More transplants, and I have a date!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This morning I was feeling rather well, while my daughters are both still fighting colds, so I decided to do the morning cat feeding.

Which turned out to already be done, except for the cat soup! I never heard my older daughter go out to do the feeding. She doesn’t do the cat soup part, though, so the cats were happy to see me. 😄

I counted 12 this morning. I did not see the calico, anywhere.

I was still feeling good so I stayed outside, uncovering the tomatoes for the day. Tonight is supposed to be quite a bit warmer than the past few nights, so they won’t need covering tonight. Then I went to check on the haskaps and water the remaining transplants in the trays.

When I got there, I decided to sort through the trays with the spruce saplings. I took out all the empty pots and dead ones, and set all the remaining living saplings together.

I refilled four trays of 18, plus there were another 8 in little pots that fit the trays and one more in a larger pot, making for a total of 81. !!!! These are what’s left from the what my SIL could fit into the back of her car, too, and there would have been room for probably 10 trays. Granted, none of them would have been full of live plants like these sorted ones, but that’s still a LOT of saplings! My brother has ideas on where to try planting these.

Any pots that still had soil in them got emptied into a couple other trays I had brought over. Almost all the little pots were pretty much disintegrating.

Then I checked on the haskap trays and found them quite windblown again. They are so tall in those little pots, all it takes is a stiff breeze to knock them out, even though they are in trays designed to hold each pot individually.

I decided to plant in the gaps among the silver buffalo berry, which has the same spacing requirements as the haskap.

They didn’t need very big holes but in this area, I was digging up mostly wood chip mulch and soil filled with grass and weed roots. So I used most of the soil from the pots to make up for it. Then I made sure they were all clearly marked and visible, using some of the posts and reflectors that came along with the drip irrigation system supplies.

It ended up being a group of two at the south end of the silver buffalo berry rows, which is in the first image above, and a group of three at the north end, which you can see in the second image. That puts us at 95 planted haskaps now.

With the extra length of the repaired hose, I was able to go around the block of large transplanted haskaps and just reach the furthest of today’s transplants. At some point, I want to set sturdy posts at the ends of each row, to make sure hoses don’t end up dragging into the stems and damaging things.

That done, the hose got dragged around to the trays and they got a good watering. Which is when my older daughter came out to check on me. She had tried messaging me when she realized I wasn’t in the house, but I was making too much noise to hear it come in. She wanted to make sure I hadn’t tripped and fallen (again) or something like that!

Once the watering was done, I headed back inside and, just as I was going into my office, my pocket started singing.

I am so not used to my cell phone actually getting calls.

It was the women’s hospital.

I have a surgery date!

In 8 days!

I got all my instructions on various things. I need to be there for 9am, which means we would need to be on the road by 7am. Or earlier, considering construction, then trying to find parking. They do have parkades near the hospital, but I’ve already been warned off of those, as they are difficult to navigate in a pick up truck.

Anyhow. I need to start fasting at midnight the night before, fluids only until 7am, then no fluids, either. Even with fluids, the options are black coffee, plain tea (no milk, cream, sugar…), water and, if I wanted to have juice, only apple juice. No other kind of juice.

I got my other instructions on where to go and how to get in. It sounds like I’ll be on the same floor that my older daughter was in after she got transferred there from the ER across the street.

I am quite thrilled to have a date, and that it’s so close.

We still have to work out the details on getting there, including considering what our options are if I end up spending the night instead of being discharged the same day, which is what they prefer to do.

So that is done.

I then spent some time on the computer, trying to figure things out at Canada Revenue. I couldn’t confirm that I still had my disability tax credit active, and was curious about it because my husband and I both got letters about our disability benefit. It turns out the letters were for something different. There is a Canada Disability Benefit, that would be on top of the Disability Tax Credit. Potentially an extra $2400 at tax time. Meanwhile, my husband still hasn’t got his DTC because his expired and we had to do the paperwork all over again. I was able to apply for the CDB over the phone, but the website said I could apply for the DTC online, which shouldn’t have been there if I was already approved for it. Right?

I had to stop part way through as I could feel pain levels coming back, so I took my T3s early and tried lying down. Which turned out to be a good decision. It was another 3 hours before I was feeling well enough to get up again, but taking the painkillers right away, instead of waiting another hour for my alarm to go off, seemed to make a difference.

Once I was up and about again, I still had time to phone the CRA and actually talked to a human being. He was able to confirm that yes, I’m set up with the DTC until 2030, so I don’t need to apply all over again.

Then I was back on the website trying to find why I didn’t get the grocery rebate that was supposed to be deposited on Monday. These sorts of things get deposited very three months. They call it a grocery rebate now, but it is just the GST rebate under another name (rather like the government says they stopped charging a carbon tax, but all they did was give it a new name, then made a big deal about how they got rid of a tax they didn’t actually get rid of). I had never qualified for the GST rebate before, nor did my husband. Apparently, he makes “too much money” on disability. ???

So I finally found it and it turns out the deposit I got three months ago was the annual amount I qualified for.

It was just over $130.

For the year.

That’s what our government thinks is supposed to help with groceries – after they artificially inflated the cost of groceries with all those hidden carbon taxes. Oh, and the tariffs they keep putting on things, then blaming the US for our high prices. Meanwhile, we’re currently at something like 1 in 20 Canadians now relying on food banks.

*sigh*

I did at least get things straightened out at Canada Revenue.

While lying down helped, I’m still dealing with pain issues, so I think that’ll be it for me today. My daughters just took care of the evening cat feeding, which I usually try to do. Ah, well.

After next week, I should be in recovery for 6 weeks, and then all of this should no longer be an issue. They’ll be sending my lady parts for testing to see what stage the cancer was at but everyone is pretty confident this got caught early and no further treatment would be expected. By then, we’ll be going into our winter “hibernation” period, and by spring I should be fully recovered and back to being able to do manual labour outside again!

If all goes well, of course.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: survivors and a little October harvest

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today turned out to be a rather nice day, that none of us really got to take advantage of.

I found myself awake at 4am and wasn’t able to get back to sleep, so I did the morning cat feeding. Which turned out to be greatly appreciated, as both my daughters were feeling quite sick with colds.

They stayed well away from my and my husband!

I did wake with a sore throat, which could also have been from sleeping with my mouth open, but I’m going to be proactive to try and avoid getting a cold. The last thing I need is for the cancer clinic to call me with a date and time for my surgery, then having to cancel it because of a cold!

The outside cats were quite happy this morning, as I made their cat soup with a couple of little cans of donated wet cat food as well as some cat milk and soaked kibble. We have so many bags of donated cat treats, I ended up scatting three (small) bags of treats all over.

I only saw 11 cats. I did not see Sprout (Sprig?) at all. Hopefully, she came by later. I did get to pet the shrine kitten, though, who no longer eats at the shrine feeding station at all anymore. There is a particular tray she prefers to eat from. The problem with that, though, is that there’s usually four other older cats insisting on eating from that tray, too, even though there are so many others around, scarfing down the food, and she doesn’t get as much. She doesn’t seem to want to eat out of any of the other trays for some reason.

After taking care of the kitties, I stayed out to enjoy the morning and do some light work in the old kitchen garden. I uncovered the self seeded Chocolate Cherry tomatoes and had a chance to give them a good look.

They are doing remarkably well.

Hidden in the thickest greenery, there are tomatoes ripening on the vine!

The frost cloth isn’t long enough to completely cover one end, so the branches there were more frost damaged. I broke off the most damage branches, and found a number of little green tomatoes that had fallen off. So I picked them, which you can see in the second image, and brought them inside to ripen. Between the frost cloth and the more sheltered position in this bed, these tomato plants are protected enough from the colder nights that they’re not being killed off. I’m quite impressed!

After that, I finally removed the cover over the beets and parsnips, and the herb bed. The herb bed was more difficult to remove, as the oregano on one side had grown through the chicken wire quite thickly. I managed to get it off without uprooting anything.

Then I started working on the summer squash, removing all the wire garden ties securing the stalks to their vertical bamboo stake supports, then the ones holding the ends of the woven horizontal supports together, before finally pulling them all up. I was able to make a couple of bundles of 10 stakes all the same length, with the garden wire to secure them. Then I did my usual morning rounds, checking on the other garden beds and the haskaps. With the high winds we had, a lot of the smaller ones in the trays were blown right out, so those got fixed, then watered. I made sure to water the spruce saplings, too. Those little pots will dry out fast.

I didn’t try to take down other covers and rods on other beds yet. The netting and clear vinyl sheets are something I will wait to have a second person help with. With the winds we’ve been having, it’s rather difficult to fold and roll them up for winter storage with just one person.

That done, I headed back in and tried to go back to sleep.

It didn’t work.

I did send a bit of a list to the girls of what I’d gotten done, and what needed to be done with them, mentioning that all the transplanted haskaps would need a deep watering.

I also found an email update on my FIL’s condition. He is, unfortunately, deteriorating and it’s looking like he is not going to be around much longer. His dementia is failing particularly fast, and he has been “sundowning” by the end of the day, talking about things like going to see his parents. They passed away decades ago. It’s been particularly hard on my husband, as he physically can’t make the trip to see his father, and now it seems he won’t even be able to talk to him on the phone. His father is unlikely to even know who he is.

It does make me appreciate just how well my mother is doing.

My SIL messaged to check on me and how I was doing, and we chatted for a fair bit before I finally gave up on lying down. I had intended to go back outside again in the afternoon, but the pain levels suddenly kicked in and I ended up having to lie down again. My daughters, sick as they were, headed outside and deep watered the haskap.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to sleep, because I kept getting notifications! I got some texts from my sister, letting me know she had visited my mother. She was updating me when the phone rang – and it was my mother! She wanted to know how things had gone yesterday. It was a mostly good call, though she did try to go on about how my brother should be doing stuff around here, not us, because he’s a man and we women shouldn’t be doing things like planting trees. Which is bizarre, since she planted many, many trees over the years! (Mostly in terrible places! 😄) She did start talking about how my brother has many important responsibilities, both at work and at home, and how he goes out of province to visit the grandsons, etc. Then, much to my shock, she switched to Polish and said a blessing on him for good health and a long life. My mother rather hates my brother and he can never do anything good enough for her, so when she does stuff like this, it makes me suspicious. She seemed to be genuine, though.

By then, a few hours had gone by and my pain levels finally eased and I did finally make it outside. I meant to just walk around and check on things but, of course, I found small things that I could do.

Including getting a small harvest.

In the East garden bed where I’d planted the Uzbek Golden Carrots, I was able to dig up these.

A couple of them were self seeded, while the others were the only ones that germinated from the older seed tape I’d made with them a couple of years ago.

While checking things out in the main garden area, I tried digging up some of the Daikon radish that all bolted. There were no radish roots at all in the ones I dug up. Just the woody material that happens when they bolt, instead.

I did, however, dig up a few Red Bearded bunching onions.

Just enough for today.

As I write this, I’ve got a pork stew going in the Instant Pot, with all these carrots and onions, plus the last of the summer squash I’d picked before the frost got them, along with our own potatoes and our own garlic. The liquid is gelled meat juices from the last of the big brisket I got a while back, cut into individual size roasts that my daughter seasoned well and slow roasted, low and slow, for something like three hours.

I am quite looking forward to it! We don’t have a lot from the garden this year, but we at least have enough for a few meals. Which is better than nothing!

I’m just really appreciating the fact that I was able to harvest anything at all, in October. Looking ahead on the 10 day forecast, we’ve got some mild weather for the next while, and even another day with an expected high of 20C/68F! Things are supposed to be cooler after that, but still relatively mild. The ground isn’t going to freeze for a while, yet. Right now, my time limit is not the weather anymore, but my surgery date. After the surgery, I’m out of commission for 6 weeks, so the more I can get done before the surgery the better, though my daughters will be taking over a lot of things as they are able.

Oh! What is that beeping I hear?

’tis the Instant Pot, finished cooking the stew and now depressurizing.

This is going to be good!

The Re-Farmer

The longest half hour, ever…

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Well, this was a day!

Thanks to my SIL offering to drop us off at the hospital the cancer clinic is in, we didn’t have to leave as early as originally planned, but it was still early enough to see this.

It’s a bit shaky, since I put my phone’s camera on the night setting and had to try and hold still for several seconds, since I had nothing I could use as a tripod. Still, it captured the image quite well, including the stunning deep blue of the sky before the sun rose some 15 minutes later.

Once on the road, we took the highway past our place first, which meant we had a town to drive through. We stopped for gas, because I didn’t want to go below a half tank.

$50 at $1.799/L added a quarter tank. *sigh*

The route we took allowed us to bypass all the construction, which was really important, though we did get stuck behind someone doing 90kph in a 100kph zone for quite a while. My daughter kept my SIL updated on our progress the whole way so, when we got there, she was outside and ready to go. All we had to do was park in their driveway and transfer my walker over. Something I almost forgot to bring along and, when I remembered, considered not bringing, since I was feeling so well.

I am so glad I brought it along, just in case.

From their place, the drive to the hospital was pretty straightforward. It meant going through the heart of downtown and traffic was heavy, but she got us there with about 10 minutes to spare! Thankfully, she knows the hospital well (having spent quite a bit of time going there herself for various reasons over the years) and knew which doors were the ER doors she needed to drop me off at, rather than the ones I was used to and through were the ER doors for some reason.

Once there, my daughter got my walker out and my SIL headed out to find somewhere to stay. I was told the appointment should take about half an hour, so we figured it wouldn’t be long before we could message her to pick us up.

Ha!

The woman who called me with the appointment time and instructions (and gave me a time frame) said to use the doors south of the ER doors. I was expecting a completely different set of doors, but there weren’t any. So we went into what we thought were the ER doors to look for instructions. It turned out they were the correct doors to go into, and we immediately saw direction bubbles and arrows on the floor for various places, including the cancer clinic.

Bonus!

We got to the registration desk and checked in, then sat in the waiting room. Before long, I was called in. I had my phone in my hand, so I was able to check the time, and it was exactly my appointment time!

We ended up in the room for about 3 hours.

First, the nurse that got me from the waiting room took my weight and height. When she told me my height, I told her, nope. That’s not right! I took off my shoes. It turns out my shoes added a full inch to my height. 😄

From there, I was taken to an examination room and she started to fill out forms and give me information, including a sheet with the names and photos of the team that I will be seeing. There was the specific doctor I was told I’d be seeing, but I would be able to see any member of the team during follow up visits and they’d all be fully informed about my file. My daughter was with me, which is great because she’s been with me with other visits and can sometimes remember details I forget to mention.

Once she was done, someone else from the team came in and talked with me some more. Then she left, and the nurse came back. Then the second woman came back, along with a guy. More talking ensued.

Something I found interesting was how many different people started out by asking me “do you know why you’re here?” After a while, my knee-jerk reaction was to think this was supposed to be some sort of trick question.

I got so, so many questions about my health background. What past surgeries have I had. What past health issues have I had. What tests have I had over the years. When talking about specific past tests I’ve had, I kept saying how they always came back normal, showed no problems, etc. By the end of it, I got comments about how great my overall health has been and I just had to joke about being the healthiest sick person around! Especially during times when we were trying to find the cause of something, like my chronic cough (which has pretty much gone away on its own), and everything kept testing normal.

We never did find out the reason for that cough.

I did get to explain the timeline of when all this started, and the connection to that anti-inflammatory I had been taking, and what happened when I stopped taking it.

Eventually, though, I had to have a physical examination, which was to be done by the guy, with the second woman assisting.

It was a decidedly invasive examination. Which I expected but, gosh, it really sucks.

They both left long enough for me to get into a gown, then change back into my clothes, then came back to give me the final information they are currently able to. I’m doing to get a dye that will help them map my lymph nodes to see which ones are directly being used by my uterus. If that works, they will remove only those nodes. If the mapping doesn’t show them any specific nodes, they’ll remove them all, along with my uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries and cervice.

Also, it’s going to be done by a robot.

Yeah, my daughter and I started geeking out.

The surgeon will be controlling the robot arms directly, and that will be used for an internal procedure. If they find things are scarred or attached in unexpected ways, they might need to switch to an external incision to do the job.

I got all the usual warnings of risks and possible negative outcomes.

If all goes well, I’ll be going home on the same day.

At this point, the waiting list for this is quite short, and the OR schedule is not overly crowded. I might actually get in within a week, but more likely within 2 weeks. I’ll be getting a phone call with the exact date and time, and detailed instructions. They also gave me a 4 page form to fill out with more historical information – some going back so far, I couldn’t even give the level of detail the form requested. Like the exact dates for some of them, or even which hospital I’d gone to, that long ago.

Interestingly, one of the instructions I was given is, in the days before the surgery, they want me eating a high carb diet. After the surgery, they want me on a high protein diet. I’ve never had anyone give me diet instructions around a surgery before!

After going over all that and signing the consent forms, they left and the first nurse came back with more forms. She had requisition forms for pre-op lab work, EKG and chest X-rays. After I finished filling out the 4 page form, I had to give that to the receptionist, then I could do all the rest, right there, rather than figure out when to get them done in one of the surrounding towns after we got home.

The sheet for the lab work had almost everything checked off on it! I was to do the EKG next but by then it was noon, and they were closed for an hour. Which worked out because I could get the X-rays done while waiting.

We were so glad for the volunteers at this hospital that are available to take people where they need to go. Even with all the floor markings and signs everywhere, the place is a maze and some things just weren’t obvious. Like having to go to the admissions desk on one floor to get registered before going to where the EKGs are done, on another floor. Altogether, we went to three floors to get it all done.

Meanwhile, my SIL was waiting this whole time. She did find somewhere she could go and wait, but we didn’t expect things to go this long, and she ended up spending a lot of time just sitting in her car! My daughter kept her and the family updated frequently, during those times when I wasn’t able to.

While the X-rays were done very quickly, the time taken to walk around, check in, then wait until being called really added to things.

Unfortunately, after that physical exam, the pain levels started kicking on, and I was so, so glad I brought that walker!! I did have T3s with me to take, but I honestly don’t think they made a difference. It just kept getting worse until I was having difficulties sitting up straight in waiting room chairs and had to lean into my walker.

By the time the EKG was done, more than an hour after I’d taken the painkillers, the pain levels started to decrease. When we headed outside to wait for my SIL to come around and pick us up, it had dropped significantly.

My SIL, angel that she is, had said she planned to take us out for breakfast after we were done.

It was getting close to 3pm by the time she got us to a restaurant. Before we’d left, I had made sure to grab an apple and some cheese for breakfast, which was at about 6:30am. During the drive, before 7:30am, my daughter had some beef jerky that we keep in the truck. That was all we’d eaten all day. We were pretty famished by then!

That “half hour” appointment ended up being about 5 hours!

Longest half hour, ever.

From there, she drove us to her place and we just transferred the walker over and said our goodbyes right away, and she was finally able to go home!

My SIL is such a saint.

Since it was pretty much on the way from their place, we had planned on stopping at a Canadian Tire and a Walmart in the smaller city on the way home. I was feeling well enough that we could still do that.

Canadian Tire was our first stop, where I was able to return the two 1/2 inch Quick Connect repair kits my brother had picked up for me and picked up a 5/8 inch set, with the female coupling attachment, which was not included in the kits my brother had picked up. That one little piece and the larger size almost doubled the price!

That done, we crossed the street to the Walmart to pick up a few groceries and some kibble for the inside cats, since I don’t know when we’ll finally do that Costco run. Between focusing on getting those haskaps transplanted and my pain levels, it just keeps getting delayed. Of course, now I will be waiting on a phone call for a surgery date, too. This time, though, they do have permission to talk to my husband about anything, so even if I’m not home, they can give the information to him. In theory, they could call my cell phone but there’s no way I’d be able to make notes while I’m out and about.

For me, I had my pain levels increase, then decrease, over the hours of those 5 hours. My daughter, however, is fighting a cold and had her own pain issues to deal with. By the time we were done and heading home, she was having trouble walking, even with her cane, and had pretty much lost her voice entirely!

Once home and everything was unloaded and put away, I did go outside for a while. After all that time sitting on waiting room chairs or lying on examination tables, I really, really wanted to get outside in the fresh air and just walk around.

I ended up watering the remaining trees in the trays. We had high winds again and a lot of them had been blown right out!

Then I remembered the Quick connect repair kit. With that kit, it took about 10 seconds to repair the broken hose. Then I got the metal hose out from all the hoses we’ve got for watering the trees and put the repairs hose back on. The repaired hose is about 30 feet longer than the metal one, which is useful to reach the transplants. Especially once we are able to set some of the little ones into the blank spots where silver buffalo berry didn’t make it, as those are even further from the house. It might still not be enough, since I will not try to run the hose through the rows of transplanted haskap, but there is still the old rain barrel and a watering can out there that can be used, if necessary.

Then, because I just couldn’t help myself, I also sorted the support stakes that we used to mark the spaces and started some bundles of 10, getting ready to put them away for the winter.

All of this was very light stuff, with no risk of overdoing it and causing pain levels to increase.

I’m going to be going stir crazy after the surgery, though. I will be on 6 weeks of recovery restrictions. No lifting. No manual labour. Not even light manual labour. I won’t be able to do much more than simply walk around, and even that will be limited.

I’m already chafing at my limitations now.

Still, it’ll only be for 6 weeks.

Which should be until around the end of November. I won’t be able to do any of the fall clean up and winterizing outside.

*sigh*

Ah, well.

The girls will do as much as they are able to, while working around their own pain levels, and some things will just have to wait for spring.

Just not the garlic. Those have to go in this month. In fact, looking at the overnight temperatures for the next while, they should probably be planted within the next week to 10 days, and we don’t even have a bed prepared for them yet!

Little by little, it’ll get done. We just do what we can!

The Re-Farmer

Ninety

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today has been a lovely day, though it is getting quite windy right now.

A perfect day to get things done, and we were even feeling well enough to do it.

The first order of business was a trip to the general store to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble, and check the mail.

We had a surprise waiting for us.

This box had one side completely covered in stamps, plus two ends! This was the alternate chair my husband ordered to replace his broken one, after his last order completely failed. It’s more of a frame that holds and exercise ball that acts as a seat. It came with one that was remarkably small. We didn’t expect one to come with the chair, and my husband already had an exercise ball – a larger one, more durable one – to use on it.

So far, he’s quite happy with it. He replaced the wheels with the heavy duty ones he’d put on the broken chair, right away. The new chair has 4 legs, though, and the broken office chair has 5, so we have a spare. For now, the new chair’s wheels are on the broken chair. Once we wrangle it to the junk pile for hauling to the dump, we will keep all the wheels. The ones from the new chair can be locked, which is nice. I’m sure we’ll find a use for them at some point. For now, the old chair is waiting in the dining room.

The cats like it.

I got a picture of Big Rig on it, but several cats have been taking turns napping on the seat! 😄

After we got home from the post office, and my daughter refilled the kibble bin for the outside cats, she headed straight for the food forest to start digging. By the time I joined her, she had dug another 5 holes for the 10 large potted transplants. While she continued digging, I watered the finished holes, then started getting the haskap out of their pots and setting them into the watered holes. After a while, my older daughter came out and she buried the root balls, and we kept that up until all 10 were in the ground.

While my older daughter finished burying the root balls, my younger daughter started to water them. With the remaining marked spaces, I raked the spaces that were deep tilled level again. That done, I grabbed the largest, strongest looking plants from the trays and laid them out at each spot before digging small holes with a hand trowel in the leveled spots for them.

There wasn’t enough for all three of us to do at that point, so my older daughter went back inside to work on commissions while my younger daughter kept watering, including the smaller holes I’d dug. While she did that, I started sorting through the remaining plants, pulling pots with larger live ones out of the trays until I could start putting them all together again, with no empty spots. There were quite a few empty pots, empty spaces and a few small plants that were beyond saving.

Before I finished that, my daughter finished watering the holes, then went inside. She was already in pain before she started digging, and simply could not bend to work with the smaller plants at all. Which was fine. I was feeling well enough to do it, and got the last 13 spots planted, then finished sorting the trays. The remaining plants needed some very serious watering! In the end, I was able to refill three trays of 18 plants.

I also brought over some taller bamboo stakes and set out one for each smaller transplant, except for the corner that got a stake with a pinwheel on it. The bamboo stakes got water bottles added to their tops to make them more visible, then I used garden wire to secure the stems to the stakes. Being the size they are, this will not only keep them growing straight, but will protect them from snow load in the winter.

Here they all are!

A grid of 90 haskap planted in rows 6′ apart, with each transplant 4′ apart in their rows.

Ninety.

Plus another 54 transplants in the trays. I moved those in between some of the rows, out of the shade of the crab apple trees, which you can see in the second image above.

We have spaces to plant some of them, but not another 54!! I don’t know what we’ll do with the extra!

Then there are the little spruces left over. I have no idea what we’ll do with those!

The trays all got watered well. They had so little soil in each pot, they will dry out quickly. A lot of roots escaped their pots and grew along the bottoms of the trays that are now exposed, which is not a good thing. Nothing we can do about that unless I can find a way to just cover them all with soil until they can be transplanted.

All the pots are garbage. They are too brittle from exposure to be used again.

I was cleaning up when my alarm went off for my afternoon painkillers, which I was starting to need by then. I over did it a bit and, as I write this, several hours later, I find I am having difficulty sitting or standing up straight because of it. It’s been worse, but it’s not at all comfortable, that’s for sure!!

Aside from seeing how many more of the little ones we can transplant, we have more to do around the 90 that are in the ground now. We’ll have to go through with the wheelbarrow and pick all the bigger rocks. Once those are removed, we’ll need to rake the loose soil from the digging and level things out. The larger ones will all be getting a water trench made around them. The smaller ones don’t need it, as they are properly below grade in an area large enough to create drainage towards the roots, rather than flowing away into the paths. They will all also need to be watered regularly for their roots to start growing out from the root balls before the ground freezes.

Looking up on how to care for these, one of the biggest issues we can expect to have is problems with birds eating the berries. We won’t be able to set netting over the bushes, which would be the most effective protection. Instead, we will look into setting taller stakes set up all over the area to make “scarecrows”. Most likely with lots of reflective pinwheels and whirligigs, or other reflective things to flap in the wind.

For now, the main thing is done. All those big pots are now transplanted and the marked out space is full. Any other transplants after this is bonus, though if they don’t get in the ground soon, they’re going to die.

I’m definitely paying for it, though. Pushed things a bit hard. Hopefully, things will be better for tomorrow, when I go in for my appointment at the cancer clinic. With my SIL’s offer to drive us in from their place and dropping us off, so we don’t need to hunt for parking, we don’t have to leave quite as early in the morning.

It’s barely past 4pm as I write this, and I am so ready to go to bed right now.

Tomorrow should be interesting.

The Re-Farmer

A non-day

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Can this be me?

I would love to have the life our cats are living. 😁

Today, the plan was to do the Costco shopping trip.

Last night, my older daughter let us know she was feeling like she was coming down with something and would be avoiding contact as much as possible to avoid spreading something.

Then my younger daughter also started feeling ill.

Which meant I would be doing the Costco trip alone.

Okay. Risky, but okay.

This morning, I found myself feeling like I was coming down with a cold, too. Very mild. Could have been something else. I decided not to take a chance, so when my younger daughter came in after doing the outside cat feeding, I told her Costco was out. It turned out she was working up to coming along with me, even though she was still not feeling well. Once I told her I was staying home, she went back to bed and crashed for several hours.

I tried to do the same but as soon as I started showing signs of being awake, I got covered in cats wanting attention, so that didn’t work out well. My husband was the only person feeling well enough to throw something into the oven for breakfast, which is saying a lot.

I’m glad I didn’t take the chance of going to the city. Before I was finally able to get up, I was no longer feeling like I was coming down with a cold. Instead, the pain levels started kicking in and the bleeding suddenly increased, after several days with no bleeding at all. It kept getting worse, even as I was just sitting at my computer, until I finally had to lie down. If I had done the drive to the city, then tried to walk around a Costco, without my daughter to take over with shopping and driving, I would have gotten much worse and would have had to wait it out before I could safely drive myself home.

When I did finally lie down, I figured I should phone my mother. I haven’t been able to visit her for quite some time, though my brother has, and kept me up to date. He had been able to set up internet in her room that allowed him to get her an internet radio that he programmed for all Polish radio stations, plus the one local multi-cultural station with a Polish hour that she used to always listen to. He was also able to set up a regular large button telephone for her, instead of the senior’s mobile phone, with an internet phone number. With that one, he programed the phone numbers for himself, our sister, plus two for me – one the land line, one my cell phone – all with photos of us on the buttons. My mother would only need to push a single button to call us.

When he got there, neither was working. Someone had taken away the device he’d set up that allowed both to connect through Wi-Fi. The phone and radio were working fine, but had no internet to connect to. He talked to someone at the front desk and they did find a note in the maintenance log about it, but nothing about why it was taken away. They found another one for her, so he got that set up again and working.

Which is when he discovered that all the pre-programmed buttons on the radio had been re-programmed, all to the one multicultural radio station. My mother had been button mashing again. She also had trouble understanding which knob to use to turn on the radio, which is also the volume button, and was instead using the knob to manually change stations.

*sigh*

While talking to my mother on the phone, she told me about her radio only having one station. I asked her if she was pressing a button and holding. She very proudly said yes.

That’s how the buttons get programmed. Instead of simply pressing a button and letting go when trying to change stations, she pressed and held and programmed the button for the radio station she was trying to move away from – and did it with all the buttons, then couldn’t understand why all the buttons had the same station.

I explained it to her a bit, but it will have to wait until my brother visits next for it to be reprogrammed, and he won’t be able to do that until after Thanksgiving weekend.

She wondered about my sister not visiting and I reminded her my sister was still out of province for a festival with their church. She did not ask me when I would be visiting next, though, and instead asked how I was doing. Nor did she say any of the other things she usually goes after me about. Which is quite unusual. I guess that’s one benefit to having cancer. My mother is behaving better towards me! Sad that this is what it took.

I did tell her about the huge number of trees we ended up getting through my brother. She was curious about how this happened, so I briefly explained. She was pretty thrilled about the idea that we might eventually have enough berries to actually be able to sell them, like she used to do with her raspberries.

In the end, it was a rather short call, and my pain levels were still spiking and I had to say good bye, which got no argument from her at all.

As difficult as things can sometimes be with my mother with her not being able to understand some things – things she used to have no problem with, like phones and radios – we are grateful that she is doing remarkably well overall. My FIL, who was in supportive living since my MIL passed away, had a fall a few weeks back and is still in the hospital. Physically, he’s doing somewhat better, but his cognitive decline increased substantially. He won’t be able to go home, has been diagnosed with dementia, and they are going through the process of getting him into a personal care home. The frustrating thing is that we are completely unable to go visit him. My husband simply can’t do the trip anymore, without being incapacitated by pain just from the drive. My FIL is more than a decade younger than my mother, but is in poorer physical and mental condition than she is. A reminder that, in the end, age has nothing to do with it.

I’m happy to say that my own pain levels did eventually recede, and I’m now feeling much better. I was even able to take a walk outside, and I did the evening cat feeding. Which had an unfortunate surprise for me. My daughter had noted this morning that we were out of kibble, and I told her there was another 40 pound bag of donated kibble left.

I was wrong.

Looking at the stack of bags where I thought there was kibble, there was only litter pellets. No kibble bag left at all.

So I “stole” some from the inside cats’ kibble bin. Enough to last until tomorrow morning. After that, we’re going to have to go out to get more kibble. Thankfully, we can do that at the general store the post office is in, and not have to drive to another town.

The girls were feeling better by the end of the day and considered digging more holes for those last haskaps, but we were starting to lose the light by then, so they will work on it tomorrow, instead. Ten more large pots, then as many of the little ones that we can find space for. We should at least be able to fill the last measured out spaces my brother had tilled, tomorrow.

My daughter and I are then going to have to go to bed early tomorrow and, hopefully, get a full night’s sleep, because we’ll be getting up quite early to get to my brother and SIL’s place to leave the truck while she drives us to my appointment in the city.

Today, meanwhile, was very much a non-day for all of us. We all felt unwell for one reason or another, and got next to nothing accomplished.

Which is really quite frustrating!

The Re-Farmer

A very productive day – but I’ll start with the cuteness

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Would you look at that face?

In the second picture, you can see him enjoying pets.

Midnight still has a mark on his nose. For most of the summer, he had an odd wound there that would get bigger, burst, start going away, then get bigger again. Which was rather gross because he kept trying to rub his nose, wound and all, against us while demanding attention! At some point, it simply started to heal and now there’s just a bit of bald skin where it used to be.

Then there’s this lovely lady.

Fluffy lets us pet her regularly now, and is often found lounging on various beds and blankets.

Today, I finally got progress done in the sun room, which meant taking all the beds scattered on the floor out, as well as the food trays and water bowl, so clear the half of the room so the floor could be scrubbed. I put all the beds and blankets into the wagon and set it outside. It was always either Fluffy or Midnight in the wagon, enjoying a nap in the sun.

Once the floor was clear, I unhooked the shop lights from one end, then cleaned all the windows on the inside.

Then I did the outsides.

Then, since I had the bucket with glass cleaner and long pole window washing tool out anyways, I did the outsides of all the first floor windows.

Then I did the windows in the isolation shelter.

Plus the roof.

That done, I got the bucket refilled with all purpose cleaner to start on the floor in the sun room. I’ve got a broom with super stiff bristles on it and I used that to scrub the floor, because there’s no way a regular mop can do the job. It was a very dirty job, but I got a little more than half the floor in the room done. Then my daughter brought me a mop bucket and I used a mop to rinse the floor – which required several changes of water.

It’s going to take quite a while for the floor to dry. Once it’s dry, we can clear the other half. Most things will go outside, but the counter shelf will be moved to the cleaned half, since it’s easier than trying to fight it through the door.

I did get the lights set up again before doing in, and the wagon with the beds was tucked into the other half for the night, in case it rains. The cats are going to have to find other places to sleep tonight!

They have lots of places to choose from.

Through the window of the above photo, you can see the beds with the self seeded tomatoes. That got covered for the night. The other beds in the main garden area did not get covered again. Instead, I harvested.

There are a few California Wonder bell peppers and the Chocolate Stripe tomatoes that will be left to ripen indoors. The single Caspar eggplant is about as ripe as its going to get, so we can try that out at any time. It’s unfortunate that we got only one one successful eggplant, and even that is smaller than it should be.

This morning, my younger daughter and I made a dump run. When we got back, she went straight to the food forest to keep working on the transplants. Her sister took a break from working on commissions to come out and help. Even I was able to help out. With the 18 holes my daughter got done last night, I started by watering each of them – something that would have been good to do with all of the transplants, but there wasn’t the opportunity. Then we worked assembly line style, getting plants out of their big pots, then my younger daughter brought them to the pre-dug holes while her sister went along and put soil back around them.

I found more pots with self seeded willow in them.

Some, like in the photo above, showed signs that someone had already cut away willow earlier, and new ones had started to grow from the same stems. We tried to cut away as much as possible, but there’s just no way to separate their roots out. In the second image, you can see the pile of most of the willows I’d cut away, including from haskaps that had already been transplanted! The leaves are quite similar, but the stems are very different, which helped in finding where to cut them away.

Then my alarm went off for my afternoon painkillers (just T3s now), so I left the girls to it and worked on other things. One of those was doing a scan of the truck. The check engine light had turned itself off a couple of days ago, but turned on again while we were driving to the dump. It was the same code as before, that our mechanic says is likely the gas cap. The other possibilities are all things we’ve taken care of already. I cleared the code, then sent our mechanic screen caps of the scan results, asking for suggestions. We’ll be doing our Costco run tomorrow, so it should be interesting to see if the light is still there.

By the end of the afternoon, this is how far the girls got.

They got 18 haskap into the pre-dug holes, then dug and planted another 7, making for 25 transplants done today. There are still another 10 large pots waiting to go into the ground that will need larger holes dug, before we can switch to the ones in the trays that don’t need such deep holes. In the third photo of the slideshow above, you can see what’s left.

It’s unlikely we’ll have a chance to work on them tomorrow, but we might be able to finish getting things in the ground on Monday. At least for the pre-measured area. Once that’s filled, we can start sticking more of them wherever we can find space.

After that, we go back to clear out the rocks that got dug up. Then the soil around each one will get raked smooth, and finally a water trench will be made around each one.

Then we can start hauling over wood chips and start mulching.

Meanwhile, we have various garden beds that need to be cleared out. The carrots need to be harvested, but those can wait, since they handle frost just fine. At the very least, a bed needs to be prepared for the garlic, which needs to be planted this month.

On the plus side, we should have a couple more weeks of relatively mild weather before overnight temperatures start consistently going below freezing. Which I am grateful for. Today I saw one of those Facebook “X years ago today” photos come up. It was a photo taken out of the living room window, 8 years ago, and there was snow on the ground. I think we even had a blizzard on Thanksgiving weekend, that year. So I am quite happy with the weather we’ve got happening right now! In fact, it was a perfect day to be working outside today, and not get too hot while doing it!

I’m also happy that I was feeling well enough to be outside most of the day, and finally work on the sun room, too. We’ll see how things are with our Costco trip tomorrow. I’ll definitely bring the walker along and have my daughter push the cart, instead of using the cart as a walker, just to be on the safe side.

Lots to be thankful for.

The Re-Farmer

Frost damage, garden and transplanting progress

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, we most definitely dropped to freezing last night, so I was expecting to see much of the garden finally killed off for the season.

I didn’t make it outside for quite some time, though.

I was doing great in the wee hours when my alarm went off – so much so, I skipped the painkillers and fell back asleep. I was still feeling good when the morning alarm went off and I took my meds and supplements as usual, then promptly fell back asleep again.

Then the phone rang. I was expecting a call back from what I missed yesterday, at 10am. The call came at about 9am, and I was still hard asleep.

It did turn out to be the cancer clinic calling. Finally! I have a date to come in on Tuesday next week. I had thought I’d be getting a procedure done – another biopsy and testing of my lymph nods – but she said the appointment should be only half an hour. So it sounds like I’m just talking to a doctor? I will find out when I get there.

The clinic is in the same hospital the cardiac clinic is in. The cardiac clinic that would not accommodate my husband’s disability while always being very late calling him in and making him wait in painful waiting room chairs, then ghosted him when he refused to put up with it anymore.

Hopefully, the cancer clinic is better.

What isn’t better is the length of the drive, downtown driving to cross the river to a sort of second “downtown” of the French part of the city, and endless parking issues around the hospital. The woman that called me even brought up the parking as a potential issue, and I told her about taking my husband in and having to park several blocks away. She completely understood. I appreciate that she brought it up. It is clearly a major problem.

Oh, and the appointment is for 9:15am. The drive, with heavy downtown traffic, is about an hour and a half. More, with construction issues. Then we’d need the time to find parking, then walking however many blocks it’ll take to get to the hospital. We’d have to leave at around 6:45am to be sure to get there in time.

I passed on to my brother and SIL about the appointment. While chatting with me SIL, I mentioned that the parking issues was brought up.

She had a suggestion. We could drive to their place, just outside the city, and leave the truck in their driveway. She would drive us to the hospital, drop us off, then come back for us later.

!!!!!

My SIL is such an awesome person. I very gratefully accepted the offer.

By the time that was all worked out, I’d had breakfast and was getting ready to head outside. Unfortunately, pretty much right from when I lurched out of bed to get the phone, the pain started kicking in. It kept slowly getting worse so I held out until my afternoon meds, using the topical painkiller lotion in between, hoping that with the two of them, things would improve.

It never really did. I’ve just taken my evening painkillers and it’s only now starting to get better.

My younger daughter, meanwhile, had gone out to start working on the transplants. She had come in briefly in the mid afternoon when I remembered that I wanted to go to the post office. I had a thumb drive to drop off for someone, care of the store’s owner, as well as getting the mail, in case there were more medical letters in.

My daughter came with me. I drove but stayed in the truck while she did the running around. By the time I was driving home, I had to hunch over the steering wheel, as the angle helped ease the pain a bit.

Once home, I decided to stay outside and finally look at the garden as I’d planned to do earlier. My daughter offered to bring my walker over – she had set it up under the crab apple trees as somewhere she could sit to rest and hydrate every now and then. I said no and just took my time over things.

Of course, I couldn’t NOT do stuff while out there.

The winter squash vines all seemed to be frost killed, even with the frost cloth I had over it. Which I’d left, because it’s white and still lets light in. Plus, I wasn’t up to moving it. The vines looked damaged, but the developing squash did not seem to have damage to them. So I left them.

The bush beans, in the first photo above, are all killed off. The Cosmos and Crackerjack marigolds in the second photo seem to be killed off, too. Looking through the plastic over the melons, they look dead, as well. I did not try to uncover the peppers, Chocolate Stripe tomatoes and eggplant. The celery, which I have not been able to harvest to dehydrate as planned, looks just fine!

The summer squash, in the third picture, were completely frost killed – revealing a few squash that looked big enough to harvest and not very damaged by frost!

So, I harvested them. Two Lemon squash, some Prolific Longneck, and some yellow zucchini.

In the other images, you can see that some zucchini flowers look surprisingly strong and like they might still bloom!

After that, I checked on the tomato and bean beds by the compost ring. The self seeding tomato plants in the old kitchen garden, which is still covered, seem to have survived, but the ones in the tomato bed did not. After checking on the state of the tomatoes still hanging on the vines, I decided they were worth picking, with the split ones going into the compost ring. Only the larger tomatoes. The Orange Currant tomatoes are so small, there was nothing salvageable there.

I was being haunted by cats while doing this, so I did the evening cat feeding. Which is when I got to love on this beauty.

Colby SO loves attention now! He’s such a gorgeous kitty!

That done, I finished picking tomatoes and set them in the cat free zone, aka: the living room, to see if they will ripen, then decided I was up to doing at least some clean up work on the tomato bed.

I basically just took off all the plant ties and clips, then pulled the stakes out. With the green stakes, I was able to make a bundle of 10 but, since we stole some to use for the haskaps, I didn’t have enough to make a second bundle of 10, so those will just wait there for now. The bed is at the stage where the protective collars can be removed, but that was more than I was able to do today.

I did have a surprise in the next bed, though.

The deer ate the entire row of Swiss Chard, but it’s trying to grow back! Chard can handle frost quite well, and the little leaves have no frost damage at all.

After that, I felt I had enough energy for one more thing. I measured inside the water bowl shelter, then cut a narrow piece of plywood to length.

The first image shows the new board, which is in the middle, plus I added back one of the other narrower boards I’d tried adding to make it wider, previously. Originally, it was just that white board in the back (there’s a spare piece of wood I’m just storing there for now). I set the self-warming shelter back, and it now has enough space to be set sideways, with the peak matching the angle of the roof. Hopefully, nothing will try climbing on top of it and crushing it again!

Under the shelf, you can see the last beds and blankets that need to be cleaned for the winter, but in the second photo, you can see I’ve added another bed, already cleaned, to the second floor. As the season progresses and we plug in the cat house, there will be power to the heated water bowl for the winter. We still need to pop the roof on the cat house to clean it for the winter, and check the heat bulb and smoke detector.

That was about it for me, by then. I did go over to see how my daughter was doing. She’d been at it almost all day. She had planted 6 more haskap, but then switched to just digging holes. While she was doing that, I gave all the pots and trays a watering. I hadn’t realized until then that my SIL wasn’t able to take all the spruce trees! There are still about 5 trays and a few loose pots of them!

My daughter dug another 18 holes before calling it a day. Digging the holes is actually the “easy” part of the job – getting the root bound haskap out of their pots is far more difficult.

Unfortunately, as she moved her way down the tilled rows, the top soil was getting shallower in places, and she was digging up a lot more gravel and rocks. Including hitting some rocks too big to dig out!

You can see the edge of one in the first photo above. The second photo shows some of the “smaller” rocks she’d gotten out of another hole. As for the third picture…

Yeah… that’s a crack in the spade’s wooden shaft. It finally broke while she was digging around that rock in the first photo.

Thankfully, my brother had brought a couple of his spades out and left them for us to use, too. We have another one that has a metal shaft that my daughter doesn’t like to use. She’d started using one of my brother’s that had a wooden shaft, but the top was some sort of ergonomic handle that she found actually caused her more pain. Which left only one last shovel available that she could use! Another wooden shaft, which she prefers. Hopefully, no more big rocks will become an issue.

Here, you can see the day’s work. Six more haskaps transplanted, on the left of the photo, and 18 holes dug. That leaves another 30 holes to dig, but the last ones won’t need to accommodate the big pots. The last ones could be done with a hand trowel, for the haskap in the trays.

You can see the piles of soil that have more gravel in them, too.

By the time she was done, my daughter fully needed to use my walker to go back to the house! The poor thing could barely walk by then.

While all this was happening, I got a message from my sister saying they might be swinging buy to drop off some tires, then head back out again. We’d been inside for a while when I checked the cameras and saw they were here! So I went out to talk to them.

Oh! I completely forgot to mention last night!

A few years ago, someone had come out here to buy several old vehicles out of the car graveyard. Two years ago, he came back wanting to buy a couple of little cars parked by the old threshing machine. They’ve been there so long, they sunk into the soil right to the undercarriage, and there were caragana and red osier dogwood growing around them.

We made arrangements and he just needed to figure out how to get them out and take them home.

I never heard back from him. I thought he might have changed his mind but, last night, I got a call. He was at the gate!

It turns out he had started a new business this spring, and now has a crane truck. He was able to use it to lift the cars out and tow them to an open area closer to the gate, where they can be easily accessed to load onto a trailer, which will happen another day.

Of course, I let my brother know and kept him up to date, then sent him video I took of the crane work. My brother, however, was visiting my mother at the time and didn’t see all of it; all he saw was that someone had come for the cars – and he completely forgot about the arrangement made, two years ago. Not a surprise. At the time, they were frantically trying to get their own stuff off their property they’d sold to bring here, before the possession date. He ended up phoning me after visiting my mother and had seemed very confused and anxious about it.

By the time they got here tonight, though, he had had a chance to see everything I’d sent them. When I realized they were here and I came out to see them, my brother was just coming back from the main garden area, where they’d checked out the progress. Then I saw my SIL come around the trees on her phone, look up and laugh, because she had just messaged to tell me what a great job was done with the digging! I told them, it was all my younger daughter! They were very impressed.

Then we had a chance to talk about the vehicles, and about the lack of paperwork for them. Even scrap yards need proof of ownership when it comes to old vehicles. That’s all gone, and the people who would have had them have passed on. Most of them have been there for so long, they would be considered abandoned, anyhow. We’ll need to figure it out.

I mentioned the guy is still interested in some of the other old vehicles, and my brother wants to talk to him about that. They’ve taken two trailer loads of stuff from here to the scrap yard and for the last one, they barely got enough back to cover the cost of gas to take them there. Selling the individual vehicles to someone who wants to rebuild them, and can pick them up himself, would have a much better rate of return. Plus, my brother is also now looking to sell more of their farm equipment, because he’s not going to be farming with them after he retires in a couple of years.

They weren’t able to stay long, though, but thanks to her generous offer, I’ll be seeing my SIL next week, when she drives me and my daughter to the cancer clinic.

Which means we will need to do our Costco trip on Sunday. Tomorrow, the dump is open so we’ll be doing that, then planting trees before more holes are dug. I know myself well enough to admit that I wouldn’t be able to do a Costco trip on Monday, without putting myself in a physically bad situation for the cancer clinic appointment on Tuesday, which leaves us only Sunday to do the Costco stock up trip, leaving Monday to do any recovering I might need. Particularly since I am now out of the Tramacet and am back to using only T3s for pain.

So, that’s where we are at now. Thanks to my daughter, much progress was made on the digging, and I was even able to do some stuff in the garden to prepare it for winter. I continue to pray for a mild fall, because I will need the time. I’m going to be severely limited in what I can do to prepare the beds for winter, and the girls aren’t that much better than I am, until they get their surgeries. Which won’t be for months, while I should get mine within October.

Meanwhile, with the weather changes, my husband is getting hit with a lot of pain, too.

What a broken and battered household we are right now!! 😄

Ah, well. It is what is it, and we do what we can. What else is there to do?

The Re-Farmer

City trip done, and more haskap transplants, with frost on the way

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We had a rather long day today, and it’s not even 5pm yet.

My younger daughter had her doctor’s appointment in the city, which meant we had to be on the road by 8:30am to get there, with extra time to be delayed by construction or whatever else came up. We had time enough to stop at a gas station along the way to pick up drinks and a couple of sandwiches for the girls, who hadn’t had breakfast before leaving. I noticed the gas prices in this town were still $1.729/L, and I hoped prices would be better while in the city, as we’d need to top up before heading home.

I’m glad we left as early as we did because, even with my daughter navigating and the map app talking out directions, I missed a turn. It was at one of the more bizarre intersections – of which there are many – and it was either turn right, or turn extra right. I didn’t catch the extra right in time. Then, because it’s one way streets all over the place, we ended up taking a completely alternate route – that turned out to make it easier to get into the parking we needed, than if we hadn’t missed the turn.

I truly dislike driving in the downtown area of the city. Some of the worst street planning out there and, for where we were driving, it can’t even be blamed on things like being split up by rivers and tributaries. Then there are the crappy drivers and the crumbling streets.

*sigh*

Still, we got there with about 10 minutes to spare. After getting through the security gauntlet to get into the building, which included my daughter justifying why we were there without our own appointments, I signed in for the parking spot we were in, then we waited. My older daughter ended up going in with her sister for what turned out to be two consecutive appointments; one with a doctor, one with a nurse practitioner. It ended up being more than an hour before they came out again, with another appointment for next month, plus some lab requisitions. There’s a lab right in the building, so we just waited until my daughter was called in. That went quickly, and we were soon heading out. Which was great “fun”, trying to find and read inconsistently placed street signs, including one that was half hidden by a set of street lights, and not get hit by drivers oblivious to everything around them. Oh, and dodging construction. Or course.

Have I mentioned I really dislike driving in this city? I don’t think I could say it enough.

My older daughter ended up not being able to eat the sandwich we’d picked up on the way out, so she was really hungry. So chose a different route out, so we could take the street we do one of our stop up trips on. Gas prices were $1.799 all over, except for one gas station we saw on the way in, at $1.639 – but it was a co-op franchise that we stopped going to after their cheap, dirty gas cost us over $400 in repairs in our previous vehicle, plus repairs on our lawn mower. There was a Domo along the way that was at $1.749/L, and today was discount day, so we got gas at $1.609/L instead.

This station is right near the international grocery store we like to go to, and that’s where we went for lunch. My daughters got themselves some steamed dumpling dim sum, and I got a large Chinese meal that I only ate half of, taking the rest home.

From there, we went to a Superstore that was along our way out. We have already run out of the torpedo buns we all like so much, so we got three more bags, along with a couple of pounds of butter, since I’m not sure when we’ll be at Costco to stock up on butter next. The girls found a giant Italian sandwich for their dad as a treat, and we happened to cut through the aisle with energy drinks, so I got some Beaver Buzz for home.

Of course, it was while we were doing all this that I got a message from my husband saying a doctor had called for me and would call back at around 2. I didn’t think we’d be home by then, so I told my husband that, if it was about an appointment, to take whatever they give me, except for November 3, and 4, when the girls have their next medical appointments.

When we got home, I missed the call back by mere minutes. The doctor hadn’t been able to talk to my husband because he’s not on the last as my “next of kin”. But she would call back tomorrow at around 10.

Which suggests to me it was the specialist getting back to me, not cancer care. I’ll have to make sure to let her know, she can speak freely to my husband about my file, if I’m not around.

We had barely settled in when my younger daughter headed out to start digging holes. Her sister followed soon after.

They were able to finish the first section that was planted in, where I’d already dug 3 holes yesterday, which is what you see in the first image above. Then they moved to the northernmost end of the new rows and started working across there. My younger daughter did the digging while her sister did the transplanting. In the second picture, you can see the 6 transplants along the north end are in. The next photo shows just some of what my daughter had to deal with while digging!

So. Many. Rocks, all over this area.

The last image is taken from the south end of the new rows. The transplanting will be done from the north end, so that when the south end is reached, we will be planting small ones out of the trays, rather than the big pots. We’ve got a total 77 haskaps in the large pots, but there are a total of 90 spaces to plant in. So, to fill the whole area, there would be another 23 plants from the trays, plus another 5 or so spots between the Silver Buffalo berry to fill. I’m pretty sure we can fill all those spaces, and still have plants in the trays left over.

I did pop out later on, though I was banned from doing any digging. Depending on which app I look at, we’re going to drop to either 2C/36F or 0C/32F tonight. I brought out the fabric to cover four beds – the peppers, eggplant and Chocolate stripe tomatoes in the main garden area, and the self seeded tomatoes in the old kitchen garden. My older daughter came out to help me while updating me on their progress.

I remembered that I still had an unopened package of frost cloth I got at a dollar store, years ago. I got multiple packages but, when I tried to use them, they tore apart. I figured I would try using it to see if I could protect the winter squash, which are more exposed on the chain link fence.

It wasn’t quite long enough to cover from end to end, but the developing squash, at least, are covered. The edge on the inside of the chain link fence got squished between the squash plants and the sunflowers, then it got secures with clothes pins to the chain link. The sunflowers might actually help hold it in place, too.

That was about my limit for today, as pain levels were starting to increase, and I wanted to not let it get worse. When my daughters came in, they updated me with their progress. All of the transplants got watered, as well as all the pots and trays. Later on, I’ll rake around the transplants and make water trenches, as with the first ones that got done, but that’s not as urgent as getting them in the ground and watered. After getting updated, I went out and took pictures, before we lost the light.

I really hope a lot of these survive. With the silver buffalo berry, we had a bundle of 30. Over the span of several years, we’ve lost only 5, and they were in great shape when they were planted. The haskap are not in great shape, so it’s reasonable to expect a higher loss rate. Still, it would be nice if they all made it!

Tomorrow, we do more digging.

Well. My daughter will probably do more digging. If I’m still banned from digging, I’ll see if I can finally get back to cleaning the sun room for the winter, which has had zero progress in the past few days! Too many other things dragging us away. After tonight’s drop in temperature, things will warm up again for the next while, with no rain, so we should get some decent progress done.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

So. Many. More!!!!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Wow. Just… wow!

I’m pretty sure I was saying that yesterday, too.

We’re going to run out of space.

Last night, my brother and SIL picked up and dropped off another load of haskaps in large pots. I’d already gone to bed after taking my evening meds, so I wasn’t able to see them until this morning.

I counted and got 30 pots. If you look at the second picture, you can see that some of them have invaders. Willow, in that photo. Poplar in others. Herbaceous weeds in others.

I wasn’t sure how many more, but my SIL wasn’t sure if they’d have to make two trips to get the rest. Which means about 30 more in one load and who knows how many in another.

I started marking and measuring more rows.

Each row is 6′ apart, and the stakes in the rows are 4′ apart for a dozen spots marked in each row.

I ran out of stakes and grabbed the ones from the trellis for the red noodle beans that never grew large enough to use it. I had a thinner, shorter stake that I used to hold the end of the measuring tape at a stake marking spots in the row I’d done yesterday. After lining up the first three stakes of new rows, at 6, 12 and 18 feet, I moved the end of the tape measure down each stake along the row I’m made yesterday, then lay one end of a 4 ft stake at the previous 18 ft marker to line up with the tape measure to find where the next 18′ marker would go, then placed the next 6, 12 and 18 ft markers. Lather, rinse, repeat.

When my older daughter came out to join me, I was running out of stakes again. She helped me steal 6′ stakes from the Orange Currant tomatoes, since those are a bush type and weren’t attached to the stakes like the other two varieties needs. Just the plastic coated metal ones, since the few bamboo ones in there would just break in this soil.

Then my younger daughter came out to join us and things went much faster. By that point, I had enough stakes to make one more row of 12. My younger daughter would move the stake holding the end of the measuring tape, my older daughter would use the 4 foot stake to find the 6 ft mark, and I’d push in the next stake.

At this point, even with the curve at the south end of the row, it was getting close to the largest crab apple trees. W

Well, I least we knew there wasn’t going another load!

By this time, we’d made enough rows and marked enough spaces that, counting the empty spaces from the rows already transplanted into, we could plant another 71 haskaps.

My daughters and I went went around to check out other things while I put the measuring tape back where it belongs in the garage, then they went inside while I headed back to the haskaps. I wanted to make water trenches around the 21 that were transplanted yesterday.

How close the ends of the rows were getting to the crab apple trees was bothering me, so I made a decision. The rows were a dozen spots long because I was lining up with the sliver buffalo berry, not because I was counting how many spots per row. I decided to shorten all the rows to 10 spots to transplant into, rather than 12. That meant the first three rows my brother had been tilling in the dark until we told him to stop weren’t going to need more tilling, other than a single spot that he didn’t get to before we told him to stop.

I used those to mark out another row. Since I had both 6′ and 4′ stakes available, I used those to work out where each stake would be placed in the new row. In the end, a total of 6 new rows of 10 stakes were marked out, plus there 9 spots remaining in the original three rows that were already transplanted into.

I then used a garden hoe around each transplant already in the ground, creating a trench, making sure the outside of it had a higher wall of soil. Once each had a trench, I dragged the hose around to the south end of the rows, since I now had 6 rows of stakes preventing access from the side, used the jet spray in the trench so the water could level out the soil as it filled, then switched to the shower setting to water the based of the plants themselves. They’re going to need a lot of watering to be able to develop new roots out of root-bound plants. They’re going to suffer for it, but there’s just no way we could deal with that before transplanting so many at once.

Meanwhile, I eventually got a message from my SIL. She said they’d packed 32 large pots, plus smaller plants she wasn’t sure of.

Which meant we marked out more rows than needed. Which is okay. I’d rather have extra than not enough! I had no idea what these smaller plants were, so I left it, in case it would still be needed.

I did move the pots already hear, setting them closer to the spots they would be planted in. It turned out I had double counted a pot, and there were 29 of them.

The first image above is of the marked out rows, with water bottles on some of the stakes to make them more visible. With there being “only” 29 pots, it was exactly enough to set them out at two marked rows, plus the 9 spaces left in the original three rows.

They ended up taking longer to come out as they had opportunity for other stuff to do before getting here. I had plenty of time to go inside and have a late lunch before going out again to feed the outside cats. I had come back in and was just settling down when the gate cam notification told me they had arrived, so I headed back out again.

When my SIL backed the truck up to the food forest area, she had a surprise for me. I’d messaged them about a new hose connector repair set, and my brother had picked up a pair of them for me and left them before they headed out this morning. I went to fix the hose and realized I neglected to tell my brother than I needed a 5/8 repair kit. He’d picked 1/2 inch sets. Oops! He did leave the receipt in the bag, though, so I can exchange them later.

They came back with hoses… and a drip irrigation set up!!!!

These are not regular garden hoses! On the stump are a couple of timers. There’s a couple of cannisters that we’re not quite sure what they are. The pink stakes, I was told, are to hold electric fence wire, but are just there as highly visible stakes. There are steel clamps and reflectors in there, too, plus a couple of pieces with rigid pipe on them. In the second photo is a hose with drip irrigation nozzles. A couple of pots had the short length of drip hoses and ground stakes to hold them, which each pot would have had at some point. The third photo has a better look at the timers and a cannister; the second one is still attached to a hose somewhere.

I’m going to have learn how to use a drip irrigation system. We would need to buy the drop hoses and nozzles and stakes before we can actually use the system.

I am truly blown away by all of this!! This is all stuff the family was ready to throw out!

Once we got the hoses out, it was time to unload the haskaps. My SIL climbed into the back of the truck and passed them to me, while I set them aside by the trays of spruces. By this time, my brother had brought their tiller over. He shifted each of the stakes, one row at a time, marking where they were with a spade, so he could till an entire row at one, pausing the tiller to let it go deeper, next to a stake. Then we went over the rows again, working to get each pre-measured spot deeper and looser.

He was still working on that when we finished unloading the truck. I set them out in rows of 10, and there turned out to be 27 big pots in total. My SIL told me later how they kept trying to count how many pots there were, and kept losing track! Sounds like me, trying to do a head count of yard cats in the morning. 😄

Then there were the trays.

They turned out to be more haskap in little 4″ pots, but they were so overgrown, they should have been in 8 or 10 inch pots!

The first image above shows the large pots, the second shows the trays.

After all these were unloaded, my SIL drove the truck back to where they keep it parked out here, then drove their car over to fill the back with the trays of spruce that will be passed on to a friend.

While she was doing that, I started digging holes in the original rows that were tilled. I managed to get three done – taking it very easy and letting the weight of the shovel do most of the work – before I stopped for the day. My alarm for my evening painkillers was going to go off soon, and we were starting to lose the light.

My brother managed to get all the rows tilled, including the “extra” row, making sure to get a fairly wide, deep area by each stake that he’d shifted aside.

That’s as far as things could go tonight. They needed to get back to the city, and won’t be able to come back for some time.

So, it looks like we’ve got a total of 77 haskap in the large pots. Twenty one are already transplanted, plus another 56 in large pots, and an unknown number in the trays. We’ll have enough to fill every pre-measured spot, fill in the empty spots among the silver buffalo berry and have more left over. The ones in the trays are in very rough shape, though, so we can afford to be picky over which ones get transplanted.

Over the next while, we will be digging holes.

Lots of holes.

We’ll have to take our time about it, since we’re all pretty broken, though the deep tilling my brother did will help a lot. Once the holes are dug, transplanting will go much faster.

It’s unlikely we’ll get any digging done tomorrow as my younger daughter has her medical appointment at the skeevy downtown clinic in the city, and my older daughter is coming along, too. That’s in the morning, but who knows how long it’ll take once we’re there. I’m glad we did the bigger stock up shop on the weekend. Normally, today would have been our Costco shop, but we can postpone that for a while as we focus on getting those haskaps transplanted!

Then we see how many survive. They have all been neglected for quite a long time, I’m told.

The area that these are being planted in is now so large, it will actually change my plans for building raised beds. I had intended to make two or three more pairs of trellis beds, plus a polytunnel. There is no longer room for that. We will probably just finish off the pair that’s in progress right now (much delayed), then the polytunnel. After that, we will start working in the other direction, in the space I’d been thinking to use for perennials and self seeded things that can be treated as perennials.

I am absolutely blown away by all this. So many haskaps, plus the drip irrigation equipment!

I’m really looking forward to finally having them. Our original three haskap bushes did not produce a single berry that I could find this year, and the two others I got are in their second year and barely grew at all this year. Much like the highbush cranberry don’t seem to be getting much bigger.

I have no idea how much my brother and SIL paid for all this. My SIL only said it wasn’t much – and she had offered to buy them when she found out they were going to be thrown out, then confirmed we had the space for them here. This is easily several thousand dollars worth of plants and irrigation supplies, had we tried to buy these new through the usual sources.

We – quite happily – have a lot of work ahead of us in the next while!

The Re-Farmer

Twenty one – for now!

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Wow.

Just… wow.

Yesterday, I’d prepped as much as I could in advance of my brother and SIL coming out with haskap bushes they managed to acquire. My SIL estimated about 30 pots. I marked out 36 spaces to plant them in.

My brother arrived first, having come out after he finished work, getting their tiller out of the barn. By the time he checked it, filled the gas tank and pushed it over to our food forest area, and we were talking about what I’d done, my SIL was driving their truck over to unload.

We were already loosing the light by then.

My brother started tilling the soil at each marked spot while I helped my SIL unload the truck. She had managed to bring 21 pots of haskaps, along with more than 10 trays of spruces. Spruces are not something we need – if we ever want to transplant any, we can get seedlings out of all sort of places, including the ditches. Those got laid out between the crab apple trees and will be taken back later, to be given to a friend.

My sister now estimates there are about 45 pots of haskaps in total. She had brought barely half of them.

My brother had intended to till each spot, then start digging holes to plant all the haskaps, before the left. It was full dark, and my SIL had moved the truck around so he could work under headlights. We stopped him after he’d done about 30 of spots. As we started transplanting from the north end, he realized there was no way they’d all be done that night. Between the three of us – and several flashlights – we got 6 into the ground. Then they had to leave.

My SIL took the truck, leaving the car she came here with, so she could pick up the rest of the haskaps today. We messaged each other this morning. Since my brother is off tomorrow (I keep forgetting that the last day of September is a statutory holiday), they will both come out tonight to unload, stay the night, then plant them tomorrow.

We talked about where to plant the extra haskaps. It’s a bit difficult to figure that out, since we don’t know exactly how many are left. She hopes to give me a count as soon as she is able. We settled on adding a fourth row, which would be another dozen spaces marked. That would bring the total to 48. If there turns out to be more, there are empty spots among the silver buffalo berry, where bushes had not survived, they could go in.

My younger daughter headed over after she did the outside cat feeding. She was determined to finish transplanting the remaining pots this morning, before things started to get too warm for her to work. Our expected high was 20C/68F. Which we have reached now, in the mid afternoon, with the humidex putting us at 23C/73F. That area gets full sun and bakes, and my daughter has a little tolerance for heat.

I made sure to have breakfast before I headed out to help her. While she was digging and transplanting, I measured and marked off another row. Then I wanted to help her, but she banned me from digging holes. Instead, I got the thatching rake (or landscaping rake, or whatever that type of rake is called now) and used it to level out the “excess” soil around each transplant, while also removing some of the bigger rocks that would be in the way of any mowing or weed trimming.

Towards the end of it, my daughter switched to just digging the holes, then setting a haskap into it, before moving on to the next hole to dig. I had caught up enough that I could bury the root balls and pack things down, then continue raking the soil into place.

We got them all done just in time. I don’t know what temperature we were at by then, but my daughter was already having a hard time with it.

We had some light rain last night, and it was still raining when she first started on the transplanting, which is great for the transplants, but I made sure to give them all a watering. I brought another hose from the front tap, so we could reach to water each transplant directly. Plus, with the soil damp and rather sticky, I needed to stop to wash the muck stuck on the rake, and even my shoes, before I could continue. While watering, I mostly wanted to use water pressure to settle the soil between the root balls and the walls of the holes that were done, and wash away any loose soil that fell onto the base of the stems. These have been in their pots for too long, and were quite root bound. With so many of them, we made no effort to address that, so anything that encourages them to start extending roots into the surrounding soil is a good thing.

Later on, I will go back and make narrow trenches around them, or build up soil walls, depending on how rough the ground it, so encourage the water to stay and get absorbed near the root balls, rather than draining away into the paths. Then, they will be mulched with wood chips.

This is the final result.

The first image has the 21 freshly watered haskap bushes. In the background, you can see the trays of spruces. Now that I look at it more closely, I think there’s a dozen trays of seedlings. On the right of the photo, you can see the new row marked out.

You can also see just how huge these are!!!

In the second image of the slide show above, you can see a photo my daughter took when she was still just starting with digging the holes. We expect to find rocks and roots, but under this one, she seems to have hit a boulder. She could not get it out, at all. She did, however, find an “edge” around it. In the end, she went ahead and planted on top of it. The haskap should still be able to spread its roots to the sides and around the boulder.

Given that these have been getting neglected for some time, the owner of the greenhouse having become ill before passing away, we fully expect that some of these will not survive the winter. The next while is expected to be mild enough that they should start developing new roots, and they should be able to survive their first frosts. With so many of them, we should still get enough surviving to get decent harvests. My daughter even noticed a few of them already had berries!

This is such a HUGE boost to our food forest area. We had meant to get more haskaps, but this is enough that they could potentially bring in a market income in a year or two, even if half of them don’t make it. There is no way we could have afforded to buy this many through regular channels.

What we don’t know is what variety they are, or even if they are all the same variety. There could be several varieties in there. Nothing was labeled. Given this came from someone’s greenhouse dreams, I would expect there to be cross pollinating varieties in there. Expectations, however, don’t mean much!

It’s getting later now and I don’t know what time my brother and SIL are expected to arrive tonight. It may be while we are losing light again. Sunset, this time of year, it shortly after 7pm, so that wouldn’t be particularly late, either.

Tomorrow should be interesting!

The Re-Farmer