A new farmer’s almanac

SNOHOMISH — Farmers learn to rely on their smarts for some of their projects.

Engineering and math skills have helped Michelle Canfield keep her farm running the past five years.

She has used them to put up fences, decide how to breed her livestock and to build a barn.

The sof

tware engineer for Philips bought the farm in 2006, named it Canfield Farm and started to fulfill a dream.

“I love working with animals and I wanted to grow my own food,” said Canfield, 39.

The farm, located at 12320 Old Snohomish-Monroe Road, was sold for $230,000. Part of it was used as a dairy farm but most of the 14 acres were filled with weeds and old farming equipment.

The most predominant structure on the land was a century-old barn which was demolished last year.

Canfield started using the land to give her border collies a place to run. She slowly started filling it with animals. In 2007, she started raising poultry. A year later, she got sheep.

Right now, she has 29 pregnant ewes, two rams, four dogs, 20 chickens, 15 ducks and one llama.

Taking care of them, she learned that keeping organic livestock is hard to do, especially when animals get sick and their health is in jeopardy.

“I try to use as little as possible but sometimes it seems warranted (to use chemicals),” she said.

If that was not enough, she tells how life in a farm really happens in her blog, the Collie Farm Blog, during the week. “The blog is useful in giving the realities of farming,” Canfield said.

She blogs about almost everything that goes on in the farm, from how to build a fence, to the misadventures of her two guardian dogs with the sheep and the llama.

One can tell she is an engineer by the way she writes.

“Other bloggers write how great they are,” said Ruth Keller, a reader and client from Tacoma, “she actually explains her problem and describes how she will solve it.”

With all the activity going on at the farm, Canfield is never short on topics.

She wakes up at 5:30 in the morning to feed the animals. Four times a week she takes the bus to downtown Seattle. When she comes back, she feeds the animals again and does chores around the house.

On the weekends, her time is spent mostly on the farm.

Her main source of income is still her day job at Philips. The cost of taking care of the animals are balanced by what she gets by selling the sheep and eggs. Still, she is operating at a loss right now because of what it cost to build the barn.

“She’s pretty busy. She likes it that way,” her husband, Kirk said.

Kirk and Michelle met in 2007 when Kirk refurbished a bathtub at the old barn.

The bathtub stayed at Michelle’s home. So did Kirk. In 2008, they married.

At the beginning, Kirk, 41, was not sure if things could work out, especially because of the change of lifestyle.

It has.

“We work pretty well together,” he said.

With the barn almost finished and waiting for the calf to be born, Michelle will have plenty to do in the near future.

She is not complaining.

“Farming is a passion of mine,” she said.

Alejandro Dominguez: 425-339-3422; adominguez@heraldnet.com.

On the Web

The Collie Farm Blog: http://colliefarm.wordpress.com/