One of my Favorite Things......The "Wike" Bike Trailer!

Queenie and Opal in the "Wike"

Side view of the Wike

Last spring, we took some of our income tax returns, and put towards the ultimate bike trailer for our two youngest children! We did some research first, since we've never owned a bike trailer for our young ones, and hummed and hoed about what we wanted to purchase. We just weren't pleased or satisfied with the ones you get at the regular department stores etc. from the manufacturer's of other famous bike products. So after searching the net, I came across a Canadian company that was just over an hour away from where I live, and they were offering a very nice custom made, built tough bike trailer....they have several models to choose from, and accessories, depending on your needs, and your child's needs etc...they are world known, since not many other companies create a product for children, or young adults or adults with special needs due to any disabilities and can support their size, and weight etc...This company is top notch, and coined the market for bike trailers originally, until their patent was stolen by one of the "big name" companies....I went all out, and got the one that was more deluxe, and the more fancy trendy colour, and such....It was not cheap by any means, but again, a big splurge, and well worth the money! The bike trailer can also be for jogging, or stroller, and comes with a lovely pushing bar etc...If you refer to their website, you can read for yourself about their unique diverse products that they have for offer. I hope you enjoy reading their website, I did! 


http://www.wike.ca/


Please check out their webpage, it's really worth a look!


~Rosemary~

Random Baked Goods.........

Nanaimo Bar (from the town's official recipe)

White cake with lemon curd layer inside, and whipping cream and fresh raspberries from the garden

Raspberry Charlotte

Inside the Charlotte

Canadian Living's Cheese Danish

More Danish with toppings (cherry, apples, lemon curd)

Danish again! (cherry, blueberry)

Cherry Pie

Homemade Doughnuts (first time)

Buttertarts with Maple Syrup

Cherry Cheesecakes, Peanut Butter Pie or such?

Dark Cocoa Cake

My version of sticky buns/chelsea etc....

Just a couple pictures of some of the baked goods I have made, or make on a regular basis....the pictures for some don't do justice....but all very tasty items....My favorite is the Nanaimo bar from the official town website of Nanaimo, British Columbia. They had a contest for the best bar recipe, and I made up a batch and followed the recipe to a "T" and it turned out just perfect, I also started to add my own secret ingredient eventually of a layer of homemade pure maple syrup...to make it even more disgustingly good! Another of my favorites here is the Cheese Danish from Canadian Living's recipes. It is so perfect, fluffy, divine, rich, and once you make them, and eat them, it becomes addictive to do again and again! I follow their recipe, and place the cream cheese mixture on top of each, but also add a layer of assorted fruit topping, and then bake! Another more recent item I just started to make was the Dark Cocoa cake....I happened to pick up a bulk bag of dark cocoa, and fell in love with the way it looked and smelled and was determined to use it in either cakes, brownies etc....I found a recipe from Hershey's, and followed a basic cake recipe, and it turned out so awesome, it was a one bowl idea recipe basically, and real easy enough for the kids to do! It turned out like the best "Devil's Food Cake" I have ever had! I also whipped up a batch of cocoa fudge...and it turned out pretty tasty! Another real neat recipe I made there was the Raspberry Charlotte! A mousse cake really, with fresh and frozen raspberries from my garden, which i have an abundance of, and wanted to try using them up. The recipe entails making your own "lady finger" type biscuit to be the bottom and sides of the cake, and then you make up the mousse filling...a real neat recipe I found, doing some techniques I've never done before...all and all and easy, yet elegant recipe!

Everything Maple Syrup....Time To Tap!

It's that time of the year again, to get busy and go out to the bush and start tapping our maples. We are a little behind this year, just because of the freezing and miserable weather we have been experiencing this entire new year! My husband has been busy fabricating his own evaporator for us to use this year! Last year, (our first year at tapping) we just made due, boiling in pots by open fire, woodstove, and propane stove and kitchen stove(yes, kitchen stove, i know, a big no no, but, it worked out fine, since i have lots of windows in my kitchen, and own a fan, and it worked out fine, other than drawing on the electricity). So this year, he's determined to make things much better for us, and more economical. Last year, all and all we did everything at next to no cost (we had some spouts/spiles and we used "free" white plastic pails from the local grocer's bakery departments, and have our own ample supply of firewood of course, and except for one fill of propane, and a couple of cases of glass jars, and extra spiles) we did try propane once, and it works, but of course, you shouldn't have to pay for heat. We had a lot of fun last year, and an unusual mild spell at the end of February, and March was perfect too, although a very short season for tapping! We all and all, did really good for our first time as a family tapping  trees, and collecting sap, and boiling it all up! Just beautiful was the early virgin maple syrup we got, i call it Gold....then it was so amazing to see the change in colour of the syrup the longer we tapped. We have plenty to do yet for this year...we are running behind personally, and of course weather wise....we need to get our pails cleaned out, equipment ready, wood supply ready and tap the trees of course! The following are some pictures from last years tapping, I can't wait to take pictures this year!

Paul drilling

Tapping in Spile/Spout

Sap!

Hanging Bucket and Fabricating Lid

Sap running into pail

The finished product! Early "virgin" "liquid gold" i like to call it, and the later syrup which is much darker!

Today Is The Type Of Day For Making Pierogies.....

Pan Fried Up Homemade Pierogies

Green Cabbage Filling

Red Cabbage Filling

Potato and Cheddar Cheese Filling

I am half Polish. My father came from Poland to Canada when he was a boy. I grew up with some of the most finest Polish cuisine made up by his mother, (my grandmother), and just loved it when we would go to her house for special occasions and holidays, and for the feasts that she would prepare. One of my favorite Polish dishes was Pierogies....a simple dough rolled out into circles, and then filling in the centre of either potato and cheese, wild mushroom and cabbage, or just cabbage, (these are the ones i remember, or preferred, I'm sure she made other filling flavors as well), anyways, after placing your filling in the middle of the uncooked dough, you fold it over, in a crescent like shape, seal, and place into boiling water until cooked. Then, my favorite way of eating them, was to wait and have them usually the next day when they had cooled down, fry them up in butter in the frying pan, so they get nice a greasy and crispy! Now, that is just the best! They are also really nice to have with the rest of a traditional Polish meal, such as with pork and rice filled cabbage rolls, mushroom sauce, potatoes, other vegetables and breaded pork chops and so on....everything just goes so well together....also usually to start off the meal, a bowl of homemade mushroom, or tomato soup...tomato being my choice. My children now just love the wild mushroom soup that my Dad makes....I'm so glad to see that most of my children really enjoy the same type of fare. I grew up watching my parents make Pierogies, cabbage rolls etc...I too now can make most of my favorite Polish dishes....and am very proud of my background, even though i know very little of it unfortunately. Anyways, I recently made up a great batch of dough (care of a new found friend from Manitoba, who shared with me her hubby's grandma's old recipe) and my recipes from my Dad and his Mother's cabbage filling (which tasted great, didn't look quite the way my Dad does it, but same great taste)....combined together, it made one great Pierogie! My kids prefer of course the cheese ones....I the other....Hope you enjoyed this little tidbit about one of my favorite Polish foods.


~Rosemary~

Looks Like it Came in Like a Lamb!.........

As an update, it looks like the first day of March, came in like a Lamb for us! So out like a Lion? We will just have to wait and see what happens now at the end of March....nothing surprises me with the weather/climate these days!!!Oh well, it's turned out to be a lovely sunny and clear day, with a bit of blue sky! Have a great day!


~Rosemary~

“If March comes in like a lion, will it go out like a lamb?”......

Today's the first day of March, and we all ask, "will it come in like a lion, and out like a lamb?"....we'll just have to wait and see, i'm leaning towards it coming in like a lion....since we've yet had any nice weather here in  my part of the world, and yesterday was a dirty day here, with school buses being canceled and school's closed....it was gusty, and the roads icy, and of course cold and miserable! We are still waiting to tap our trees for maple syrup! I just hope we get the chance to this year, and not just skip right over that precious window of time, ever so crucial for collecting sap!

Speaking of lambs, we had several new lambs come to us starting at Christmas, and into the New Year....We raise pure bred Katahdin sheep..."the meat sheep"....a nice low maintenance sheep breed that does not require shearing, easy lambing, parasite resistant, cold hardy, and just all around, a great breed to keep! I started to raise just a small handful a few years ago after watching my father and his wife successfully raise them, I purchased a few ewes and a ram from him, and have kept back over the years all my ewes to grow my herd. We sell off the males either for meat, or as breeding stock, and fetch a much higher price selling them as breeding stock. They are raised all naturally, feeding them our own home grown corn, mixed grains, and hay! I have no complaints about keeping them, rarely had any losses until this winter's births, and I think it was due to the severe cold we had, and perhaps first timer ewes, and lack of good nursing within the first twenty four hours....All and all....good animals to keep, just wish that they would fetch higher prices at the market, since buyers seem to be prejudice towards them because they aren't "woolly".....We keep two goofy half brother llamas who have been at our farm since we got the sheep in....I bought the llamas from a local who was selling off his stock, and felt i just had to have them both, even though I've been told numerous times, that I only need one for guarding over the herd. Oh well, they do a good job, and help protect the sheep from the abundant population of coyotes we have in the area. We also have a heinz 57 beef cow, that we artificially bred to a shorthorn and got a lovely shorthorn heifer calf out of the deal! We were hoping to re breed the heifer to shorthorn, to get ourselves a pure offspring eventually....we'll just have to see what we do....it takes some handling to get the beef cattle to become pets, in order to handle them for artificial breeding.....I do hope to get back some layer birds this spring, (it's been a bit since i've had layers, or meat birds, or turkeys), so i'm hoping this will be the year, we can get back into keeping more animals on the farm. It would also be nice to get some hogs going, and a fatten up some calves. Oh, the things one can do on the farm, just a matter of time, and sometimes some money....We also should be back to milking our own dairy cow, since my hubby spent his entire life pretty much milking....it would be nice to get a Jersey! Well, here's to the first day of March! Have a great day everyone!

~Rosemary~

Llama, Cow, and Katahdin Sheep in yard

Katahdin Lamb and Ewe

Llama's (the buddy's)

 

Everything Honey Today!...Well, As Honey As It Can Bee!...

Recipe from Company's Coming Millenium Edition

Honey caramels/fudge

Beautiful Comb

Hollow Log with Honey Bees and their Combs

Busy Bees and their combs and honey!

The winter time, is my favorite time of the year for making fudges.....It's too hot in the warmer months, and in the winter they chill and set up much easier with the help of placing the old pot into some snow to help cool it down faster for whipping....This recipe is so nice, delicate, and the honey hit's the spot! I was so proud of back in the fall that we had our first harvest of homegrown honey! By chance last summer an old hollow log that was brought up to the yard/laneway near our barn for firewood, and never got cut up, made for a perfect home for a colony of honey bees! All summer we watched, and eventually in the heat of the summer and fall, could smell this sweetness as we'd walk by it to go to the barn....Come the fall, when we started to get cold/freezing spells (the bees went temporarily dormant and hid way back in the log), my mother started to venture into our log to see what she could find....we removed some of the comb, and slowly drained the honey. Just so amazing! What a beautiful, and neat first time experience of discovering our organic honey! Anyways, we are hoping they will continue to produce this spring/summer season, and I'd like to bring out more hollow logs from the forest for them to settle in as well....It's all new to us, or me, so i'm starting to do some more research on raising honeybees, and would like to do it as naturally, and simple as I can. So I made up a batch with the little bit of honey that we harvested!  I love making fudges, from various recipe books, or mixing up my own concoctions, especially candy coatings for candied popcorns.....Another one of my fave all natural ingredients is using our own fresh maple syrup from our forest! That will be my next topic on here soon, maple sugaring! We are currently getting ready to tap, and the weather is just not behaving very well for sap to run, or so we feel by the cold/freezing day temperatures we are still having! Stay tuned for pictures and tidbits on that!

~Rosemary~

All of us together.....sorta.....

We don't have any real recent family photo's of us all together (taken on our first ever family boat ride to a lovely island on Georgian Bay to check out a camp the children were going to be attending! We had a blast, since we are only use to canoe's and not powered boats!), something that i am working on.....in the meantime, this is a "homemade" photochop picture of us all, that i created for my daughter who is in junior kindergarten this year....the teacher loved it, since we are the largest family in the class, and most of the other classes at the moment in the school! From left to right, Big Daddy, Eugenia, Opal, Issy, Queenie, Emma, George, and Big Mama!


~Rosemary~

A Few Of My Favorite Things......Cookbooks!

My mother's mother bought all her daughter's one of these!

A few of my fave seed/plant catalogues

My Bible, my Mom's originally!

I love Canadian Living publications

Another great one, has the danish recipe inside!

Has some nice tasty fudge recipes in it!

A rummage sale find that either me or my mom picked up!

The Place We Call Home.......

The Ol' Girvin House facing west

Side View of the house, addition that is being added on

Paul's Big Daddy Van 12 passenger

This is our home, my hubby was the second owner in the history of this old place, and at one time, a female family member from his clan married into the Girvin's who built this lovely house on the hill! Its still under construction, and like most older homes, needs a lot of TLC and time and money put into it...it's all original in the inside, except for the kitchen....I have my moments i'll tell you about this old place......

This is our lovely Ford 350 diesel 12 passenger van! Paul first started out when we got married with sporty snazzy GMGrand Am's....what a laugh....then we went on to a Ford Explorer, then onto a Ford Windstar, and finally straight to the top, the Ford 350! Couldn't live without it, and we use it for pulling tractors, wagons, loads of hay etc....built tough for our large farm family needs!

View to the old barn

My Darlings......

The Darlings!

From left to right back row first, Isabelle, Eugenia, George, Emma holding Opal, and Queenie in the red dress!

~Rosemary~

And Here He Is......

My Farmer.....Paul!

Here is a nice smile from my farmer after a long hot afternoon doing up square hay bales! He was bashful of me taking his picture, and I said, na, don't be silly......

~Rosemary~

How I Met My Farmer.....

My mother said to me before i went off to college, farmer's college that is...to either do really good, or find a rich farmer.....I did really good! So much for fetching a farmer while i was there....oh well, there's a reason for everything in life.....I did get a farmer eventually, just not that easily...well, i guess it wasn't too hard....all i had to do was put an ad in the local papers, stating i was looking for one! When people ask now how my farmer and i met, i just say "i bought him in the newspaper".....Little did i know then, that i was getting more than i paid for (stories for another time)...Here's a bit about my farmer....His name is Paul, he's seven years older than me, not a very big fellow, but i fattened him up over the years that we've been married!....he's gentle, kind, soft spoken, respectful, kind hearted, hard working, loyal, smart, kinda cute, jack of all trades kinda fellow, determined, and really crazy for marrying me!!!!I don't know how he's tolerated me all these years...I can be quite the opposite to him at times (perhaps that's the reason we attracted to each other so well), and determined that I wear the boots in the house!!!!Oh well, anyways, that's how i met my lovely Paul...short and sweet, i'll spare you all the details! I can talk way too much, and i don't think everyone wants to hear every little thing i have to say!So, now that you know how i became "The Farmer's Wife", I can now get on with all my stories, recipes, pictures, and tid bits of life here on our farm....Thank you for reading my blog, and I hope to be of some sort of interest to you all!

The Kiss! Our wedding day! Paul & Rose!

~Rosemary~

I always knew I was destined for farm life.....

Growing up as a child in Canada's largest city, Toronto, I always new I was meant to be living somewhere else....From going to my grandparent's hobby farm of ten acres since I was a squirt, and going there on the weekends and some holidays, I always just knew I was meant for so much more than living in the city...those fun times as a kid, and playing with my older sister, and aunty (who was a year older than me), having the time of our lives, playing in the fields of wild flowers, playing in an old shack in the forest, and playing at the pond, and helping with the family garden, growing vegetables, and getting into mischief like finding rotten eggs on the manure pile that came from a neighbouring farmer, and stepping on them and running for the hills because they stunk so bad and killing ourselves laughing, and just feeling carefree, happy, and full of life...it's endless the times we had there, endless...anyways, besides getting a taste of my grandparents hobby farm, I also got to get my hands dirty in our small backyards in the city, ever so proud to help out my parents with the small vegetable garden, and plantings of fruit trees, and perennials and flowering shrubs....The chance at around the age of ten, to travel with my own parents to the shores of Lake Huron, and take in some of the towns along the lake (like Kincardine, Goderich, Port Elgin, Southhampton), going to the beautiful beaches and camping, renting cottages etc...also taking in the Bruce Peninsula, and Manitoulin Island, and other parts of Georgian Bay....all good memories, and times I would never have had, if it wasn't for my mom pushing my dad to get us there! Little did I ever know then that one day I would be eventually living in that area and near the towns that I once visited as a child, and tourist! Years past, and my mother was determined to get us out of the city, she too longed  for something more, an escape from it all, no more hustle and bustle and rat race.....she wanted out of it all...it was a big chance, a big risk, others thought she was crazy for her idea (including my dad)....it took some time, some research, and several trips back up to those areas we enjoyed so much, and scouting out the perfect farm for our family....my dad was on board, but barely(he had to worry about making an income in the country, even though we'd rent out the land to a local farmer for income)....we had fun sorta, checking out farms, and the area...my parents made most of the trips themselves to scout things out....eventually narrowed it down to one farm...a lovely ninety acre cash crop farm one concession over from the beautiful shores of Lake Huron just north of Grand Bend....just perfect, prime land, ok old farm house, and near towns for school and hospital etc...they took it...we were moving, and moving fast....we sold our lovely home in the city, and packed everything up, and moved on my seventeenth birthday! Quite the birthday gift I'd say, and only the beginning of my life as "The Farmer's Wife".

~Rosemary~