This is what I have written for you today:

**Get ready for meat pickups

**Our village: the Williams'

**Harvest seasons' cold dusky mornings

Get ready for your order pickup days!

Harvest season is upon us, and I am so excited to stock up your freezers with amazing, delicious, healthy, happy meats for you! Here is a schedule of when our various meats will be available. We've even got something special planned for the Order Pickup Day scheduled on the October Full Blue Moon.....

A couple notes about this schedule - please let me know when you will be collecting your order, so I can have it pre-packed and ready for you. In the case of the Wakefield Market, for your honey, I can only bring it if you let me know in advance you'll be coming on a given market day.

A final note about pork orders - pork will not be available until mid-December. I know, I know, fall mornings with bacon and eggs can't be beat! But, this was the soonest we were able to get our pigs processed given the current abattoir capacity shortage (due to COVID). Thanks for understanding. If you have ordered pork as well as other products, I'd love to find a way of getting you the majority of your order before December, and then we'll do a "catch-up" round of pork neighbourhood drops as soon as we have our pork back from the butcher in early December.

Saturday, September 26, 9:00 am - 1:00 pm

Wakefield Farmers' Market

We will have chickens, honey & lamb sausages.

Saturday, October 10, 9:00 am - 1:00pm

Wakefield Farmers' Market

We will have chickens, honey & lamb sausages.

Saturday, October 24, 9:00am - 1:00pm

Wakefield Farmers' Market

We will have BEEF, chickens, honey & lamb sausages.

Friday, October 30, 4:30 - 6:30pm

Champlain St., Hull Order pickup

We will have LAMB, beef, chickens, honey & lamb sausages.

Saturday, October 31, 2:00pm - 7:00pm

Order pickup & Halloween Fun Day on the Farm with Hayride (3pm) and Full Blue Moonrise Walk (6pm). Halloween costumes encouraged!  

We will have lamb, beef, chickens, honey & lamb sausages.

Friday, November 20, 4:30 - 6:30pm

Champlain St., Hull Order pickup

We will have lamb, beef, chickens, honey & lamb sausages.

Saturday, November 14, 11:00 - 3:00

Order Pickup Day on the Farm

We will have lamb, beef, chickens, honey & lamb sausages. 

Early December, date tbd

PORK order catch up - neighbourhood drops in Hull, Chelsea, and Wakefield for those who have picked up everything else and are just waiting on pork. 

Saturday, December 19, 11:00 - 3:00

Order Pickup and Winter Fun Day on the Farm - potential skating and/or sledding!

We will have PORK, lamb, beef, chickens, honey & lamb sausages.

What I need you to do: Email me, letting me know when you want to get your order - it can be one pickup or a couple different pickups if you're getting different products. And make some space in your freezer... =)

And if you haven't ordered yet - it's not too late, here's the link.

The Farm Team: Meet the Williams

I'm not quite sure our farm, or even our family, would operate very well. Well, it would be possible, but its hard to envision. The Williams, if you don't know them, are an awesome family that have helped us along on our farming journey from it's very inception, back at our old farm in Cantley. If you do know them, then you'll know what I mean. All along they've been helping in the background: providing awesome and super-fun childcare for our kids, weeding and harvesting in the garden, showing up for the hay harvests, sweatin' it out on the tough jobs to help us keep things cleaned up and well-maintained, and even taking care of all of the animals the odd weekend or two so that we could get away. Like, the day when our youngest daughter was born, coincidently the same day that 100 newborn ducklings were due to arrive on the farm - Zoe zipped on over, took the box of ducklings from my slightly shaking hands, settled them in and got them fed and watered, then came back to check on them several times over the next few days while we were otherwise seriously preoccupied. Or when nearly the whole family showed up, that hot -- no, SWELTERING summer day a few years back when we had no other help, and helped us get our hay into the loft before the rainstorm hit. You can't ever overlook Seamus, the youngest of the Williams family but an exceptionally mighty worker. There's literally no job Seamus can't do, and do cheerfully, fast, and well. Then there's the fact that half of my garden produce would likely be rotting on the vines this summer if it weren't for Rachel, or the fact that my kids jump up and down with joy (their faces like those little heart-eye-emoticons) when it's a Bronwyn or Mallory day, two of their most cherished caregivers. I could go on, and on, and on. Our farm couldn't operate without a little help from our friends, and we are surely and truly lucky to count the Williams' as friends. 

The cold dusky mornings of the harvest season

On these cold, silent, dusky fall mornings, my first step is always to pour myself a cup of coffee, sit in the rocking chair by the window and let the coming of day slowly soak in. I just can't rush in the early hours, I need the quiet of a still-sleeping house as the outside world wakes up to get ready for what these fall days will bring. It's the only time of day that I can just sit and do nothing. I guess my other alternative is to continue sleeping, but those minutes surrounded by the peace of a cold morning is worth more than a few moments rest. No matter what will come in the day, I know I can start them like this, and so I'm ready for it.

We're working on getting ready for winter. As soon as that autumn feeling comes - you know, that moment when you all of a sudden are jolted into recognition that the season has changed - it's my cue that we need to abandon our optimistic plans of all the amazing things we are going to get done this season, and instead focus on finishing the things that we absolutely need done before winter. This year these things are: some new fencing for the sheep and cows, and a space for machinery storage. 

And then there's the grazing. Although the grazing is one of my favourite jobs, it's also the one that I've had so much amazing help getting done this summer and fall. To be sure, it's hard work taking down and setting up the portable fencelines, but you can literally see your progress: shiny coats on the cattle and luscious wool indicate that we've been giving the cows and the sheep exactly what they need; vigorously growing grasses show us that the soil is benefitting from our efforts; and as we move across the landscape of the farm once, twice, three times, we see the changes in the land that the different months bring. Today the sheep move back into the bobolink nesting habitat - no sign of those grassland birds now - they've moved on, I'm not sure where. In early summer we heard the bird calls and saw their flickering wings, in late summer it was monarchs and bumblebees, now it is getting quieter. The land isn't sleeping yet. But getting ready.