On this farm we value life. We are always looking for ways to avoid using chemical fixes for problems.
More on how we do that in another post, though look at the “unusual” house our laying birds live in and ask why we do that… The food we eat is sometimes buggy and that’s ok, sometimes fails and that’s ok, We have a wide diversity of everything for that very reason, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!”
I watched this documentary [twice in 4 nights] It is one and a half hours long, which if you know me, is Not what I do.
and cannot recommend it enough. If you would like to try and understand why we MUST take control of what we eat, this is a huge part of why… Maybe we can start a movement in North Saanich, to stop using chemical means to clean our environment, as a tiny step in changing our world.
With Thanksgiving over, we are now turning our attention to our future.
With our Municipal election fast approaching, we felt we could offer our rural N Saanich community an opportunity to meet electoral candidate, Sanjiv. We feel he has passion for community, great clarity and transparency in the ongoing North Saanich debate over our future.
Come by to the farm store at 9774 West Saanich Rd and meet Sanjiv, and ask all the questions you want before heading to the polls on Oct 12 or 15th
Wednesday Oct 12th 11.45 – 12.45
Thursday Oct 13th 12 – 1
Friday Oct 14th 1- 2
We are not sitting on the fence
We were young and poor when we chose the rural peninsula to make our home in 1981, we knew we wanted to be on the land [though we were naive about most things]
We found many different ways to make it work, all included hard graft.
41 years later we are passionate about building equity in the land, the farms soil is our bank account and we build it for ourselves and for the fantastic community we live in.
Climate change keeps us awake at night, our food supply cannot be turned on and off like a light, so we create fertile soils, plant trees and try and manage the drought and rain events when they happen.
Success! Our broody stable has been hatching chicks from our colourful flock. We hope our system will keep them safe from predators, the girls are great mothers. Anyone wanting chicks with built in caretaker mums get in touch, we are happy to home chicks in this natural way.
Apple harvest is underway, we have a great crop that is starting to get harvested, Apples from trees that have never sprayed, proof that nature always balances, one year winter caterpillars decimated the trees the next year a bumper crop. Vital to this farms survival and success is
As the summer wanes, though with the heat you wouldn’t know it, a quick reminder that We will be closed for the Labour Day Weekend, on Saturday September 3rd.
Our turkeys are growing fast out in the back pasture, with apples and blackberries and the odd monster zucchini! keeping them happy. We are taking orders for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
We are very happy to have these useful tools available, especially as hay prices have stayed so so high. No one needs to see hay wasted, these new feeders compliment our slow feeder hay nets from Knaughty Nets https://www.knaughtynetsandpets.com/and round bale feeders for those on giant round bales.
We unloaded a hay truck of Timothy and Alfalfa at the start of this hot week, bringing back memories of a year ago, though what a difference 6-8 degrees makes, Hot but workable
Since Buckerfields lost the Pro Form feed distributorship, after the chain changed ownership, White House Stables farm has been enjoying welcoming back old customers and meeting new ones. We have been a distributor since we opened in 1994 and continue to value the great feeds made in Chilliwack including the fantastically digestible extruded feeds, filled with the good for our horses, omega 3 fat sources, not the hydrogenated vegetable fats that has to be used in pelleted feeds
We are closed this coming BC Day long weekend to enjoy some family time, but you still have until Friday at 5 pm to stock up, We re open on Wednesday August 3rd at 10.30 am.
SALE on the Step and Natural Harvest lines of Pro Form feeds
SAVE $1.50 off a bag until the end of June.
We appreciate that life’s tough enough, without adding unexpected supply issues. To accommodate the peninsula poultry and horse folk who, like us, value the quality feeds from Pro Form, we will be providing a temporary extra service.
For the next couple of weeks we will be checking phone messages and e mails, mornings and evenings on days we are closed, so we can put feed out in our pick up shelter. Call 250 656 8701 and leave a message or e mail whitehousestables@telus.net.
If you need Step feeds and or the Natural Harvest line of Non GMO poultry feeds outside of our opening hours, we will do our best to make sure the animals in our lives don’t have to adjust!
What a crazy spring in so many ways. But we continue to “work with it”
Avian Flu has us all protecting our flocks in the best ways we can, changing how we do everything. see picture for how much grass they consume, before we move the cages.
Our thanksgiving turkeys arrive as day old chicks next week, and will start out inside, but hopefully ,will be able to graduate to grass fields if the Avian flu disappears with the end of bird migrations. Covid taught us to be super flexible to change, we will apply that lesson as needed to our birds.
We are doing more, as our wonderful hard working young men go out into their world, Brayden to a possible exciting career, after slogging here in all weathers for almost 5 years and Kash graduates and is heading out East in July. The bees are working hard too
We changed our days and hours of opening in May, we like the new regime and hope you do to.
We loaded more hay in the barn, so thankful to have such great suppliers, and therefore not needing to be as restrictive to our customers, whilst we wait for a 2022 hay crop.
We are bringing in MORE Pro Form feeds, in particular the Step Horse feeds and the Natural Harvest range of Non GMO poultry feeds, as the Saanich Peninsula steps back to the way things were, when we opened our doors almost 30 years ago. At that time we were the sole supplier of Pro Form and we are still here, filling that role again, as things change around us. We did so because we believe in the quality of the product.
For eg. as we all know, a bag of dog food can range in price from $20 – to more then $100 a bag, depending on the quality of inputs.
Cheaper inputs = less digestibility, so you feed more and get more out at the other end to clean up after!
The same applies to all the feeds we give our animals. We expect a lot of, either horses in performance and growth, OR the farm animals.We believe we are what we eat, so prefer to avoid having things like colour dyes in our chicken food to get strong coloured yolks. The colour can and does, in Pro Form feeds, come from the feed itself, not a chemical dye added. the same can be applied to all the other sources of inputs that make up the animal feed industry.
Sunshine gives us all a smiling faceSpring Flowers make me smile
With the arrival of light nights and April I am running my first Chicken workshop in 3 years!
Contact me for details.
We are continuing to work hard to provide all the small farmers and gardeners with what they need , sometimes having to be extremely patient whilst supplies wend their way to the Island.
We are thankful to the suppliers that we have built relationships up with over the years as they try so hard for us.
Our Chickens and cows are thriving as are the plants on the farm. We are constantly adding to the diversity and resilience of the land and soil, to make sure a food supply is possible even if inputs dry up… what a fascinating world we are journeying in.
from a US company called High Country Plastics, 
White House Stables 