January 15 2026
This time of year makes me a little anxious when I look at the remaining hay for the horses. I have five horses and Sorrel the new lovable filly now 6 months old is almost full size and I think she eats more than her share just like any teenager!
I had only reckoned on four horses for 2026 as Jim was getting very old and may not live for long. He had some teeth missing making eating hay very difficult so to solve this problem I decided to chip the hay so that it would be in smaller pieces which helps him eat. But first I had to modify the chipper as it had a gas motor which was very difficult to start in the cold so I put an electric motor on it which worked just fine. So I am still feeding Jim and have actually found him very useful in plowing the recent snow and I can't get rid of an old affectionate horse who still loves life?
Luckily there have been a few days of very warm weather which has melted the snow in the recently harvested sunflower field. As I do every year when planting the sunflowers I also planted various clovers and grasses at the same time and they come up in the fall as the sunflowers ripen and give some much needed sunlight for the clovers and gasses. So when it is warm and the snow melts there is a wonderful field of new grasses and clovers which the horses love to eat. So now when the sun shines the horses get to feed in the sunflowers field to preserve my limited amount of hay.
As an interesting aside to this is Jim's eating habits who barges in and thinks that he is the only one who is starved and he took some of his feelings out on Sorrel by biting her. This concerned me for a couple of days but then Sorrel got the idea of biting Jim back and it sure worked well at keeping Jim in line. Sorrel is learning very quickly on being part of the herd!
Please visit out internet pages to see more of our farming world. (matsfineoilsandflour.ca)
Thanks for your support,
Mat and Dorothee
Jim and Sorrel friends again eating chopped hay
Nov 12 2025
The world will have to change as we do things more locally. We may not be able to continue to transport goods from one coast to the other or from one country to another. Small farmers like ourselves may be called upon to provide things like flour and oils from locally grown spelt and sunflower. Local farming may become very important. So I invite people to see how things are done at our farm.
We have rebuilt an old 20 inch stone mill recently and I invite people to visit our farm on Sunday November 16 from 1 pm to 5 pm to see the spelt being milled and sifted. We can also talk about why we grow spelt and view the dehuller since spelt needs to be dehulled before milling into flour.. For those interested Dorothee will also show us how to make sourdough spelt tortillas.
The new mill.
May 2025 newsletter
The next fresh oil and fresh flour milling is scheduled for the week of May 19 2025.
The winter was practically normal with cold temperatures and snow through till April so the farming season had a very good start. The cold weather seems to have killed of a lot of my mustard weed and I may have killed some of the sunflower moths which hibernate in the soil. We were able to log with the horses in the late winter, cut firewood and haul and stack with the help of many visitors which was a lot of fun.
Last year I tried planting my oats in January since the weather had turned very warm. This was not a success as the weeds germinated and dominated the oat field which also happened to the spelt field. We had a a very poor crop of spelt and oats last year but the sunflowers did well with the crimped rye method I have been using to discourage the weeds.
http://matsfineoilsandflour.ca/Crimped%20rye.html
This year the horses have been very busy in all aspects of the farming from plowing, to discing to tine weeding. Just as I am getting old so are the horses so instead of just two horses pulling the plow or tine weeder all three are doing it together with Duke in the middle who has always been inconsistent puller but in the middle it evens him out.
http://matsfineoilsandflour.ca/Oats.html
Jim the horse had a difficult winter as his teeth do not allow him to grind the hay so we put him on hay cubes and Beet pulp. He lost a lot of weight in winter and then to make matters worse he got a bad case of mites which made him loose a lot of hair. Luckily the vet cured the mites and worked on his teeth. Today Jim is much happier without the mites and looks forward to his morning ration of hay cubes and beet pulp soaked in water to fatten him up.
And the spelt and rye I planted last fall are looking the best I have every seen. It has been ten years since moving to the farm and working to improve the soil.
Thanks for your support.
Mat and Dorothee
