Working on a farm you get used to all the obvious noises you hear every day. It's often very early in the morning these noises occur. The crowing of the rooster starts at about 2 am, braying from our little donkey as we enter the farm , the screeching from the geese as we pass by the duck pond early in our feeding schedule, neighing from the horses when we open the barn doors and turn on the lights and mooing from the cows demanding they get their breakfast right this minute!
It's the out of the ordinary noises that perk up your attention. The cries from newly born animals can wake up a farmer pretty quick and get you hopping tending to their needs. Hungry babies sure do make quite a racket!
Once a barn full of animals has had their breakfast it is truly amazing how quiet it can be. All that is heard is the quiet munching and chewing sounds as the hay gets devoured. Babies are content and back to sleep after bottles are drank dry.
Sitting on a little stool beside a warm jersey cow with the sounds of the milk clinking into the bucket there is anouther sound I have been trying to figure out what it is and who it is coming from for a while. Beside me is a large stall of pygmy goats eating their breakfast except for one soft groaning noise. This noise is familar as we had a nubian dairy goat that often made this noise at night resting after dinner.
Well, the problem is if I get up from the milking stool and try and see who it is that is making this noise they will of course stop, so I enlist the help of one of the farmers to sneak over to the stall and try to find this groaning goat. Farmer Dominique is very quiet, stealthy and observant and finds our goat who is making these funny noises. Sweet little Molly the pygmy goat is happily groaning away as she's finished her breakfast and lying peacefully on a homemade block in the middle of the stall. Thanks Farmer Dominique!
It's the subtle noises that get you going, make you curious and catch your attention when there are so many little noises at a farm!
Join the fun here at the farm and see how many little noises you can hear!
Farmer Nadine
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Happy Easter
It's been an Easter tradition here at Maplewood Farm to hatch our own eggs in an incubator. This year we opted for a smaller hatch which ended up to be fourteen little chicks this year. For those of you that don't know what an incubator is, it is a machine that provides heat, humidity and a turning apparatus to simulate what a setting or brooding hen would provide. It takes 21 days to hatch chicken eggs. They have just hatched so come on down and see them as they grow very fast.
Chickens are getting quite alot of publicity these days as many municpalities have new bylaws to allow them in backyards but what do you really know about them? Well they are very entertaining little critters.. Ever see a chicken run? It will deffinately make you laugh! Need any pest removal or excavation? A chickens natural behaviour of scratching and digging for insects, grubs, and bugs churns and rotates the earth. It is also interesting to watch chickens in a group interact. It would seem the particular breeds stick together. Silkies with silkies, little bantam duck wings with each other and so forth. Our Silkie rooster is particularly gentlemanly to his hens when he finds a good collection of bugs he calls his cluster of hens over to endulge while he patiently stands guard!
If they're not eating , running or scratching around you will find them sunning themselves or having a dust bath in the nearest pile of dirt.
So enough about chickens! There are many other critters to see and lots of fun to be had right now at Maplewood Farm!
Farmer Nadine
Chickens are getting quite alot of publicity these days as many municpalities have new bylaws to allow them in backyards but what do you really know about them? Well they are very entertaining little critters.. Ever see a chicken run? It will deffinately make you laugh! Need any pest removal or excavation? A chickens natural behaviour of scratching and digging for insects, grubs, and bugs churns and rotates the earth. It is also interesting to watch chickens in a group interact. It would seem the particular breeds stick together. Silkies with silkies, little bantam duck wings with each other and so forth. Our Silkie rooster is particularly gentlemanly to his hens when he finds a good collection of bugs he calls his cluster of hens over to endulge while he patiently stands guard!
If they're not eating , running or scratching around you will find them sunning themselves or having a dust bath in the nearest pile of dirt.
So enough about chickens! There are many other critters to see and lots of fun to be had right now at Maplewood Farm!
Farmer Nadine
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Grizzly and the calf
Hey there everyone,
It’s that time of year again, the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring; here at Maplewood Farm, that means baby animals, baby animals and more baby animals! Yaaaaaaaay!
If you’ve had the opportunity to come to the farm in the past 3 weeks, you have probably met some of our new lambs (who grow faster by the day!). You may have come across one lamb in particular, a little guy who has his own stall and heat lamp. This little lamb is named "Grizzly". Grizzly is the ram (boy) lamb and also the runt from a set of triplets born to one of our ewes (a female sheep) named "Panda". However, as often happens in nature, Panda realized that she could not rear all 3 babies, so she rejected Grizzly, entrusting him to the special care of us farmers. This situation has a happy outcome though, because Grizzly now has all the love and attention of 7 new mothers – and boy oh boy does he know it! When he isn’t with his seven farmer mothers that snuggle and play with him for hours and hours, he can be seen snuggling up to his favourite bedtime toy, an eyeless stuffed plush elephant, of which he happily curls up to under his heat lamp after the farmers tuck him in for the night.
In related baby news, on February 20th, our Jersey cow "Lima" introduced us to her adorable newborn heifer (girl) calf. Now, a scientific thing about dairy cows is that they are bred to produce enough milk for not only their calf (or calves), but also for us two-legged beings to buy and consume. Now, that is a lot of milk! In fact, it’s so much milk that if the calf was allowed unlimited access to his/her mother’s udder, the calf would actually drink way too much milk for their little tummies to hold, and would then get very sick. To prevent this from happening, farmers (like us) keep calves together in the same stall, or in a stall with other small animals, and bottle-feed them the cow’s milk until they are weaned and able to rejoin the group of cattle.
And so, this is how the little lamb, Grizzly, and this new calf became stall-mates! In these few short weeks, Grizzly and the calf have become friends… and then best friends… and now act more like brother and sister. They play together, eat together, nap together, and even remind us farmers (at the top of their lungs) when they are hungry together! Calves naturally like to nibble and lick everything within their reach; our little calf even sucks on Grizzly’s ear when he’s not looking! They both love being petted, and Grizzly, the more rambunctious of the two, has no problem climbing right over the calf to get closer to the little hands eager to give him a scratch. Even though Grizzly is smaller than the calf, he is a very speedy, agile, social little guy; he not only keeps up with the calf all day in the paddock, he also encourages her to greet the visitors that walk by.
In conclusion, I am happy to report that today both Grizzly and the calf continue to do well and have certainly found a new day-and-overnight companion in each other. Stay tuned to find out if the calf starts "baaaing" or if Grizzly starts "mooing"!
-Farmer Dominique
It’s that time of year again, the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring; here at Maplewood Farm, that means baby animals, baby animals and more baby animals! Yaaaaaaaay!
If you’ve had the opportunity to come to the farm in the past 3 weeks, you have probably met some of our new lambs (who grow faster by the day!). You may have come across one lamb in particular, a little guy who has his own stall and heat lamp. This little lamb is named "Grizzly". Grizzly is the ram (boy) lamb and also the runt from a set of triplets born to one of our ewes (a female sheep) named "Panda". However, as often happens in nature, Panda realized that she could not rear all 3 babies, so she rejected Grizzly, entrusting him to the special care of us farmers. This situation has a happy outcome though, because Grizzly now has all the love and attention of 7 new mothers – and boy oh boy does he know it! When he isn’t with his seven farmer mothers that snuggle and play with him for hours and hours, he can be seen snuggling up to his favourite bedtime toy, an eyeless stuffed plush elephant, of which he happily curls up to under his heat lamp after the farmers tuck him in for the night.
In related baby news, on February 20th, our Jersey cow "Lima" introduced us to her adorable newborn heifer (girl) calf. Now, a scientific thing about dairy cows is that they are bred to produce enough milk for not only their calf (or calves), but also for us two-legged beings to buy and consume. Now, that is a lot of milk! In fact, it’s so much milk that if the calf was allowed unlimited access to his/her mother’s udder, the calf would actually drink way too much milk for their little tummies to hold, and would then get very sick. To prevent this from happening, farmers (like us) keep calves together in the same stall, or in a stall with other small animals, and bottle-feed them the cow’s milk until they are weaned and able to rejoin the group of cattle.
And so, this is how the little lamb, Grizzly, and this new calf became stall-mates! In these few short weeks, Grizzly and the calf have become friends… and then best friends… and now act more like brother and sister. They play together, eat together, nap together, and even remind us farmers (at the top of their lungs) when they are hungry together! Calves naturally like to nibble and lick everything within their reach; our little calf even sucks on Grizzly’s ear when he’s not looking! They both love being petted, and Grizzly, the more rambunctious of the two, has no problem climbing right over the calf to get closer to the little hands eager to give him a scratch. Even though Grizzly is smaller than the calf, he is a very speedy, agile, social little guy; he not only keeps up with the calf all day in the paddock, he also encourages her to greet the visitors that walk by.
In conclusion, I am happy to report that today both Grizzly and the calf continue to do well and have certainly found a new day-and-overnight companion in each other. Stay tuned to find out if the calf starts "baaaing" or if Grizzly starts "mooing"!
By the way, have you heard of our Name-The-Calf contest? See the website for more details.
-Farmer Dominique
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Here We Grow Again!
We are very busy making improvements at Maplewood Farm to better improve your visit.
We have one more month of being closed on Mondays, giving us 3 more days to "Get 'Er Done!"
While the gates to the Farm are closed it is a flurry of work going on inside, building new fences, resurfacing paddocks, replacing benches, improving pathways for strollers and our guests in with wheelchairs or difficulties with mobility and spring clean, clean, cleaning!
We have had a tremendous amount of support from committed District Employees in the Parks, Utilities and Streets departments. Thank you Everyone!
We are very excited about all of the changes and improvements, Better for our Animals! Better for our Visitors!
Farmer Courtenay
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Hi y'all! So you can put some faces to the names, here are some of the Maplewood Farm staff that will be contributing to this blog space. Feel free to post any question, comments, feedback. We welcome and appreciate it all.
Derek Palmer
I fell off the turnip truck in 1983, very wet behind the ears. I planned on heading for a trade and that trade was going to be heavy duty mechanics. The thing was I needed a job of some sort in the meantime, given the circumstances then. I took a part time job at a little place called Maplewood Farm. A job soon became a passion, thanks to a great mentor in April. I quickly learnt that you never know enough and will never know it all. Working outdoors with animals and people, especially the little people, makes my day. Never a dull moment. It just puts a smile on my face! Some of the people I am most fond of in life have come to me through the Farm. My most favorite time of year on the farm is Spring/ Summer….. yes, the birth of new life. It never gets old.
Nadine Gibbon
Hi, my name is Nadine. I joined the farm in 2001. After working with little kids and their moms in a local recreation centre doing all sorts of fun stuff, I decided to change things up a bit and add animals to the mix!
It sure has been lots of fun looking after all the critters we have at the farm especially in the springtime when we welcome all the new babies. When I'm not at the farm you can find me playing outside. Some of my favorite places are either at one of the local ski hills, out on salt chuck in our boat or just out walking the dog!
Come on down to the farm and join the fun!
Pam Blewman
Hi Folks, I’m Farmer Pam and have been at Maplewood Farm since July 7th, 2003. Growing up in the country and coming from a small town gave me a strong foundation and a vision as to what I would do later in life. I was always around or involved with animals in one way or another growing up and always remembering the joy they brought to me and thought that one day I would like to become a vet. Well I didn’t become a vet but I did get my dream job working at Maplewood Farm. I’ve traded in my high heel shoes and skirts for work boots and overalls and haven’t looked back. It’s hard work but very satisfying being a farmer…especially when all the babies start to arrive. The next time you come by for a visit, stop in and say hello.
Courtenay Fraitzl
I joined the Farm in 1996, coming from the field of small animal veterinary medicine. I was looking for a place where the animals are always happy and Maplewood Farm was just the place! I remember coming for my interview and marvelling at how short the fences seemed and how small the animals were, far different from my childhood memories of visits to the Farm.
The Farm combines my favourite things in life, children, animals and being outside! The Farm is such a special place and I consider this one of my most favourite places on earth. This wonderful job comes second only to my role as mom.
Maria Cheechoo
Hi, I'm Farmer Maria, aka "Hat Woman" (cat woman was taken) and I love being a Farmer. Spending a number of years cattle ranching in Northern Alberta I am thankful to be in the warmer climes of North Vancouver here at Maplewood Farm. As a retired teacher I also enjoy the educational aspect of sharing my love and knowledge of the farm animals through our children programs and in general with our visitors. As an Animal Healing Therapist I believe in cherishing our 4-leggeds and winged ones as kindred spirits sharing a journey, "they can make it a whole lot easier".
Baa'aa'aa bye for now!
________________________________________________________________________
Hello everyone, I’m Dominique. I first joined Maplewood Farm in October 2010 as an eager volunteer during my Grade 12 year in High School. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and became part of this nifty farming team shortly after I graduated.
Animals have been the main part of my life for as long as I can remember. I was always a frequent visitor to the farm as a young duckling and when I was old enough I started volunteering at the West Vancouver SPCA. I truly discovered my love for working with farm animals, big and small, and also people of all ages during my old summer job at the PNE, where I would give demonstrations in the livestock barns. It was a dream of mine to become a farmer ever since I was twelve, so once I put my mind to it, that’s just what I became! I am now in bliss playing with all my old four-legged animal friends and I look forward to meeting lots of new two-legged friends along the way.
Hi, I am Natalie, and I’m a relatively new addition to Maplewood’s team of farmers. I was a devoted volunteer before I got a job, and couldn’t imagine a more fun place to work. When I’m not taking care of animals and doing the milking demonstration at the farm, I’m at university studying to be an engineer, snowboarding, traveling or playing the piano. I was home schooled my whole life, so my first day of school was when I started university. We moved around a lot when I was young and I have lived in Ontario, Tennessee, Texas and of course, Beautiful British Columbia.
Derek Palmer
I fell off the turnip truck in 1983, very wet behind the ears. I planned on heading for a trade and that trade was going to be heavy duty mechanics. The thing was I needed a job of some sort in the meantime, given the circumstances then. I took a part time job at a little place called Maplewood Farm. A job soon became a passion, thanks to a great mentor in April. I quickly learnt that you never know enough and will never know it all. Working outdoors with animals and people, especially the little people, makes my day. Never a dull moment. It just puts a smile on my face! Some of the people I am most fond of in life have come to me through the Farm. My most favorite time of year on the farm is Spring/ Summer….. yes, the birth of new life. It never gets old.
I still engage in my original interest of all things mechanical through hobby.
Nadine GibbonHi, my name is Nadine. I joined the farm in 2001. After working with little kids and their moms in a local recreation centre doing all sorts of fun stuff, I decided to change things up a bit and add animals to the mix!
It sure has been lots of fun looking after all the critters we have at the farm especially in the springtime when we welcome all the new babies. When I'm not at the farm you can find me playing outside. Some of my favorite places are either at one of the local ski hills, out on salt chuck in our boat or just out walking the dog!
Come on down to the farm and join the fun!
Pam Blewman
Hi Folks, I’m Farmer Pam and have been at Maplewood Farm since July 7th, 2003. Growing up in the country and coming from a small town gave me a strong foundation and a vision as to what I would do later in life. I was always around or involved with animals in one way or another growing up and always remembering the joy they brought to me and thought that one day I would like to become a vet. Well I didn’t become a vet but I did get my dream job working at Maplewood Farm. I’ve traded in my high heel shoes and skirts for work boots and overalls and haven’t looked back. It’s hard work but very satisfying being a farmer…especially when all the babies start to arrive. The next time you come by for a visit, stop in and say hello.
Courtenay FraitzlI joined the Farm in 1996, coming from the field of small animal veterinary medicine. I was looking for a place where the animals are always happy and Maplewood Farm was just the place! I remember coming for my interview and marvelling at how short the fences seemed and how small the animals were, far different from my childhood memories of visits to the Farm.
The Farm combines my favourite things in life, children, animals and being outside! The Farm is such a special place and I consider this one of my most favourite places on earth. This wonderful job comes second only to my role as mom.
Maria Cheechoo Hi, I'm Farmer Maria, aka "Hat Woman" (cat woman was taken) and I love being a Farmer. Spending a number of years cattle ranching in Northern Alberta I am thankful to be in the warmer climes of North Vancouver here at Maplewood Farm. As a retired teacher I also enjoy the educational aspect of sharing my love and knowledge of the farm animals through our children programs and in general with our visitors. As an Animal Healing Therapist I believe in cherishing our 4-leggeds and winged ones as kindred spirits sharing a journey, "they can make it a whole lot easier".
Asha Sehra
Hi There! My name is Asha and Maplewood Farm is my second home. I grew up not too far away so the barnyard animals and I have grown up together. My favourite part of the day is when the peacock displays his beautiful feathers. I know the hens aren't impressed but I sure am! I've spent the last couple of years pursuing my Bachelor of Tourism Management degree, and the farm gives me the pleasure of working with both locals and tourists so I'm very pleased. Come on into the farm, I'm the first face you'll see and I look forward to meeting you and answering any questions you may have along the way.
________________________________________________________________________
Hello everyone, I’m Dominique. I first joined Maplewood Farm in October 2010 as an eager volunteer during my Grade 12 year in High School. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and became part of this nifty farming team shortly after I graduated.Animals have been the main part of my life for as long as I can remember. I was always a frequent visitor to the farm as a young duckling and when I was old enough I started volunteering at the West Vancouver SPCA. I truly discovered my love for working with farm animals, big and small, and also people of all ages during my old summer job at the PNE, where I would give demonstrations in the livestock barns. It was a dream of mine to become a farmer ever since I was twelve, so once I put my mind to it, that’s just what I became! I am now in bliss playing with all my old four-legged animal friends and I look forward to meeting lots of new two-legged friends along the way.
Hi, I am Natalie, and I’m a relatively new addition to Maplewood’s team of farmers. I was a devoted volunteer before I got a job, and couldn’t imagine a more fun place to work. When I’m not taking care of animals and doing the milking demonstration at the farm, I’m at university studying to be an engineer, snowboarding, traveling or playing the piano. I was home schooled my whole life, so my first day of school was when I started university. We moved around a lot when I was young and I have lived in Ontario, Tennessee, Texas and of course, Beautiful British Columbia.
My favorite animal on the farm is Sofie the Hereford cow. She is a total darling, and I can sometimes be caught taking a break from work to give her a good head scratch. As you can see in my photo, Krokur the Icelandic horse is also a buddy of mine. We became well acquainted when I was in training and we did pony rides together over the summer (although his true love is Farmer Dominique). Hope to see y’all on the farm!
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