Because we have a wood burning fireplace and a bush full of dead trees, every fall/early winter we have to get a pile of wood by our house!

Andrew filling a sled full of wood.

Jesse splitting wood

Brownie’s being very helpful… making sure that the wood doesn’t get stolen?!

When Josh first built the carrot washer in 2011, it was powered with an exercise bike. It was quite hard work to operate and sometimes a very slow process due to the belt  slipping...but it sure beat washing carrots by hand in big tubs of coooold water!  The boys dumped the carrots  into one end of the washer which was slightly elevated. The carrots tumbled down to the other side while being sprinkled with water by a perforated metal pipe attached to a garden hose.  At the opposite end, the quality control guy was cutting off the ends and spots and filling up trays. This process was usually repeated 2 or 3 times until the carrots were “spotless”.

In 2012, with increased carrot  planting, Josh outfitted the carrot  washer with an electric motor and chain drive (the box on the side). He also added a dumping chute, tray  shelf, and strengthened the barrel. (Pictures taken in 2013)

This year (2013), the last carrots were washed  2 days before it snowed!

A picture from the shop roof. This is part of the carrot patch before it was dug!

Digging the last few carrots! It was difficult digging them out of the partially frozen ground… a tough year on digging forks, we broke quite a few!

Jesse spraying carrots down before washing.

A cooler of carrots ready for sale!

More carrots! We got tons of carrots this year! We still have some sorting and bagging to do as we get time!!

These two carrots weighed over 5 pounds when they were dug, but have lost some weight due to storage.

Here are some pictures from picking cherries.

It was fun visiting with the pickers we hired.

In the past few years we have hired some Burmese families from Rosthern to help us with the picking.

Grandpa (age 95) even helped us for quite a few hours each day.

In one variety of cherry trees, we had over 50 % brown rot. So we had to pick very carefully, and sort very carefully.

Caught red-handed at the sorting table!

Some cherry trays in the cooler.

A very full van off to the processor! There were at least 6 trays high in most places!

On this last load we brought around 1705 pounds to Lumsden, which is close to Regina.