Well… what a crazy couple of weeks it’s been here on the Funny Farm.
I know, I know. You’re probably thinking, “Don’t you say that every blog?”
And honestly… you’d be right.
This time of year is always busy. Between the garden, the animals, work, and trying to squeeze in a little bit of fun here and there, the days seem to disappear before we even realize they’re over. Looking back through my photos while writing this update, I was reminded of just how much we’ve managed to pack into the last couple of weeks.
One thing that has become a regular occurrence around here is Addy bringing home extra produce from the organic farm where he works, Earth to Belly. When they finish harvesting a field and it’s time to turn it over for the next crop, instead of simply plowing everything back into the ground, Addy gathers up as much as he can, loads it into bins, and brings it home.
I jokingly call it “bonus work.”
Don’t get me wrong—it’s incredible. It’s free, fresh, organic food that would have otherwise gone back into the soil. But it also means that all of a sudden we have a mountain of produce to process that we weren’t exactly planning for.
This time it was radishes and spinach.
And when I say spinach, I don’t mean a grocery bag full. I mean a large Rubbermaid tote absolutely packed with huge, beautiful spinach leaves. The radishes were just as impressive, with some of them being nearly the size of potatoes.
So our week quickly turned into a food preservation marathon. The spinach became homemade pesto, which turned out surprisingly delicious. I’ve already used some of it in a pasta dish, and I can definitely see us making that again. We also chopped and vacuum-sealed plenty of spinach for the freezer so we’ll have it ready for soups, pasta, and other meals later in the year.
The radishes took a little more creativity. We chopped some finely for relish, which freezes really well because relish doesn’t need to stay crisp. The rest we cut into cubes and thin slices with the intention of making pickled radishes. We just haven’t found the time to actually pickle them yet, so that’s sitting on the to-do list.
Welcome to homesteading.
Sometimes your carefully planned week gets completely rearranged because someone comes home with a Rubbermaid tote full of vegetables.
I certainly won’t complain, though. It’s hard to be upset about filling the freezer and pantry with food that would have otherwise gone to waste.
As focused as we’ve been on our goals around the homestead this year, we’ve also been trying to make time to step away from the never-ending to-do list every once in a while and simply enjoy spending time with friends.
One evening we headed into Fredericton to meet up at Picaroons. It’s a really relaxed, pub-style brewery where you order your food at the counter, find a table, and settle in for the evening. They serve all the classic comfort food you’d expect—chicken wings, nachos, deep-fried pickles, burgers—and of course a great selection of their own beer, along with cider and wine. They also had live music that evening, which made for a great atmosphere.
Addy invited several of the foreign workers he helps supervise at Earth to Belly, and they joined us too. It was a lot of fun getting to spend time with everyone outside of work, even if there was a bit of a language barrier. They speak very little English, and unfortunately, we speak very little Spanish. We can confidently order two beers… which only gets you so far when you’re trying to have an actual conversation.
Thankfully, smiles, laughter, and good company don’t need much translating.
Our friends Al and Constance joined us too, and we spent the evening eating good food, listening to music, and sharing plenty of laughs. It was a nice reminder that taking a break from the chores now and then is healthy.
Saturday was our annual greenhouse shopping trip. We ended up at Scott’s Nursery because they always seem to have the best selection.
The main goal was to fill in the gaps in our herb garden. I picked up lemon verbena, sage, regular mint, apple mint—which is my favourite for tea—holy basil, and Thai basil. It finally feels like our herb garden is becoming what I imagined.
We also picked up some hot pepper plants and twelve tomato plants. I had started San Marzanos, Manitoba slicers, and cherry tomatoes from seed this spring, but they’re looking a little stunted. I’m still hopeful they’ll recover, but it doesn’t hurt to have a backup plan.
Naturally, I couldn’t leave without flowers, so a little six-pack of zinnias came home too.
Once everything was home, we got right to planting. Addy still has trays and trays of seedlings rescued from Earth to Belly, and between those and everything we’ve started ourselves, our garden has become much bigger than we originally planned. We definitely aimed high this year.
The fennel is finally taking off. The dill from the farm has exploded—but I’ll come back to that in a minute. The Swiss chard looks fantastic, both varieties of kale are thriving, and the celery… let’s just say we’re going to have enough celery for a while.
At this point, the garden is basically planted. If we don’t build any more beds this year, that’s okay. We may still turn over a couple later in the season for succession planting, but for now our jobs are watering, weeding, and helping everything get established. Now that we’re finally past the first full moon of June, according to the Farmer’s Almanac, I’m hoping everything really starts growing.
Father’s Day was the next day, and Addy kept his request simple. Food.
I made him bamboo shoot stir-fry because I hadn’t made it in a long time. Josh and I had something different—I honestly can’t remember what—but Addy got exactly what he wanted. I made it as spicy as I possibly could. His response? “It could be spicier.” I don’t understand; I tried so hard!!
The weekdays after that seemed to disappear. We settled back into the normal routine. We get up, feed everyone, milk the goats, go to work, come home, take care of animals again, and somehow fit meals, preserving food, and sleep into whatever time is left. Most mornings I’ve either been making cheese or starting another batch of yogurt. I think I’ve finally figured out the system that works best for me. I heat the milk on the stove, cool it back down, transfer it into the slow cooker, stir in the yogurt starter, wrap the whole thing in towels, and let it sit on the counter for about twelve hours. When I uncover it… Yogurt!!
Then it spends the night in the fridge before going into my yogurt strainer for another day or so. By the time I remember to take it out, it’s turned into a really nice thick Greek-style yogurt. I’ve been leaving it plain and adding fruit or honey afterward, and honestly, it’s becoming one of my favourite ways to use all this goat milk.
Work has been especially busy because we’re nearing the end of the month, and Addy has been working almost every day because this is one of the busiest times of year at the farm. The days have absolutely flown by.
As if we didn’t already have enough preserving to do, Addy sent me a text saying he knows what we are doing after work, then came home one afternoon with another surprise from Earth to Belly.
Dill.
Not a little bunch. A full Rubbermaid tote. The funny part is that we already have a four-by-four garden bed dedicated entirely to dill, and it’s thriving. Homesteading is funny like that. We filled our countertop dehydrator, but there was still so much that I pulled out my hanging herb dryer. Somewhere along the line I decided it needed a name, so naturally it’s called Herb.
Herb is currently hanging behind our couch beside my apothecary cabinet, absolutely stuffed with dill. Once it’s completely dry, I’ll crumble it up, package it into pouches, and store it in the cold room for all the pickles we’ll be making this year.
The only question is…
Why are we growing our own dill when apparently Addy can simply bring home a Rubbermaid tote whenever the farm harvests theirs? I suppose it’s a good problem to have.
Speaking of growing things, do you remember at the end of May when we brought home nineteen baby quail?
They’re not babies anymore.
The boys have started crowing, and they officially outgrew the bunny hutch we’d been using. That meant another building project.
Last weekend Addy—well, mostly Addy—built them a proper enclosure using the old rabbit hutch our rabbits lived in before he built them their shed. The new cage is intentionally only about sixteen inches tall because quail aren’t exactly known for making good decisions. If they get startled in a cage that’s too tall, they’ll launch themselves straight upward and can seriously injure themselves.
The new setup has a proper access door for collecting eggs, a wire floor, and we’re adding a sand tray so they have somewhere comfortable to stand and dust bathe.
They’re doing great. For such tiny birds, they eat an incredible amount of food.
The best part is that this is only phase one. We only used half of the old rabbit structure, so Addy’s already planning a second matching enclosure beside it. Eventually we’ll separate males and females—or maybe have one breeding pen and one grow-out pen.
And once those girls start laying… Well, then it’s time to dust off the incubator. I’m pretty excited about that.
Sunday was our fun day.
As focused as we’ve been on the homestead this year, we’re also trying to be intentional about finding a little balance, and this was the perfect opportunity. Our friends Al and Constance invited us to spend the day exploring a couple of New Brunswick’s waterfalls. There are so many beautiful waterfalls around the province that we’ve never actually visited, so we happily accepted the invitation.
They offered to do the driving in their Bronco, which turned out to be a very good decision.
Our destinations for the day were Bartholomew Falls and Fall Brook Falls. We packed a picnic lunch that morning. I made some pasta salad, and we brought watermelon, fruit, breadsticks, drinks, and a few other snacks. We figured we’d be gone for about four hours or so. Leave around 10:30 in the morning, enjoy the waterfalls, have lunch, and be back home around 3:00 to take care of evening chores.
That… didn’t quite happen.
On the way to Bartholomew Falls, we were faithfully following Google Maps.
Apparently, Google Maps has a very different definition of the word “road” than we do.
Before long, we found ourselves driving up what was essentially an ATV trail. It was narrow, overgrown, muddy, and definitely not somewhere we would have intentionally driven a vehicle. Thankfully, Al’s Bronco is built for exactly that kind of adventure. It has every four-wheel-drive setting imaginable—mud mode, rock crawl mode, and probably a few others we didn’t even need.
There were a few moments where all of us were leaning out the windows, pushing branches out of the way while trying not to scratch up the Bronco too badly. Eventually we all agreed that maybe this wasn’t actually the route we wanted to take, backed up, found a more sensible place to park, and finished the trip on foot.
The hike itself was beautiful.
Thanks to all the rain we’ve had this spring and early summer, everything was incredibly green. The downside, of course, was that it was also incredibly wet. The trail was full of puddles, slick mud, and water-filled ruts. Thankfully, we all remembered our bug spray, which made the hike much more enjoyable because the mosquitoes were definitely making their presence known.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the trail my feet decided they had different plans than the rest of me.
I slipped.
Down I went.
Somehow I managed to land on my side, my knee, and my backside all at once. Miraculously, I didn’t end up completely covered in mud. My backpack took the brunt of it instead, which I considered a pretty fair trade. Other than a sore knee and a bruised ego, I was perfectly fine, so after laughing it off, we continued on our way.
And it was absolutely worth it.
When we finally reached Bartholomew Falls, the water was rushing thanks to all the recent rain, making the falls even more spectacular than usual. We spent some time taking photos, enjoying the view, and sitting down for a few snacks before heading back to the Bronco.
Thankfully, we made it back just as the sky started rumbling with thunder. We could hear the storm rolling in, but we managed to get off the trail before the rain really started. That felt like a small victory.
We worked our way back to the logging road, plugged our next destination into Google Maps, and headed off toward Fall Brook Falls.
Or at least… we tried.
Getting to Bartholomew Falls had already taken us down a maze of logging roads, dirt roads, and what were arguably ATV trails. We were truly out in the middle of nowhere. There were very few signs of civilization—just the occasional cabin or logging equipment. At one point we actually got excited to see a stop sign because it meant we had found people again.
We even passed a roadside sign with balloons tied to it that mentioned salmon. Addy was convinced it said “Salmon Burgers.” I honestly can’t remember what it really said, but that’s what we’re calling it now. He may have just been getting hungry.
Thankfully, we had packed plenty of snacks. Constance had made ham sandwiches; we had breadsticks, watermelon, fruit, and enough picnic food that we simply ate lunch while bouncing around the logging roads inside the Bronco.
As for Fall Brook Falls…
Well…
Spoiler alert.
We never found them.
Google Maps was absolutely determined to send us down trails that either ended in dead ends or became so rough that we turned around before getting ourselves properly stuck. We backtracked more times than I could count, tried different logging roads, drove through an Irving forestry gate, passed enormous piles of freshly cut logs and heavy equipment, explored brand-new logging roads, and… ended up at another dead end.
We repeated that process for what felt like a couple of hours.
Eventually we came across some people riding side-by-sides, so Al stopped to ask for directions. In hindsight, we probably should have asked how to get to Fall Brook Falls, but instead we simply asked how to get back to the nearest highway.
To be fair, at that point finding pavement felt like the bigger priority.
Their directions got us safely back onto the highway, but every kilometre we drove seemed to make Google Maps recalculate an even longer route to the falls. Finally, Al pulled over, and everyone compared navigation apps. There was Google Maps, an ATV trail map, and a lot of scratching our heads. At that point I’d pretty much accepted that maybe we weren’t seeing the second waterfall after all.
The important thing was that we were back on pavement.
Eventually we gave up on the waterfall and enjoyed the scenic drive instead. We made our way through Renous, connected with Highway 8, and eventually looped back through Blackville, Doaktown, Boiestown, and Stanley. Somewhere along the way, we stopped at Tim Hortons for dinner before continuing the drive home.
One of the highlights of the trip happened on the way back.
Our friend Al has a band, and they recently released their very first song. While we were driving, it came on the radio.
It was such a cool moment.
Both Addy and I grabbed our phones to record it while everyone celebrated in the Bronco. You could tell how much that moment meant, and it was really special getting to be there when it happened.
By the time we finally got home, we barely had enough energy left to put the animals to bed before calling it a night ourselves. It turned into a much longer day than any of us expected, but honestly, we couldn’t have asked for better people to get lost with. Everyone stayed positive; we laughed through the wrong turns, shared good food, and enjoyed the adventure for what it was.
Sometimes the destination isn’t quite as memorable as the journey—and this was definitely one of those days.
And that pretty much wraps up another couple of weeks here on the Funny Farm.
Looking back, it’s amazing how much can happen in such a short amount of time. Between preserving mountains of fresh produce, finally getting the garden planted, building a new quail house, getting lost while exploring New Brunswick’s backroads, making yogurt and cheese from an ever-growing supply of goat milk, and somehow fitting work and everyday life in between, we’ve certainly kept ourselves busy.
Some days everything goes exactly according to plan, and other days Google Maps decides you’re going on an off-road adventure whether you like it or not. Either way, those unexpected moments usually end up becoming the stories we remember the most.
As always, thank you so much for making it all the way to the bottom. It truly means a lot that you take the time to follow along with our little adventures, celebrate the wins, laugh at the mishaps, and cheer us on as we continue learning this homesteading lifestyle one project at a time.
I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Have you ever gotten completely lost on an adventure that turned out to be just as memorable as the destination? Or what’s one thing you’re harvesting or preserving from your garden right now?
Until next time, stay curious, embrace a little chaos, and remember that life is usually more fun when things don’t go quite according to plan. We’ll see you soon from the Funny Farm!