The Final Big Move...

And here we are, official residents of Oliver BC!  It was a rough 6 months traveling back and forth from Vancouver to Oliver every 4 days trying to set up the farm & then heading back to our city jobs.  We finally made the big move, we are no longer with our city jobs & now we are full time farming.  It is a big risk to take... leaving comfortable, reliable work to farm but it is what we really want to do and what we really love doing everyday.  We have been here for a week almost steady and we have been working at least 10 hour days, sometimes 16 but it really doesn't feel like it.  The mild winter that Oliver had this year has been lingering... so the few heat loving plants that we planted are not doing so well but they will recover... plants are resilient.  Riccardo tilled the field with our tractor from the 50's that came with the farm and now we are in full planting mode.  We are doing things a little differently than most of the farmers in the area, we are companion planting without any plastic mulch or pesticides.  We have been using organic fish fertilizers to give our plants a head start & it seems to be just the key!  So we are well on our way in the fruit and vegetable department & up next is our biggest challenge ever, we have 100 chickens arriving and 25 turkeys.  We need to come up with shelters, feeders, coops & a plan on how we are going to care for these animals.  Basically we are going to build summer housing for them & use a greenhouse for winter housing... build portable coops for the egg layers & moveable cages for the broilers.  We are very excited to offer these birds organic feed & the opportunity to be real chickens and to forage all day on real land with fresh air.  So I think that we have our work cut out for us but it is the most rewarding so far.  Dave, Maria's father lives on the property as well and he is in the process of building a wheel hoe for us which he is calling Dave Jr.... hopefully this helps us out in the weed department because there are sooooo many weeds here to deal with & we are not using any chemicals.  Cheers until next week!