Day 13

All Day: Rainy day in the Greenhouse

I looked outside this morning to see a misty morning with heavy dark clouds, just like last night. We worked with Moritzio and Lisa all day in the green house. We started with cleaning off all the Aphids from some pepper and eggplants, by hand. It was kinda strange feeling them crawling all over your hand when you can barely see them move. Then we potted on some different variations of tomatoes until dinner at 5:30.

Evening: Six Nations Talk

After dinner and cleanup we had two guest speakers come and talk about six nations treaty and how the government is slowly wearing away at aboriginal reserves. There were two speakers, a man who had attended the picketing off highway 6 and a young Indian women who talked about her childhood and about what it was like to live on a reserve. It was a very moving talk that really inspired me, maybe I'll change my civics project to this topic!

Day 12

All Day: Weeding

Today we spent the entire day weeding two long beds near Green Haven. One full of beets the other of Turnips. We also had a visit from a bunch of kids from a school who came to get a bit of a farming experience. I must say i realize how much better i am at weeding then when I started, seeing them weed like we did when we first came was entertaining.

Day 11

Morning: Weeding

We started this morning with Brenda, Brenda, Yahuda, and Lisa, together we weeded through beets, radishes (yum), and carrots. We Did this all morning and we had a nice surprise from Shanta when she came out and asked us all whether we wanted tea, coffee and even buttered, home-made muffins! We all 'placed our orders' and went back to work. When she brought our snacks we took a five minute break and then worked until 12:30.

Afternoon: Transplanting more Kale Kohlrabi

For the afternoon we continued our work with the Kale and Kohlrabi in east field. Eventually we ran out of the certain type we were transplanting so we went back to the field near Green Haven with the kale and tools. When we got there i used a 'Wheel Plow' to plow out some beds for the kale real quick. Which resulted in two ripe blisters, one on each palm of my hands - painful.

Dinner:2 Birthdays and a gooood meal

I just felt I had to post about this too; Today for dinner we had home-made fries, home-made burgers, and home-made cakes. - yes cakeS since there were 2 birthdays, and me and nigel stuffed ourselves on it. The birthdays were mine and Ossi's.

Weekend

We had a great weekend, staying up really late and snacking on our ration of junk food. Also Erich's birthday was on Saturday, but we are officially celebrating it on Monday. Happy Birthday Erich!!

Day 10

All Day: Transplanting Kale and Kohlrabi

After our usual routine, we went to the East field to start a long day of transplanting. It was really hot and tiring work, but we got through it eventually. We planted about two beds full, going in three long rows down the center of the bed. Just a side note, when we first got here, and we did our first transplanting, I could only stay in a squatting position for 10-15 minutes. But now, two weeks later, I can stay in a squatting position for over an hour without my knees cramping up at all! After dinner we went out and saw Angel and Demons at the friendly local Orangeville Cineplex. It was a pretty good movie with an interesting plot twist at the end, I would recommend seeing it.

Day 9

All Day: Transplanting Leeks & Kale

Today we did our usual morning routine, then headed out to the back vegetable gardens to help with transplanting. Both of the farm managers (Gram & Yahoda) were away picking up fair trade coffee and chocolate from Gram's former business partner in Toronto, so we worked with Moritzio and Lisa all day. It was really hot and the work was very repetitive, considering that we were planting 500+ plants over the course of the whole day.

Day 8

Morning: Rise and Sh-Mulch

Today we accidentally forgot to set the alarm and got woken up 2 hours and 20 minutes late(10:00am), threw on some clothes and ran out the door to find a disappointed Brenda doing our job with the chickens. We helped her finish that and began our day.

Brenda showed us where the next row of tree that needed to be mulched were. We did one load and then went in for a very quick breakfast. After breakfast we worked on the mulching with Lisa until we finished the row.

Afternoon: Transplanting leeks

After lunch we went out to East-Field and helped transplant leeks, and did we ever plant a LOT of leeks. we did three rows per bed and spacing of 6 inches +/-. over all i think we planted about 1000+ leeks today.

Day 7

Morning With the Gardeners

Today we spent all day with the Gar5deners. We started with weeding some Carrots. Then we split up and I went to go hoe furrows for leeks, while Erich continued weeding with the other half of the group. The hoeing to forever, well at least it felt like that when you couldn't see the end of the field. Then we got all the tools we would need and brought the leeks over from the greenhouse in carts so we were all ready to start after lunch.

Afternoon: Transplanting Leeks

After lunch we started to transplant the 5000 leeks that we have in the greenhouse. We did about half of it over the course of the afternoon, finishing up around 6:00.

Day 6

Morning: Turning and Trenching

In the morning we started in the herb garden where I turned a patch of soil and picked out what seemed to be an endless amount of 'twitch' grass roots. While I did this Nigel worked dug a trench at the end of a patch so as to stop the grass from growing into it. Lisa and Brenda were also with us; Lisa was laying down straw between strawberry rows, while Brenda worked beside me weeding between a bunch of assorted herbs.(her hands got stung by stinging nettle) :(.
After we finished there we made our way to the tree nursery where I finished up the straw and newspaper mulching we started on Friday. While I did that Lisa and Nigel worked on turning up a patch of dirt for later use and Brenda worked on weeding between some of the bigger trees and bushes near the fence. By the time Nigel and Lisa were done,I was still working so they joined in and eventually Brenda did as well

Afternoon: Helping Shanta

After lunch break we made our way to the wood chip piles and loaded two carts of wood chips to bring to Shanta's garden. Lisa, Nigel, Brenda, Shanta and I ALL worked on laying down cardboard and shoveling wood chips on top of it. Eventually Shanta went out for dinner and Brenda went to work on a small garden somewhere close and Lisa, Nigel and I finished shoveling wood chips onto the cardboard. It was quite a hot day so at one point Brenda invited us to take a 5 minute drink break in Green Haven.

Weekend Project

Green Energy: Anemometer Tower

In 2002 the Whole Village community put up a anemometer to measure wind speeds on the property for a wind turbine. The system never worked properly and no one has the knowledge on how to fix it, so its been sitting up there just doing nothing. I decided that I would go take a look to see if I could figure out whats wrong with it. I had a look around, nothing around the tower seemed to be obviously wrong, so I went back down to do some research on the data logger system. The data logger is called NOMAD and is manufactured by a company called Secondwind. It is a older system so I'm having problems getting the user manual and specifications. Ill post new information as I get it

Green Energy: PV Solar Power

Whole village purchased ten used solar panels from a hospital about 6 years ago. Because no one was interested in taking the initiative to have them connected to the grid they have been sitting up in the top of the barn for the last 6 years. There have also been debates about whether or not to make the system grid tied or independent of the grid.

The first option would allow them to sell the energy back to the grid, since the new green act was signed into legislation about a week ago, they could pay off their investment in about three years (not taking into account the inefficiencies of the old solar panels). The only problem with this system is that you are still dependent on the grid for electricity. The second option would be an off grid system which would feed the solar energy into batteries to be used when needed. The main problem with this is that the solar panels wouldn't produce nearly enough electricity to run all of Green Haven. The system would have to have a larger wind turbine to supplement the solar panels. Along with this is that in the long run it isn't as Eco friendly, the batteries will only last 10-15 years at top efficiency before they need to be replaced, and all that toxic battery material ends up in the landfill. I would like to help get the process started on getting these solar panels used instead of wasting away in the barn.

Day 5

Morning: The Vegetable Garden

After our usual routine of feeding the chickens and having breakfast, we headed out with Brenda and Lisa to the vegetable garden, armed with shovels, trowels a couple carts and a bunch of energy we got to work. We laid down newspaper and hay on top along all the pathways. This prevents weeds from shooting up in the pathways during the growing season. We turned over a vegetable patch and did some weeding. Since Shane wasn't around to carry a hay bail over to the garden with the tractor, we had to cart it over from the side of the barn, which really increased the workload. Around 12:30 we took a break for lunch to recuperate before our next task.

Afternoon: Rhubarb Patch and Memorial Garden

We Started the afternoon off by mulching and weeding the rhubarb patch which is also connected to the tree nursery and the black crescent bushes. We started to dig up a new area to expand the tree nursery but we didn't finish it due to lack of time. We went over to help Shanta with her memorial garden for her husband. We added mulch around all the trees and along the pathways. It looked a lot neater after all the mulch was put down. We headed in around five to get ready to go into Erin, a small town nearby where Brenda was donating some plants from the community garden. It felt so nice to take a shower after a long days work, and I felt the cleanest I've been in years!

Day 4

Morning: Weeding

Today was a VERY windy+rainy day until the afternoon, when the rain stopped, but the wind continued to blow hard!
After doing chickens in the rain, we went to green haven for breakfast. When we met Brenda who said that there wasn't much work for us in the rain and we got to have 30 more minutes of rest until she could find something for us to do. Eventually we were notified that there was some weeding in the hoophouse for us to do. So we made our way over and met Graham who taught us which plants needed to be weeded out and which plants were to stay. After a few mistakes and a bit of practice we were able to zip up and down the patch weeding out all the bad things without taking the good ones out.

Afternoon: Weeding and Seeding - er, Potting-On

We spent the majority of this afternoon on 'Potting-On' which basically involves transplanting small to medium plants into bigger, more fitting pots; giving them the room to grow big and strong. Before we started this however, we finished a bit more weeding in the hoophouse as well as a bit of weeding outside in a small patch of lettuce. After the weeding we went to the heated greenhouse(the fire was off and both ends' doors were open) to do Potting-On for the rest of the day.

Day 3

Morning:Mulching

After doing chickens and having breakfast we meat Brenda at the piles of woodchips. We all loaded a cart full of the mulch and began a tough journey across the field with our carts and our shovels. When we got to the rows of the trees, Brenda explained the method of mulching the sugar maples. And so we spent our morning loading, hauling, mulching, etc.

Afternoon:Bees and More Mulching

The beginning of the afternoon lead us to the beehives where Jamie the Beekeeper showed us one of the hives and took out a few frames for us to see the honey, larva, pollen, and wax. He also showed us that he was injecting floric acid into the hives to get rid of mites. This was done by putting what seemed to be a small blue package just below the lid of the hive.
After our little treat (we didn't get any honey though) we went back to the mulch pile and finished mulching the sugar maples.

Day 2

Chickens ‘fore Breakfast

This Morning we woke up at 7:45, getting earlier every day! We threw some clothes on and went down to green haven where we waited for Brenda and tried to wake ourselves up a bit, but no food. When Brenda Came out of her apartment we the three of us and Mike(Vick’s Child) headed to the chickens for morning setup.

On our way Brenda showed us the three compost piles where we are to put everything the chickens/ducks can’t eat into. We continued our way to the pen and spread the remaining compost out close to the door. As we opened the door the chickens swarmed the compost like flies to dead animals, and there our work began. Brenda Showed us around the barn and explained our tasks as we did them. We had to feed the cats, and give them water, clean the chickens' water and fill their food troughs. Our Most important task was making sure that doors that were supposed to be closed were closed.

Morning: Washing the Bins

After breakfast, we headed over to the CSA shed to get our job from Shannon, we were assigned the arduous task of washing out all the bins and containers that hab bin thrown in the shed last fall. That took us untill lunch, which we ate out side with the farm crew.

Afternoon: Packing and Seeding

After lunch we went over to the greenhouses to start packing dirt into trays to prepare for seeding. half way through Nigel got asked to help Shannon with rolling up some tarps. When he got back we finished up the packing and moved on to the seeding, this process involves cataloging what kind of seeds are going where and then planting them. We probably did around 30 trays before the bell rang for dinner.

Evening: Baby Chicks!

Day 1

Morning: Wetlands

After we woke up and made our way to the Ecovillage, we met Brenda and went over general farm rules and safety precautions.

Then we went out and weeded the wetlands, a engineered area used to clean grey and black water.

Then we brought some of last years dried bull rushes around a patch of raspberry bushes and used them to keep the weeds back and keep the moisture in. Essentially what mulch does. Then we put straw in and around the bushes.
After that we raked straw off a strawberry patch that was started last year. And added straw to the pathways between the rows to keep the weeds down. We weeded and mulched a patch of black currents, then took a break for lunch.

Afternoon: Strawberry Patch

After our break we went to go find Shane for a job. We found him behind the barn using the tractor to transport part of a well. He showed us where a pipe had broken that supplied water to the solar showers and outdoor toilets. We then had to dig a 3x3 foot hole in the ground, about 3-4
feet down. When we found the leak we realized that it wasn't a joint leak but that the pipe had cracked. We dug some more to allow Shane to get better access to the pipe and went on our way to help Brenda.
We found Brenda and she finally found us some Citronella which we gladly covered our faces and heads in. -at last! no more darn black flies- We continued to take two 'wheel carts' to the other strawberry patch beside the farmhouse where we worked until 5:00pm. Then we came in for a harty dinner of sausages, assorted vegies and chocolate cake.

Arrival

I arrived at the farm just before seven, Erich got there about ten minutes after me, we met Brenda in the Ecovillage, a intentional community of around 25. We went for a tour of the farm, checking out the farm house where we would be sleeping, the barn, and the surrounding fields. Then we sat in on the weekly check-in, community meeting about the general management of the farm and community. We got a chance to introduce ourselves and try to remember every ones names. We got a chance to get settled in the loft of the farmhouse and relax until we fell asleep.