New Addition
With holiday season in full swing, things here have become more varied. Last Friday saw the arrival of a new member of the farm team. We're very excited she's here. Asha wasn't sure she really wanted to be here. In fact I know she didn't. She doesn't really want to be near people at all. In fact, neither Tim or I even really saw what she looked like until this week. Well, Asha is a gorgeous girl. After her first week, she is still hissing at me (although it's half hearted now), but will accept food from my hand willingly and even come out of her heated bed to eat in front of me. The past 3 nights she's had the run of the milkhouse and today, Saturday, she has the milkhouse during the day. I have no doubt she will be an excellent employee!
She may not even be happy to see us, but she'll always accept us filling her dish full of food. This will hopefully work out as our last barn cat, Finnegan, is now firmly a house cat. Asha is a rescue form an unmanaged feral colony. She was rescued and vetted by a rescue group close by in Mount Forest. Originally Asha was in a larger group of cats and kittens. Being an adult without kittens she wasn't able to be rehomed. She's content to be on her own - she's the perfect barn cat.
Permaculture Chores
The best looking parts of each branch are made into greenery bundles for the holidays. Each bundle is made up of spruce, pine, willow, and dogwood. If there is cedar on the fences, there can be a little cedar too. Make up of the bundles depends where on the fence lines I am that week. Some of the willow comes from our test willow coppice. We sell them through Dufferin Grove Farmer's market as well as our own online store. The parts of the conifer branches that aren't nice enough to go into the bundles get fed to the sheep. They love them this time of year. Nothing goes to waste!
