Farm Weekend

Hello everyone, we had a very unwelcome visit from a mink over the weekend.  It scaled the fence in the barn and killed our last 7 chickens.  We recently had 17 of our hens killed by what we thought was a weasel which had gained entry to our hen house.  Sometimes having a farm is fun and sometimes it is not.

In the spring we will be doing some work on the hen house to try to make it predator-proof and then we will order more laying hens.  In the meantime I will miss having my fresh supply of eggs daily.

Meanwhile work continues on the guest bedroom.  We found an old headboard and footboard at a local thrift shop and will give it a coat of stain later to darken the wood.  The new beds were delivered a couple of weeks ago and are a big improvement over the old worn out mattress we had before.  Chantal approves.

We are milling the trim for the rooms in the addition.  Our goal is to have the interior of the new construction look as if it is part of the original farmhouse which dates to the 1850s.  Building the millwork for the cathedral window is a bit of a job!

The chandalier is installed over the bed.

I have been collecting various pieces of Delftware and other blue and white pieces.  They will be displayed in the guest room when it is done.

Lucy approves of the bed too.

 

After spending several hours painting the new kitchen and breakfast room it was time to enjoy a loaf of home made bread.  Delicious!

 This past weekend we enjoyed springlike temperatures.  This morning our house was bathed in warm sunlight but the forecast calls for a snow storm later this week.

~Thank you for visiting~

Brrr!

Hello everyone, it is a very cold weekend here at the farm with windchills of minus 37.  We shouldn't complain too much though as other parts of the country are even colder.  Overall we have had a very mild winter.  In spite of the very cold temperatures the sun is getting noticeably warmer.

We have ice on the inside of some of our windows!

 The barn is relatively toasty at minus 2 degrees.  When the temperatures get this cold the barn is closed up.  Although the ewes dont mind the cold it can be fatal for the little lambs as they dont have the body fat to protect them.

 Hello, would you like to play with me?  You look funny!

 This little lamb is about one week old.  We have about 12 lambs in the barn at the moment.

 We made a mixture of fat, peanut butter and bird seeds to feed the birds in this weather.  All of our feeders are topped up so there is lots to eat.  We havent had much bird activity other than chickadees and today we saw a woodpecker.

We were astonished to see how quickly this black squirrel appeared to raid one of the feeders.  We like to use sections of large branches for some of the feeders-we carve out little hollows and fill them with suet.  It would appear from his puffy appearance that he is cold too.

We are taking a bit of time away from work this week to continue working on the house.  We should have some work-in-progress pictures to share soon!

~Thank you for visiting~

Horatio

Hello everyone, I thought I would share a quick post about Horatio.

I was surprised one day to see a little cat outside of my office window.  As my office is in the city and there are no homes nearby I wondered where he came from.  It was immediately apparent that he was in very poor condition with very dirty fur, bite marks on his neck and abcessed wounds on his arms.   We provided him with water and kibble which he gobbled up and then he promptly curled up into a little ball and fell asleep in my office.

He was clearly a stray and in need of medical attention.  I packed him into a cardboard box and hurried him to our veterinarian.  The poor little fellow had a high fever and was dehydrated, our vet said that he would not have lived another 2 days.  So we paid for his bills and brought him home!  As we have other cats he needed to stay in isolation for a few days so we kept him in the barn.

Many years ago we had two very old barn cats.  We thought that Horatio could live in our barn where it is warm and sheltered and he could catch mice.  He however had very different ideas.  His new life as a house cat was determined when he escaped from the barn and wouldnt go back.  We had no choice but to bring him inside.

He quickly learned that he was safe and would be well looked after.  It didnt take long for him to start exploring outside and patrolling the veranda railings is one of his favourite activities.

We are not sure what is so much fun about rolling around on a stone wall but it is something he enjoys a great deal.

It did not come easily but eventually Charlotte and Chantal learned to barely tolerate having another cat in the house.  As the ladies are older they find him rather annoying and we have had many cat scuffles.  Horatio is still very kitten like and loves to play.  He is very affectionate, loves to cuddle, purrs constantly and sometimes seems to think that he is a dog.  

So many strays end up in shelters or lose their lives trying to survive.  Horatio is so fortunate that we found him and were willing to pay for the care he needed.  If everyone would spay or neuter their pets these situations could be avoided.

Horatio is one lucky little cat although from his behaviour it often seems that he thinks that we are the lucky ones!

~Thank you for visiting~

Sunday Morning Stroll

Hello everyone, it is a very mild Sunday here at the farm so I went for a little walk.

 We have had very little snow this year, the bases of the statues are barely covered.  The temperature today is hovering around 5 degrees and the forecast is for unseasonably warm temperatures over the next couple of days with lots of rain.

Duck and sheep tracks!

Could we possibly have a robin so soon?  Apparently there have been many sightings of robins already.

The little garden shed tucked into a corner.

Mosses on one of the big maples along the road.

An old roll of fencing wire that was here when we moved here 23 years ago and hasnt moved since!

There are still apples on the trees for the sheep to eat.

Our two muscovy ducks enjoying some fresh air outside.

A mom and her little one looking out the window.

~Thank you for visiting!~

Sunday Stroll

Hello everyone, I thought I would take a little stroll around the property and share some photos with you.  We have had very little snow for this time of year but it was quite cold today with a wind chill of -20 Celsius...my fingers were quite cold!

A view of our old farmhouse from the road.  The addition is the wing on the rear of the house.  We have just enough snow to cover the grass.

Everything looks rather dreary perhaps because it was overcast today.  The main floor of the addition is our new dining room.  The second floor in this photo is a guest room-I recently shared photos of this work in progress.  We still have much finishing work to do. 

Sasha's statue is barely covered in snow.

We still have some round bales of hay in one of our farm lanes that didnt quite make it to the barn.

Our chickens are enjoying their winter residence in our barn.  Sadly most of our chickens were killed when a weasel gained access to our hen house.  These hens are old girls but still provide us with about 4 fresh eggs per day.  We are not sure but think that the weasel may have in turn been killed by an owl that has taken up residence in a large maple by our barn.

A lamb in action!

We have 6 lambs in the barn at the moment.   Although I asked politely most of them were not interested in having their photos taken today.

Many of the apple trees still have apples on their branches. 

I was quite annoyed to catch several sheep one morning eating our cedars.  They stand on their hind legs with their front legs on the split cedar rail fence and nibble on the green branches.  Very irritating!!  The sheep have done quite a bit of damage to this little hedge.

We have several bird houses scattered across the farm.  This one is on a fence tucked behind a large cedar to provide shelter and protection.

I painted a pair of old skates with gold paint and hung them on our gate as a Christmas decoration.   I was quite late putting decorations up and am quite late taking them down-at least I am consistent!

This deer is a prototype made from firewood and twigs and branches that fall from our large maples.  I think it is rather cute!

Guest Room Work Begins!

Hello everyone, now that the Christmas festivities are over we are starting to do work on the interior of our home.  In 2014 we finally moved ahead with a major addition to our 1850's stone farmhouse with the contractor finishing his work last spring.  Unfortunately the work took several months longer than anticipated so we didnt have last winter to finish the interior as we had planned.  Now we are back on track, one year later!

We hired a contractor that was experienced with old stone structures.  As we are both fairly handy people we had the contractor handle all of the major construction and thought we would do the final finishing ourselves.  We are optimistically hoping to have everything done by the end of 2016 and I will be providing frequent updates.

The first project is the upstairs guest bedroom.  Our plans called for a cathedral window to mimic another cathedral window that is part of the original old house.  We were also very specific that we wanted to carry the sloped ceilings from the old house into the new construction.  Our goal was to have the addition look like it has always been here.  All of the windows were specially ordered to have the same appearance as the windows in the old house.

We made very few alterations to the original design.  One of the changes we made was to eliminate a walk-in closet from the guest room.  As the room is not very big I thought that the closet would take too much space but after looking at the room for several months I thought we should have some sort of closet after all.  So we came up with a compromise and are building a small closet so that guests will have somewhere to hang their clothes.  The interior of the closet will be lined in cedar.  A custom door will have a slanted top which I think adds character and is in keeping with the style of the room.  The little area next to the closet with have a couple of shelves and a lamp.

The opposite side of the room shows some of the detail of the sloped ceilings.  When the construction was being done some of the workers were joking about the amount of swearing going on while I was away...all of the slopes and angles made for some very challenging construction.  

This room is immediately above our new dining room on the main floor.  Both rooms incorporated the existing stone wall from the old house.  We are so happy that keeping the stonework exposed was a major part of the construction.  As in the past I have selected heritage paint colours, this is a Benjamin Moore colour called Buxton Blue.  

While having dinner at a friend's home we were admiring the transoms that she had built over the doors in her new home and thought we would like to do the same.  As the doorways had already been framed and drywalled the contractor had to undo some of his work.  The framed area above the doorway will eventually hold a stained glass window.  I am thinking that the shop that sold the Tiffany lamp I recently purchased may be able to help with this as the owner does stained glass work.

 We spent a lot of time considering flooring options.  As we live on a farm and have lots of pets we needed something that was very durable.  Although we love the look of wood flooring our experience with our existing wood floors is that they cannot stand up to 4 large dogs, 3 cats and the general dust and grit that gets tracked through a farmhouse.  We finally settled on this high quality laminate floor from Mannington.  It was easy to install although it was quite fussy to cut and notch the end boards to incorporate the changing shape of the stone wall.

Have a great week and thank you for visiting!