I remembered to go out in the dark and take a flash picture of the sign I’m working on. Looking at it on my phone, I didn’t think I got very good coverage. It wasn’t until I uploaded the photos onto my desktop that I could see how funny it was.
On the sign itself, you can see spots that are reflecting more than the rest. They were the same in each of the photos, which I took at different angles, which tells me that yes, it’s the covering, and not, say, the LED flash on my phone.
It’s what I see around the sign that is funny. All those white looking spots around the sign? Even on the grass? That’s the reflective paint! It’s everywhere! :-D It was a bit windy when I was spraying it. I expected a bit on the wall of the cat’s house, and a smattering on the posts below, but I did not expect to see that much on the grass or on the ends of the sledge the cat’s house is resting on!
So… if it’s calm enough tomorrow, I’ll give it another coat, then check it again! :-D
While I was outside, using the wood chipper, my daughter was busy dealing with our last summer squash!
She made four 750ml jars of refrigerator pickles with most of them.
The rest went into a summer squash and tomato soup. I think she actually used canned soup as a base, with the summer squash and the teeny tomatoes we’d harvested recently, plus our own onions and garlic, added in, then whizzed with the immersion blender when they were cooked.
With the lovely weather we’ve had, the branch piles are dry enough that I went out to do some chipping.
This time, I took the chipper into the maple grove to start on one of the branch piles near the old garden shed. In this location, I didn’t bother bringing the collection bag, since the wood chips would be used in the nearby garden beds.
Before I started chipping, I sorted and pruned through the branches for those small enough to go into the shredder chute, and those big enough – and straight enough – to go into the chipper chute. Just enough to clear space around the chipper and get started.
The first thing I discovered once I started it up without the collection bag is, there is a LOT of air pressure coming out of that thing!
This photo is after I’d chipped the first batch of sorted branches. Look at that hole the air made in the soil! That was after only about 15-20 minutes of chipping.
Here I’m working on the second batch of branches. When I started, the branch pile had extended out to where you can see the larger stick pile, and where you can see the taller grass in the foreground.
Getting the branches ready for chipping or shredding took a lot more time than expected. This is a big part of why…
The red lines in this picture trace a single branch. This was pruned from an apple tree, and they are the worst for branches and twigs going in all directions! The branches that were big enough to go into the chipper chute not only had to be cleared of any twigs or side branches that might get hung up in the opening, but they also had to be relatively straight, to avoid getting jammed.
After chipping and shredding a second batch, I sorted through the branches until my daughter came out to tell me supper was ready, which was my cue to stop for the day.
In the photo, pile 1 is the larger branches for the chipper. Pile 2 are the twigs up to 1/2 inch in diameter for the shredder. Pile 3 is the wibblely, wobblely, twisty branches that can’t go into the chipper. There is also a pile 4 started, well away from the work area, for the larger branches and tree trunks that are larger than 3 inches in diameter.
When I started the second batch, the chips were being blown around so much, I rifled through the junk pile behind the garden shed and found a piece of rotting plywood to use as a deflector. By the time I was done, the hole was so much deeper, I put the brick down. The next time I bring out the chipper, it will hopefully prevent the air pressure from making the hole even deeper.
Also, there’s basically no chips! All those branches, and there’s next to nothing. Yes, a lot of the chips are blown around the area, but even so, the branches got reduced to a very small amount of chips. I did make quite a dent in the pile, too. It basically shows that these branch piles are more air than wood!
The amount of time spent trimming and sorting the branches to fit is much more than I expected. It’s not that big of a deal when working on one of the little piles in the trees, but it’s going to be insane when working on one of the big piles. For those, it might still be worth hiring the tree company with their massive chipper. They don’t need to do any trimming at all, and can shove whole branches into the chute. When I got an estimate done, the guy figured it would take 6 hours to do the two big piles in the outer yard, the one by the garage, and the piles in the maple grove. It took me about 1 1/2 hours to do the amount of sorting and chipping I did today. At that rate, if the girls and I were all sorting and chipping at the same time, we might be able to finish the pile I was working on today, in maybe 4 hours – and we would still have the bigger pieces and twisted branches left over to deal with, most of which their chipper could handle.
I will continue to focus on the smaller piles in the inner yard. Hopefully, next year, we will have the budget to get the tree guys to come out with their monster machine to do the big piles. :-) Meanwhile, we can also use the chipper each time we work on cleaning up the spruce grove, cutting down those dead trees, and not be adding to the piles anymore!
Thanks to my husband being up at ungodly hours and feeding the outside cats for me, I didn’t have to head out for my morning rounds until things had started to warm up a bit. Even so, I found ice!
We keep a storage bin with tools and various handy things at the far-flung garden beds. It’s in the shade of the rain barrel (which we no longer fill; it has only enough water to keep it from blowing away), and the rain water that had collected on its lid had a layer of ice on it!
The reason I needed to go into the bin was to get a knife. It was time to collect the few remaining winter squash and melons.
The mutant Red Kuri has probably been ripe for a while, and just the outer skin was getting more time to thicken. The smaller one hasn’t reached its mature colour yet. The larger melons are the Pixies. Their vines died off ages ago, but I still had to cut them free!
The two surviving Teddy squash are smaller than they would have been under more optimal conditions, but from what I’ve read about their mature size, not by much. I do think they actually did get a chance to ripen.
The last two Halona melons! They got to this size, and just stopped growing. They are probably not edible, but who knows?
I figure we’ll be cutting into these as soon as we can. I think the winter squash, at least, will be something we can eat, and we’ll want to do that right away. The Pixie melons should probably be fine. Those little Halonas, though… I suspect they will find their way into the compost!
We’re supposed to get a really warm day tomorrow – 18C/64F!! – then back to chilly, but still mild, temperatures. It should be at least a week before we potentially get rain again, then mild for the rest of October. That will give us plenty of time to do more wood chipping, pull of the spent plants, and work on the high raised bed some more. I plan to include garden material among the layers when filling the high raised bed. Every little bit will help!
Yesterday, I consulted with my brother about a job that needs to be done. The old chicken coop – a log building that was a summer kitchen when my parents first acquired the farm – has a corrugated metal roof that was laid over the original wood shingles. A tree had been allowed to grow next to it and, in high winds, the branches had torn away a section of the metal sheets. I cut away the tree last year, so at least there is no new damage from the branches.
This building is still salvageable, but the exposed wood roof needs to be covered, or it’ll end up collapsing like the others. The metal pieces that got torn off are pretty damaged, and I couldn’t even find all of them. There was another building next to the barn with the same type of corrugated metal roof. It collapsed long ago, so the remains of the roof are almost on the ground. It still has several pieces that are bent to fit over the peak of the roof, so I should be able to salvage those, as well as some other pieces, to cover the old chicken coop roof.
The problem is getting up there. I don’t think that roof can hold a person’s weight anymore. Plus, it would be pretty dangerous to try and use a ladder around there. The ideal thing would be to have scaffolding. My brother told me that there used to be scaffolding alongside the building my parents’ stuff is now stored in. I was pretty sure what I would find, but this morning I went to take another look, just to confirm.
No scaffolding.
Something else that disappeared before we moved out here.
*sigh*
My parents ran a fully equipped and functioning farm until their retirement. Sure, it was just two sticks ahead of the stone ages, but as my late brother prepared to take it over, he brought all sorts of supplies and equipment. I’d say it was more like three or four sticks ahead of the stone ages before he died. Now, it’s like I’m down to just one stick ahead of the stone ages. I have fewer tools and resources available now, than when I was a kid and we still didn’t have running water or an indoor bathroom.
It makes taking care of and improving this place, very frustrating!
Ah, well. We make do with what we have. Perhaps, with our vandal taking me to court over the remaining junk, a judge will see fit to order him to return what he took, or pay my mother and brother back for what can no longer be returned. One can dream!
Oh, what a lovely day we’re having today! As I write this, we are at 17C/63F, which is a couple of degrees warmer than forecast. We’ve got beautiful blue skies and sunshine, though it was a bit winder than I would have liked – only because I needed to do some spray painting.
While the girls cleaned the eavestroughs, then brought the pieces of insulation from the barn to put around the based of the house, I started with spraying the sign I’m working on with reflective paint. With a white base, the reflective paint is not visible. Later this evening, I want to try taking a picture of it with flash, which should show me how well it worked. According to the label on the can, it works better with a light coat than with a heavy one, so as long as I got good coverage, it shouldn’t need another coat.
That done, I grabbed the baby chainsaw with the one charged battery (I forgot to switch them in the charger!) and did quick work on the high raised bed. After taking about an inch more off the notch on one side, that was done. I had enough juice left in the battery to start cutting away excess on the top of the end piece, where the next log will rest. I didn’t get very far, though.
Those little jobs out of the way, I got to work on the big job! Topping up the low raised beds, so we’ll have somewhere to plant the garlic when it arrives.
One of the beds wasn’t filled as much as the other, so I started with that one, first. We had soil from the potato bags in the kiddie pool, and there are still 10 bags of fingerling potatoes, so I decided to use it as filler, as it had already been amended with organic material. With all the rain we’ve been having it was very wet and heavy! While filling the wheelbarrow, I could see some nice, fat, happy worms in there, too. :-)
It filled a couple of wheelbarrow loads, with some soil being left to weigh down the kiddie pool, so it doesn’t blow away. I even found a couple of little potatoes that got missed in the process! After spreading it around evenly, I added another three wheelbarrow loads of the garden soil we bought in the spring. I’m really glad we were able to get two dump truck loads! We’d have been out by now, if we hadn’t, I’m sure.
After the one bed was filled, I brought another three wheelbarrow loads of soil for the second bed, then leveled them both with a garden rake.
Next, I split a 40 pound bag of hardwood pellets between the two beds, and worked them into the soil. One of the things we found with the new garden soil is that, over time, it gets really hard and compact. Since we don’t have any compost or manure to help prevent that, the pellets should do the job.
After working the pellets into the top couple of inches of soil, both beds got thoroughly watered, until the pellets reverted to sawdust. They absorb quite a lot of water in the process.
The sawdust does tend to rise to the top, though, so after they got a solid soak, I worked it back into the top couple of inches again.
They are actually a bit fuller than I had intended. The garlic will get a heavy layer of straw mulch after they are planted, so having it a bit lower would have help keep it from blowing away. The beds will settle, though, plus they will be covered with plastic, before we get snow that stays.
If all works as intended, these beds, with their layers of wood and lighter organic material in them, should require almost no watering, even if we have another summer of drought. If we had a wet summer, they should have good drainage, too.
I do find it kind of funny that I had to get these two beds ready for the garlic, because the other beds we have, in the old garden area, still have things growing in most of them! Not counting the one that’s being converted to a high raised bed right now, the only one that’s completely empty had onions growing in it, so I wouldn’t want to plant another allium in it.
It should be interesting to see how the garlic does in these beds!
One of the tasks I got a bit of progress on yesterday, was the sign I am making to replace the one with my late father’s name on it, that identified this farm.
Before adding the second coat of paint, I cut a scrap piece of 2×4 from the wood we found in one of the sheds and brought to the basement a while back, and made “legs”. They are short, but they are something I can work with when we are finally able to put the sign up. Mostly, I wanted them screwed in place before the second coat of white paint was added. That way, I could brush over the screws to make them less visible, while making sure not to fill in the holes for the screwdriver, so they can be taken out easily, if necessary.
They also did a better job of keeping the sign above the top of the freezer while I painted, than what I was using before. :-D
There is one problem with working in the old kitchen, though.
The wasps are somehow getting in from the hive in the crawl space.
So far, they are staying at the north window, trying to get outside; the south window faces into the sun room, and the west window is covered with foil, so there is actually more light from the north. Plus, the old kitchen is not heated in any way and is always a few degrees colder than the rest of the house, so the wasps were pretty groggy. Still, when I first came in to start working on the sign, I did have to move a wasp off that had landed on it, while the paint was still a bit wet. If it had been warmer and the wasp less groggy, it probably could have flown off on its own. As it is, when I gently brushed it loose, it just fell to the floor, where I could no longer see it.
They won’t last long, as wasps die off over the winter, but it does mean my husband has to be careful going into there, since he is allergic to stings.
With the second coat of white paint done yesterday, the next step on the sign for today will be to take it outside and use the reflective spray paint on it. I’ll have to read the label on the can again, to see if it should have more than one coat or not.
I can do this part outside, as we are not expected to have rain again for a while. With how much we got recently, this morning I decided to check out the old gravel pit that the renter got dug deeper, so see how it was. Along the way, I checked a pond, and there was no standing water at all, though the bottom has a lot of green growth at least.
The old gravel pit is wonderfully full of water! This is the most it has had all year. Thankfully, there is a lot of clay to keep it there, too.
The hill created when the pit was deepened has been noticeably affected by the rain, as well, and I could see where actual rivulets had formed, washing things away.
This is the bottom of one of the rivulets, where you can see a deer had made its way through the clay and silt. All around the bottom of the hill, there are now patches of clay and silt like this, but this is the only one that had tracks in it. :-)
I’m really glad the renter was able to get this pit dug deeper. Even with all the rain we’ve been having, the water table has not recovered yet, so this is the only water around for wildlife. Of the dugouts in the area that I can see from the roads, only one, about two miles away, has any water in it, and it was also dug deeper this year, too.
Well, things have warmed up nicely – it’s currently 15C/59F right now! – and it’s time to get outside and get some manual labour done! :-)
Here we are, in the middle of October, and still there are things in the garden to pick!
Yesterday evening, I went out to work on the high raised garden bed a bit. The notches at the north end needed to be finished. In particular, I needed to deepen the ones at the ends of the side logs. Since so much material had already been removed, I just used the baby chainsaw for as long as the batteries lasted. Checking it this morning, it looks like one side still needs more material removed, so I will work on that today. I didn’t bother taking photos as the difference really isn’t all the visible.
After I did as much as I could on the high raised bed, I went and did a burn. With the rain we’ve been having lately, using the burn barrel is about as safe as it can be, without snow on the ground! :-D What an evening it was! I could hear masses of Canada Geese out in the field, where the renter has already harvested his corn. I could even see clouds of them, though the trees, flying low to the ground.
The burn barrel is in the outer yard, which made it easy to check on the garden beds along the chain link fence. When my daughters came outside while doing their evening chores, I snagged one of them to tend the burn barrel while I got a bowl to pick tomatoes into.
Yes, we still have tomatoes!
It was getting a bit too dark to see the ripe from the almost ripe tomatoes, but there were enough that my daughter finished with the burn barrel before I was finished picking!
While we were out there, not only we were serenaded by the cacophony of geese, but howling, as well.
Very different sounding howls.
We have quite a few coyotes in the area, so hearing them howling and yipping is not unusual. These, however, sounded like wolves! Wolves are rarer in our area. I can’t say I’m surprised, though. With all the fires we had this summer, we had a lot of bear sightings. If so many bears could be driven this way, wolves certainly could be, too.
Last night, temperatures were predicted to drop to just above freezing, which means frost was very likely, even though we had no frost warnings. I figured, however, this would be our last tomato harvest. Especially since the actual temperatures dropped lower than predicted. At least, according to the weather apps.
I think I was wrong!
I checked them this morning, and the tomato plants are just fine! With temperatures warming up again over the next while, we should be picking tomatoes for quite a while longer!
The Ozark Nest Egg gourds are also looking just fine, too. Seeing this has confirmed for me that setting up garden beds in the outer yard, south of the house, is a very good idea, because things were different in the old garden area.
The bush beans are done. There are still many little bean pods, but after last night’s cold, I could see frost damage on them, so that’s it for them.
The summer squash… I’m not so sure. I picked sunburst squash, anyhow.
Most of these are smaller than I would have picked them. There are still quite a lot of little ones on the plants, and I left the zucchini entirely, just in case they survived. This entire area gets full sun, however it parts of it do get shade for longer in the mornings, because of trees along the fence line to the east. The shade does not reach the squash tunnel, however, and when I checked it, expecting to harvest the last few winter squash, I decided to leave them longer, though I did collect a couple more Tennessee Danging Gourds. Even the luffa looks like it’s still growing, and there are a few melons that are still firmly attached to their vines. With the warmer temperatures expected over the next few days, the longer the fruit stays on the vines, the better.
So we shall see how it goes!
Meanwhile, the lettuce and chard are handling the temperatures just fine, so we’ll have access to fresh greens for a while, yet.
Today’s focus is going to be on preparing beds for the garlic. I got an emailed shipping notification, so they will arrive next week. There is no way I will be able to finish the high raised bed in time, so I will finish topping up the new low raised beds built over where the garlic was planted last fall. I’ll prep both, even though we may only need one. The beets in the third bed are still growing. Until the ground freezes, they can be left, as can the fingerling potatoes. One of my weather apps has long range forecasts into November, and it looks like we will continue to have mild temperatures for quite some time, yet! Even the overnight lows are going to remain mild, with only a couple of nights forecast to reach -1C/30F.
With temperatures that mild, we may actually eat all our lettuce and chard before it gets cold enough to kill them! I’m very curious to see how far the Ozark Nest Egg gourds manage to mature, and if the radishes will mature enough to produce pods that we can pickle.
These mild temperatures and rains are just what we needed right now. If we can continue to have a mild, wet winter, and no more Polar Vortexes, that would be icing on the cake!
My husband was able to feed the outside cats for me this morning, so when I came out to do the rest of my morning rounds later, most of them had already moved on. Junk Pile Jr. was by the door and aaaalllmost let me pet her, but not quite! She did sniff my hand, though.
Then I saw Rosencrantz and Toesencrantz at their private dining area under the shrine and had to take a closer look. What was Toesencrantz doing?
He was all sprawled out on the kibble tray, as if he was taking a nap!
Very unusual. Was he okay?
As I watched, he would sometimes lift his head and snuzzle his mother.
Awww… How sweet!
Using the zoom on my phone camera makes for some terrible photos, so I tried to slowly come closer, without disturbing them.
It didn’t work.
Seeing me come closer, Toesencrantz started to get up, then finally move away from where he was lying, to the other side of the tray, watching me to see if I’d come any closer.
His mother immediately moved over to start eating the kibble he had been lying on top of.
The little bugger! He had lying on top of the food, leaving only the little dregs around him for his mother to eat!
Yesterday, looking at the weather radar, I had expected that we would catch the edge of a weather system that was being pushed up from the southeast. Which is what usually happens.
Instead, the system ended up going right over us, and we had heavy rain all day and most of the night. We are expected to continue to get rain today and tomorrow, and remain cool until the day after.
I didn’t think the bee on the sunflower would survive that long.
We have a mini greenhouse in the sun room, so I lay the cover of a seed starter kit upside down on the top shelf, and had a sieve ready to use as a cover, then went to cut the sunflower off and bring the bee over. It had actually moved a bit since I last looked at it, which was encouraging. We had set up a light fixture on the top of the mini greenhouse with a full spectrum, incandescent light bulb in it, to keep our seedlings warm. The sun room wasn’t much warmer than outside, so I turned the light on to add a bit of warmth, making sure the fixture was tilted away, so it was more indirect.
The bee is hidden by the petals on the sunflower, in the above picture.
If the bee were sluggish and staying on the sunflower only because of the temperature, I expected to see it become active fairly soon. If that wasn’t the reason it was still on the sunflower, I expected to find a dead bee.
Since it’s too wet to work on outside projects, I set up in the old kitchen to start an inside project. Since the sign with my late father’s name on it got disappeared from the corner of the property, I decided we needed a new one, as it had been a landmark we could use to give directions to our place. Yesterday, I went rifling through the barn and found a scrap of half inch plywood that was in decent shape, brought it over and gave it a cleaning. Today, it was dry and ready for painting.
We still had some white paint from when we fixed the door into the sun room and repainted the frame as well, and there is enough to do at least two coats.
It’s just a bit bigger than the top of our freezer! :-)
The first coat is done, and tomorrow I will give it a second coat. I will also look for wood that I can attach to the back to make posts that can be driven into the ground. The sign that disappeared had been attached to the corner post of the fence, but all those old fence posts along there are falling and need to be replaced, so I want to mount the sign independently from the fence.
After the paint is dry, but before the lettering is painted on, I plan to give the whole thing a spray with some reflective paint I picked up a while back. This way, the background should highlight the lettering when hit by headlights as people turn the corner towards our driveway.
We’ve been talking about coming up with a name for the farm, just for fun. It has always been really important to my parents that the farm stay in the family name, which is why it went to my older brother, who has sons and now grandsons, to carry on the name. So out of respect for my late father, I have decided to simply use our family name on the sign, however I will also include our driveway marker number, with the municipal road name, which is also our family name, and an arrow towards our driveway. The road sign with our family name on it that disappeared when the stop sign it was mounted on was broken, never got replaced, so having that road name on the sign will be helpful for our neighbours, too. Which means I will have two lines of lettering, plus an arrow, on this sign when it’s done.
I think we might also need to set up another camera on it, just in case. I have no proof that our vandal stole the old sign, but if we put up a new one, with our family name on it, I suspect it will infuriate him, and our restraining order against him is still going through the court system.
After I finished with the first coat of paint, I checked on the bee, and was happy to find it crawling actively around the sunflower. I’m very glad we had it covered!
We tucked the entire sunflower into a plant pot (our houseplants are still outside), where it would be more protected, both from the weather and from curious kitties. Happily, it immediately began crawling around even more. Hopefully, it will be able to make its way back to its hive, wherever that may be. Most local bees are more solitary, and have hives underground, so there is no way to know where it came from. At least now it has a chance, and we need all the pollinators we can get!
As much as I appreciate the rain we are having, I’m looking forward to when it clears so I can get back to work outside. I got a transaction notification from my bank, showing that Veseys has charged us for the garlic we ordered. That means they will be shipped soon. Possibly even today or tomorrow. I’ll get an email notification when they do. They will need to be planted soon after they arrive. That means we are running out of time to prepare a bed for the garlic. If the weather prevents me from finishing the high raised bed we are working on, then I will top up the low raised beds we made where the garlic was planted last year. With the new dimensions, we might even be able to plant all three varieties in one bed. It’s typically advised to rotate alliums into different beds every year, but in building the low raised beds, the soil has been amended a lot, and they will be topped up with fresh soil, so it should be just fine. We shall see what we have time for.
Meanwhile, we’ve got a couple of days to work on indoor projects, instead. Like the bread baking I can hear my daughter working on as I write this! :-)
While doing my morning rounds, I decided to check the sunflowers and, sure enough, the bee I saw yesterday was still there!
I did confirm that it’s still alive; when I brushed a finger near it, a single, pollen covered back leg lifted up to warn me away!
It’s simply too cold and wet for the poor thing, it seems.
My daughter did some searching, and what I think we will do is cut off the sunflower head to bring it, and the bee, into the sun room to warm up. We’ll cover it with a large sieve we have, so it doesn’t fly off and get stuck in the sun room. If it does revive and warms up, we will release it back outside. Hopefully, it will then be able to get back to its hive before the chill gets to it again.
Here’s hoping it works!
The Re-Farmer
[Edit: I accidentally used a photo from yesterday, instead of the one I took this morning. After much fighting with our increasingly crappy internet, it has been fixed!]
The Re-Farmer 