2025 Season in Review

2025 was a busy year in our homestead. With two small kids not in school full time finding time for anything was a rare occurrence, but we did what we could.

Season:

Zone 3, northern Alberta average frost free days 89-117. Actual this year: 123 not including mid season light frosts.

“Last” frost, not including random midseason frosts, was I think May 16. Average is May 21-31 so a little earlier.

Had a mid season frost on June 23. Had to bury the tomatillos and tomatoes in hay again this year but they all survived with no damage.

Saw our first light frost on September 16 (average is Sep 11-20 so right on cue…) and our first hard frost on October 5, and our first snow on October 12, though real winter weather didn’t come until December this year. Now we have 3-4 feet of snow. The coldest we’ve seen so far this winter is -36C. It has been warmer than previous years.

On August 6 our county declared a state of agricultural disaster due to the drought and grasshoppers. I am seriously concerned about how many of my saplings in the shelterbelt and orchard will have survived the grasshoppers.

The pond was pretty low by the end of the season, but even with the drought it kept the saplings in the orchard and shelterbelt watered, as well as the garden, and livestock. We still had the dugout for the livestock if needed too.

Livestock:

We had our first highland calf born, a healthy black bull calf (now steer.) We learned to band, tattoo, tag and vaccinate. In February I went and spent 4 days learning how to artificially inseminate cows, and in September (confirmed in October) I successfully got our cow pregnant on my first try! We also learned the importance of having a good chute/headgate. Getting a highland specific one has prevented serious injury and made working with the cows so much easier. We also added a beautiful yellow heifer to our fold in November.

We raised up 30 chicks we got at day-old on April 29. We lost 3 (1 chick and 2 hens. One hen to unknown causes and one to injury.) In the end we kept 12 hens and 2 roosters and put the rest of the roosters in the freezer. We are considering going down to 1 rooster.

From the livestock we harvested:

76 dozen eggs and sold 7 dozen of them. Yes we ate a lot of egg dishes!

20.8kg of chicken. We put away 11 whole frozen chickens for winter and 1 large bag of chicken feet frozen for making stock.

We paid $600 for chicken feed. If we get a hammer mill we can cut that by about ⅔. We will want to get a hammer mill for when we get pigs too.

For the livestock we harvested:

21 bales of hay. All first cut. Due to the drought we did not do a second cut of hay. Talking to our neighbour who has been farming a long time they made the same choice so I feel we made the right choice. 21 bales is still way more than we need at present. We put out the first bale on October 31.

Planting:

Started plants indoors mid to late March and again in May. March was too early for tomatillos and tomatoes and too late for peppers and eggplants and about right for the brassicas. May was too late for everything.

Direct seeded most plants in May and transplanted tender plants in early June.

In the orchard we planted Ussurian pears, Bolshaya, Krazulya and Suite pears and Valton and Skiba plums. We also grafted various apples and pears mid May, but will see what took and survived this spring. It was my first time grafting. Few were successful but unsure how many survived the grasshopper assault.

In the orchard we harvested:

2.7kg of apples from our one small mature tree. Way down from 18.1kg last year.

We should have harvested crab apples because there were loads of them, but we were too busy.

1.1kg sour cherries I found in the windbreak

20.6kg saskatoon berries. Last year we picked 31kg for ourselves but we just didn’t have as much time this year. We put away 6 large bags frozen for winter.

We also sold 248.5kg saskatoon berries and 5kg raspberries from the u-pick. We opened the u-pick on July 16 and closed on Aug 3.

In the garden:

This year was mostly a wash since fencing and dealing with problem cows took up most of the time I needed to be planting. Mostly I just wanted to try out some different varieties and get a feel for what might do well here since the growing season is so very different than what I am used to.

Pests primarily included flea beetles in the early season, cabbage moths mid season, and at the end of the season deer and mice.

That said, we harvested:

0.16kg blue oyster mushrooms on wood chips

10.3kg winecap mushrooms on wood chips plus easily 2x as much fed to the chickens and a $5 bag sold. We put away one small bag sautéed and frozen for winter.

0.66kg yellow oyster mushroom on wood chips

0.6kg pole beans (total failure, lol… I think I will try bush beans next year. This isn’t coastal BC with 211 growing days.)

5.1kg mixed brassica greens. We put away 16 small bags frozen for winter. I could have had so much more at the end of season if not for the deer!

1kg broccoli. We put away 2 small bags frozen for winter.

1kg cabbage

1.7kg cauliflower. We would have had so, so much more, like 20x more, but my cabbage moth netting failed and they got infested. We put away 2 small bags frozen for winter.

0.3kg chrysanthemum. This was an experiment. It had a unique taste but I actually quite like it. I would grow it again.

1 ear of sweet corn. I trialed two varieties to see if either would work in our very short season, but ended up feeding all the immature corn except one ear to the cows and the chickens.

20 salads worth of mixed lettuce. This was not due to shortage. This was just poor meal planning. I fed lettuce to the chickens and cows almost every day.

9 bunches of green onions. Again I could have harvested a lot more, I just… didn’t.

1.7kg multiplier onions to replant next year for green onions.

2.4kg yellow onions. Total failure.

4.1kg snow peas. Almost all Norli. Norli performed so well it will be the only variety I grow next year. They also stayed shorter and didn’t pull my netting down. We put away 4 small bags frozen for winter.

26.5kg potatoes which we have almost gone through entirely already. But I did learn the variety that did best for us was Kennebec followed by Sangre. The Burbank russet were really nice potatoes but they did not have enough time to fully mature and yielded poorly. Yukon Gold yielded poorly and Norland performed worse than Sangre for a red potato. Also, don’t leave them in the ground too long after the tops die off – mice got to them!

3.5kg pumpkin. Enough to make pumpkin soup twice. We ran out November 29.

0.25kg summer squash… yes you read that right. One measly zucchini.

10.1kg winter squash. Fully ripening them was iffy. I think I need to spend more time figuring out which varieties can thrive here.

17.3kg tomatillo. Toma Verde and Chupon de Malinalco performed best while Amarylla lagged behind. Chupon was the star though with its gorgeous elongated fruits. We put away 7 large bags frozen whole for winter.

42.7kg tomatoes. We put away 14 large bags frozen whole for winter, and 2 small bags stewed and frozen for winter. We ran out of fresh tomatoes (ripening on the counter) on November 21.

1kg fiddleheads

1.8kg of spruce cones with which we made 2 bottles of muglio.

Projects:

We learned how to install electric fencing and fenced 3 pastures, including the winter pasture which is mostly treed and now wired for pigs as well. We also got the posts pounded for the orchard fencing, and ran electrical to the garden/orchard.

We built a 10×10 insulated heated water shed and ran the water to an insulated, heated waterer, which was working well until the heat trace for the buried water line failed.

We had 17kw ground mount solar installed.

We purchased a livestock trailer so now we can pick up and move our own livestock instead of arranging and paying someone else.

In the deep snow we are having to snowshoe and use a sled to move wood from the woodshed to the house.

We continue to deal with the nightmare house and the fixes it requires, but it is functional. It still takes up too much of our time and money.