Canadian Acres
Farming in the North
Homesteading Goals: 2015
After writing the summary post of our first year on the farm I am amazed at how much we accomplished… and also a little overwhelmed because I mean, how in the heck do we top that?! But with the New Year brings a refreshed sense of over achieving and I think we’re up to the challenge.
Earlier this week, Clay and I sat down to sketch out our farm goals for the year and my oh my, how do we still have so much to do? Ah yes, it’s called homesteading and there is a reason that not everyone else we know is doing it. Starting from scratch takes time, patience and a crap load of work. Also, mistakes. You have to be willing to make mistakes and not kill each other over it. So far, nobody has died (save a few critters here and there). Well, we’re pretty good at making mistakes so might as well continue to do what we’re good at!
Here is a breakdown of our 2015 homestead goals:
- The Garden:
Maynard in the garden site last summer - Triaged from last years list my major focus this year will be implementing my garden. I have big plans, big plans I tells ya… to the point of maybe too much but I am committed to taking it one step at a time and starting with a well thought out, drawn out plan. The hard part for us is starting small, so we will be practicing that.
- Design, design, design… I am designing my garden based on permaculture principles that incorporate many different ideals on how to best work with nature to accomplish our goals. The back 1/2 acre will focus on an integrated food forest design and the front part will consist of hugelkultur beds, suntraps, keyhole beds, mandala beds, microclimates and herb spirals.
- Books I am currently reading or have read for research are: Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture, The Holistic Orchard by Michael Phillips, Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway and Integrated Forest Gardening by Wayne Weiseman (just to name a few).
- We have to build an 8 foot elk fence around the acre section. For a while I figured we didn’t need it and all would be fine, but this winter has proven me to be a liar.
Thor stands down two bull elk directly next to my garden site - Our water system will be a major project as an acre is a lot of ground to cover. Whilst I’ll be designing the garden with plenty of water saving techniques (swales, hugelkultur and mulch) we will still need a reliable source of water. The garden plot is currently located between two existing dugouts so we will need to figure out a way to best use these resources. And also will need to get ducks, obviously…
Dugout located on the right side of the garden site… perfect for ducks, right? 
An elusive Peace River water hippo and some sort of creepy water goblin enjoying the dugout on a hot day 
The second dugout is located to the left of the garden site in the section of trees - Then it will be time to dig and dig and dig and move and lift and haul and plant and water and plant and water and…. spend so much quality outdoor time with nature my soul will fill to the brim.
- Design, design, design… I am designing my garden based on permaculture principles that incorporate many different ideals on how to best work with nature to accomplish our goals. The back 1/2 acre will focus on an integrated food forest design and the front part will consist of hugelkultur beds, suntraps, keyhole beds, mandala beds, microclimates and herb spirals.
- Triaged from last years list my major focus this year will be implementing my garden. I have big plans, big plans I tells ya… to the point of maybe too much but I am committed to taking it one step at a time and starting with a well thought out, drawn out plan. The hard part for us is starting small, so we will be practicing that.
- Building our horse corrals:
Corral site - We will continue on our lovely log peeling journey to finish up the rails we need to start construction on our corrals. The land will hopefully start to turn into pasture as we finish the last 150-200 rails. Then it’s time to put them up!
Clay peeling logs with two very hard working supervisors - Once the corrals are finished, the goal is to load up the 50-60 wild horses from across the river, transport them 3 hours to the farm and let them get used to the idea of being contained. We’ll host a big old party to entice people to come help us with the cutting, branding and breaking and will hope that all goes well and Wyatt doesn’t get killed immediately by a wild horse… some will be sold, some will be kept and the mares will be transported back across the river with Thor as their new stud… I hope he’s up for the challenge!
Our Fjord mix stud Thor in the front 
The wild ones last summer
- We will continue on our lovely log peeling journey to finish up the rails we need to start construction on our corrals. The land will hopefully start to turn into pasture as we finish the last 150-200 rails. Then it’s time to put them up!
- Install my clothesline, keep muddy dogs and loose chickens away from it
- Install gutters on house and add a few rain barrels
- Landscaping:
The fire pit area in need of some finishing touches - Finish fire pit area
- Lattice the bottom of the deck
- Chicken yard and area around well
- Re-seed patches in lawn
- Chickens:
- I want to add some Ameraucanas and Blue Copper Marans to the flock
- Going through our first winter with the coop has pointed out some flaws with the interior design so we’ll be working on remedying some of these issues
So there you have it… doesn’t seem so bad…. right? Oh who am I kidding, it looks really bad, but in a good way. There is a reason we don’t have TV.
I’ll be looking for full-time work and have many personal goals in mind this year as well, so it all could go either way. But this is the path we’ve chosen and we enjoy the good life so here’s hoping we don’t collapse in a heap of exhaustion, or even worse, end up with goats 🙂
Ever optimistic and always on our toes. Cheers to the new year!
~Katy
The Wilderness Way
After December hits it’s time to start making the 3 hour drive across the river to start feeding the wild horses. We load up 6-8 round hay bales (1200 lbs each) on the trailer and hope for decent weather and good road conditions. Living in the North, both wishes rarely come true.
This past Sunday Timber and Clay loaded up and headed out. Since it was -36 (both Celsius and Fahrenheit… at temps like that they seem to both agree it’s effing cold) I decided to stay home and attempt to organize my life after the holidays. The horses are located on a remote grazing lease across from our land on the Peace River. It takes 20 minutes to canoe there, and 3 hours to drive as there are no bridges for a direct route. Only accessible by an oil field road, conditions can vary from crappy to we’re all going to die. So down the road they went at 6 am.
Around 11 am I get a phone call from my husband via his father’s cell phone. “Um… so, the transmission over heated and the truck caught on fire. We’re stranded just past the corrals. We are okay physically but my phone is dead and my dad’s is losing battery. The only person who knows how to get over here is Blake and he’s not answering his phone. Can you try to get a hold of him?”
I glance out my kitchen window where Blake’s truck sits as he is currently on the islands below our house loading out an elk they shot the day before. Not likely to show up anytime soon. I call and leave a message. I then call Clay’s Mom and let her know what was going on. My main concern was the cold, but I knew they were both mountain men and would be comfortable for a few hours. My next call was to Clay’s uncle Ross who I knew had never been over to the exact location, but knew the area better than me. I asked him to try to call Timber before his battery ran out to see if we could get directions. If we couldn’t reach them, the plan was for me to drive to his house (1 hour away) and we’d both head over there and use my sense of direction to (hopefully) find them. Luckily, Ross got a hold of Timber, Timber sent a photo of a drawn map and since Ross was closer, he headed out with a friend to save the day. Phew.
Eventually they remembered a battery charger Timber had received as a present from his wife (Yay Arlene!) for Christmas and were able to fully charge their cell batteries. Clay assured me he had plenty of warm clothes and a fire and they were gearing up to walk 2 km to meet the truck.
Now that I knew they were safe, I wanted to know – HOW ARE THE HORSES?!
They all look happy and fat. Cold, but shaggy enough it didn’t seem to bother them too much. Clay and Timber spotted 23 in total and many yearlings were seen amongst the crowd.
Ross and Larry showed up as the rescue crew and everyone made it home safe and sound. Clay and his dad waited from about 10:45 am after putting out the truck fire with a shovel and snow until 3:30 pm when the A-team showed up. The situation could have been much worse if they weren’t so prepared and we still had some lessons learned:
- Bring excess food and water
- Bring warm and appropriate clothing + extra
- Bring an axe and a fire starter
- Know where your fire extinguisher is
- Always have a charged cell phone or a charger that works without truck power, make sure you will have cell service
- Leave a wilderness plan: more than one person should have access to a detailed map, a time when you departed and a time when you expect to be back
All in all a successful day on the farm. Everyone lived to tell the tale and the horses look great. 2015 is off to an interesting start and proving once again there is never a dull moment here at Canadian Acres!
Stay warm people.
~Katy
*all photos credited to my handsome husband Clay
Our First Year in Review – 2014
I can’t believe it’s been a WHOLE year on the farm! Actually, I can because let’s face it, it’s been a crazy amount of work, time and effort. But boy, what a way to spend our time.
Earlier this year I wrote out our goals for 2014 and looking back, we
were ambitious… very ambitious. I suppose it’s better to be ambitious than aimless, and we should be proud of what we’ve accomplished. So take my hand and I’ll take you on a magic carpet ride through our year. Although my magic carpet looks more like a horse and smells more like a chicken… we can’t all be perfect.
The original list: Homesteading Goals 2014
- Install workable gates throughout property fences
- Done! With the help of our favorite farm hand (Go Timber!) we managed to finish the fencing surrounding all 160 acres of our property, added working gates and fenced off about 40 acres for the horses.
- Clear trees & debris in horse pasture, secure fences (40 acres)
- Done! A logger came out and cleared about 2 acres of that area (up by our future corrals) for horse pasture and we piled and burned the remaining debris. Fences are secure.
Timber busy as usual
Build horse corrals & tack shed, move in horses, give them treats and scratch their ears
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- Half done? This goal started with a delivery of about 500 “rails” (aka logs that need to be peeled by hand) and lots of sweat. Seriously, peeling logs is not easy work. We probably got 300 peeled by early summer and then quickly ignored the remaining pile every time we walked/quaded past. We put up a make shift corral with some panels Timber had, moved in a “tack shed” (a large yellow moving van container I lovingly refer to as the Yellow Submarine) and moved in some horses. At the most we had 9 horses on the property and they all got plenty of ear scratches and oats.
- Build chicken coop, raise 25 chicks & figure out what to do with all the roosters at a later date
- Done! Probably one of our largest projects of the year. We started out with a seacan, 14 chickens and Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor. As of now I have 8 laying hens, 1 rooster named Beatrix and 5 “littles”, 4 of which are roo’s. I didn’t have much success with my rooster/hen ratio so we also got to learn the fine art of butchering a chicken. Next year I may have to find a Mennonite family who would like to complete this task for me… not my favorite. But I DO love my chooks! We also taught the dogs to love them and moved in two farm cats just for the fun of it. We average 5 eggs a day during the winter and have an array of brown, green and pink eggs.
Build compost areas, figure out how to keep Wyatt out of compost areas
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- Done! I proudly built myself two beautiful compost bins out of pallets complete with hinging, securable gates to keep the Wyatt’s out… keeping the chickens and kittens out has proven more challenging…
Landscaping: Lawn, perennial flower beds, fire pit area, figure out how to keep Wyatt out of the growing lawn area
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- Half done… Preparing the lawn site took the longest amount of time and the most amount of work, but we successfully laid down grass seed and attempted to block off the areas from Wyatt… Fail. Also, the Canada Day party we had probably didn’t help. At the end of the season though, it was looking lush and hopeful so I guess we’ll see how it looks this spring. We put in a U shaped hugelkultur garden bed alongside the north, west and south ends of the house as well as a small one in front of our chicken coop. The fire pit area has been established and we need to make a decision on how to finish it this summer. All in all, we have much more in landscaping to come, but for the most part we kicked ass.
Finish cabin for guests, entertain said guests- Fail? We didn’t touch the cabin this year but did have guests stay in it as they passed through to Alaska. No one was offended or eaten by mice so I guess that counts for something…
Build garden/orchard fence: 1 acre of 8 foot elk/deer fence
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- Fail…. Triaged until 2015. We decided this was such a large project that has so many variables we just couldn’t do it the way we wanted to this year. Okay by me as I’d like to really focus on the beginning stages of this to create my soon to be dream garden. I still grew some veggies in my garden beds so was happy with that.
Plant garden: Include raised beds, permaculture design principles, sheet mulch beds, hugelkultur beds- Fail… I told you it was a big project.
Install orchard: Northern hardy varieties of apple, pear, plum, apricot, cherry and variety of fruit and nut bushes- Fail… please see above. I told you we were ambitious.
Plan and install garden watering system- Fail… Now it feels like we didn’t accomplish anything… failure is not in my nature.
- Continue to improve and upgrade the farm road
- ????? Not sure how to rate us on this one. The road washed out twice this year. Once in the spring and once in the fall. As of now, no real lasting improvements have been made and we still don’t know what it will look like. Life was full of quad and side-by-side rides and we managed as best we could.
Install clothesline
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- Fail… on the list for this year.
- Paint and finish power shed
- Done! And it looks fabulous (note to self, never ever ever build something out of OSB board and try to paint it… it sucks. Literally. It took me 4 coats of paint and I still steer people away from looking too closely. Thus explains why there is no photographic proof.)
We met some “off the list” goals as well this year which included:
- Stained both the front and back decks
- Put up a pretty decent harvest that included: elk, deer, chickens, saskatoons, jams, jerky, smoked salmon, oven roasted tomatoes, peaches, pickles, wine and cordial.
- Installed a beautiful wood stove in the house
- Entertained lots of visitors
- Burned our overgrown grassy areas and our growing burn piles
- Enjoyed ourselves thoroughly
And just in case you thought we’d ever allow ourselves some downtime, we accomplished some pretty great personal goals as well:
- I started this wonderful blog!
- Traveled to Vancouver, Canmore, Banff, the Caribbean, Alaska, Texas and Calgary.
- I completed a 30-day yoga challenge in the month of November
- Clay was appointed to the Board of Directors for the Peace Valley Environmental Association
- I took an art class and found out I can actually draw… kind of
- I had my first magazine article published
- Hiked, biked, skied, rode and snow machined all over our property and then some
- Wyatt survived his many adversaries including: barbed wire, the horses, the deer, the quad, the elk, the horses, a marmot, the side-by-side, that one tree that looked really scary that one time, the horses, the kittens and Mom. He very noticeably ignored all coyotes…
Well, we won some and we lost some, but mostly we just worked. Everything was a learning process and could probably have been done better, but hey, I’m a rookie so lay off!
As we sat down to pen our 2015 Homesteading Goals, we started with two main ones as we really wanted to be realistic. Well those two goals quickly turned into 15 so there you have it… we might be slow learners but at least we are optimistic!
Cheers to a new year and plenty more things to do.
~Katy
Kittens & Chickens
Most of you who follow me on Facebook or Instagram know that I have two kittens living amongst my flock of chickens. It was a logical place for them to go as the tack shed is kind of far away and not yet equipped for two barn cats. I didn’t know if they would get along, just hoped that since most of the chickens were larger than the kittens at the time, they would learn to coexist peacefully. I wasn’t prepared for the amazing relationships that have formed.
I have been attempting to document my adorable critters and hope you enjoy my compilation of photos thus far. I think this is proof that differences really make no difference at all.
Loving this farm life of mine…
~Katy
Deck the Shed with Lots of Game Meat…
Fa la la la laa laa laa laa la…. ‘Tis the season to feast and eat… Fa la la la laa laa laa laa la.
Don we now camo apparel… Fa la la la la la laa laa laa. Tote around a single barrel… Fa la la la laa la laa la laa la.
Howdy folks, it’s officially my favorite time of the year. Not only is it the holiday season, it’s also a time we get to fill our freezers with tasty wild game meat. I’m not much of a hunter and as an animal lover, I must admit it’s a hard process for me to go through without crying, but I am a firm believer in knowing where my food comes from and that each animal lives a wild, healthy and happy life. Being able to hunt on the farm was a huge draw for us on deciding to homestead.
This November brought deer season and I was saddened by the amount of poaching that goes on in our area. I am thankful for our fences and signs as we do have the horses living amongst the wild game, but boy did people push the envelope. I mean, I can SEE you… you are in my neighbors field and you can obviously see my house. Sigh… I digress.
I am thankful that Clay had his mule deer tag and harvested us a beautiful 4 point buck in a single shot. I was so proud I promptly marched out and took a bunch of amazing photos, later to realize I didn’t have a memory card in my camera… blast! Anyway, Clay gutted it (with my leg holding assistance), skinned it and hung it up in our power shed. The whole process didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. This farm girl is growing up!
After hanging it for 10 days it was time for my very first large animal butcher session. I was a little intimidated, but once Clay started to bring in the quarters and I had fully gotten into my first glass of wine, everything came pretty easily. I just followed the natural lines of the muscle and trimmed, trimmed, trimmed. As an avid cook, I knew what I wanted to keep and what I didn’t. It was actually kind of fun. And man oh man, is venison a gorgeous meat! I mean, look at that color. Happy happy girl.
The dogs enjoyed a leg bone each… Wyatt got the crazy eyes and devoured his. It took Maynard about 15 minutes to warm up to the idea and realize it wasn’t there to kill him, and in the end, enjoyed it very much.
After packaging all of the large cuts of venison with my handy dandy food saver, I set the remaining scraps aside in the fridge for next day grinding. We bought a grinder from Cabela’s a few months earlier and I was eager to try it.
So the next day, I trimmed and sliced about 2 lbs of jerky meat and fed the rest through our grinder. It was awesome! I was finished in like 20 minutes and that was running it through 2 different blades. It took longer to clean the darned thing. Ha ha! 10 lbs of beautiful ground venison for the freezer – am I a bad ass or what?! (Sorry, the new homestead skills have gone to my head quickly. Also, gotta keep the motivation up for our next much larger butcher session.)
Fast forward one month to this week and we were on our next hunt. Mind you we enjoyed our first venison tenderloin steaks (delicious) and butchered 10 roosters within that time… I can not stress enough that this lifestyle literally never has a dull moment.
At the end of November we had a herd of elk move onto the property. What a breathtaking sight to enjoy my morning tea to. Elk are absolutely gorgeous animals and something I did not experience in Alaska. Clay and I enjoyed doing a daily count, and watching the bulls try to woo the ladies. Mostly we anxiously awaited the arrival of December 1st, when Clay’s Limited Entry Hunt tag for a cow elk came into effect. We hoped they would stick around.
And they did.
The weather was warm, I got home at 4 pm, we geared up, he with his .338 and me with my camera and a hunting we did go. 20 minutes later we had our elk. I think I’ll start going on more hunts if it only takes 20 minutes. (I can feel Clay rolling his eyes from here.) I am amazed at how big elk are. She was beautiful and we both thanked her for her life and sacrifice for our family.
Clay’s dad came down to help haul it up to the house and they gutted, skinned and quartered it for the shed. Hooray! I haven’t bought red meat from the grocery store in a year and I won’t be starting anytime soon. I am excited to butcher my first elk and try my hand at elk jerky… the venison stuff only lasted for 2 days around our house. Nothing like jerky for breakfast 🙂
Another busy month leads us into the holidays and we remain thankful and blessed. We truly are living the sustainable lifestyle we dreamed about. Although, I keep having a stare down with the giant elk heart that’s in my fridge at the moment… I’m still a work in progress.
Now, time to increase my wild game meat recipe collection – what’s your favorite way to prepare venison or elk?
~Katy
Canadian Acres 