May | 2015 | White House Stables

What a whirl wind this spring has been, we have just got to the end of our foaling season with 5 gorgeous babies, 3 colts & 2 fillies safely on the ground. Last years babies, now stunning yearlings are entered in this falls CTHSBC sale at Thunderbird in September.

Last baby has arrived

The farm animal numbers never seem to decrease, even though we vow to reduce our workload. We are really enjoying flocks of ducks and geese, something new for us to try, feeling they are a more sustainable form of meat production and will save on the weedeating and mowing in areas the cows, horses and donkey can’t get to. The results have been encouraging so far, though we spend time fencing instead of weed eating. Actually we rarely use a weed eater, Norman is a master with the scythe, so last night our “Friday night date” was on Pats driveway, him scything , me pointing out all the plants buried in the grass and weeds, so they didn’t get sliced! The cows, Bella and Patsy, following us and swallowing everything that came their way.

Angus, our wonderful Gloucester Old Spot boar, is digging an area in the “Nile Valley garden” ready for planting some heat loving plants. He took his time to reach maturity and breeding age [we should have realised that would happen, the old breeds belong to a time when Flavour and Temperament were important, not like todays model of industrial production of fast growth not flavour.] He has been out in the community meeting some lovely sows and producing some great cross breds. We now need to find some lovely pure bred GOS sows that are unrelated, to keep this great rare breed going in Canada. Liverpool University in the UK have a breeding herd of GOSs and there are some in the USA, but moving pigs over borders is an expensive and difficult thing to do.

Angus the Gloucester Old Spot boar

The plantings of the fall are doing great, we added lots more food trees, plants and bushes over the winter, so it’s an exciting time seeing what thrives and how much water retention we get with the swales and healthy soil. It’s been frighteningly dry here, so I’m hopeful that this will help us keep producing food into the future.

Sasso meat birds pasturing in our front field

Talking of food production, as well as all the stuff we grow, this year Heather Verdin has joined us, she is developing areas of the front field for more vegetable production and is offering a limited number of CSA food boxes for 20 weeks over the summer. Her farm name is Honey Beet Farm at White House Stables and she can be reached