Month: April 2023

Stinky kitty!

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I had another rough morning today. Along with pain and stiff joints, I had almost no balance, bouncing off the walls going to and from the bathroom, so I asked my daughters to feed the outside cats for me again.

Since Easter, when I was no longer on my Lenten fast from sugar and starchy foods, I have still not been eating a lot of either. I might include a potato with my breakfast, or some rice with my supper, and even had a couple of cookies my daughter recently bakes. That’s about it. I think, however, I am going to have to go back. I was mostly pain free during my fast, and certain other… bodily functions, shall we say… had improved. I even had days where I didn’t take any painkillers at all. Granted, some of the pain issues I’m having now may be related to how the temperature fluctuations affect my osteoarthritis, but that can only explain so much. Fatigue is another issue.

A lot of this stuff was so constant, I didn’t even really notice them until they came back after I ended my fast. So it looks like I’m going to need to cut out the sugar and starches, if I want to accomplish the things I need to get done this year. When I finally headed outside, it was because I made myself go. I sure as heck didn’t feel up to it. But, today is working out to be another gorgeous and sunny day, and I had things I wanted to check on.

The first thing I heard when I got outside was a very familiar crunching noise, so I checked the kibble house.

No wonder I was seeing cats cautiously circling around their shelters! Stinky Kitty was moved right in!

This little bugger did not want to leave, either. It’s still too cold to set up the hoses, so I tried to convince it to leave with a long stick. The little bugger just sniffed the end of the stick and kept on eating. He (she?) finally left after I went around the kibble house, banging on the roof and kicking at the back wall.

After that, I did the rest of my rounds. Once more of the snow is gone and the ground it less muddy, we’re going to have to take the wagon or wheel barrow around to pick up all the little branches and garbage that have been blown around. There are a few more garden beds that can be worked on, but I’m physically just not up to it. I kept seeing stuff that I want to get working on, some of which I can start now, but the old bod just can’t handle it today. Which is really, really frustrating. This is stuff that needs to get done, whether I feel like it or not. Especially since the weather forecasts – but just on one of my weather apps – is saying we might get 2-3 cm (about an inch) of snow starting tomorrow, and continuing over the next couple of days. Other apps say it’ll be rain. Either way, not good conditions for the outside work I want to do.

Which I will get into more in a video tour I made yesterday. Unfortunately, every time I try to save the file in a format I can upload, the video gets corrupted. I’m sure the problem is my computer, though, not the software. I’m going to try again today and, if it finally works, I’ll upload and post it.

Then, I’m going to take a nap before I plan to go into town to meet the egg lady for a couple more flats of farm fresh eggs!

The Re-Farmer

Feels wasted

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Today is Sunday and I normally try to keep it as my day of rest, but today just feels… wasted.

I woke up to a bad pain day. Enough that I asked my daughters to take care of feeding the outside cats, then went back to sleep for a couple more hours. It’s not even the worst pain I’ve been in, but it’s like all my joints just don’t want to work properly.

(As I type, retype and retype again, these few sentences repeatedly, because my fingers don’t want to work right!)

Still, I wanted to make sure I got outside for a while, do the rest of my morning rounds and get some fresh air and sunshine. It’s a really gorgeous day out there, and I didn’t want to miss too much of it!

Judgement is judging the state of my boots. 😄

Judgement and Gooby both followed me around all over. With more snow melting away, and plenty of wind, I found and picked up a lot more of those plastic strips from the new shingles being blown around.

One of the areas I can now get into is parts of the spruce grove. Usually it’s either too wet from the snow melt, or too overgrown, to get into. The snowmelt is being absorbed by the ground this spring and nothing is growing yet, so I was able to get through most of the area. There are so many dead trees in there. Some on the ground and rotting, some stuck on other trees and may actually be useable, and others that will need to be cut down. I was also spotting the poplars I want to thin out to use for the trellis tunnels we will be building. Poplar has been taking over the spruce grove. We will be keeping them to a certain extent, as they have been a very useful material, but as we cut down and clean out the dead trees, I want to plant more spruces in the spruce grove!

Feeling the way I do today, though, looking at all the work that needs to be done had me feeling my aching bones even more.

I was also scoping out locations. If things work out to plan, we’re going to have a shed delivered to us at some point, and we need to decide where to put it. It will likely be used as a chicken coop, once it gets the repairs it needs, until we can build the mobile chicken coop I have in mind. We will need some sort of base to support it, so it’s not directly on the ground. Yesterday, I was able to get into the barn and see the state of things. In the lean to side, there are a whole lot of old tires (why are there so many old tires all over the place???), some with rims, some without. It occurred to me that we can use the tires with rims to support the shed. Or just the rims. We don’t have as many rims without tires around, but we can take the tires off.

I had considered putting the shed near the barn, where we would have access to electricity if we wanted, but we have other plans for the outer yard, including permanent raised garden beds and the outdoor kitchen, so I’m thinking it might get to be too much. My daughter is also looking to build a shelter for a forge in the outer yard, though in a different area. The space is going to be filled up quite a bit, and we still need to make sure that there are lanes to drive through with large vehicles. There are also pipes from the well and septic tank running through towards the barn, with the septic pipe running off to the outflow pipe and water pipes running to an old cattle fountain and the barn. The area over them needs to be kept clear, in case they ever need to be excavated. Some day, I would like to be able to turn that water on again, but not until we’ve been able to replace our well pump and upgrade to a larger pressure tank. The shut off valve for fountains and barn is in our basement. There are two cattle fountains are designed to refill automatically, and they keep the water from freezing in the winter. One fountain, we can see from the house. The other is behind the barn, set up to be accessible both inside and outside of a pen. I’d like to have both of them checked out and repaired as necessary. We’re not planning to have cattle, but if we end up having goats or something, or even have it available for the deer or the renter’s cows, that would be good. That is years in the future, though. As for the tap in the barn, it’s been bashed into at some point and needs repair, too.

In the end, I decided the best place to set up the shed would be near the garage. There’s an open space there that no longer has a branch pile in it. We would have to line it up with the front of the garage, which should keep it from shading out the asparagus and sunchoke beds along the chain link fence. With the chain link fence and the garage, we would have to fence off only two sides to create a run for any chickens. It would be a small run for just a few chickens, but enough to start with. The shed would need to be far enough from the garage to access the wall and roof. Now that the branch pile is gone, we can finally clean out the eaves on that side of the garage!

That branch pile was never meant to be there for several years!!

Having it by the garage gives easy access to electricity, plus better storage for feed and bedding, and still be fairly close to the house, where we’d be getting water from.

To prepare for the shed here, the ground will need a small amount of leveling, and the tires/rims can be brought over. I don’t know the dimensions of the shed yet, so I’d just want to have them nearby until I know where to put them. We even have a chain link gate in the storage house, sitting on the remaining section of stairs to the basement, that could be used to access the chicken run after we fence it off. The shed itself needs its floor replaced. It has a flat roof that leaks, which is why the floor got damaged, so I want to put an angle roof over the existing one, with an overhang on all sides.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The next area I wanted to scope out was the maple grove behind the house. The two branch piles there are now gone, so it’s nice and open again. The old garden shed is slowly rotting away. My late brother got it second hand from who knows where, and it was basically shoved in between some trees, on top of rocks. I don’t know if any attempt had been made to level it when it was first brought in, but it’s certainly not level now. The trees are holding it up, though!

Since the outdoor bathroom we were planning to build as a cordwood practise building will have to wait until we’ve cut down and removed about a dozen dead spruce trees, I want to make a garden shed as a cordwood practise building. My original thought was to place it next to where there is a path through the maple grove to the main garden area, with the door facing the path.

The bare ground the branch piles had been on will be planted with a lawn replacement mix of seeds, but as I walked around, I considered using one of those patches as a better location for the shed I have in mind. It’s not going to be very big; the interior is planned to be 6’x8′, plus the width of the cordwood walls, so we have some options. One thing to keep in mind, though, is the water. There is a tap near the old garden area. It used to be right at the path along one side of the garden, but the garden grew smaller over the years, as my parents planted more trees closer to the house, instead of along the north fence line. There are now trees on the other side of the old path, where garden used to be. A lot of trees have been cut down since it was installed, and there’s even a stump right at the tap that still keeps sending out shoots. Other trees have gotten much bigger since it was installed, too. The water source is a tap at the back of the house, and there is a hose buried in the ground. I’ve tried hooking up the hose end, only to have water spraying up from the ground, at the edge of one of the branch piles that was there. One of the goals of this year is to dig up the old hose and replace it. My thought is to get some heavy duty hose and run it through a PVC pipe from tap to tap. That way, if we ever need to replace it again, it would be relatively easy to pull it out and put a new one in, without having to dig a new trench.

Digging that old hose out is not going to be easy. There are going to be a lot of roots in the way!

The main goal being to have that tap at the main garden area working again. It would be a better place to hook up a hose for watering the garden, and I want to make a vegetable washing station. Having the new garden shed near the tap would also be convenient.

The more I walked around the area, the more I realized the best place to build the garden shed would actually be on the other side of where the hose is buried, closer to where the current shed is, and closer to the tap. There are fewer tree stumps to work around, among other things! There would also be more open space in what would be the front of the shed.

In planning the cordwood walls for this, we intend to place longer logs in parts of the wall to support a bench on the outside at one end, which would be closer to the tap. We could even include some longer logs higher up to support a small table or shelf, too. The other end will be facing south, and we plan to have a window and bottle bricks on that side for natural light. With the new location I’m considering, there won’t be as much light, since there are more large maples there. At least one of them is dead and needs to be cut down and untangled from the live tree that’s holding it up. Others are leaning so far over, I plan to cut them to where the trunks are still straight, which will encourage new growth at a lower height. That will be better for the trees, but will eventually block out more light from the planned shed. I don’t mind that too much, though. As long as we have a good, strong garden shed!

So…

Lots of plans. Lots of work to do this summer.

I guess today wasn’t that much of a wasted day, after all.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: potting up Indigo Blue, and progress

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It’s a chilly, damp and dreary day today. You know what that means?

Gotta do something gardening related!

Today, I potted up the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes.

I’d started them in a peat tray with two rows of four square cells. One row for the tomatoes, one for the Little Finger Eggplant. I planted 4 seeds per cell, which got me 11 plants, which is quite a good germination rate.

I wish I could say the same for the eggplant! Only three germinated, so I replanted. As of today, I have finally seen one tiny, barely visible seedling, germinating. Hopefully, that means we’ll see more, soon.

In other things, yesterday I finally saw the tiniest, microscopic oregano seedling, and this afternoon, there was an equally tiny spearmint. The Roma tomatoes sharing the tray, however, are doing great. I’ll have to get more soil for potting up. Quite a bit more. The Roma and Spoon tomatoes will need to be potted up, and eventually the peppers sharing the tray with the Spoon tomatoes will need potting up, too – there are finally more and more of the peppers germinating!

I’m going to start running out of shelf space for the plant trays! It will be good when things warm up enough to start moving trays into the sun room – and start keeping the yard cats out! Last year, we set up a surface using a couple of saw horses and an old closet door I found when cleaning the outhouse over the swing bench, which worked out really well. We’ll have to work out something better to support the lights, though. We’ve got a few weeks to figure things out.

We’ll also have to figure out what to use to protect the plants when it’s time to harden them off. Last year, we used the frame of my daughter’s market tent, with an unused, home made bed frame made out of plywood on it. This kept the plants high enough that none of the cats went after them. The market tent is being use now, though, and the bed frame got painted and is now in the basement, keeping litter boxes raised off the concrete floor – just in case things get wet again. I think I saw a folding table in one of the sheds – it’ll take some doing to access it to confirm, and see if it’s big enough. The problem will be how to keep the cats off, since it would be about half the height of the frame we used before.

We’ll come up with something!

It just felt good to do at least a little big garden related, today!

The Re-Farmer

Some good – but very expensive! – news!

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So we took David in to the vet for what I thought might be a cyst. An abscess was another possibility.

It turned out to be neither.

David had a really bad case of ear mites.

Here he is, with his freshly cleaned ears. He also got a shot of antibiotics to help with the wound he’d scratched on himself.

Then, because if one cat has ear mites, all the cats have ear mites, we got enough medication to treat all of them. One box has enough ear drops for 11 cats. The other has a topical treatment for the remaining five.

Before I left, someone came in to show me how to administer the ear drops so he, at least, has been done.

Fifteen more to go.

Most of the cats don’t actually show signs of ear mites in their behaviour, but I was pretty sure Ginger, at least, had them. I’ve tried to keep his ears clean and treated with mineral oil, but he is not very cooperative about that. Can you blame him?

Once I can get organized with the girls, we’ll start working our way through the cats. I’ll have to make a check list so we can mark off which ones are done, so we don’t loose track and forget someone. The hard part is actually going to be cleaning their ears as much as possible, first.

The life cycle of ear mites is 3 weeks. These meds are a monthly dose. One treatment should be enough, if we get them all done as quickly as possible, but if we were to stagger the treatments over a longer period of time, we’d run the risk of reinfection. Several of our cats have been treated for them before, but I don’t think we’ve ever been able to treat all of them at the same time.

The vet asked about contact with outdoors, and I did mention Potato Beetle being our newest indoor addition, however we would have had the ear mite problem before he came in.

The final bill was just over $640.

Ouch.

That’s more than what I had budgeted to for a plumber.

Thankfully, my daughter will be able to help out, though she has to transfer out of her PayPal account, first, so it will take several business days. I don’t know if she’ll be able to cover the full amount. Whatever it works out to, I hope it’s enough that we can still get the plumber to come in and replace those bathroom taps for us! I guess it’s a good thing I kept forgetting to call him back – and a good thing it is no emergency to get it done!

The most important thing is that the swelling behind David’s ear was nothing major; it was just from him scratching the one spot so much.

The vet that treated David was the same vet I spoke to about Pointy Baby after we got him unstuck from the fence. She was a bit surprised to hear he had passed, but only because when we spoke to her, he had seemed to be doing all right. Given the circumstances, it was most likely due to damage to his neck bones. It wasn’t “broken” – he could still move all his limbs – but considering how long he had to have been struggling to get free, all sorts of damage could have happened. I’m just glad we were able to get him out and he died in the comfort and warmth of my arms, and not while still stuck in the fence!

The whole thing makes having this good news with David much more of a relief.

The Re-Farmer

Well, crud

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Early this evening, my daughter brought David over to the isolation ward, AKA my bedroom, for supervision duty. He’s been scratching a lot at one spot behind his ear to the point of irritation. I’d treated it with an antibiotic ointment, but he’s a bit hard to pin down, so it hasn’t been doing regularly. Today, my daughters noticed that there’s now a patch of fur missing behind his right ear, and the skin is quite red and raw.

I was able to put more antibiotic ointment on it while my daughter held him, but in the process I could feel that there is a definite lump under the wound. My guess is, there’s a cyst that’s bothering him.

Crud.

We were able to call the vet clinic just before it closed. After explaining why we wanted to have him checked, I was asked if we wanted to get him in right away. Of course, I said yes. It turns out they had a cancellation, so we now have an appointment to bring him in tomorrow morning.

He wasn’t too keen on not being allowed out of my room. Especially since I took the opportunity to clean his ears with some mineral oil, just to see. The right ear, with the lump behind it, was very dirty, but there was no blood, which was good. The left ear wasn’t very dirty at all. He was very unhappy with the procedure, so the next while was spent keeping him from scratching while my daughter tried to find a cone. We should have two of them, but no one can remember where they are. She didn’t find one, but after awhile, the irritation went away, and he stopped trying to scratch the area. After several more attempts to get out, he finally settled down, and is now sleeping comfortably on my bed.

Marlee is not happy with the new addition, but they just growled at each other a bit, and are now chillin’ far away from each other.

Hopefully, he will just need a cyst to be drained and that’s it.

We’ll find out, soon enough!

The Re-Farmer

The status of things

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Today may be cooler, but we’re still staying above freezing, and the kitties are just loving it!

I only counted about 16, this morning. As things melt clear and my morning rounds are extending further out, I’m seeing the cats all over the place. The long haired tuxedo followed me all over the place, much like Pointy Baby did – just without actively trying to get me to pick him up and carry him!

I miss Pointy Baby.

The berry bushes we planted last year are almost completely uncovered. That old saw horse with the sticks is over the highbush cranberry the deer kept eating. I checked the other one and can almost, sorta, see leaf buds starting to form!

The main garden area is still mostly covered with snow. If all goes to plan, the area in front of where I’m standing will have at least a couple of trellis tunnels built.

The garlic bed isn’t quite clear, yet!

The standing water has receded more, so I was able to get to the storage warehouse (which I would really love to reclaim as a work shop again!!) and look around. With not being able to get to the dump as often in the winter, we’ve been storing our garbage bags in the old kitchen, where it could freeze. It’s getting too warm for that, now. We need to build a garbage bin outside that is cat and racoon proof to store the bags until we can make our dump runs. There are pieces of plywood and other random boards in the warehouse. With all my parents’ stuff jammed into there, none of it is accessible. Some of the stacks of boxes need to be moved around, anyhow, as they are starting to collapse and tip. That’s as good an excuse as any to move things around. Some of the plywood sheets, however, are behind a couch, and there are all sorts of boxes and bins that predate us on and in front of it. No matter. We’ll figure out how to get to them. I’d love to get rid of all the bags of clothes in there. They’re not even suitable for donating after all this time, but my mother still insists we don’t throw anything out! *sigh* She’s still all worried that someone might come in and steal her old underwear or something. 🤨

While in the shed, I noticed an old broiler pan that will work as a kibble tray. I don’t know why we’ve been finding broiler pans all over the place – no one ever used them for what they were made for – but they make great kibble trays, so I grabbed it. With a bit of readjusting of things, I was able to reclaim two of the baking sheets I got for carrying transplants around that were being used as kibble trays over the winter. There is still one more, just inside the cat house entry, but I will leave that for now. With the two trays I reclaimed, I’ll be able to pot up the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes now.

After I was done my rounds, I made a quick trip to the post office to see if a parcel had arrived. With so much snow gone, once I was back, I actually went to close the gate! I’m seeing our vandal walking by with his dog on the trail cam more often, so I wanted to have it at least closed. This makes it the first time that gate has been closed since the snow got too deep to keep clear, several months ago.

Well, now.

When my brother and I put the repaired gate back up, the two sides were even. That sliding bar holds the two sides closed, and I could put a pin through the pair of holes at the corner, which made sure the wind or whatever didn’t vibrate the bar off the end of the gate. Before winter, it was noticeably shifted, but we could still lift one side of the gate while pushing down on the bar and get the pin through. Now, it’s just too far off! We’ll have to come out with a level and see which gate post has shifted the most. I was thinking the north post was tipping away, but my daughters think the south post is tipping inwards. It could well be both. The gate posts were installed in such a way that they can be adjusted by adding washers to the bolts at the base. My brother had done that when he installed the new hinges that replaced the ones our vandal broke. I’d hoped it would be a few years longer before it had to be done again. It’s been about 3 1/2 years since these were repaired and replaced, so I guess that’s not too bad.

The main thing is, the gate is now closed! Without being able to put the pin in the sliding bar, the chain is extra necessary to make sure they don’t swing open on their own. We’ll also have to touch up the paint a bit. I think I still have a spray can of it around. I’ll have to think about what I can put around where the chain and bar is damaging the paint so quickly.

Things are going to stay colder over the next 10 days or so, with daytime highs just above freezing and overnight lows dipping several degrees below freezing. We’re also getting smatterings of rain. I’d say it’s a good thing we didn’t plant those carrots, even if we did have the plastic to cover them until they germinated. I don’t mind, though. It means things will continue to melt and be absorbed by the ground slowly. I rather like not having to wade through giant muddy puddles to get to the garage. It will give us time to work on other preparations.

I’m just thrilled to be able to get outside and get working again, even if it’s just a tiny bit at a time!

The Re-Farmer

We have access!

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Not quite to everything, but pretty close.

But first, check out this adorableness.

Collin is a hungry boy!

Also, I caught a tongue blehp in the background!

As I write this, we are currently at our expected high of 8C/46F. Things will cool down more over the next while, and we might start getting rain today and tomorrow.

We have standing water in all the usual places, like this low spot by the trail cam stand. I really want to dig a trench along that fence line to collect the water more, so it doesn’t spread out like this. All in good time.

The areas around the garage do still have standing water, but it has receded even as the snow melts, which means the ground is actually absorbing it.

After doing my rounds, I headed into town to refill our water jugs for drinking water and pick up a few fresh groceries. I filled the gas tank on my mom’s car, too. When I was last in the city, gas prices were around 160.9 cents per liter. The Esso station in town I had been going to was at 159.9 0 but the Husky station next to the grocery store was at 148.9! Ever since they reopened after getting some work done, they’ve somehow managed to keep their prices a lot lower than everywhere else.

When I got home, I was actually able to drive into the yard and back the car up to the house to unload! First time this year. Much better than trying to drag a wagon filled with heavy water bottles through mud and water.

We can’t quite get to everything yet, though. The outer yard in front of the barn is all snow, still, except for a “river” opened up by water draining from the moat near the garage. The storage warehouse has a lake in front of it, but I could access the pump shack and the old chicken coop. I was even able go get through some less water filled areas and check on the Korean pine.

It’s still too early to tell if they actually survived their first winter. With two of them, their protective cages were smushed to one side, but the saplings themselves were still protected, and I was able to straighten out the wire. One sapling was still completely covered with snow, but I could see its green needles through the snow.

With things cooling down for the next while, we decided to hold off on planting the carrots we made seed tape with. The plastic covering the bed they will go into is still on place – since it’s just held with duct tape, and the yard cats have a habit of jumping onto our garden protection, there is always some doubt! We will leave it to keep acting as a little greenhouse over that bed as we continue to prepare others over the next while. In particular, I want to get the bed along the chain link fence ready to do our first sowing of peas. The high raised bed in the main garden area no longer has snow on it, but the ground around it is still covered in snow, including the bed the garlic is planted in, so there’s nothing we can do there quite yet. We do need to start gathering the materials to make the permanent trellis tunnels and portable trellises, though, so once the ground is ready, we can get those started right away.

With the ground in the spruce grove now mostly free of snow, this would be a good time to start cutting down some of the dead trees, too, along with the ones I’ve singled out for the permanent trellis tunnel. I should probably get our electric chain saw checked over for service and maintenance first, though.

The to-do list is long! The challenge is prioritizing what needs to be done first, rather than what’s easiest or fastest to start.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: early outdoor prep, and making seed tape

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Yesterday, we made some seed tape, and – best of all! – were able to do some outdoor garden prep. While the main garden area is still buried in snow, the south yard’s garden beds are almost completely clear of snow, and even thawing out a bit.

Here is our progress, so far.

Hope you like it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Oops! and getting ready to direct sow

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Today, I went through my bin of seeds for direct sowing, pulling out the ones that can be sown “as soon as the ground can be worked” or before last frost.

I also made sure the back ordered bean seeds I picked up in the mail yesterday went in with the other beans.

Which is when I discovered something.

I already had some.

The Red Swan beans were not the back ordered beans I was waiting for! I checked my order confirmation emails and saw that I was supposed to get these.

These are the Improved Purple Queen that had been back ordered. From the website:

Spectacular colour! Purple Queen produces high yields and has amazing flavour. While also resistant to cool conditions, Purple Queen matures early and holds its colour in cool conditions making it the perfect bean for home gardeners. Be sure to watch the bean turn from royal purple to luscious dark green as it is being cooked. Resistant to Mosaic Virus. Maturity 52 days.

https://www.veseys.com/ca/purplequeenimprovedbean.html

The Royal Burgundy bush bean we’d grown two years ago was no longer available, so we got this one instead. I wanted a purple bean. So we now have yellow, green and red beans, with a purple on the way. Once I realized a mistake had been made, I emailed Veseys about it, and I already got an order confirmation for the right seeds! Veseys is great for responding to emails. We’ve had an error like this only once before, and they are very fast about fixing things. I’m quite happy with them, that’s for sure.

Interestingly, I just looked at their bush bean collection and found it says the Red Swan bean in the collection is a substitute for the Purple Queen, which is not available for 2023. Looks like they now have Improved Purple Queen, instead.

So that is taken area of.

Meanwhile, these are the seeds I have that can be planted before last frost.

Of these, the Mountain Morado corn can be planted 1-2 weeks before last frost. The peas can be planted in mid-April or May. Everything else can be planted as soon as the ground can be worked.

I won’t be doing the kohlrabi. Every year we’ve tried them, we’ve had nothing, and I don’t know why. I do want to grow them. Just not this year. The radishes probably won’t be planted, but if I do plant some, it will be just a few seeds for plants that will be grown for their pods. I’m still curious to try them. We are not big fans of radishes, but I want to see if we like the pods.

The rest, we shall see when and where we will be able to plant things. I still don’t know where to plant the two types of poppies or the strawberry spinach. They will be treated as perennials and allowed to self seed, so they need permanent locations, and the two types of poppies need to be well away from each other to avoid cross pollination. I’ll figure it out.

The main thing I want to plant as soon as possible are the Naval carrots. The Uzbek Golden carrots are described as a cool weather carrot, but there is nothing about planting before last frost, so I will wait on those. I still have the pelleted Napoli carrots, from two years ago. That summer, they were repeatedly eaten by groundhogs and I finally gave up on the bed, only to discover they still managed to produce. They were quite good. If I have the space, I do want to try them again. As for the Naval carrots, I decided to make seed tape with them. I’ll include that in a video I will be making tonight, along with how prepping the low raised beds went. Hopefully, I’ll have a relatively short video ready for tomorrow.

Things are supposed to cool down for the next little while, and we may actually get rain tomorrow or the day after! So I’m not in any rush to get seeds in the ground, but I do want to get as much space ready for them as I can.

It felt so good to be digging in the dirt again!

The Re-Farmer

Morning finds

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

What a gorgeous, gorgeous morning! I can’t believe how much of the snow is gone! Better yet, the ground seems to actually be absorbing a fair amount of it, and the “moat” around the garage has actually receded a bit. We didn’t even reach freezing temperatures overnight. There’s a section of snow built up by our neighbour plowing that got washed away like a river by the accumulating water, draining into the outer yard towards the barn, and there is hardly any water in the exposed grass. Water has accumulated along the fence line from the garage to the gate, where it is lower and drains into the ditch, and the snow around the gate cam’s post – even the gate itself, on that side – is completely clear of snow. The other side of the driveway at the gate is shaded by a huge spruce tree, but even there, I could probably access and close the other half of the gate.

This beautiful boy followed me around the entire time I was doing my rounds. He even let me get a burr out of his fur under his neck. He still won’t let me get the ones on his tail, though, and there are quite a few of them. I’ve never seen burrs being this much of a problem before. Even Rolando Moon showed up with burrs stuck on her tail and back. She wouldn’t let me pull them out, either. At least with her short fur, she has a better chance of getting them out herself.

Snow around the house is disappearing quickly. Yesterday evening, I went around picking up the long plastic strips from the shingle adhesive that got missed in the snow. This morning, however, this was uncovered.

This was not there last fall, before the snow fell. It’s not far from where groundhogs had dug a tunnel behind the mock orange tree, next to the steps to the dining room door that I kept trying to fill in. The groundhogs weren’t as much of a problem last year as the year before – I think too many of their dens got flooded out – and I eventually stopped trying to fill in the hole when it looked like it was no longer being dug out and used. It’s still there, but partially filled, hidden behind the mock orange. There are no fresh signs of digging there. This hole, meanwhile, has the ground around it undisturbed. Which suggests to me that it was dug out from the inside, perhaps as a “back door” to the den below.

Talking to my brother and his wife yesterday, they mentioned that their sump pump is going off more often. When I was doing my evening rounds yesterday (that is something I can start doing more thoroughly now!), I made sure to check, and the hose from ours is now clear of snow, but so far, it has not gone off. The reservoir has been slowly accumulating water, but as of last night, the concrete is still dry. I even checked the floor drain on the other side. If there was water being diverted by the weeping tile under the new basement to the septic tank, I would see it there. There is no new water there (though the thinnest of roots are growing under drain cover!). So for all the snowmelt and accumulated water I am seeing outside, we are still actually quite dry!

Something else I checked while doing my rounds.

Last night, I noticed the three low raised beds near the compost pile were mostly uncovered. This morning, two of them were completely clear of snow, while the third still has only a small amount. I checked on of the open ones, and found I could dig my fingers into the soil. I’m even seeing some weeds starting to grow, and could pull up the ones with shallower roots.

This means that I could actually plant in these beds.

I have a few things that can be direct sown “as soon as the ground can be worked”. It doesn’t matter if the ground it still frozen and inch or so below, and they can even handle a bit of snowfall. This includes things like peas, carrots and beets. From what I’ve read, I could even transplant our onions and shallots out in these conditions!

Which I’m not going to do. At least not quite yet. I want to break up the soil a bit more and pull up and weeds and roots in the low raised beds. Later today, I will check the new beds I finished last fall in the old kitchen garden and see what condition they are in. There are two more beds in there I want to raise a bit higher, too, but I’ll need the ground to thaw a bit more, first.

Then I have to consider what I want to actually sow first, and where. The high raised bed in the main garden area is almost clear, but the snow around it and on the low raised beds is still too deep.

I can’t believe I’m actually thinking about sowing and transplanting outside, and we’re just reaching the middle of April!

The Re-Farmer