Snowy Sunday

 Hello dear friends and thank you for visiting our blog even when I have not been posting anything new!  I am surprised and delighted to have so many visitors from Europe.  

We have had quite a bit of snow this week and I suspect more snow so far than we had all last winter-and technically winter has not yet started!  Although it was cold today for the most part it was clear so I borrowed my husband's snowshoes for a little walkabout.

 Yes those really are frozen chrysanthemums in our new garden urns!  There is a flagstone terrance under than snow. 

Oh dear it would seem that the lawn furniture is still on the dining terrace.

I hope that we received some points for at least managing to get the cushions inside!  

This year I used the skates to decorate the gate going to the barn.  As we are not hosting any Christmas activities at the farm this year I havent spent much time decorating.

 The sheep are comfy in the barn.  It has been bitterly cold so they are confined inside so that we can keep the temperatures above freezing. 



We have had windchill values around -15 or colder and since we usually start lambing in December we dont want to take a chance that any newborns will become hypothermic.  And we dont want the water troughs to freeze.

I love this cedar hedge.  The chickens are comfortable in their insulated chicken coop-no foraging for fresh grass and bugs at this time of year.

A view from the barn looking towards the house.  A farm tractor comes in very handy for clearing snow!

Humble decorations for our gate at the road!

Looking back towards the barn and the freshly cleared lane.

From the end of the driveway looking towards the house.  The stone part is original and the addition was just done about 18 months ago.

A little stroll down the road shows the damage to this Austrian Pine from the ice storm last year.  The boughs are bending under the weight of the snow.

A view of the front of the house from the road.

My little garden shed in the distance.

Another view.  And now back to getting prepared for another work week.  I am happy to be able to take some time off between Christmas and New Years and hope to have more photos to share with you.

~Thank you for visiting!~

Warm Fall Day

Hello everyone, we have been very busy here at the farm trying to finish off some of our outdoor projects before winter arrives.  As always, some projects get bumped out of the way by other projects, and in general everything takes longer to do than we planned!  In the meantime I have a few quick photos to share with you.

Pretty Holly is obsessed with this old apple tree and the chipmunk or squirrel that lives in it.  We are convinced that the little creature spends its' day hurling insults at her and for her part Holly just cant walk away!  We can usually find her patiently waiting under the tree for something interesting to happen.

We have had several hard frosts already and many of the tender plants have died off.  I found these two little squashes on a vine in one of the flower gardens.

Yesterday was an unseasonably mild day reaching 19 degrees in the late afternoon. A late afternoon haze developed in the distance making it look and feel like early September instead of the beginning of November.  I spent the day in the garden trying to get my bulbs planted.  Sadly I still have many more to plant!  

This project will hopefully done by the end of this weekend,,,,it is our new koi pond!  It measures 11 x 17 feet and is 5 feet deep at the deepest point.  The koi are still in our waterfall pond which is not deep enough to allow them to survive our winter.

I love our old cedar hedge.

The chickens were enjoying the mild weather and spent the day feasting on weeds from the garden.

I had previously mentioned that the power utility was going to be cutting branches off of our large maple trees to help protect the power lines.  As we are in the country we will have power outages during ice storms and sometimes have brown-outs when high winds produce galloping wires.  The work crews dropped off some of the chipped wood in our farm lane to be used as mulch on the gardens.

Tiny little crab apples.

Lounging under the old apple trees.  This is a favourite spot for the sheep.

Sheep love to rub against things.  There are little tufts of wool on most of the lower branches on trees around the farm.

Part of the farmhouse.

More sheep enjoying the unseasonable mild afternoon temperatures.

Wishing everyone a great week!

~thank you for visiting~

Fall Garden

Hello dear friends, another vacation week is over and as always so much of the "to-do" list remains undone!  We did however have an enjoyable week with a Thanksgiving dinner, bicycle riding and puttering in the garden.  If the mild weather continues we may still have another 2 or 3 weekends of garden work before putting everything away for the winter. 

We have had a very dry and hot summer so are pleasantly surprised to see the maples put on a glorious display of colour.  This part of our property faces the road and runs along farm lane.  We like the look of split cedar rail fencing however it is not always practical with our collection of dogs who would like nothing more than to sneak through the rails to visit the dog across the road.  Although we live on a country road we still have car traffic and sadly some motorists think that a quiet country road is a license to speed.  Our various fences help to keep our dogs safe.

This part of the fence faces the road at our driveway.

This is a view of our lower lawn.  We like to give different parts of our property names so when we are having important daydreams about gardens we know exactly which part of the property we are referring to! 

This is also part of our lower lawn and we refer to this garden as Tessie's Garden.  It took a great many years for the blue spruce to actually start looking blue.  

This is a view towards the road.  A couple of years ago we had a new driveway constructed to allow heavy equipment to get to our house.  We have plans to continue the driveway to have it sweep around to the front of our house.  As with many projects however nothing is a simple as it seems!  In order to accomplish this task some fencing and a gate need to be moved, new fencing needs to be installed, a formal gate needs to be installed at the road and part of a garden needs to be moved.  In the meantime this little pasture holds much of the top soil that was removed to allow for some construction,  Perhaps next year we will tackle this big project.

Some of our round bales of hay patiently waiting to be moved to the barn.

It seems that we have either a resident squirrel or chipmunk making quick work of some of the apples in the grove.

A view towards the lower garden from the dining terrace area.

These are our two senior-most seniors.  Willow (left) is 10 years old and Drakk is 11 years old,  We are happy to be able to provide a great home in the country for these lovely dogs.

This driveway runs behind our house.  One of the mysteries of this old farm is why the driveway was built at the back of the house instead of at the front.  I regret not having asked the elderly couple that lived next door more questions about the history of our house.  They observed many changes to our property over the decades however as they have both passed away there are some questions we will never have answers to.  We have made many changes since purchasing the farm including adding a stone retaining wall and curving the driveway.  

 This is our dining terrace just off of our formal dining room.  We had hoped to add a second load of gravel to this area this fall but time seems to have slipped away.  There was quite a bit of settling of the ground in this area so have not yet finished it.

Lucy managed to score another apple.

A view towards the barn from our kitchen deck.  Our ever so practical hydro pole is a bit of an eyesore!  but very necessary,

Wishing everyone a great week!

~thank you for visiting!~

Thanksgiving Bicycle Ride

Hello everyone, we enjoyed a glorious Thanksgiving weekend with cool temperatures and sunny skies.  We decided to take advantage of the great weather to take a bicycle ride on a nearby trail.  The Elora Cataract Trail spans some 47 km stretching from Elora to Cataract and is a popular trail for hikers, joggers and cyclists.  In the winter it is a snowmobile trail.

Lovely wooded areas with sunlight streaming into clearings.

The leaves are turning colour and falling.

 We ran into our neighbour walking her new puppy.  Rowdy is a 12 week old Australian Shepherd.

The water levels are managed by the Grand River Conservation Authority.  The Belwood River is part of a flood control management system.  There are cottages along the river.

So peaceful.

This old fallen down bridge has been here for as long as we can remember.  We have no idea how long it has been there.

Almost home!  

 Coming up to our old farmhouse.

 What an interesting fungus in one of our old maples along the road.

That was great excercise, now it is time for coffee.

~thank you for visiting!~