With Christmas around the corner, it’s time to reflect on a fabulous year on the farm with all the exciting things that have happened.

First and foremost thanks and Happy Christmas to all our loyal supporters of our various endeavors.

Today in the midst of winter storms,  cancelled ferries, news of power outages and flooding, I went to check on the new water collecting installation that went into our front field this fall.

food forest planting

It was looking great and as always I got sidetracked,

Hatchet & Seed, guiding all the volunteers through the process, thanks Tayler and Solara

I picked our very first crop of cranberries [Never imagined that happening] and made sauce for this years Christmas dinner! I also picked carrots , onions and potatoes that the heavy rain last night made visible. All this in a t shirt and sunshine.

Our horses are happily  furry & muddy and we appear to still have 5 pregnant mares, with our first foal due mid February and 3 more before Mid March and a break before our last mare, Precious, due late May. The weanlings, Sarah and Picasso, get along great, playing hard, eating lots and growing into very impressive specimens!

The chickens aren’t so thrilled with the heavy rain, but bless them are still producing a steady though not overly abundant supply of eggs. We picked up our turkey sausages, pepperoni, etc from the butcher, making us popular with our loyal customers! There aren’t a lot so don’t miss out, we’ve been doing lots of taste testing and  they are as good as ever!

The Christmas village was installed in the shop to the delight of magi-cat, Hugo,   who immediately caused avalanches to create chaos from the carefully placed scene. The local pony club kids, here for a lecture on horse feeding, put it all back together, but the cat didn’t stay out! so we’ve left it as the “Christmas village scene after being hit by multiple avalanches!”

Sadie just birthed 11 piglets for her new family on Hornby Island and Silke will be following suit soon.

We dried up Bella the Jersey and plan on starting the process again with Zenyatta but are enjoying a break from that daily routine as there aren’t enough daylight hours.

For our racing fans, our luck continued this year at the track with our runners winning 1 in 3 starts and averaging 67% in the top 3, racing in Arizona, California and British Columbia. Racing this week is our 2014 Stakes winner Hollywood Miss [pictured as a foal on our main banner] at Golden Gate on Dec 11th.

Next year we’ll never get any work done as we’ll be glued to the live racing feeds from the various tracks when our largest number of horses reach racing age, potentially a dozen or more horses could be running.

Happy New Year to all.