It's a diary

Most Recent / March 23, 2023

I used to make new year’s resolutions; they were absurd and almost always had something to do with changing my appearance. Although, I no longer make resolutions, I have made a commitment to post a new blog once a week for at least the next year. Now that it's out in the open there's no turning back.

Why?

Well, it’s quite simple. I would like to leave something for my children and my children’s, children about my time here on our farm. What I wouldn’t give to have a journal or diary from the people who came before us. It could answer some of the questions I have about past growing seasons, when did the pond get dug out? What was the weather like in the summer of 1962? How did they deal with pests in the garden? I want to know the highs and lows of their time, the lessons learned.

As we head back towards a more traditional way of farming. Or as my cousin Laurie called it this week, “traditional farming with a twist’ the history of the farm would be like a road map of traditional farming. The lost art of self-sufficiency.

And that is our goal, self-sufficiency.

So, it starts here with me. My modern-day journal about our life and our time as farmers.

 

Winter 2023

Our year started off in the best possible way, with the birth of our second son Forrest. He was born January 6th at 4:15pm in our home. Having read countless birth stories, I decided to write out ours and almost have it ready to share.

Spring 2023

As you know if you read our last blog post, we will be welcoming four new calves to the farm this spring. We are just anxiously awaiting that day. After calving it is usually only a short while until we can put our cattle out to pasture. This is one of my favourite days of the year. We are excited, the cows are excited, and we get to watch them run and kick their way out into their summer home.

It won’t be long now until the thousands of tulips and thousands of daffodils we planted in the fall will start to erupt from the soil. This year will be having pre-orders for our spring flowers for Mother’s Day. And what a variety we have this year!

If you’re interested keep a lookout for posts on Instagram for when pre-orders, go on our website for purchase.

 

Floral Workshops

We are finalizing the details of our first floral workshop of the year, but we know for sure it will be Mother’s Day weekend! A morning of floral arranging on our farm with our spring blooms. It is going to be so wonderful! We will post a link on Instagram when bookings are available and more details. Speaking of workshops, we will be hosting several throughout the Summer, Fall and winter this year.

  • May 13th: Mother's Day
  • June 10th: Early Summer blooms
  • July 15th: Summer Abundance
  • August 5th: Summer Slow Down
  • August 26th: Ode to Summer
  • October 7th: Fall Harvest
  • December 2nd: Winter Greenery Workshop + Hudson's Hot Chocolate Bar

As we get closer to each date, we will release more information about each workshop as well as the link for bookings.

 

Summer 2023

Some changes are coming to our gardens. We are wanting them closer to the house to accommodate our lifestyle being a wee bit different with a new babe. This change also lends itself well to adopting more No-till principles and regenerating an almost unusable piece of land that is incredibly rocky, and the soil quality is very poor. Some flowers were planted in this area last year near the old barn foundation, and some easy growing flowers really thrived. The fickle flowers did not. Just another exciting change, that will bring with it a lot of work, that we know will pay off in the long run. The views from our windows should also be a little bit more beautiful as well.  We continue to build, rearrange, learn, falter and so does what things look like around here.

Come May 100 new broiler chickens will be arriving and ready for pickup in mid-July. Order forms will be available shortly if you're interested. With the most broilers we have had on the farm yet, comes building a new brooder, and a larger chicken tractor that will follow behind our cows throughout the pasture. Chickens love to eat flies and fly larvae. Which helps us keep the fly population down for our cattle, feeds our chickens and in turn they fertilize the soil as they move along eating the fly buffet.

Little farm market

In the summer of 2023, we will be the opening for our little farm market every other Saturday. What will be available? Flower arrangements of course! As well as a build your own bouquet bar once the flowers become more plentiful. From our garden we will have seasonal produce such as lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber, fresh herbs, summer squashes like zucchini, winter squash such as delicata, butternut, spaghetti, eggs, frozen chicken and finally after 3 years of building -up stock we have garlic to sell!

Connor will be on paternity leave this summer and I’m not sure who is most excited about that. An extra set of hands available full time during the busiest time of year is going to be amazing.

I think that’s all for now!

Surely, we will keep you updated on all things.

Emma

The Harrison Hill Farm Flowers Greenery Workshops Toronto GTA Buckhorn
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The Harrison Hill Farm Flowers Greenery Workshops Toronto GTA Buckhorn

We are the Harrison-Hills: Connor, Emma-Lee, Hudson and Forrest. We are the third generation of Harrison's to live and work on these beautiful 137 acres just outside of Lakefield, Ontario and we are so excited to share our farm with you.

xx Emma

5 thoughts on “It’s my diary”

  1. Beautiful post Emma! Thanks for the workshop dates- may look into the 3.5 hour drive to come to one of them🤍🌷🌻

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