🏡 Summer Farm Tour 2026 | Meet Our Rescue Animals, 9 Black Cats & Amazing Homestead!

Mark here and welcome to the Ten Acre Woods. So today I'm going to do a full summer farm tour. I'm going to touch on the animals, the garden, the freeze dryer inside, and you'll get a glimpse of some of our nine black cats that live in the house. So this is just kind of a refresh. I know there's a lot of new subscribers that have come in. If you are one of them that haven't subscribed, I urge you to click down on that subscribe button. It helps us out here on our not-for-profit animal rescue just by you watching the videos. So my wife was just out bringing the garbage in. It was garbage day yesterday. And Marlene, our volunteer, has just arrived and we're going to go out and start the animal feeding process. So up front we have our five ponies. We have JD and we have Shorty. These are our newest arrivals that came in last year. And then of course we have Astrid, Levi, and Meadow, his daughter. So we do have a little bit of food aggression that goes on. So at feeding time, JD's going into the building. Shorty's still just getting out of bed, again. And the three larger ones have their own little click and they get their hay up front. All right, coming into our old rabbit hutches. We have a Muscovy duck sitting. Hello. Hi. And I just noticed that we seem to have a pigeon down here on the ground. We've got a bunch of pigeons here and they usually nest. Oh, there's two eggs here. And then there's another nest back in there. But sometimes they will nest on the ground. Okay, let's go out to... What are you guys doing? Hey, what are you doing? Yeah, mama's bringing out food. They are all excited. Can I get a bah? Ah, good job, Turbo. You guys are quiet. So two days ago, we pick up a bunch of fruits and vegetables on Thursdays for the animals. We get like a van load. We dumped out a bunch of strawberries and blueberries. I can see most of them are gone. There's a small pile over there and there's a small pile further. So the chickens just eat that up. We've got them out into their summer home with the peacock there. And they have their housing in this area here. They don't lay too much. They're older girls. A lot of them are rescues. So they've kind of done their job. And now they just kind of hang out with Tank Jr. So Tara just threw out the grains for the animals. And then we'll get a bucket of fruit and veggies out here and finish off with some hay. Oh, you got pooped on? Oh, Piper. Probably a rooster using her as a perch. And of course, our special pen. The reason why it's special is because we keep some special ones in here. So Charlie, he's a younger boy. And of course, he doesn't get along with Petey and Piper so much. So we keep them separated. Petey and Piper are older. And it just works out better this way. Of course, we're open to the public during the weekends. And people usually enter the gate from here. And this is kind of the first pen that they come into. So we got Sheldon. Sheldon is, well, he was born here on the farm. And he is special. We'll just say that. We believe he's got autism. Just by the way he reacts. Terry used to work with Child and Family Services and a lot of autistic people. And, you know, he has a lot of those traits. He just threw out the grain to the animals. The animals, of course, the animals, the rabbits. So, oh, there's Barry. I was looking for Barry. He was bought at an auction. And then they realized, well, they live in an apartment. Like she won the bid and she lives in an apartment and she can't have a rabbit. Especially a California, not a California, a continental giant. So Barry is a continental giant breed, which is a very large breed. And then he's got two rex rabbits over here. And they came in about a month, month and a half ago they came in. So this is what's called the nursery. And it's a great place to house the rabbits. If we have some smaller birds like that that's sitting, we will probably put her in this area here underneath the willow tree. And if we have small chicks, we will probably put them in here. So this is kind of the nursery within a nursery. So our special pen extends into this building here. So we got half and half. All the regulars out here. And we have Tucker and Onyx and Nestor and Shimmer. And it looks like Panda has snuck in here. Actually Panda and Penguin. I can't see now. Penguin's out there. But they were originally black. They were supposed to be black, but they have turned brown. I guess the bleaching of the sun has turned them brown. Which mama, which is right beside her, she's brown. And there's Holly. So Holly has her two kids in here that were born last year on the farm. But they are smaller than normal. So they're stunted. So we decided to leave her and those two kids in here for the summer. There we go. We can get a closer look at Panda and his brown coloring. I guess he's going back in to eat some hay. And Moo. These two boys are hilarious in the evening. They were last night playing on the plate structure. Headbutting each other. Right? Weren't you? Yeah, weren't you? Going to go in and have some hay? Yeah. Inseparable. Yeah. Penguin and Nana. I'll come in. You want me to lock you in? Yeah. So we do put our gate. You know, over the past 20, 25 years, we've learned a few little things. Yes, this door does lock, but quite often you can see the condition of the fence here. It should look like this. And this isn't a very old fence. What happens is, you know, there's some of the evidence right there. Some wool. What'll happen? Primarily Turbo, the sheep that we saw earlier. He comes over here and then we get Sheldon that comes over here and they've got to headbutt each other through the fence. So what happens is it jiggles it and can potentially move it down and unhook from there. So our extra line of defense are bungee cords. So we basically just pull that out, hook that on and that's just our extra line of defense. So this is some of the stuff here that Marlene is unpacking. So we're going to give this, this is a whole bunch of arugula, organic. So we've got two, four, six cases of that. What we're going to do is we're going to open those up, dump them in the buckets, give them to the chickens for their today meal. Ah, a little surprise in the bottom. Green berries and strawberries. Enjoy. Hi Tucker. Yeah. Fruit and veggies are tomorrow apparently. Yes. Mummy forgot to cut them up last night because we were so busy. Yeah. So you'll get them. You'll get them tomorrow. You've got lots to eat. You got your hay. You've got your grass. Yeah, I know. All right. So yeah, we did the, uh, the chickens and they have their, that arugula. We had to get that out there. It just doesn't last very long, especially when temperatures are going to be as high as they are this weekend, which is in the 30 degrees Celsius range. Uh, and that's not including the candidates. So what is it? Oh, Tinker. Tinker's another one of our little special ones. So she gets fed some extra grains. She's a little older. She's skinnier. And the same with Onyx. Onyx is also on an additional ration type food. So, uh, so speaking of inside where, no, we're, we're done for the day yet tonight. Tiana, our daughter will come out tonight and do the evening feed. So coming into our indoor barn area. So the chickens that are outside don't come into here. They do come in here in the winter time. These are some smaller breeds that we have in here. And just to kind of keep the peace, we like to keep them separated. Plus smaller birds don't poop as much. So it's not as bad. Uh, although we have discovered, uh, wood chips. So we got a wood chipper last year and a stump grinder this year and wood chips work great for a chicken coop. So it is, um, the hay, we were using hay for a number of years, but what happens is you get that moisture in it and you get that poop in it and it turns into a heavy kind of solid mass. But this, this actually dries out because it's very airy. So in our barn, we actually cool it in the winter time, even though it gets minus 40 degrees here in Manitoba. Uh, we've got an exhaust ventilation fan there that blows the air out consistently during the winter months. And then we've got a few other pens and cameras, reel link cameras to keep an eye on things. Uh, getting into our food processing area here. So we've got, so every week we get donations that we go and pick up here. We've got some, some pears, carrots, and we've got some bananas. We had all that arugula. So we get a bunch in plus grains. So our grains are stored in these bags. We have them in another section and in a silo. And we have our grains here that we give to the animals. So this here is wheat, and this here is barley, and this here are oats. So, and these grains are actually tested for food grade stability. I don't know, however you want to. So what happens is a farmer will go and they'll have a lot in one of their bins and they'll take like a kilogram. Actually, this is a mixture I can see now of barley and wheat. Uh, they will take, let's say one kilogram of grain and they'll send it to the lab for processing. And the lab then takes maybe a cup, half a cup for testing and the rest of it used to all get incinerated. And then we ran into somebody who works there and they said, Oh, well, let's do some kind of collaboration. And it's been an excellent collaboration. Tara goes and picks up the grains on Wednesdays, I believe it is, and pick them up in these bags here. And then we store them. And we actually use, we pay our farrier with, uh, with oats because she's got horses as well. And we don't use the oats so much. So it is a great partnership and it's just another way to help when rescuing animals is to where you source your materials from. Okay. So coming out of the barn area, this actually used to be our trailer. Uh, when we first moved out here, it was a mobile home and this was Tiana's bedroom and her daughter. So that was in 2001. It's now since turned into a workshop area. And this used to be our rec room that was off the back of the trailer. So this whole addition was off the back. So now we've kind of turned it into a store, but we're not good at doing the store thing because it's not really open. And if people mention stuff, we'll like give them a kind of, we'll come in and give them a little tour. So this is, we've acquired this from a bunch of different areas. The girls, Tara and Tiana will go into the city and go to this, um, this store that buys Amazon extras. And you can go on like dollar days, um, crazy bins. That's what it's called. And so they look for certain things like pet eye wipes and wrinkle wipes, I guess for wrinkle dogs, uh, reptile calcium, pet ear wipes, finger wipes, finger wipes, and then just different medical supplies. So they pay like a dollar for, uh, for them. And then a bunch of syringes because we often use syringes. There's a bunch of stuff in here. And then we've got pet grooming gloves and all this stuff is it. We sell this, uh, to help, um, if we, and tick dog spray, uh, a lot of times terrible, give it away to people because we're all about helping right on Halloween last year, we gave away a whole bunch of these, uh, cat calming colors, um, along with flea and tick topical and collars. So they got candy and they got, if they, you know, they got things for their dog or cat. Uh, so just a bunch of different things, Thai babies. These were actually donated to us from a woman, um, who was getting rid of them and she wanted them to go to good use. So we've been doing different events in the past. And, um, these ones in the case here are the kind of the elite Thai babies. So if you see one that, uh, that maybe you need for your collection, let us know. And there's tons of Thai babies up here. Uh, we've got our tack supplies here. Although we don't ride those horses plus these saddles, uh, are too big. I think this one's probably the only one that's the right size. Uh, and then we've got mitts and moccasins. So we do make mitts and moccasins during the winter months. So this is one example of it here, but again, in donations, we had a whole bunch come from, um, it was a man who his father and mother had retired to DC and he would bring them back due to their age, but they had a store. And I guess they were from New Zealand or they had a contact in New Zealand and he had to get rid of them before his dad came back or he would never get rid of them. So all of these, uh, shoes, these moccasins, uh, and then we had a whole bunch of jackets. So these are new jackets that were just stored in this son's basement. Beautiful. They are hand stitched. They're hand selected. They're signed by the, um, the craft crafted by and hand selected by like they are, they're beautiful. We had tons of them. So we've sold and we've given away a bunch of them. But what Tara also does is she takes them apart. Um, yeah, I know it sounds like a shame, but we can turn or she can turn, I can't, I can't do it, but she can turn these jackets into mitts and moccasins by some kind of witchcraft and she's got all these patterns and she makes them. So I don't know. There's probably some myths around here as well. Tiana also helps out. She made these little box ears, I guess. So those are cute. And then these are from our sheep. So here is our wool. We had this professionally done a couple of years ago, you know, to Carstairs, Alberta. I did a video on that and it was just too much of it. So this is from our sheep and our alpaca. We had alpaca a number of years ago. Here is, um, alpaca roping or roving. I thought it was called roping, roving. This is called roping. I don't, maybe it's a spell spelling. Uh, roving is what I see. I know some words and, uh, so, and teddy bears, teddy bear making class. So this one here, we take old, this one, I think it's mink. We take old mink jackets. And usually what happens is that we, maybe a daughter or a son, they have a jacket from their grandmother that just passed and they would like Tara to make some, um, teddy bears for the kids. So she'll, she can make, I don't know, she can make like four or five or six teddy bears out of one, you know, especially the long jackets and then knitting. So during the winter months, she does a lot of knitting with, with, uh, wool and, uh, makes, uh, slippers and, and knits and all that stuff. Here is one of the knits that she makes. So there is a prime example of, uh, what is that? The left hand, I guess that's the right. And there's a Tiana, and there's another memory there here. So you can just see that. And then, uh, some more of the donated stuff. Years ago, we ordered a bunch of shirts when Barry was around Barry. Uh, Barry's no longer with us. Neither is Fernando. Sheldon's still around though. Shine like Sheldon. We're just not good at merchandising. You know, we kind of suck at it. It sits in here. We ended up giving this stuff away. Um, like this here, these are, uh, baby items again from the crazy bins. These are little washable, uh, sippy cups, but withdrawn. So, and then we've got soother holders. It's a latex or a silicone folder, right? And then more tie babies. Incubator. We bought an incubator years ago. This is a 264 egg incubator. It hasn't been used in quite a few years. So, but it's a nice, uh, nice little unit. And then just some other things here. So we've got, uh, cages and stuff and carriers that get donated. Some of the animals come in like the rabbits. Uh, they bring this stuff in. Of course we do our own wood chips and everything here on the farm. We don't have to go to the retail store and buy it. Uh, but we use that and we might, we get that and donate, donate that away or send it with one of the rabbits. Um, should they get, um, should they get adopted out? Uh, again, this is a land cloud here. Uh, one of Tara's projects is the sheep, uh, and she's got it selling for 200 bucks. So it's, uh, it's cute. So it's, uh, yeah, she just does different projects. So that's kind of, there's a bunch of stuff in here, all kinds of different, I made for the work. So there's some of my work, right? Some bookmarks, uh, the cats and the dragons. So I did those. And then I did these here, frustration Rummy. And again, another project that we, yeah, we got a bunch of these along with those shirts and they just sit here and this was, oh, I want to say seven, eight years ago, nine years ago. You know, I'm here for some sheep thrills. So that's one of my favorites. Um, everyone's happy place. So we had a newspaper article written by a local newspaper from Winnipeg and it was a full page, a full page write-up and it was everybody's happy place. So we kind of took that tagline, which was fine. So, so that's it. And then these are the bags that we get. So these ones are waiting to, uh, this was probably last week's bags. We've got a whole bunch of them here. They're going to get dumped out and put into the appropriate containment. So there we go. There is our store unofficially that I don't really know if I've shown you much of in the past. So it's now seven o'clock. The sun is kind of gone behind trees. I'm wearing a different shirt now because I was working out in the yard, in the sun, in the heat and had to go in and have a shower. So I'm nice and, and refreshed for the garden tour. So we're going to go in and see what's up in the garden and we'll let Tara go from here. All right. Okay. The archway. Yeah. The ivy, which is beautiful. A lot of people are saying that it's invasive, but you know what? If you pay attention to your garden, then invasive is kind of what you want, right? So what do we got? We got a bunch of plants. Yeah, I got a bunch of plants that I rescued from Costco. So we'll see what we can survive. They kind of like it. Oh, I got a water tonight. I'm now on water duty every night. Yeah. And then the garden. So what's going on in the garden here? Right. Well, it looks great. And believe it or not, I haven't watered once this year, other than the Costco saved me plants. Yeah. These trees we planted and we've been meaning to move them. So I'm not sure what gave me Compre, which is doing fantastic. So I'll have to hurt a lot of this. I have to get into the freeze dryer and it's just been gone going nonstop. Yeah. It's made a little, well, it's last year's. Oh, it seeded from last year. And so did all the carrots. I didn't plant anything out here. So anise is new. That's, that's a cool addition. Okay. Smell it. Put your my smell of vision. Oh yeah. Licorice, black licorice. So I said invasive, but this is all these weeds. These aren't weeds. This is mullion. Okay. And then catnip, which our cats really enjoy. And we've got marshmallow over. That's what that is. Deanna wanted to make some marshmallows with it. That's oregano and that's coneflower. Echinacea. I know things. Good for you. Bunch of baby mallow. So Brayden wants mallow. The boy or the boys want mallow. Okay. So that's them and Patricia wants some too. Uh, that kind of got neglected. We have scabs. Yeah. There's a few here. The birds have been getting in and enjoying them. So just some little ones here. We'll go to seed and then I'll harvest the seeds. Yeah. We were getting lots of, uh, lots of that. And then plant some for the boys. Cause a lot of what they want, like they want this one too. So they'll take it over there. Like take cuttings. The bee bomb did really well. Speaking of bees. They've been busy. Yeah. So, uh, Speedwell or Veronica, that one and a different colored Echinacea. Okay. Which is cool. Irises. They've already all kind of bloomed. The tiger lilies will be next, but a lot of this will, um, Brayden is, they have a envision of a long path depth to the back garden, which I'll be able to give them of course, variety of, uh, different colors. Yeah. And more of the plants from Costco. All along there. All here. We'll see what we can save. They look good. The potato vine really perked up. Yeah. I'm looking at that and it's fast growing, so it should take over. Right. But I have to water a couple other trees here as well. This is all my mints. They did, you know, without watering, everything did really well. Uh, grapes again, no watering and there's more grapes than I've ever had. So we'll see. You can see all the grapes down there. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Those are a wine making grapes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's supposed to be a green, but they ended up being a purple. Um, we were gifted the hostas from Patricia. Patricia's my gardening guru, Kyle. Um, so we'll separate. And those are also really nice. And I'll pull my other hostas in because they really like it in here. This is all mullion. We know how much mullion we went through last winter. And I said, I planted a hundred times as much. I'm guessing I planted a billion times, but it's a good plant to have. And I share it. So, which is nice. Uh, I got in, the wasps are gone. Yeah. We had a couple of wasp nests that we had to get rid of. Yeah. So I was able to get in here and clean this up. So this was the old tomato plant from last year. Raspberry. This is raspberry. Oh, those were, yeah, sorry. You were, you were pointing here. I was just passing through. So it looks like some of the raspberry then are coming back because we, we had last year where they just all seem to die out. Yeah. So, I mean, if it's all underground, so if it decides it's coming back, it'll come back. This is one of the maple trees I was talking about because some of this is, can be shaded, right. Or at least only have the afternoon sun. So I can bring up some maples in here and increase the trees on this end for shade. Right. Because the animals love being back here. They love maples. So there's one, two, not these are poplar, poplar. There's another maple here, which is a good spot there. Do you know what I mean? Like, so it'll shade in there. Like you kind of change. Well, I need your help lifting that up. Yeah. Yeah. We'll have to, the wind blew that down during the last storm. So yeah, it's just a matter of cleaning things up here and we're getting ready for, I have a family reunion. So my side of the family is coming out actually next week. They're going to start to come out. So we're wanting this all to look nice and perked up all these plants and anything that doesn't come back, like we're looking at a couple of sad ones here, at least the hanging pots and the soil. Yeah, we can utilize that. Mix it. I've got some really good soil, mix it with that and fill my things so I won't have to order soil. Yeah. Right. So bonus both ways. So that's, that's pretty much it for the garden. So we'll go inside and we'll have a look at the freeze dryer and see what we've been up to with the freeze dryer. Look how far the ivy's come. I know. I love that ivy. I love that ivy so much. I forgot about the catio. So that's Lucifer out there. We have a catio. It's roughly, I don't know, about 125 square feet. It runs the length of the house across and five feet out. And Lucifer is wondering what's going on. Not sure how many are out there or how many are in here. This is Zoria. Where are you going Zoria? She can be a little shy at times, can't you? Yeah, our fluffy one. And then next, she's the queen. Aren't you? The original, the OG. Oh, life's hard, isn't it? And tear, drooly tear. Yeah. So he's been with us for a while, but he's still a little shy. We need to give him treats if you want to brush him, don't we? So those two, those two are a thing. A thing. The other ones must be downstairs or out on the catio. What's that? The most needy and the least needy. Oh, yes. Yeah. So the freeze dryer. Yeah, I'm having fun. I'm getting there. I'm building stock, getting up there. Everybody's got their favorites. So yeah, there's anything and everything. One of the favorites, though, is leaky, leachy, leaky, like, like, like, like, like, yeah, yeah, they're, yeah, they're really good. I'm like, okay, well, you got to buy it and give it to me. And then I'll dehydrate it. But yeah, we're not growing that here. No, no. Candy, you know, it's fun. But the these are the fruits. And we did Skittles. Berries are. And we did Hi-Chews. We've got some other candies here that we haven't really done. And some just didn't work. Yeah. And what do we have here? So we've got pineapple, kiwis, strawberry, plum, papaya, plum, tomatoes. So these are, these are really good. They're, they're cherry tomatoes. And you just cut them in half. Yeah. Grapes as well. Blueberries, you have to poke with a hole. Everything you have to slice up nice so that the skin's pierced. Rhubarb from the garden. Cantaloupe, kiwi, nectarine. Pineapple is a huge hit. This is a white nectarine. This is a peach. I got too much peach. I might have to. Grapes. Grapes are another popular one. Mango. That's a good one. And then you're powdering some of them as well. Yeah, I'm powdering each one of them. So, um. So that. Some of them are a little, are a little. The cherry. Yeah, the cherry is, and that's plum. And the plum too. So, but, but, I mean, they're still a powder, right? Yeah. And we did eggs as well. So that is, oh, that's in the back, I think. Kind of looks like Tang, right in the back. Oh, this is potato. So instant potatoes. Yeah. Yeah, potatoes. Instant potatoes, eggs. You cook. Yeah, the eggs you don't cook. No, they look like. I say it looks like Tang. Oh, somebody, they look like sparkles. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Amazing. So that is, that's what we're doing. Yeah. It's been, what, a month and a half now. Is that it? Oh, the dehydrator. Feels like forever. The, I keep on saying dehydrator. Harvest. The Harvest Rite freeze dryer has been going pretty much non-stop. So I hear somebody at the door. Oh, Toby. Yeah. I don't know if we showed Toby. Come on in, bud. Our Westie, our West Highland Terrier. He's got to come in first and do his cleaning duty. Check around the garbage. Make sure there's no foot on the floor. Make sure everything's good. Check the garbage bin. Yeah, that's good. Okay. Good. Are we done? Oh, good. Daddy's got a baby before the Yes, he needs a bath. Daddy's job. He's not too bad. He looks white, but he needs a bath, a brush, and maybe a little bit of the trim just to make him look pretty. Trim off that chopper. Right, Toby? Yeah. Right? Good boy. So that is it for this video. I hope you enjoyed it. The only area we didn't touch on was the future plans for our orchard that's happening over on the west side of our property. That's of course going to take a little time to do. So that is it for this video. I hope you enjoyed it. It was a little bit longer than normal, but I wanted to kind of show the whole farm tour. And so anyway, we hope to see you next time here at the 10 Acre Woods. Take care. Bye.