Jenna Allaway

A lot of what we do/have isn’t specifically done for pollinators, but does benefit them. We have a very diverse land with muskeg, and wetland along the north which is all just for the wildlife, we also have a dugout and a large pond that while we use are amazing in how much life they attract. About 30 acres of trees we also leave to the wildlife aside from some walking trails and cutting firewood. A good chunk of our understory is wild rose. 3 acres of saskatoons, and adding in another 3 acres of orchard. We are also planting native wildflowers and that is probably the only thing we are specifically doing for pollinators. I’ll probably also put mason bee houses in the orchard.

David Livingston wrote:It also depends on how you count profit .
You could grow and sell Christmas trees but then have to buy in food . So you make 25000 then pay tax on that but then spend X on food Where are if you made 15 000 and also grew most of your own food you might be better off finantially

I definitely consider any money I save (on food, for example, or heat from wood) when considering the income I make. If I wasn’t here doing this, I’d have to pay for those things.

We hunt and fish and have for almost 2 decades. However I see hunting becoming less as we have more livestock now that we are on 70 acres. When we were on 1/4 acre we just had rabbits for meat and ducks for eggs so the hunting helped a lot. I would like to have fish in our pond though, and as the kids get older I can see doing more ice fishing at the local lakes during the long winters.

Our “lawn” lawn, like the actual bit we’ve designated as backyard for the dogs and the kids to play? Zero-turn mower. We use it for mowing the orchard rows currently as well, but working toward shifting to sheep for that purpose. Hayfield and large miscellaneous areas like along the side of the driveway get done 2x a year with the tractor & haybine. Pasture is cows, but we need more cows for the area we have just to keep things down to manage fire risk a bit better.

I’m up here in northernish Alberta still waiting for spring to thaw the ground. Last year I was covering my tomatoes June 17-19 to protect them from frost. I wasn’t prepared so I buried them in hay, which we had in abundance. It worked.

I go around with gloves and long sleeves and cut the flower heads as soon as they bloom before they have a chance to set seed.

It’s native here in Alberta and everywhere. I know I won’t eradicate it from our property, but I do try to keep it away from high traffic areas.

We have highland cattle.

Catie George wrote:Haskaps have grown well for me in Zone 4 Ontario, and i suspect would also do well in Zone 3.

Plenty of people growing haskaps around me zone 3a northern-ish Alberta. They are on my list to add in the coming years.

Partially. We heat with wood and propane, have well and septic, but we are connected to the grid for electricity. We are currently looking at installing solar.

Yes. We are on almost 70 acres and I’m not sure how we would manage without. We have a tractor, haying equipment (baler, haybine, rake…,) wood splitter (saves my back splitting wood to heat with 5-6 months of winter deep freeze here in northern Alberta,) woodchipper.