Farm 7...

Farm 7 is farming. With a capital F. Located in the east of Saskatchewan, here they measure their land in multiples of 160 acres (also known as a quarter). The land is huge, the numbers of animals are big, and there's a lot to learn.

Days are varied: Riding a quad round the grasslands, moving chickens or pigs, looking for missing animals, feeding the meat hens, checking on watering and filling tanks, riding around on the back of pickups down dusty roads, chasing escaped chickens round the field, butchering and gutting chickens, pigs and cows for the on site butchers shop, baking bread for the whole family, milking the jersey cows, making cream and butter, fixing electric fencing, moving herds of 350 cows...

The one staple in my day is the twice daily feeding of the meat chickens. We drive out to the pasture in a truck, lay out long lines of food in the fresh grass, and using the truck, pull the long hoop pens (known as the chicken tractors) onto fresh pasture. Two people run up and down inside the pens and scare the chickens away from the back wall, ensuring they don't get trapped under the back or the rollers. This means that each day the chickens get two fresh areas of pasture to peck around - the fresh pasture is full of grasshoppers, insects, grass, clover and other legumes and the chickens go crazy over it.

I sometimes help feed the turkeys and laying hens, and collect the eggs. At the moment, they're collecting about 200 eggs a day, so it's a fairly lengthy process to collect, wash, box up and label the eggs. I've also got into the routine of doing the evening milking of the two jersey cows. They have a small milking machine, so I have to set up the pails, call in the cows, wash the udders, attach the machine (to each cow in turn) and then process the milk as needed (either saving for the family, separating into skimmed milk and cream (for eating or making into butter), or packaging for sale as "pet food" (as legally they're unable to sell unpasturised milk for human consumption)).

Other than that, I do whatever needs doing. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are chicken days, where we butcher and package up around 500 chickens for sale, with the help of some neighbours. Other days I might help round up other animals for butchering, move pigs or cows, grind grain, harvest vegetables, look after the kids (enabling mum to get on with some paperwork), bake bread, help fix electric fencing or machinery.

I've learnt a lot here - more so than anywhere else. Partly because it's so different and there's so much to learn, but partly because they're so willing to teach and share their knowledge. They actively practice holistic management of the farm, aiming for the highest health and wellbeing of the animals as well as actively improving the quality of the pasture and land. They also follow many of Joel Salatin's principles of animal rotation (one of the reasons I came here) and it's amazing to see this in practice. It's changed a lot of my views about animal rearing and butchering, and taught me so much about farming.

I'm here for another week, then I'm off to northern BC for 6 weeks or so. I'm hoping to keep wwoofing over the winter around the Vancouver Island area. Time to get planning...

Meat hens...

Chicken tractor (moveable pen that gets moved twice a day)

Pig!

Pigs being pigs

Laying hens and turkeys (who get moved every 1-2 weeks)

Barley bales

Making bales...

Combine harvesting...

The Jersey cows for milking (the right hand one has been named Steph after me!)

Just a couple of cows...

One of the highland cows they use as lead cows (they're hand reared and so follow the farmer, the rest of the cows follow them - an easy way to move 350 cows...)

Kate looking at the cows...