Okay, it could have been worse, but I had a bit of a disaster this morning.
While trending the seedlings and doing a tray rotation, I topped up the larger cell tray of San Marzano tomatoes with more soil. I’d deliberately half filled the cells to start, and now I’m “potting up” the seedlings this way.
After carefully putting the soil around the seedlings, tamping it down gently, then gently top watering to settle the soil around the stems more and avoid air gaps, I went to put the tray back into the mini greenhouse frame at the window. I had to rotate the peppers and eggplant tray back to the top, as they’re getting too tall to be anywhere else, so the tomatoes needed to go one shelf down. I’ve got the LED lights set up above the lower shelves, but I did move the cables around to get them out of the way.
Well, not enough.
Between getting caught on a cable and the uneven bottom of the tray catching on one of the wire squares on the shelf itself, the entire tray ended up sliding off the far side. There is a gap between the shelf and the wall, because of a baseboard heater (these are never used and the breakers are off. I don’t remember them ever being used when this part of the house was built!). The tray, however, landed against the window sill, rather than sliding all the way down to the floor.
In the process of falling, it knocked one of the onion trays on the shelf below, off in the other direction.
What. A. Mess.
I was able to retrieve the tray, but a lot of the soil – and water! – was all over the window sill, down the wall, and on the carpet below.
The shag carpet.
*sigh*
I think they’ll survive, though.
Once the tomato tray was cleared away, I had to pick up the onions before I could reach anything else. They are in four sections of a vegetable tray, and the roots actually held everything together pretty well, but some soil was lost. The bundles could be popped back into the tray. I think they’ll survive, too.
The mini greenhouse frame had to be cleared of everything else before I could move it and reach the biggest mess. I was able to save some of the spilled soil, but most of it will have to be vacuumed up.
I fixed up the tomato seedlings as best I could, and had to add more soil to a few of them.
For now, I’ve got the trays spread out in various sun spots, though those will be gone soon. We have a fan going in the room for the seedlings all the time, so that will help dry things out faster. Once the mess can be vacuumed, we can put the frame back and return the seedling trays.
It could have been worse.
Well. I suppose it still could be. Let’s see how the seedlings survive over the next little while!
I am so loving these longer days. Not only is it beautifully warm out, at 7C/45F (yeah; I know – in a couple of months, this is going to feel cold!), but it’s 6pm as I start this, and still bright and sunny out!
The dump is open today, so I took advantage of the gorgeous weather to do a dump run – hopefully, we’ll be able to do these a lot more regularly again! – then headed into town. We had a couple of the 18.9L/5 gallon water bottles to refill, so I took advantage of that, too, and took advantage of some sales at the grocery store, too. Then, icing on the cake, I had enough loyalty points to bring the bill down by $20. My husband’s claim for his CPAP supplies may have been reimbursed, but every little bit still helps.
When I got home, I drove into the inner yard to unload and saw this.
Rolando Moon was in there when I drove in to load the truck for the dump, and still there when I got back!
After we were done unloading the truck and parking it, I did a few tasks outside while I still had my rubber boots on, including checking the outhouse. The water in front is so deep, I got my pantlegs wet, even though they were rolled up. While I managed to find rubber boots with wide enough tops that they fit over my calves, they don’t fit over my pantlegs as well. Which gets amusing. One of my calves is a bit larger than the other, so the boot is very snug against the skin. As a result, when I walk around, it makes farting noises.
*snicker*
It doesn’t take much to entertain me.
As expected, the pit under the outhouse is quite full of water. We’ll have to give the outhouse a spring cleaning, soon, if only to get rid of the cobwebs under the seat! Hopefully, this year, we will finally be able to do something about the roof and give the outside a scrape and paint, thanks to the small scaffolding we were able to buy last summer. This outhouse will have to do until we can build the outdoor bathroom we have in mind, and it will probably be at least another year before we can start on that, in the location we have planned for it.
Speaking of things to do, there’s one thing we should be able to manage soon. Take care of that raised bed that Rolando is lounging in! I’ll have to snag one of my daughters to help me move the cover off and set it aside. We can then remove the mulch and harvest the last of the carrots in there. I want to pick up some metal corner reinforcements for all the raised bed covers I made. With this one, I want to add horizontal supports across the middle, at the top of the arches. I’ll need to do that with the tiny one in the old kitchen garden, too. The hoops hold the mesh up fine on their own, but I didn’t count on the cats jumping on them and lying on them quite so much!
Whether I get the extra supports done right away or not, the main thing I want to do is put plastic over it, then put it back on the bed, to make a little greenhouse and heat the soil up faster. The bed next to it, where the corn was last year, has the box cover plus with the third arched cover I made, stored on top of it. I’m quite pleased with how the arched covers fit on the box cover so well; that will come in very handy for when we have taller crops that need to be protected. For now, though, I want to separate them and put plastic on that arched cover, too, and get a second bed warmed up. The first arched cover I made, using strong fence wire, is on the newest raised bed in the main garden area and, at the moment, we won’t be able to get at it. The snow there is still too deep.
Still, if we get at least a couple of the raised beds in the east yard warmed up faster, that means we can do some direct sowing earlier, too! Of course, I can just lay the plastic directly on the top of the third bed in there, and it’ll warm things up just like that, too.
Oh, that reminds me. This morning, I was checking on the seeds I decided to sprout before planting. The container they’re in was just on the coffee table in the cat-free zone (aka: the living room). I keep forgetting how cold that room gets. The damp paper towels were way too chilly. So I reversed how they were in the container, putting the damp paper towel with the seeds on the semi-transparent lid, then covering it with the black plastic base, before putting the whole thing on the heat mat in the big greenhouse aquarium. They need warmth, but not light. Hopefully, that will help. I’ll have to check them more often, since the warmth will also dry out the paper towel.
Meanwhile, we can expect things to get very messy out there for the next while. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to start getting highs in the double digits (Celsius), and even the overnight lows are supposed to stay above freezing! It’s also supposed to stay nice and sunny, too. As mild as our winter was last year, it is still a huge psychological boost to finally have sunshine and warmth!
I just have to post this picture, taken one year ago today.
Yeah, we’re pretty ahead of the game, this year! 😂😄😂😄
Yesterday was incredibly gorgeous, reaching 8C/46F, bright and sunny. Things were melting all over the place! I’m loving the longer days, too. My daughter was able to slog through the snow to do a perimeter check I haven’t been able to do for some time, and tells me she is seeing signs of new growth all over the place.
As I write this, we’ve reached our expected high of 6C/43F, with a “feels like” of 11C/52F The outside cats are in heaven with these temperatures!
There’s the cat with the messed up eye, which seems to be doing better. I counted 32 this morning. I did not see Sad Face anywhere.
Speaking of messed up eyes, Wolfman’s eye really does seem to be looking better to me. I got a call fairly late last night from the Cat Lady about him. She’s just gotten a call from the vet! He’d felt bad about not really answering her when she showed him the pictures of Wolfman and he kinda blew her off. So he took another look at the pictures. He thinks there is still vision in the eye, and it can be saved. There’s a non-steroidal drop I don’t know the name of that he thought would be the right treatment. The Cat Lady told me has a cat she’d used this stuff on before. She had been sure this cat would lose it’s eye, as it was all shriveled. When this stuff was prescribed to her, she had been shocked. She’s never seen such a tiny amount before. A single drop is applied, every 2 weeks, for a 6 week treatment. So, 3 drops total – at about $100 a drop! However, after just the first application, the next day the eye looked almost completely recovered, and the cat is still doing fine. The vet is aware of the situation, though, so if Wolfman in brought in, under her name, he does have samples he can give her for free. !!! Technically, he’s not supposed to give them out to the general public, but she’s a rescue, and they’ve got a good working relationship. They are a business, though, and need to do things the right way.
So next week, I’ll meet up with her with the Wolfman, she’ll take him in for the usual shots and blood tests, and he’ll get his eye properly checked out. Who knows. He might not need this stuff, after all. The main thing, though, is that the vet thinks there is still sight in the eye, and it can be saved. At least that’s what he can say based on just looking at the (rather horrifying, I thought) pictures of the eye.
After all the usual vet care and assessments, Wolfman will then be officially put up for adoption. I told her, I would expect him to be adopted out fairly quickly. He is such a gorgeous cat, with this massive, fluffy tail! Talking about him with her family, it seems they are already bracing themselves, though. So many cats from us have become permanent members of their household, they’re half expecting to fall in love with him and keeping him. 😂😂 He’ll be going into the “cat room” part of their house, for the adoptables, with other cats, but if he ends up in the regular household…
They know themselves too well!
That got us to talking about some updates she got from other cats they found homes for, for us. She sent me a picture of one bonded pair that were adopted out together. One had been so very ill, but is now fully recovered. They are currently hanging out at their winter home, in North Carolina, where they had been flown out first class (!!) and are living in the lap of luxury.
Can she find people like that to adopt me, please?
Then there was another pair they adopted out for us. One of them we’d named Plushy, because she looked like a gorgeous, fluffy stuffed toy. She has another name now. Shortly after adoption, she had a sudden emergency surgery that everyone was surprised by, and ended up having a portion of her small intestine removed. There had been zero sign of any problems, then boom, this happened. She recovered very well, though, and the couple that adopted her and her buddy just dote on them.
They also entered her into a cat show. The show was for Norwegian Forrest cats and Maine Coons, but of course there is no lineage for Plushy, so she was entered in the “long haired house cat” category.
She won third place!
So she is certified gorgeous!
I’m absolutely delighted that these former yard cats are now in such loving homes, and living their best lives.
The Wolfman is not even a year old yet, but he’s already a stunner, and I think we’ve got another David happening – we think he’s going to be a big, fluffy boy! So different from his siblings. Soot Sprite is getting bigger, but he’s still a very slight cat. Tiny, The Beast, on the other hand, looks like she’s going to stay pretty tiny! She’s another stunner, too. They are both short haired cats, and absolutely sleek.
Oh, I almost forgot. The Cat Lady has been talking to the vet at the clinic that still does cheap spay days. While they will also do males on these days, they’re looking to do a males only day in the near future. That’s good news for us, because among the outside cats, the most socialized ones that we could easily get into carriers, are all male. If we could manage to get Sad Face in there, that would be amazing, but getting him into a carrier would definitely take some doing! He’s such a big boy, too, there’s only one carrier we have he would even fit in. We can easily find 5 outside cats for our 5 hard sided carriers, if the Cat Lady can things out. We’ve also got the 2 soft sided carriers, so we could potentially bring in 7 cats, but with outside cats, they might actually tear their way out of one of those. They may be more socialized, but stuffing them into a carrier is something else entirely!
We shall see how that goes. We’re still waiting on our tax returns. I hear these are delayed because Canada Revenue had to fire several hundred people who inappropriately got CERB money during the illegal lockdowns. Not very encouraging to know so many tax department employees had no problem committing fraud, but not very surprising, either. Hopefully, the refunds will be processed soon. Aside from potentially paying for cheap neuters, it’ll be nice to finally get the pill switch replaced on our septic tank, so we’re not having to turn the pump on manually several times a day!
Ah, well. It is what it is. It’ll work out.
Meanwhile, I’m still giggling over the updates on our adopted out yard babies. I knew we had some really gorgeous cats, but now it’s official; some of our yard cats are show quality gorgeous!
It’s been a quiet, homey sort of day today. Not much to write about.
I head-counted 31 while feeding the outside cats this morning. Then, as I was returning from my morning rounds, I saw Broccoli and Sprout had arrived – they, at least, are very distinctive! – making 33 in total.
I heard back from the Cat Lady about Wolfman. She talked to the vet about his eye, but the vet would not comment either way without seeing Wolfman directly. I was hoping to at least get a ballpark figure on what a removal might cost, if one is needed. So she will let me know the next time she needs to be near our usual half way meeting point to pick up Wolfman and pass on some kibble donations.
As for Wolfman, if we were to go strictly by his behavior, you might miss that there is anything wrong at all. Just a little while ago, I saw him dashing around me, and it does seem like he can still see through that eye. Given what it looked like in the photos I managed to get, that’s surprising. He may simply have gotten used to it. She still sometimes squints with the one eye, but that’s about it. There is no appearance of discomfort, and he’s his usual playful self. He’s even still play fighting with his adopted siblings, which may well be how the eye was injured in the first place!
In other things, I’ve decided to try sprouting the seeds I got soaking yesterday, before potting them. They are now between layers of damp paper towel in a take out container. With large seeds like this, I covered the semi-transparent lid to reduce light exposure, and I did also scarify their outer shells.
While tending the seedlings, I noticed a strange thing with the large tray that has the eggplant and hot peppers. Most of them are getting nice and big, but a few seem to be wilting, and are more stunted. The stunted ones are all on one side of the tray.
I need to look up my old post about starting these. This tray may be the one where I ran out of one brand of seed starting mix, and opened a bag from another brand. Most of the cells in the tray would have a bit of both, but one end would have had only the second brand.
What I didn’t do was mark which side that was!
If this tray is the mixed brand one, then the San Marzano tomato tray is all the second brand. So far, they seem fine. In fact, I’ll be needing to add more mix to top up the cells around their stems soon. I’ll leave them in these cells a while longer, before I thin by transplanting.
Ah, I just went and looked up my old post. Yes, this is the tray with the two different brands of seed starter mix. Considering that I had the tray mostly full before I had to open the second bag, there would be fewer cells with the second mix, only, and the others would have had the first brand in the bottoms, and then just got topped up with the second brand before the seeds were sowed. Which means the smaller number of cells that have stunted seedlings in them would most likely be the ones with the Miracle Grow brand of seed starting mix. I believe the other brand was Jiffy, but I’m not sure.
Dangit. I should have taken better notes! Ah, well.
We have more seedlings that we need, so if some don’t do as well, that’s okay. At long as we have at least a few of each that survive transplanting, we’ll have enough for our needs.
I had a much interrupted night last night, so the girls took care of the morning rounds for me, so I could sleep in.
Well. As much as the suddenly cuddly cats would let me! 😄
I did end up having to go to the post office to pick up some packages, and ended up going into town to run some errands while the post office was closed over the lunch hour. I finished too quickly, so I used up time by going to the local dollar store – I forget which franchise it’s actually part of.
The tomatoes and peppers on the heat mat are ready to be moved aside, so today I prepared the next batch of seeds to start.
Oops on the labels on the left and the centre!
The packages across the top of the photo were my dollar store find. After watching the Gardening in Canada video about useful Dollarama garden finds, I went looking to see if they had clear plastic drop cloths. They did, so I picked up three of them; one for each of the raised bed covers we have, with the curved tops. This plastic is quit thin – about half the thickness of actual greenhouse plastic – so I don’t expect them to last more than a season but, at 12′ x 8′, they should be just the right size to cover the frames. If we can get at the frames and cover them early enough, they will made nice little greenhouses for the three low raised beds next to the spruce grove. The sooner we can warm up the soil, the sooner I can direct sow those seeds that can be planted before our last frost.
Until then, I got my gardening fix by preparing Crespo squash, drum gourd and luffa seeds, all of which have a long growing season. There were only 6 luffa seeds left in the package and they’re pretty small, so I’m using all of them. With the drum gourds, I still had some left in an open package, plus I have an unopened package. Because the seeds are so large, I chose only 4 of the drum gourds and the Crespo squash seeds. There are still more seeds left in the Crespo squash seed package, too.
Yes, I did catch on that the plant labels are under the wrong seeds! The smooth seeded Crespo squash’s bowl is on the correct seed package. The drum gourd seeds look like they have a rough texture, but have a soft surface that’s almost fluffy.
Usually, I would scarify the seeds and plant them after only a short presoak, mostly because I would forget to let them soak overnight. Last year, I had such trouble with them and had to reseed the pots several times. This time, I am making sure to do a longer pre-soak. I got them going in the mid afternoon so, by morning, they should have about twice the soaking time compared to leaving them overnight.
I plan to split the seeds between two pots per variety. Hopefully, we’ll have decent germination. If only one seed each manages to germinate and survive transplanting, I’ll be happy!
Now that I think about it, this would be a good time to try doing it the way Maritime Gardening suggests; leaving the seeds on wet paper towel until the start to germinate, the planting them. Hmmm… Yes. I think I’ll do that – after they’ve had their overnight soak. With big seeds in particular, I think that would be especially helpful.
When my old computer died, I had an order ready in the shopping cart of another seed company. By the time I got my new computer and was able to log in again, the cart had been dumped, of course. I placed an order with what I could remember of it. There turned out to be some squash varieties my daughter had asked for that I had forgotten about.
Veseys has a “wish list” function, which comes in very handy! They also had the same varieties. So, I took advantage of the Maritime Gardening promo code and placed an order with the forgotten seed varieties. Photos belong to Veseys.
A new take on a traditional favourite. Switch up your next holiday meal to include Mashed Potatoes acorn squash! The white exterior and interior closely resembles traditional mashed potatoes when baked and mashed. This compact plant produces 3-4 fruit approximately 1.5 lb maturing in 90-95 days. Approx. 15 seeds/pkg.
We have a 99-100 day growing season. We could direct sow these!
Warm up the oven! Baked Potatoes is an Acorn type squash that has high yields of 6-8 fruit on a compact bush plant. They mature into beige coloured 1-1.5 lb fruit with creamy white flesh in 100-110 days. Approx. 15 seeds/pkg.
At up to 110 days to maturity, these ones would have to be started indoors.
We might not actually start either of them, this year. We have so many winter squash seeds. Having said that, the only package we have that we want to plant all the seeds is the variety pack. We don’t know what seeds are actually in there, and we got it as a way to try some of the more interesting varieties we don’t want to buy entire packages of seeds for.
Having said that, we have things like the Pink Banana and the Georgia Candy Roaster, which we really enjoyed, that we would want to grow again. Plus, there are other varieties that we tried to grow that didn’t succeed, because they got baked in the sun. So we will probably try to start other varieties, but we can’t do too many. We just won’t have the space this year, unless we manage to build a LOT of new beds early enough!
Ordering these seeds with the promo code got me free shipping for the entire order, and my last item was these.
Fragaria. Sweet homegrown berries all summer long. Albion is a day-neutral type that produces berries all summer and into the fall. In autumns with late frost we have picked berries well into October. These plants will produce large, sweet strawberries. Great for growing in hanging planters and pots. Produces fruit in first year. Strawberries are planted 12-18” apart, in rows 4 feet apart and are hardy to zone 2 if covered. No. 1 sized root.
This is a package of 8 roots, which will be shipped while still dormant, in time for immediate planting, based on our hardiness zone. We have some strawberries now, but haven’t been getting a lot of fruit. The transplants we’ve had for a couple of years are still in recovery mode, first from being flooded out, then from being eaten by deer! The ones we grew from seed last year did start to bloom and form tiny fruit near the end of the season. The growing kit they came in did not give the name of the variety, so I don’t know of the tiny fruit was because they were not really mature plants yet, or if that’s the size the variety will always have.
Either way, we want a lot more strawberries, so these everbearing ones will be a good start. I do plan to get other varieties over the next few growing seasons, but we will also be saving new plants from the runners to increase our numbers. There are a few areas I want to plant strawberries in to create a sort of groundcover, but I’m not going to get very far with that, with only 8 plants! Depending on how things go later in the season, we might buy some transplants, too. We shall see.
On a completely different note, I contacted the Cat Lady about Wolfman, asking if she knew what it might cost, if Wolman’s damaged eye needs to be removed. She had messaged me letting me know she has some cat food to donate to us, and brought up getting Ginger. When I told her about Wolfman’s status, she ended up phoning me. She suggested that they might take Wolfman instead of Ginger, and get him to a vet, since Wolfman is also on the adoption list. She’s had cats that had to have an eye removed before, and it had cost $1800. !!!! I can’t believe the cost for that at a city vet would be higher than getting an amputation done at a small town vet! She will be seeing her regular vet tomorrow with another cat, and said she would talk to him about it. She asked for some photos that she could show him. As a rescue, she can sometimes get better pricing, plus they might be willing to do a payment plan, though she is already making payments on other bills at that clinic. She tells me that all the rescues are really struggling to cover vet care right now. The donations just aren’t coming in, when so many people are now struggling to pay their own bills and still have money to buy groceries. Which means she’s offering to cover Wolfman’s care out of pocket!
She will let me know what the vet tells her when she gets home tomorrow evening. Hopefully, it won’t be too bad. Either way, when my return comes in, I want to make a “donation” to help cover at least part of the bill! We should find out more by the end of tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ve already received an email from Canada Revenue confirming my tax return was processed and the amount I’ll be getting automatically deposited, so hopefully, that won’t be long now.
Then I got my daughters to help me get a picture of Wolfman’s eye. It took some doing, but I managed it.
It’s the first time I’ve been able to get a good look at it, and wow. Yeah. I understand now, what the girls were trying to describe to me. It looks really bad! It may be possible to save it, but I think that’s highly unlikely. The Cat Lady, however, has dealt with this a few times, and she’s had cats that she was sure would lose a damaged eye, only to have it heal completely, while others she thought were not as bad, ended up losing it. Until a vet sees him, we won’t know, but the sooner he gets to a vet, the better.
On another note, she’s frustrated with trying to adopt out Ginger. There was the one person who was all ready to take on a three legged cat, filled out the application, etc. – then suddenly decided to get a kitten.
At least she was able to adopt out a couple other challenging cats, though, so that opens up a couple more spaces, too.
We shall see how things go with Wolfman. He’s such a handsome, fluffy boy, I can see him being adopted out rather quickly, even if he end up loosing that eye.
We had visitors yesterday afternoon. Three of them!
They were very curious about that cat, too! They hung around for a while before coming into the yard and checking out the compost heap.
This morning I counted either 28 or 29 yard cats. I’m not quite sure.
It’s not actually the black cats I loose track with. It’s the “printer babies”. All the white and greys!
Here, you can see the one cat’s messed up eye. That inner eyelid is making it harder to tell, but the pupil has a cloudy spot on one side that seems to be clearing up, while the other side is still looking brown.
On the topic of messed up eyes.
We’re going to have to change focus for when my tax return comes in. We still have to get the pill switch replaced on our septic tank, but we’ll have to wait on the pipe clearing. We need to get the Wolfman to a vet. After talking with the Cat Lady and showing her pictures of his eye that looks like it got scratched by another cat, we treated him with the last of our Metacam and monitored him. The rescue’s donations had run out, so even though Wolfman is on the list for adopting out, there’s nothing for vet care. Any donations they do get are quickly used up with spays and neuters.
I have the hardest time seeing the condition of the Wolfman’s eye, but he was opening it more often and blinking, so I thought it was getting better. The inner lids are still pretty swollen, but we can’t get more Metacam without a prescription, we can’t get a prescription without an exam, and we can’t get an exam done until we have funds. The girls seem to have better luck with seeing the eye, and this morning, they told me it was looking deflated.
*sigh*
Which means when we go bring him in, most likely the eye will need to be removed. I have no idea how much that will cost. I don’t think it’ll be as much as an amputation, of course; those both cost in the $1300 range. Still, it is a surgery, and that’s always expensive.
Damn.
Today, I got a call from the tax preparer. They just had one question for me, and then our files were done. I’ve already made the drive over to pay the bill, brought my husband’s form home for signing, and got it back right away. I didn’t even look to see what the final numbers were until I got home. Mine was exactly as I expected. I have no income, so I’m getting my caregiver tax credit, and that’s it. My husband qualifies for the disability tax credit, but his private disability and his CPP Disability combined bumps him into a different tax bracket. Without the disability tax credit, he’d be owing. Instead, he typically gets less than $20 back. That changed this year, though, and he’s actually getting more. Not much more, but enough to be helpful.
What isn’t helpful is that as of today, appropriately on April Fool’s Day, yet another Trudeau carbon tax has kicked in, which will make the cost of everything go up. I’ll let Quick Dick McDick explain it, as only he can. Language warning.
Not only is the idea that taxing “carbon” is somehow going to make the weather gooder laughable (keep in mind that we are carbon based life forms on a carbon based planet, so taxing “carbon” is taxing life itself – oh, and if you take into account Canada’s vast Boreal forests, we are actually CO2 negative), but we keep getting told that we will somehow get back more than we paid in.
Our Prime Dictator has openly admitted that he can’t do math, but you’d think even a trust fund baby born with a silver spoon in his mouth would know better. Which I’m sure he does, but the psychologist in my recognizes a narcissistic psychopath when I see one.
We’re told that we are supposed to be getting these quarterly rebates to make up for the new tax. My daughters get them, along with the GST rebate. Paltry sums, really, considering how expensive everything has become because of these taxes. My husband and I don’t get either. Apparently, he makes too much money on disability, which is insane. Since we’re a married couple filing our tax returns together, that means neither of us get any federal rebates. Sometimes our province will throw out a bone, but even then, I get it but my husband doesn’t. No doubt there are plenty of other families in our position that will keep seeing our costs increase, but never see any of these “getting back more than you pay” rebates. Then the powers that be will and their propagandists blame the eeeeeevil capitalists and the Conservatives for everything, right on script.
For those of you who have been following Karlyn Borysenko, who has been deep diving into the “woke left” for years now, you know that this isn’t really a politically left or right thing, but the result of decades of neo-Marxism.
I don’t want to go too far into this sort of thing on my blog, though, but this is something that affects all of us directly. Even us, in our little corner in the boonies, and the choices we need to make, so I feel I have to talk about it at least a little bit.
Looking at just the past few years, on top of the carbon taxes, they’re also punishing the use of nitrogen (which makes up almost 80% of our atmosphere) to grow food, they’ve declared that home gardeners are actually causing more “climate change” damage than large scale agriculture, and cow farts are heating up the globe, so they’re trying to get rid of cows in favour of ultra processed “plant based meat”, even though they know this stuff is worse for both our health and the environment, and so on.
What it comes down to is that people like us – people who just want to be as self sufficient as possible, and produce as much of our own food as we can – are going to have a much harder time of it, unless there are massive changes in the next few years. Having homeschooled our daughters, we’re already used to autocrats either trying to make what we were doing illegal or, failing that, making it so they control what, when and how we did it. During our final homeschooling years, we came very close to losing so much in the province we lived in at the time, as the NDP and the teacher’s union tried to push legislation that would have literally controlled what parents could talk to their kids about at the dinner table. They tried twice, actually. They learned from the first time, so the second time, they framed it as a way to “fight hate” and “homophobia”. A remarkable number of homeschoolers fell right in line, and they succeeded in pitting homeschoolers against each other. I don’t think people realize just what a disaster it would have been, had the proposed legislation passed, it was so broad and ambiguous. It’s just another step to see the same thing being tried to control our ability to grow our own food and live self sufficiently. I mean, it’s already illegal for a lot of people to grow food in their yards or keep a few chickens in their back yard. Hell, the mayor of Toronto is pushing to tax rain, for crying out loud.
Of course, we’re already seeing the effect of this new tax, and it just kicked in today. When I was in town to see the tax preparer, I saw gas prices had gone up another 4 cents per litre. Honestly, I expected it to jump higher than that.
Meanwhile, the price of groceries is going to keep going up, tradespeople like plumbers and our septic guy are going to have to increase their prices again, and the value of our dollar is going to keep going down due to this artificially created inflation.
Which makes what we are trying to do here, just to feed ourselves, all the more important.
At least while growing and producing our own food is still legal.
The Re-Farmer 