We get a lot of visitors here at WestWind Farms.
Some are an hour or greater away who have phoned ahead just to make sure we are home, and others are just curious pop-ins just passing by on the road.
On the other hand, many are regular customers who come frequently to pick up one, two or three dozen free-range, brown in colour, chicken eggs, a selection of pasture-raised pork and, more often than not, an armful of outdoor-raised hybrid roasting chickens for their freezer.
We have, too, a long list of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shareholders who come regularly, during 16 weeks or more, starting in early summer, to pick up seasonal selections of field-fresh handpicked vegetables straight from a non-chemical fertilizer and pesticide-free garden.
Most who come because of the mileage, pack their vehicle with family and friends just to let them see the friendly animals that roam at will in the paddocks and pastures. There are more, I can assure you, happy and healthy creatures than you can count on a full connection of your fingers and toes.
If you talk nicely to our state-of-the-art, early 1960s vintage 420 John Deere tractor, it might just fire up and pop, pop, pop you, and a gang of others, around the farm on a hayride. It enjoys the exercise, too.
As I sit comfortably on Jenney, my jitney, collecting my thoughts, I hear the song of our big 2130 John Deere tractor working the far-back field, the rototiller, putt, putt puttering as it turns the soil in the beside-the-house kitchen garden, and the Kubota lawn mower purring back and forth as it cuts 60 inch swaths, acre after acre, of deep, green lawn. It is the hum of machinery happily at work where progress and profits are not confused.
Closer at hand, I can see the happy little pair of barn swallows as they twitter on the top wire of the paddock fence. From further away, I can hear a bluebird singing to its mate. Across the field, I can see a bobolink singing in flight, while a meadowlark sings from a fence post selected as his.
Strutting around the feed trough in the pigs’ over-sized paddock, a pair of big black crows utter their guttural crackling mutter of opinion, but they quickly move on when a pair of bossy ravens fly in. A couple of robins that have obviously chosen the pigs’ shelter to build their nest within quickly scream at them.
Less than a yard from my foot, a tiny chipping sparrow is gathering hair shed by Foxy, our housedog, to line its tiny nest with.
Its nest, each year, with a clutch of five tiny brown blotched blue eggs, can be found in the low-down branches of the evergreen yew shrub that corners the back of our home.
Our henhouse on wheels is nearing completion, and our new crop of laying hens is expected shortly. Near everything is out to pasture with the exception of a half dozen weanling Berkshire piglets that have not yet been sold.
Such is life at WestWind Farms, where homegrown goodness thrives. It is well worth a day trip to come see for yourself.
Take care, ’cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105