The Fall Mural is Complete

Painting a life-sized picture of your family butchering chickens on a 3-storey building for everyone to see? Who does that? Apparently we fall into the "who does that" category fairly often and the question seems most appropriate with this project.

On this third side of our mural building, the timeline was pretty tight- our artist had just three months to offer us. So we prepped the wall to be fixed and primed by the end of June.

This wrap-around mural has a theme "To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven." Each side represents a time of day, a season of the year and a time in history.

You can read about the creation of the other two sides here and here and here.

The latest side, which faces the entrance of the farm, shows a fall evening in the year 2025. We wanted to give our visitors a peek behind the curtain to see a part of our life that is not usually on display, so in this picture, you will see four generations at work together, butchering chickens, milking, chopping wood and gardening. And, of course, listening to a read-aloud.

Another aspect of the farm is the origins of the feedlot which was historically responsible for the visible infrastructure all around the property. The design of the mural bends space and time a bit by showing our family homestead in the foreground and the larger commercial farm in the background.

To capitalize on our artist's amazing ability to include detail, we sourced our material from photos taken on our real-life processing day in June this year, then layered in a few more activities in order to include each family member.

Then, in a final beautiful touch, she spent a day adding insects, birds and other wildlife.

We've already spent a few hours oogling the many details as a family and every guest that arrives for a visit has to take time checking it out. We can't wait to share it with everyone next season.

As for our fantastic artist, I'm not sure "thank you" begins to scratch the surface. We are so proud to be able to showcase this amazing artwork to the public.