As the temperatures have gotten warmer and the snow melts away, I’ve been able to expand my morning rounds. Today, I was able to reach the barn and a shed near it, for the first time in months.
I had a purpose in mind.
One of the things we have found all over the place, beside mirrors and tires, are windows. All kinds of windows.
If there are windows, could there be… ??
… yes there could!
I found a fairly large screen at first, then found at least three like this one. It has an aluminum frame, and a very strong metal mesh.
This may work as a “lid” for the small fish tank greenhouse. It’s much bigger than the tank itself, but if I can secure it safely, I should be able to use it, even with the amount of overlap there will be at the front and sides. I can remove the light fixture from under the lid of the tank, and attach it to the underside of the screen – unlike the light on the big tank, this one can’t handle the weight of even one of our skinny cats on it. There is even a space I can use for the power cord from the light.
The screen itself is probably strong enough to hold even Dah Boy and Cheddar’s weights! As long as no jumping is involved. They don’t tend to try and get on the tanks in general, so I’m not too concerned about them.
The screen has been scrubbed and sanitized and is now set aside to dry. I have time to figure out what I can use to secure it to the tank, while still being able to open it easily to get at the seedlings inside.
Here’s hoping it works!!
Also, there are a LOT of old windows in the barn and shed. Some are broken, but others are still intact. I took a closer look at some in the barn. I am continually amazed by one group of reclaimed windows. They are so filthy with years of dust and grit, I actually didn’t realize they were windows until my brother told me that’s what they were! While some sort of canvas was draped over the middle one, to keep them from touching each other, they are thoroughly stuck to each other at the ends. I estimate them to be about 7 ft by almost 5 ft, and they are at least double pane. Possibly triple. There are a couple of others about 4 ft square that are double pane.
I am sure we will be able to find some use for these. Especially the big ones, if we can manage to separate them without breaking them. I see potential cold frames and mini greenhouses in them! :-)
Today has been one of those days of getting things done that were also enjoyable. Like a morning spent converting feed bags into grow bags while watching/listening to videos about crossbow safety. More listening than watching, since I was, after all, hand stitching the bag bottoms into shape. :-D
I also got to enjoy watching deer through my window, making their way to the feeding station.
I saw a couple, earlier, but that early in the day, our East facing living room window is so full of reflections, I can’t get any good shots, but I could get some shots with my phone through the North window. At one point, I was seeing 4 deer, and I think there was a fifth hidden away in the maple grove.
I made a quick trip into town to refill a couple of our 18.9L water bottles, then pick up prescription refills. I timed it so that I could hit the post office on the way home. My husband had been expecting a parcel all week, and today we found out why it hadn’t come in earlier. The padded envelope it came in was sealed in a plastic bag with “apologies from Canada Post” on it. I had no idea what my husband had ordered, so seeing oil stains on the package was a bit alarming.
It turned out he’d ordered honing oil, and the bottle leaked! No harm done, thankfully. :-)
I was excited to see a catalogue I’d ordered had arrived. This is from a company I had included in my list of cold climate seeds sources, which also included nurseries. Whiffletree Farm and Nursery. They specialize in “Cold hardy, disease resistant, fruit trees, shrubs, vines and canes.”. I love how the back page includes phone numbers, a physical address (in Ontario), a map, plus their latitude and longitude!
How very… rural Canadian. :-D
I actually went through the Irrigation Instructions insert, first. They’ve got add on kits designed for new plantings, mature plantings and tree plantings. I found it a lot more informative, both textually and visually, that most of the kit sources I’ve been looking at. Though we don’t plan to plant our fruit and nut trees for a while, yet, where we are extending the garden to this year is well away from the house, and an irrigation system would be well worth the investment, even if we have to McGyver something cheap for the first couple of years.
As for the catalogue itself, I was very impressed.
First off, it’s just plain beautiful. It is printed on the heaviest paper of any catalogue I’ve seen. More than sturdy enough to withstand cats clambering all over it, demanding my undivided attention! Even how the photographs are lined up with the write ups is the best I’ve seen. There is a also LOT of extra information included.
The range of products they have available is amazing. After just a few pages, I started over again with a highlight marker, marking off everything that was Zone 2, Zone 3 or Zones 2/3. I didn’t bother marking Zones 3/4 or higher, because there were SO MANY Zone 2 and 3 choices, it wasn’t necessary. The only exception I made was for a mulberry tree that was Zone 3/4.
Did I mention how informative it is?
I learned something new that really caught my attention. There is a section on Buffaloberries, Peashrubs and Autumn Olives.
I was curious about what Peashrubs were, but it turns out that we already have some! They are caraganas! In our clean up, I’ve had to cut away and cut back a lot of caraganas that were either dying or overtaking other trees and shrubs. It’s been a balancing act between clearing them away and keeping them.
Though I am familiar with the shrub, I discovered that the seed pods are actually edible! At least the Siberian Peashrub (caragana arborescens) are. They have two other varieties. The Siberian variety is “A multi-stemmed upright growing shrub covered with delicate yellow flowers in spring, followed by small edible seedpods which can be eaten as a vegetable. By late summer the dried seedpods snap open, dropping the seeds which are 36% protein and make good chicken feed. So it is sometimes planted in poultry yards.”
Who knew?
I also learned that they are good nitrogen fixers, and wind breaks. We should see if we can figure out what variety we have here!
The catalogue also displays an excellent sense of humour. As an example, in the section on edible lilies and high bush cranberries, there is this write up for the Common Snowball.
“Okay, we admit it – this plant is neither edible nor medicinal to the best of our knowledge. In fact, it produces no fruit at all, not even for the birds. Our only excuse for offering it is for the nostalgic memories is evokes for many folks. Every year in early summer, these old-fashioned, carefree bushes become covered with fleecy, white pompoms. The ‘snowball’ name is visually very fitting, but that’s not all. Perhaps we should market it as a weather prognostic – according to a local, time-honoured adage, there is always a brief, unseasonably cool spell when the snowball bush begins to bloom. Like many weather maxims, you can count on it, it always holds true – except when it doesn’t!”
Ya gotta love it! :-D
While we are not in a position to start ordering food trees for this year, we are shooting to do so as soon as possible, given how long it can take for trees to mature enough to start producing fruit. And let’s face it; at my age, pretty much any fruit or nut tree we plant is for our daughters and future generations, because my husband and I will probably be long gone by the time some of them reach maturity!
There is so much information in this catalogue, we can use it for planning purposes. Especially when it comes to their orchard growing equipment and supplies.
With that in mind, these are some of the things that interest us, that also grow in Zones 2 or 3.
Apples: there are many varieties suitable for our zone, including larger eating apples, edible crab apples and cider apples. They have columnar varieties, dwarf varieties and varieties that are good for espalier training. When it comes to apples, they are not something we tend to eat a lot of, on their own, but we would be using them for things like apple cider vinegar, hard apple cider, or freezing them to use for baking later on. We will have to take into consideration that we need to cut down a lot of our crab apple trees due to fungal disease. It may be worthwhile to get rid of the diseased trees, then wait several years before planting new varieties, or planting new varieties in locations well away from where the diseased trees are.
Plums: This is one of those things that we almost never eat, but if we had them, we would eat them. We do have plum trees, but they are not an edible variety – more stone than fruit – that my late father used to make wine, but having larger, fleshier plums that can be eaten fresh would be really nice.
Pears: I remember we had a pear tree when I was a child. It was a variety that produced small, hard fruit that needed to be exposed to frost before they could be eaten. They are another type of fruit we rarely buy, mostly for budgetary reasons, but would eat more of if we had our own trees, so having cold hardy varieties that can be eaten fresh would be enjoyed, and this catalogue has several such varieties that can grow in our zone.
Cherries: the variety of cherry are from a tree from Poland, which has a warmer climate than we do. They bloom wonderfully, but in the time we’ve been here, produce almost no fruit. Their bloom time doesn’t match when the pollinators come out. So getting a variety or two that is good for our zone is something I would like. They do tend to spread through their roots, though, and can become invasive, so we would have to carefully plan where they would go. Some varieties make good hedge trees, wind breaks and privacy screens, so that’s an option, too.
Nuts: there are only two types of nuts suitable for our zone; several varieties of hazelnuts, and butternuts. We are still looking into planting other varieties. They may not have a long enough season to produce edible nuts, but the trees themselves are an investment.
Rugosa Roses: we already have wild roses growing in the spruce grove that we will be encouraging, as other types of underbrush will be cleared away, but these varieties are specially noted for their large hips, and high nutrient contents. These are for the “apothacary” plants we will also be adding, over time.
Kiwis, grapes, gooseberries and currants, saskatoons, haskaps, raspberries and blueberries: we already have some of these, but will be adding more over time. Some are poorly situation and need to either be taken out, starting over with new, or transplanted.
Companion plants and wildlife packages: they’ve got a number of different plants that are beneficial to plant near trees, for various reasons. Some because they attract pollinators, or attract predator insects that will eat nuisance insects. Others because they are good to plant in paths instead of grass, can handle foot traffic, but don’t need to be mowed. There are even seed mixes to provide grazing for deer and other wildlife, and even have wildlife tree packages, made up of a mix of excess trees, or trees that didn’t make the grade for orchard/yard use, which may not even be labelled. They would be useful for a food forest or permaculture set up to feed both humans and wildlife. These are all things that fit in with our long term goals.
All in all, I am very excited by this catalogue, and look forward to being able to order from this truly unique company as soon as possible!
One of the things about visiting my mother is, she tends to … pass things on to us.
Basically, she is foisting off things she doesn’t want or need on us, because there’s lots of room on the farm, right?
Four decades, friends in the city doing that to my parents. A lot of that stuff is still lying about in various places. Now she’s doing it to us! :-D
Most of the time, it’s not an issue. I just got a bag full of plastic containers that will be just fine for putting leftovers in the fridge (some of them are what I used to bring meals to her! :-D).
Previously, we got a bag full of odds and ends that included small flashlights so old, the batteries were on the verge of leaking.
We just never know what to expect!
One thing she has been pretty consistent in including has been sweets. She “can’t eat” sweet things (yes, she can. She knows enough to limit herself, but she has her preferences, and that’s just fine).
Most of the sweets are little baggies of candies the social workers have been including in little gift bags they’ve been giving to people in my mother’s building, since they aren’t allowed to have bingo or coffee nights or any of the other many social events they used to organize.
Someone, however, has been giving my mother Polish chocolates!
The last box she passed on to us was around Christmas, and they were quite excellent.
Today, she gave me these.
Wawel (VAH-vel) is a place. Czarny Las (CHArny Laas) means Black Forest (and is the site of the WWII massacre of 250-300 Poles by the Gestapo). Czekolada Nadkiewana (Che-ko-lada Na-jye-vana) means stuffed chocolate. The info in the back says this is from Krakow, which is not all that far from where my mother lived during WWI until the province was turned over to the USSR after the war, and Poles were expelled.
I find myself curious as to who is finding these Polish chocolates for my mother, and where are they finding them! The only place I can think of is the city, which has a substantial Polish community my parents used to be a part of, but I just don’t know of anyone in her building would even know the area exists, never mind knowing where to buy Polish products.
When I got home, I opened the box, discovering that it had already been opened. My mother had tried them before passing them on to us. :-D
Unfortunately…
… they were not stored properly! :-D
It looks horrible, but it’s just a bloom that happens when the chocolate gets exposed to temperature extremes, instead of being in a consistent cooler temperature.
I was not expecting to see all those mouths when I unwrapped the chocolate!
Yes, I did try a piece.
Not a fan of the cherry filling. I’ve never been a fan of fruit in chocolate, really, so that’s not a surprise. I suspect the temperature fluctuations that caused the bloom also affected the texture of the filling.
I did some unexpected running around yesterday and didn’t have a chance to post. Now that I am, I’m seeing that the title font in my editor has changed. I did not change the default font. I’m not even sure how I would do that!
Well, we’ll see if anything is different after I hit “publish”. So far, it looks the same as always when I hit “preview”.
WordPress gets weird at times!
Anyhow.
For the last couple of mornings, I have been happy to see that the outside cats are using the cat house again. When I head out, I’ve been seeing a big mass of orange in the window and, as I come closer, three heads will pop out to look at me! Unfortunately, when I try to get closer to get a picture, Creamsicle Jr. gets spooked and runs off.
I’m still heating up water for them, which they really seem to appreciate!
Yesterday, the plan was to drive my husband to the clinic to get some blood work done. Unfortunately, he had another really bad pain day, and could not handle the trip. I should see if they will fax the requisition to the lab in the town closer to us. I think he would better handle a 15-20 minute drive, over a 40-45 minute drive!
I still wanted to take the van out on the highway, though, and see about blowing more carbon out of the lines at highway speeds. So I headed out to the Walmart in the small, nearer city to finally pick up the rest of the month’s supply of cat litter and dry kibble.
You can tell that spring is in the air, though, when you start seeing birds in the Walmart!
This little guy was checking out the bird seed aisle, and finding stray seeds to eat! :-D
While there, I hoped to pick up more 750ml canning jars, but there weren’t any. I’d picked up the last one, previously, and it doesn’t look like they got more. So I got more wide mouth 500ml jars (2 cups/half a quart). I think these are the two sizes that will be the most useful for us. The plan is to pick up a case or two every month over the summer, so that we’ll have a good stock available by the time we are harvesting from the garden. Assuming everything goes well and we actually have enough to preserve. I usually go with “hope for the best, plan for the worst” but in this case, we’re also planning for the best!
The van, I’m happy to say, ran well. I even loaded the heavy stuff in the back, rather than the middle, and didn’t feel any of the issues I’d noticed before, that had us splitting our trips and loading the heaviest things in the middle of the van.
Later on, I made sure to call my mother to arrange a grocery shopping trip for her. That was set for this afternoon.
If all had gone to plan, I’d be on the road to her place right now.
Does anything go to plan? :-D
It was quite late when I got a call from my mother. She had suddenly developed pain in her bones. Especially her already damaged knees.
My mother had received the vaccine for Schrodinger’s virus a couple of days before.
She was obviously quite concerned, but as we talked I suggested it might also be because of the fluctuating temperatures. That calmed her down, and she decided she would take some Tylenol, bundle up for the night, and keep the cordless phone by her bedside, just in case.
I’m happy to say she was feeling better today. When she got the shot, she had the usual adverse reactions everyone seems to be getting; her arm was sore, redness and swelling. Fatigue, as well. No allergic reactions, but I wouldn’t expect any from her. She has an iron constitution. Muscle and joint pain, nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, vomiting are all on the list of adverse reactions that are being reported. We will have to keep an eye on her after the second shot, as reactions are reportedly worse after that one.
Though she was feeling better, she wasn’t up to actually going out, so I was going to do her shopping for her. We had a bit of a snow storm happening this morning; not unusually cold, but colder, with blowing snow, low visibility, etc. It was supposed to get worse in the afternoon, so I headed out in the morning. I popped in to go over her list with her and be really clear on what she wanted. I noticed things that were not on the list and asked her about them. It’s always hard to shop for someone else. Especially when shopping is often a “see what’s good” or “whatever’s on sale” situation.
There were a few things on her list she would have picked up at the pharmacy, but the pharmacy kicked me out because they don’t honour medical mask exemptions, so she said she would get those items, later. She’s not willing to pay the grocery store prices for the same things. :-D
Just me and her list did make for a very quick trip! I was even able to stay for a short visit, which I haven’t been able to do for a while.
So she is doing all right, but is very tired and will be getting lots of rest for the next while. My siblings and I are going to have to watch not to pester her with phone calls to check up on her! :-D
Thankfully, the local weather has actually improved; whatever was being forecast for this afternoon seems to be missing up.
Another day where some things went to plan, and others… not so much!
But that’s not always a bad thing. :-)
While today wasn’t as warm as yesterday, we were still very mild. For the first time in ages, there was no ice at all on the cats’ water bowls!
Things are very messy out there. While checking on things, I saw that one purchase we made in the fall had most definitely paid off!
This is the waterproof case covering the plugs for the power cords between the cats’ house and the sun room. The cords themselves are encased in ice. I’d have to chip them loose. The waterproof case, however, seems to be absorbing heat and has melted out it’s own little space. It is not sitting in water at all, but everything around it is very wet.
We did have to buy them (it came in a three pack) online, because no local stores carried any. It was well worth the time and effort to find them!
Later this morning, I brought our van in to get the new EGR valve cleaned out of whatever crud came loose from the lines that were too far to reach to clean. It was just a drop off, and he was really busy with other customers, so I just left the keys in the office and headed out. Thankfully, it was much warmer than the last time the van was brought in, so I had no problems walking around outside while I waited.
There were two things that I wanted to get with my tax return. The garden soil, which will have to wait until it thaws out enough to be loaded onto the trucks, and a chainsaw. We’ve been doing some research and are leaning towards a battery operated chainsaw. I could have bought one online, but there is the place I took our riding mower to last summer, not far from the garage. They sell and service riding mowers, chain saws, weed trimmers and a whole host of landscaping related tools, and I wanted a chance to actually talk to someone and get feedback and advice.
I am glad I did!
Also, they had zero issues with medical mask exemptions. I walked in with my Mingle Mask, and they didn’t even blink. Bonus!
So I started talking to the guy about what I was thinking of (and what my budget was!), and about the sort of work I need to do. The main thing is, I’ve got those dead spruce trees to take down. They’re about 60 ft tall, and there’s probably 6 of them.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t really show me different models suitable for the job, as he just got new inventory for the season, and they weren’t even in the computer yet, never mind on the shelves. Of what he did have on display, they were waaayyy out of my budget, and designed more for commercial needs.
For a job like the dead trees, they recommended a gas powered chainsaw, because a battery powered one would drain way too quickly, even with the high end, high power models. And you don’t want to run out of juice half-way through cutting down a tree! Given what I would be using a chainsaw for the most, they suggested I might want to simply rent a gas powered chainsaw to take down the trees.
And when I mean “they”, I mean the owner/manager I was talking to, and the guy at the counter that chimed into the conversation.
Who turned out to be the Stihl rep that just happened to be there when I came in.
We are already fans of Stihl products. We’d had a Stihl chainsaw that we gave to my late brother when we last moved out of province and to a city. We had been very happy with it, and so was my brother. I don’t know what happened to it after he died, but it certainly isn’t here on the farm.
Having a guy from Stihl right there to give me advice was welcome, indeed!
We spent quite a bit of time talking about what I needed and, in the end, they suggested that I wait until the end of the month to get a battery powered chainsaw. That’s when a sale is starting, and I’d be able to get one with a higher powered battery for the price of one with the regular powered battery.
As we were talking about the dead trees I need to take down, I mentioned that we have other ones that are closer to the house that we plan to hire someone to take down. It would probably be easier – and safer – to get them to take down all the other dead trees as well. The manager started looking something up on the computer when I added that we’d already hired a particular company to take down the trees that were hanging over our roof, and to clear our power lines. As soon as I said the name, he turned back to me from the computer, saying he was just about to look up the contact information for the same company to give me as a recommendation! This company has a most excellent reputation. :-)
So I had pretty much decided that I would wait until the end of the month, then come back to buy the chainsaw, when I remembered something else I ask about. Little hand held chainsaws, and if they had any.
I swear, both of them got so excited! Especially the Stihl rep.
The manager wasn’t sure if he had any, then spotted them and pointed them out.
I was confused. All I saw was a display of weed trimmers.
It turned out the boxes were on the shelf above the trimmers. His last three of the dozen he’d just added to his inventory. There were none actually on display, because he’d never had a chance to add any!
They got one down for me and opened the box.
Oh, if only I’d had this in the last few years! I didn’t even know they existed until a month or two ago. There are so many jobs I’ve been doing with pruning saws, a carpenter saw, and the reciprocating saw (which seemed to be giving up the ghost when I last used it around the pump shack) – even buck saws – that would have been much, much easier with this tool!
Yup. I picked it up.
I now have a baby chainsaw.
Okay, it’s really a “cordless garden pruner”. Whatever. It’s a baby chainsaw. :-)
I decided not to wait until the sale at the end of the month, because there was no way of knowing there would be any left. These things are so insanely popular, the manufacture can’t keep up with the demand. I can totally see why.
As I was getting ready to pay for it and we continued to chat, I mentioned that I’d first discovered these existed online.
Both of them practically jumped in horror, almost simultaneously saying, “noooo!!!!Don’t get it online!” They both had stories to recount of people coming to them with these little chainsaws that they’d bought on Amazon that had already broken. The Stihl rep had a woman insist that she’d bought hers from Stihl, and wanted it repaired or replaced. A $20 hand held “chainsaw”. The one they carry – that I was in the process of buying – is just under $200. His comment to her had been, why would Stihl sell their $200 product for $20 – and also undercut their distributors?
My comment was, you get what you pay for!!!
So, I have a new “baby” in the house. One that’s going to get a real work out this spring! Eventually, I’ll be getting a second battery.
We will still need a chainsaw, but I will bring in the little electric one I found in the garage and see what they can do with it. It likely just needs to have its chain sharpened, but the chain might need replacing.
Which had reminded me that I want to bring in our new push mower. I mentioned this to them, telling them how it had worked fine when I bought it in the spring, then didn’t use it for most of the summer (when it got too dry for grass to grow), then suddenly I wasn’t able to start it anymore.
The first question they both asked: where do you buy your gas?
Yup. Just like with our van. That poor quality co-op gas! Even though we only used premium, it makes no difference. They had both seen all sorts of problems from people who bought their gas from the co-op. It seems that not only do they provide the poorest quality of fuel, but also the oldest. Gas is only good for about a month. This fuel seems to already be old before it gets to the stations. Leave it sitting in the tank of a lawn mower or something over the summer, then try and start it, and it’s likely the fuel is several months old. After I described what was happening with our new push mower, he figures he’ll probably have to take the carburetor off to clean it.
Sounds a lot like what was going on with the EGR valve in our van!
Speaking of which…
I was able to leave my purchase at the store until after I picked up the van. The new valve did, indeed, have crud in it. It only took the mechanic half an hour to clean it, so the bill was very small. He cleared the codes, too, of course. Once again, he recommended I just drive it as much as I could.
I needed to use up time so that I could stop at the post office after it re-opened on the way home, as we are expecting packages to come in this week, so I ran some errands, then drove to different areas where I could park and play Pokemon Go for a while. At one point, I was pulled over and left the engine running while doing a gym battle in the game. After finishing and getting ready to move on…
I saw the check engine light was on again!
After finding a better place to park, I hooked up the OBD II reader, and got the same two codes as before.
*sigh*
So I phoned the garage and left a message, adding that there was no need to call me back today. We might just leave it until I bring the van back for regular maintenance, which would be to put the summer tires back on, next month or so.
Too bad we didn’t have to run the van so much back when gas was really cheap for a while.
First, I wanted to share with you a photo of some visitors out our living room window last night.
There were actually five in total, but they were chasing each other around. The mama of the two in front chased the one you can see behind the cross, who chased another deer out of that spot before I got the picture. The fifth one that I saw making its way long the edge of the spruce grove disappeared before reaching the feeding station, and I missed what happened with that one.
The deer are definitely getting feistier as the weather warms!
It’s not quite warm enough, though!
I hadn’t received a call about the garden soil over the weekend, so I called them back this morning. The woman who answered seemed at a bit of a loss with how to help me, and ended up giving me the cell phone number for a particular person (since I want someone to come here in advance to see where the loads will be dumped), but there was no point in trying to call them until after 7pm, because they were in a cell phone dead zone. It ended up not being necessary. She called me back not long after.
Their pile of garden soil is too frozen.
She suggested I call back in about a month. Hopefully, it’ll be thawed enough for the equipment to be able load the truck! It would have been nice to get the soil well before we actually need it, but as long as we get it before we need to actually start planting, it should be fine.
I also called the garage to follow up on the van, and we’re now booked to bring it back tomorrow morning, so he can clean out that new EGR valve.
My husband got a requisition for blood work some time ago, but between the polar vortex, van issues (my mother’s little car is far too painful for him to ride in, and his walker wouldn’t fit in it, even folded up, anyhow) and pain levels, we just never made it in. I called the clinic to make sure the form was still at the reception, and that was confirmed. We had planned to go in today to get that done, but my husband’s pain levels were too high. We’ll try again on Wednesday.
On the positive side, my husband’s tax return came in. We had plans for part of it that I tried to take care of last night, only to discover we couldn’t use our debit Visa.
With no trip to the clinic today, I was open for making a trip to the city.
This is what we picked up.
Yup. We got a crossbow kit.
More specifically, we got a Killer Instinct Boss 405.
It’s an early 33rd anniversary gift. :-D
Now, what we really wanted to get was a rifle, but we have not been able to get our PALs yet, and with certain political activities going on right now, we were seeing our window of opportunity closing fast. However, having a gun on the farm is needed, if only to ward off the coyotes and other predators. Plus, I want to be able to hunt.
My husband and I both know guns (me from growing up on the farm, him from his time in the military), and bows. I used to shoot recurve, and my husband shot compound. We were both rather good at both guns and bows, too. However, with age and injuries, anything with a draw weight suitable for hunting is getting beyond our levels of mobility.
We decided that a crossbow would best meet our needs, while still being something we can actually get. Plus, the archery hunting season is much longer than rifle hunting season. As a bonus, a crossbow is quiet. I like quiet!
With that in mind, we did our research and decided on a crossbow at Cabela’s. It’s not high end, by any means, but it’s hardly bottom of the barrel, either. It will meet our needs.
Then, since I had to drive well over an hour to get to the store, I took advantage of the situation, asked questions, and picked up a few other things. (Happily, they accept medical mask exemptions, too!)
One of the things I’d tried to buy on the website was a crossbow rated target. I called ahead, and the crossbow and target were both waiting for me when I got there. After seeing it in person, I decided to get a larger target. I didn’t take pictures, but I ended up getting a Morrell Yellow Jacket YJ-425.
I also got these.
The crossbow kit comes with 3 bolts with field points. Bolts will get lost or damaged, so I picked up a 6 pack of extras. The spares do not come with points, so I picked up a 12 pack of field points. They are slightly heavier than the ones in the kit, so we won’t be using the kit points at all. I also picked up hunting points that need to be assembled, but they are the same weight as the field points. I also got a de-cocking bolt, which can be safely shot into the ground.
After taking this picture, I had to hide everything in a closet, because the cats were ALL OVER everything.
Susan tried to chew on the fletching of the de-cocking bolt.
Tomorrow, the bow will be assembled, but I don’t know when we’ll be able to test it out and start practicing. Not only is it very wet and messy right now, but we’ve got rain in the forecast tomorrow, and snow in the forecast a couple of days later!
And for those who are wondering, no, we don’t plan to hunt the deer that come to our yard.
Over the next while, I’ll be searching out local crossbow groups and hopefully be able to find a hunting mentor. I will still need to take the hunter’s safety course to get a hunting license, and while it would be nice to have a freezer full of venison next winter, I don’t expect to be ready to hunt this year. While all of us can practice shooting with this, it is likely that I will be the only one that will take the course and get a license to hunt.
At least, that’s the plan for now. Plans have a terrible habit of changing at the last minute, but it’s a goal we are shooting for.
In choosing garden seeds this year, we kept a lot of things in mind. Choosing food that we’ll actually eat, choosing foods for long term storage, choosing foods we would eat more of, if they were more affordable at the grocery store, and choosing foods just for the fun or challenge of it.
One of the things I picked for the fun and challenge of it is corn that is such a deep, dark purple, it looks black.
This image is from the Baker Creek website, where I got our seeds from. I chose it not only for it’s unique colour, but because it is a corn that can be used to make flour; something we have plans to do in the future.
Maize morado is a Peruvian corn, and I found the story behind how Baker Creek got their seeds to be really interesting.
The question is, how do I grow a Peruvian corn, in a Zone 3 prairie environment? So I started looking for people who had already tried to grow maiz morado.
I didn’t have much luck.
I did find things like this video from 2015.
Yeah. They didn’t do too well. I found an earlier video, and saw that these were the Kulli variety, also from Baker Creek.
I found a few other videos, and noticed one thing in particular. They started out with very few seeds. One guy had only five seeds, and of those five seeds, he got one corn plant that he had to hand pollinate, and only one ear of corn, which he intended to save the seed from to plant the next year. I found no follow up on that. Another person had planted 8 seeds, starting them indoors, but he deliberately intended to cross pollinate them with local varieties, to develop a hardier strain. He stopped posting videos soon after, so there was no conclusion to his experiment. All of these were older videos. Of the ones that showed the end product, they got very tall corn plants – 8 feet tall or more – very few cobs, and very few developed kernels on those cobs.
We have one advantage, in that our packet says it has a minimum of 75 seeds in it. At the very least, we should have plenty of corn plants and the wind can do the pollinating!
There is something else, though.
In spite of what the Seed Stories video from Baker Creek says, these are not Maize Morado.
This variety is a northern adapted homage to the legendary Maiz Morado/Kulli corn from Peru. Ed Shultz, the accomplished and passionate open pollinated corn breeder who spent 30 years selecting this dark purple variety, explains that Montana morado is was actually selected from the Painted Mountain corn.
These are shorter and stockier than the Peruvian Morado strains, and are bred for Northern gardens.
Except this is Montana, which means for us in Canada, it’s bred for Southern gardens.
Will this strain work here? Aside from a few articles about the development of the strain, I am finding nothing about people actually growing it, and how. It may simply be too new a strain. It’s all pretty much a mystery.
So we’re going to be flying by the seats of our pants on this one.
The plan right now is, we will start them indoors in the second half of May. As corn is not something that is normally started indoors, and their roots do not like to be disturbed at all, we will be using toilet paper tubes to start the seeds in. The tubes will be left open ended in a container, so that when it’s time to transplant them, they can be put into the soil, tube and all, with zero disruption to the roots. Hopefully. As their roots tend to grow more downwards than outwards, the open bottoms should mean no root constriction, while the cardboard tubes break down in the soil.
Unlike the one gardener whose video I found, we do not intend to deliberately cross pollinate, so these will be planted at the opposite end of the garden from the other varieties. With wind pollination, the only way to be absolutely sure no cross pollination happens anyway would be to put bags over the developing corn, and then hand pollinating.
I’m not that dedicated to preventing cross pollination.
I am hoping that this one packet of seeds will give us enough corn to be able to have some for fresh eating, maybe even freeze some, and hopefully even try making some chicha morada to drink, but mainly to keep some for seed to plant more next year. Then we will repeat the process until we eventually get a mill and can try grinding some for flour.
Along with the Montana Morado corn, I’d ordered a variety called Dorinny Sweet – a Canadian hybrid – from Baker Creek. We will be direct sowing the Dorinny Sweet, and plan to save seeds from those, too. The Veseys three pack of Peaches ‘n Cream varieties I also ordered was more because I wasn’t sure the Baker Creek order would make it past the border, and while we will have plenty of corn for fresh eating and preserving, Peaches ‘n Cream are just about sustenance, not any particular interest in the variety. They’re the Russet potato of the corn world, in my view. :-D
Well, that’s the plan.
Who knows. Things may even work out to the plan! Either way, I’m looking forward to trying out this variety of corn, and seeing how it handles our climate.
I needed to divert myself with positive thinking, and what better way to do that than to think of gardening!
Also, I am striving mightily to NOT start those tomatoes yet, so sitting here and writing about starting them is keeping me from starting them. :-D
I will explain shortly.
First, I went through the seed packs and took out the ones that need to be started indoors. Here they are.
Then I worked out which ones need to be planted when. Here they are, in order of when they should be started indoors.
You can probably see where I might be having some problems.
Right around May.
It’s the tomatoes that are teasing me. I’ve never grown tomatoes before, and the Spoon tomatoes in particular are a new variety. Even in the reviews, I saw no one in Zone 3 that grew them. In my research, I have found articles from people in our zone who experimented with different tomato starting times, and they generally found that starting them earlier did not benefit them in any way. And yet… there are Zone 3 gardeners who have already potted their seedlings up. The down side of giving up social media for Lent is, I’m no longer seeing the gardening groups about it! But there are other resources and, at the very least, waiting another week will not cause problems. However, if you are a Zone 3 gardener who has experience growing tomatoes from seed, please do feel free to leave a comment! I am eager for the voice and advice of experience!
Next on the calendar are the gourds, in late April. Ozark Nest Egg, Birdhouse, Dishcloth/Luffa, Tennessee Dancing and Thai Bottle gourds. How many we plant of each will depend on how prolific the variety is expected to be. I’ve read that the Tennessee Dancing gourds, which are quite tiny, are extremely prolific. We’ll probably plant just a couple of seeds of those, and shoot to have one plant, while we’ll probably look to have 3 or 4 Birdhouse gourd plants. I learned from last year, not to jump the gun on our frost date of June 2, but we also need to keep in mind that we could still get a frost after that date, so I’d rather have more plants than less.
All of these will be trellised in some way.
Then there is early May.
Oh, my.
All the winter and summer squash, pumpkins and melons need to be started at the same time! Our winter squashes are Teddy and Little Gem. They’re small and I expect them to be fairly prolific, so we probably won’t be starting the entire packets of seeds, but we will likely plant at least half, depending on how many seeds are in the packages. We also have the tiny Baby Pam pumpkins, and I expect them to be fairly prolific, so we’ll likely plant half a package. The Crespo squash, however (listed as a type of pumpkin on the website) get huge, and will likely have fewer fruit per vine, so we will likely plant the entire packet of seeds.
The summer squash include Magda (light green), Goldy (yellow) and Endeavor (dark green) zucchini. Last year, few of them survived the late frost, so we didn’t have many of them. Even the surviving plants were not as prolific as the varieties normally are. We definitely want to have at least 3 or 4 of each. As for the Sunbrust squash, I got an extra packet of those, and we intend to plant two packets of seeds. They were a favorite last year, and we look forward to having lots!
The melons, Pixie and Halona, are small fruiting varieties. There don’t seem to be a lot of seeds in the packets, so we will likely plant all of them. Hopefully, they will be prolific.
A lot of these will be staked or trellised.
Next are the cucamelons and Montana Morado corn in late May. By which I mean, mid-May, so they’ll be ready to transplant after June 2.
We will be trying the cucamelons two ways; I potted up tubers from last year, which should mean getting an early start on them when they are transplanted in the spring, but we will also start a few indoors. It should be interesting to see what differences there are between them. Assuming the tubers survived their winter in the un-insulated old kitchen.
As for the corn… I have been researching that and I’m going to save my thoughts on those for their own post!
Then there are the sunflowers; Hopi Black Dye and Mongolian Giant. This will be another experiment. I got two packets of each. Last year, we direct sowed our giant sunflowers, then sowed another giant variety to make up for the losses from the first batch. They never really had the chance to fully mature. This year, we will start one packet of each, indoors, then will direct sow the other packets when we transplant the first ones outdoors. It should be interesting to see the difference.
Finding the space for all these starts is going to be a challenge. I’m hoping that, by the time we need to start so many seeds in early May, we will be able to use the sun room instead of fighting for space in the aquarium greenhouses. Last year, it was a somewhat chilly spring, and that wasn’t an option. However, if we can provide some sort of heat overnight, it might work this year, even if we get another chilly season.
While all of these need to be started indoors, there are also some things we will be able to direct seed “as soon as the ground can be worked”, which means in mid to late May. The bread seed poppies, kale and kohlrabi, peas, etc. will all be direct sown before any of these are ready to be transplanted. A lot of local people start putting their gardens in on the May long weekend, including transplants. If we had the things necessary to properly protect transplants from frost, I probably would do the same, but we don’t. Our attempts to protect them last year were not particularly successful. :-/ So we will wait for June on the transplants.
Now I just have to hold off another week, before starting those tomatoes!! :-D
In my last post, I wrote about the destruction wrought by our indoor cats. To counter that, here is a photo of an adorable little outside cat.
Meet Ginger, of the rubber spine!
He followed me around while I was doing my rounds, and kept flinging himself onto the ground in front of me, rolling about like some sort of Polychaete worm. Adorable!
Inside cat destruction is not, however, what fried my brain.
I call a call from my brother this morning, to talk about upcoming court dates. I’ve got my application for a restraining order against our vandal coming up this month, and the court date for his vexatious litigation against me in July. It took him a while, but my brother had managed to finally upload a file of phone messages our vandal had left with our mother. I already had the most recent ones. These ones were basically from the past year.
I just spent that last few hours transcribing them.
The transcription itself is it’s own challenge, with having to go back and listen to things repeatedly, trying to figure out what was being said. I’m pretty sure he was drunk for some of these calls, but in others… well, he just doesn’t sound all there, words and phrases are messed up, and there is some stuttering as he was clearly trying to find the words to say.
The other thing was, of course, the subject matter. Though my mother has no part in my applying for a restraining order against him, he keeps accusing her of trying to put him in jail. In fact, it’s a vast conspiracy of my mother, me and my siblings, and the RCMP, all trying to put him in jail. Because we’re evil. And my late father and brother are watching this from heaven in disapproval. Also, apparently, my mother has given the farm to me. All of it. Never mind that my younger brother has already inherited a third of it. And we only love my mother for her money (that apparently she had loads of. Somewhere). And did you know that there are people being killed and raped around the world, but here she is, trying to put him in jail?
This dude needs psychiatric help. I realize my mother got these calls over the span of a more than a year, counting the most recent ones, but I was listening to all of them, one after the other. And he is absolutely obsessed with me, and me being here on the farm, not allowing him on the property or access to all the stuff he thinks belongs to him. The fact that he was caught in the act of breaking the gate, then trying to break it again, on top of his pilfering over the years before we moved out here, never came up. Instead, he would say things like “why are you doing this to me?”
Yeah. Brain. Fried.
I need to go distract myself with something more sane.
Last night, while checking on the onion seedlings, I decided it was time to lower the shallot and bulb union seedlings in the big tank. The seedling tips were looking a little dried out, likely because they were getting too close to the warmth of the light fixture.
Doing that required removing the trays and the “floor” they were resting on, then shifting the boxes holding them all from standing on end, their tallest position, to standing on their narrow sides, which is their second tallest position. Later on, if it seems necessary, we can turn the boxes onto their broad sides to lower the plants even more.
So that worked out rather well. For the trays, anyhow. Unfortunately, being the suck that I am, I tried to do it without removing a kitten that was staying warm on the light fixture. Saffron is a tiny thing that gets cold easily, and she’s taken to using the light fixture to stay warm. So I just slid the whole thing to the back of the tank. It wasn’t enough to get the “floor” out, so I pushed one end a bit further. And a bit further…
The next thing I knew, the whole thing fell behind the tank as a Saffron launched herself across the living room in a panic.
And the lights went out.
At first, I feared I had broken a bulb, but no. The light in the small tank had gone out, too. As the fixture fell, it swiped the power bar’s plug into the wall.
This house does not have many power outlets. In the living room, there is an outlet behind the big tank, though only one plug in it works. We can access the outlet through the cabinet tank’s cabinet, as it is completely open in the back.
Which requires getting down on my knees and crawling half into the cabinet to reach.
My knees did not appreciate this at all.
After straightening out the prong on the plug that got bent when the fixture landed on it, I managed to get it back in and everything was working fine. Nothing broken.
Phew!
Then I put everything back in place.
Almost.
I had been keeping a small plant pot in the tank with the trays. We’ve had to put various types of barriers on, over or around all our house plants that can’t be hung from the ceiling, to keep cats from digging in the dirt. One small succulent was completely covered with a clear plastic dome, like a mini greenhouse, but the cats kept managing to knock the cover off. The last time that happened, I found the poor little succulent on the carpet, along with a pile of soil that had been dug out of the pot. I replanted it and stuck the pot in the aquarium, so it could get the light and the protection the seedlings were getting and, hopefully, recover.
When I lowered the trays, I forgot to put the plant pot back.
This morning, I discovered my error.
I also discovered a half empty pot, and a pile of soil on the shelf and scattered all over the carpet.
What I didn’t find was the plant. There is no sign of it. It’s likely under another shelf, but it could just as easily have been dragged down to the basement.
I had to do my outside rounds, though, so I rescued as much of the soil as I could – it’s a soil mix specifically for succulents – then moved the pot to the dining table. The table is covered in stuff. Partly because all flat surfaces just seem to invite things to be piled onto them, partly on purpose, to keep the cats off when we’re not around. I tucked the pot against some other stuff, then dashed outside to do my rounds.
I came back to another pile of soil on the dining table, and on the floor.
*sigh*
So, that’s another plant lost to the cats. I am pretty sure the culprit is Cabbages, as she’ has been caught many times, trying to get into other plants, but others have been caught, too, so I can’t say for sure.
I really hope the temperatures warm up overnight and stay warm, soon. When we start having to get larger numbers of seeds started, they’re not all going to fit in the two tanks. We’re going to have to use the sun room as a green house. Right now, I’ve seen it reaching as warm as 20C/68F during the day, but it does go below freezing overnight. We’ll be able to fit some things in the big tank with the onion trays (like the tomatoes we will be starting very soon), but when it comes time to start the corn and squash seeds, those onion trays are going to need to be moved to the sun room. This won’t happen for probably another month, at the earliest, so we should hopefully be okay by then.
