The bunkhouse stairs are built and installed! They are made from wood from the family woodlot. The beauty of real wood is always impressive. Ken has worked hard to take the rough lumber and turn it into a work of art. He is now working on the upstairs bedroom floor. We hope to have it ready for the first apprentices when they arrive on March 24th and it looks like we will make the grade. Devan Penny, a former apprentice, came for a short visit and got right in on the action fitting the doorjamb of walnut with Ken!

The chickens are really enjoying the warm weather. Around 20 chickens have wintered over and are starting to lay eggs again. We have ordered another 30 ready to lay pullets to arrive in mid-May. The plan is to fence the field that is just north of the house and have it be our chicken pasture. We’ll see if we have better luck with that.

The greenhouse is up and running with the wood stove in place. The first transplants have been started. I always enjoy greenhouse work in the early spring. Applications keep arriving daily. We still have some shares available for the 2010 season.
An application can be downloaded from the CSA page of this website.

After the spring-like weather a week ago it seems winter has returned! The horses don’t mind because the snow and frozen ground make their paddock much cleaner than the mucky muddy mess we have had some yeas in February. I don’t really mind either, because Ken is itching to start his spring plowing and the winter conditions help keep him focused on the bunkhouse wood working. I am very pleased to report that the stairs are now in place and we are ready to start work on the floor for the upstairs bedroom. The beams look lovely with their final sanding and oiling. We are very hopeful that the bunkhouse will be ready for the apprentices when they arrive the end of March.

Around the edges of the bunkhouse work we will be starting up the greenhouse for the early spring transplants. Lots of garden planning has taken place and we are excited about the coming year’s growing season. CSA garden applications keep arriving daily with the mail. We still have some space available and welcome local folks to join for the season.

Yesterday we had another successful logging workshop here at Orchard Hill Farm. Ken worked hard getting ready the last couple of weeks felling trees to pull out of the woodlot on the big day and getting all the horses shod for the winter conditions. Our son, Grayden, came home for the weekend to help supervise the participants and demonstrated that he hasn’t forgotten his teamster skills while living in the big city of Toronto.

One of our youngest participants ever, 12 year old Chris Collinson, took to driving like a duck to water.

Now it’s time for us to get back to work on the bunkhouse in order to have it finished for our apprentices when they arrive the end of March. Ken has a set of stairs to build and Martha will be doing the finishing work sanding and oiling the woodwork, painting the dry wall and washing down the clay walls.

Everyone asks us what we do in the winter…One of our January tasks is to make wheel hoes to take to the Guelph Organic Conference to sell at our booth where we advertise our Apprenticeship program and our Draft Horse Workshops.

Ken was inspired to build his first stirrup wheel hoe after hearing Eric Eberhardt give a talk about how he cultivated his rather large garden with such a wheel hoe. When that first stirrup wheel hoe proved to be such an effective and easy to use weeder in our own CSA garden Ken decided other people might be interested to purchase a similar tool. The wooden parts are harvested from ash trees in our family woodlot. Ash is very strong, but springy hardwood that has been traditionally used for handles. The wheel employed is a bicycle wheel. The large wheel rolls easily and no tire and tube are needed, because there is no significant load to carry and pneumatic tires eventually go flat and need repairs. Most of our horse equipment rolls along fine on steel wheels. The stirrup is constructed from recycled band sawmill blades and makes a very tough but thin weeding blade. Painting is such an environmentally unfriendly process that we have opted to give the whole machine a coat of boiled linseed oil made from flaxseed to protect the steel and wood.

Another January job is to map out the garden and order seeds. Some of you may remember the picture a year ago of Caesar as a puppy sitting on my lap while we ordered seeds. This year he was too big to sit on my lap, but he still helped.