Way north bass guy

Our bass opener here was yesterday. It was WAY too wet and miserable to take the boat out, but luckily I was able to walk behind the house to the river that runs through our property and scratch the itch! I’ve not missed an opener in well over 30 years, so it sure was nice to have the “ extreme local” option to catch a few😏

My wife and I have grown things forever. Always had a bunch of veggies, and flower gardens all over the place (our last house had more gardens than grass). Just this spring we’ve started our new adventure. We’ve begun setting up a cut flower farm, looking to mainly sell to wholesalers/florists, as well as do a subscription bouquet service to local business and summer cottagers. It’s the main reason why I’ve hardly had time at all this year to post much on here, tons of extra work, but lots of fun and learning as well. I hope to make it my full time job in a few years. We’ve accomplished a lot since early spring, and plan to start selling next year. If anyone wants to check us out on instagram, to follow along with how this thing is going, look up Blackbird Flower Farm. We’re located in central Ontario.

The kid and I spent a bit of time today laying fabric on some flower beds. All ready to start plopping in transplants tomorrow morning!

Haha, it’s hard to tell in the pic, but if you were to look closely at the yard, it’s just a typical “ country yard”, lots of clover, different grasses and other “green stuff”. I’m fine with it, it’s all green and looks decent when cut down, and it’s fairly tough as far as drought etc.

If anyone was wondering, I’m still alive 😏. I mentioned on here earlier in the winter about starting a new adventure at our house. Since about mid March or so, I’ve been busy in the greenhouse, starting hundreds of baby flowers from seed. Several weeks ago with the help of my neighbour, we got up approx 600’ of 8’ high deer fence, and I’ve been tilling 50’ beds with the tractor ( between what feels like nonstop rainy days🙄). Today was the first day of planting. Got about 85 dahlias in the ground, and two 50’ rows of seed from about 5 kinds of sunflowers, and a few others. Next weekend I plan to get the rest of the transplants from the greenhouse into the field, and let the sun do its work! This is our “test year” at the farm, doing a bunch of trials to see what grows best in our soil, and what will be the most profitable when we start to sell next season. The plan is to sell mainly wholesale to florists, and larger wholesalers in the Toronto area, but we’re also looking into selling bouquets. Since we’re in the Muskoka region of Ontario ( basically where the wealthiest people in the world come to relax at their cottages for the summer), the plan is to get setup selling bouquets to the many resorts, high end restaurants, and a subscription service to the many cottagers in the area. It’s gonna be a busy year between the new flower farm, and still running my masonry business, but I’m gonna try to get the boat wet as much as I can still. I did finally manage to get out on Saturday and catch a bunch of pike, so at least the itch got scratched a little bit.

That’s a great video! Hope to see more of those 👍

I’ve commented to my wife many times how one of our two dogs can all of a sudden have the worst smelling gas for a day ( often at night when they’re sleeping in their beds in our bedroom!), even though they eat EXACTLY the same thing every single day! Same amount of the same food at the same time, same number of treats of the same kind every day, and they don’t roam out of our yard, so there’s not much opportunity to sample any new “stuff” when they’re outside. Seems like about once every two weeks or so we have to sleep with a window open, no matter what the outside temps are 🤢.

Spent the day yesterday getting my main corner and gate posts, and all the metal T posts in for our deer fence at the flower farm. Sure was nice to be out in the field in March with the machines, and it was actually dry enough to not be an issue for them. Usually a job like this would still be a few weeks away at the earliest, but with hardly any snow this winter it’s drying up nicely. Gonna get the fence hung in a week or two, then I’m ready to till up some beds.

Good thing they’re extinct then I guess!

You can never go wrong with kids and dinosaur bones!

Well, actually I’m totally taking the blame for this one. I took the blower off the back of the tractor last week, greased it all up and put it away. Told my neighbour “ that should make for a foot or two of snow next week”, guess I was right 😏.

We went from all the snow completely gone two days ago, to this now. Probably got a foot in total, but it’s already packed down a fair bit with the sun this afternoon. Still don’t like it one bit, but it should be gone by next week.

Well, there’ll still be plenty of stonework to do for now. I’m already booked up until the fall and need to still have some $ coming in this season. The plan was to ease into the farm side of things, and still do the masonry at the same time, but after talking to several florists and other potential customers, I’m pretty certain I’ll be able to sell as much as I can grow once I’m established. That means my several year plan is looking like it’s gonna change to maybe a 2 year plan. I’m still fairly young (44), and in good shape, and can still do the masonry, and it’s provided a great life for me and my family, but I’ve also been doing this full time for over 25 years, and the stones aren’t getting any lighter! I don’t want to be in my 60’s and not be able to walk cause I was too pig headed to slow down with my job, and I love this place we’re living at now, so if I can make a good living at something that won’t completely wreck my body, and still be outside enjoying myself, I’m gonna give it a shot.

Picked up a new toy today. I haven’t been on here a whole bunch lately, been pretty busy getting my ducks in a row for my future career change. My wife and I have both always been huge gardeners, both veggies and flowers. This winter I’ve spent a ton of time researching and acquiring stuff to start a cut flower farm. This’ll be my test year, trying a bunch of different crops to see what grows best in our soil etc., with the plan to get going full bore next spring selling to florists, wholesale buyers in the city, and retail bouquets and bunches to the many high end resorts and restaurants in our area, as well as a subscription bouquet service for the many wealthy cottagers that are here all summer. If things go as planned, I hope to get a big commercial greenhouse next year perhaps, then I can extend the season greatly. Got 660’ of 8’ fencing coming in a week or so to keep the deer out of the profits, and I’ll be tilling up about 1100’ of beds to get rolling as soon as it dries up enough. The boat might collect a bit more dust this season, but that's ok, cause I’ll still be outdoors enjoying nature as much as I can.

I can tolerate both temps, but I’m not a huge fan of either extreme. Luckily we don’t often get too much super crazy hot stuff here, at least for more than a few days at a time, but I’m in the heat loving camp for sure. I’ll take shorts and t-shirts over snow suits any day.

Spring pike fishing is one of the most fun times of the year around here. I’m also blessed to be around a ton of big fish, especially when the water is cool and they’re still pretty shallow and feeding heavily after they’ve spawned. Won’t be long now and I’ll be cruising the shallow back bays, watching “logs” swim around and sunning themselves, and having absolute monsters dart out of fallen trees and make my bait disappear in their mouths that look like five gallon pails when they inhale it!

Nothing written on the boat, but I like to refer to it sometimes as “ paid for” 👍🏻.

We got a pretty good dumping from Sat night to Sunday afternoon. Strong winds too. By about 3:00 in the afternoon it was gone and the sun came out. 45 min on the John Deere got it all cleaned up. We’re going on our annual guys sled trip at our hunt camp next weekend, so this is the perfect amount of snow for that. After that, it can all melt asap! Before the sun came out yesterday, it was a good day for hiding inside 😄

Waitin on mom to get home from work.

Congrats on the new land! It’s a pretty fantastic feeling to own your own little slice of heaven, for three years now I’ve been able to walk across my field to a section of quiet river that I own on both sides of, and catch all kinds of scrappy little bass. Enjoy it as much as you can 👍.

Bout all it’s any good for 🤣

Well at least he doesn’t have to worry about getting a flat on the left side.

If you could stand the winters we have up here ( except for this one, it’s like march every day 🤷‍♂️), come on up here and you can climb on roofs for me, laying stone and fixing chimneys instead of trapping critters on the roof. I’ve got so much bloody work, I don’t know which way to turn, already booked solid till at least Labour Day, and early spring is when my phone usually starts to go bonkers again with calls from people looking to have work done. I truly don’t know what I’m gonna say to them this spring, other than “ see you in 2025” I guess.

We have a family of kestrels that nest here every year. There’s a nest box on a hydro pole right across the road from us, and they come back every year and usually have at least 4 babies. They are really cool to watch flying around our place all summer. Lots of open fields around here for them to hunt. I’ve seen them drop straight down from about 50’ up, almost like they’ve been shot, then come back up with a mouse or small bird. They also get tons of insects, grasshoppers and such.