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Turning lights out for just one hour a year seems trivial to me. It should be 'monthly' or even a 'weekly' event nevermind. This certainly would promote FAMILY TIME , as no interuptions from TV's, computers etc.. but parents would have to strong hold the Ipods to create the full effect. Our farm always has 'power issues'. It's funny, as it seemed to always happen during a weekend my stepdaughter was on farm. She whines like she is dying or calls herself a 'mennonite' when it happens!! LOLOLOL! Nice try. That's when you can create some fun memories. Lots of candles, trying to cooks eggs & bacon via a 'fondue pot' (LOLOLOL!!) Reading stories from the book: "Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover's Soul". Reading those stories outloud in our family home rich with history and our own horse outside brings on some massive tears - THEN laughter, as our horse is not dead yet or even close!!!! Pure bliss silence, until you hear ...

This month just flew for us! The weekends are beginning to 'blur' along with the week -that's when you know a new season on the farm has begun! Woke up this morning to a picture-worthy scene: winter wonderland...blaaaa. Burn furnance oil, burn! I've been a sickly farm hand humming about the couch for the last two days with a massive 'cold'. I pride myself in "never getting sick" and I practice 'prevention' with how I eat and take care of myself in the first place. I blame my mother-in-law, aka 'Babca' or 'Sophie'. She had it first over Easter. I have to make time to enter a blog about just her, as she is a really good woman that needs some attention. Ok, back to whinning about being sick: Entering and Exiting the warm greenhouse environment never assists with these ailments either I may say! For me, it's how you 'deal with it' that will help you in the long run. For us around here is lots of my mother's 'hore...

Finally spring! Not much to blog the past few weeks. Was Alaska with a nice snow dump a while back. It is slowly melting, and I don't mind too much the freezing temps, all I want is SUN! You can burn tons of oil in the greenhouses, but nothing will thrive without the burn power of the sun! We have alot seeded now. All tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, leeks, onions, lettuces, asian greens, broccoli, cauliflower are seeded and have germinated. My vast heirloom tomato seedlings are my 'little soldiers' and will be transplanted soon. I will have 80 different varieties of the heirloom tomatoes at market this summer! Happy Easter! We are cleaning the first greenhouse, making Ukrainian Easter Eggs, BBQing and eatting well with family this weekend!

Each year I do the same thing: try and squeak 'lots' of seed in before March! It is still very cold and not cost effective for us to fire the middle greenhouse yet and no point creating more stress for myself panicking as I can't plant stuff out till the fear of frost is gone anyhow. If we have a crappy, cold April like last year with little sun (Ohhhh I dread this!!) I couldn't push the plants along if I tried! I sit and stare at the seed logs from last year making sure we are on track and trying desperately to be just a 'touch' earlier (aka 'better') than last year. "Long time yet. Relax woman." is usually Ben's response to my useless worrying. You can truly annoy the hell out of someone by wandering around the house evenings shaking seed packets!! LOLOLOL, poor Ben. (I do wish we had more of a 'Californian climate' though.) It's a hell of alot of work to fill the greenhouses, so the sooner I start, the sooner it fills seem...

Hello again Dufferin Customers! Ahhh, seeding. It was a nice weekend, BUT more cold and snow in the forecast. Instead of firing up the middle greenhouse now, we use our insulated 'cooler' room in the barn and 'heat' it instead, saving huge on oil/wood costs for the furnaces! Germination can take place here and within a couple weeks we'll move all the seedlings out to the greenhouses for needed sun! At this time we have some tomatoes seeded and the majority of all our onions. We had some 'volunteers' this past weekend (my stepdaughter and a friend) who helped out! First they filled the open flats, then 'stamped' the flats to make neat little rows, and then I seed out the onions! We then rack everything and water it good. The last picture is the first of our tomato seedlings emerging! It's still hard to believe the time is here and a new season has begun!! We ate well this past weekend. Lots of homemade soups and for Saturday night we had a fish ...

Day before market, busy as usual on the farm. Ben's mom with be grading storage crops with me, then we are cleaning the cooler out to get ready for 'seeding'! Yup, we will germinate in that insulated room, which is much warmer this time of year. Ben's busy doing maintenance on the outter wall of one greenhouse; and I've also decided it's time to tackle cleaning out the middle greenhouse - sorting trays, sweeping up. Every once in a while I know I'll jump out of my skin, as a huge sheet of snow will slide off the glass roof - THIS is a nice sound! Ben's also decided to seed later this afternoon. Should be a great day, nice to see the sun. Nothing happens until all the animals are taken care of. This morn was weird, as our horse is extremely vocal in the morning. She was silent and I didn't notice her around outside as usual when I fed the cats. We soon discovered why! Ben said: "It's usually the child that leaves the gate open, this time it w...

Happy Valentine's Day! (I'm gone Thurs., may as well yap now..) There is just something special about my grandma. Our collaboration has proved to be effective and fun this week! We have created 'heart shaped' perogies for Valentine's Day, which just happens to be 'Dufferin Market Day'!! (I just had to take advantage of that fact, to show some 'love' to all my customers that I value sooo much!! Same price too, so just a special treat for all!! ) My grandmother taught for over 30 years at our local catholic school here in our small town. Considering we could NOT find large heart shaped cookie cutters ANYWHERE, the retired teacher stayed awake Monday night and came up with a plan AND she came loaded with bristol board templates and a yard stick to attempt to do the job on the dough! It was classic and anyone that had my grandmother for a teacher would totally recognize her perfect handwriting, straight lines on all these cutt out designs, just classi...