Author: Re-Farmer

Just a bit earlier, today

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With how bitterly cold it has been for the past while, I have been doing my morning rounds much later in the morning. It may only have been a couple of degrees warmer, but I was taking anything I could get! Usually, by the time I came out, the outside cats were hovering around the door, looking for me to come out with warm water.

This morning, I headed out at a more usual time, even though it was -31C/-24F with a wind chill of -33C/-27F

Absolutely none of the cats came out to greet me! LOL

The only cat I saw was Nosy and, other than lifting his head to look at me, he did not move! Considering that he is curled up right under where the terrarium bulb is, I’m guessing it’s still working.

My brother’s dog was visiting again. He’s loving this cold so much! :-D I didn’t have any cats joining me for my rounds, but I did have him to keep me company! You can even see him in the photo below.

We have deer paths all through the garden area and the East yard, but none are as well worn as these, here. We used to have a trail cam facing where they would cross the road from my brother’s place and jump our fence. One of these days, I’d like to set one up again. I miss seeing how many deer used to cross here!

What I found this morning, however, is that the top barbed wire is loose from one post, and it was twisted around the middle wire. It had been torn loose when a deer didn’t quite clear the fence! I’m going to have to find some U nails and head out with a hammer to fix it.

Long term, we’re going to have to find a way to stop the deer from entering our yard around here at all. As much as I like them, I don’t want them eating the garden! Privacy is also a goal, and not just from our vandal creeping about. Even with the lilac hedge and other trees along the fence like, people driving by like to slow down and peer into the property. Particularly if there are deer at the house. The fence posts around the garden area all need to be replaced, and I want to get away from barbed wire completely, so building a privacy fence around the garden area that the deer can’t jump over is right in line with our goals. When we can do that is another question entirely! :-D

Speaking of gardens…

This morning, I noticed that the label for the bunching onions in the small tank had been knocked over. Though I had blocked the opening in the lid, a cat had still managed to reach in and bat at things. When I lifted the lid to fix it, though, I could feel it was noticeably colder than the room!

Clearly, lining the inside of the tank with insulation was not enough. The above picture is from when the trays were first put into the tank. Not only did a cat knock over the label, but I found one of the peaks of cardboard in a corner had been torn off!

The light on this tank is LED. It provides no warmth. The light on the big tank is fluorescent (I had thought it was LED, too, but was remembering incorrectly), so it does help keep the seedlings warm. The little tank was way too cold for the seeds!

After thinking about how we could warm up the inside of the tank, I remembered something. Years ago, I’d bought a small, recessed bulb, light fixture to provide spot lighting while I was working on crafts, etc. I stopped using it because it had a tendency to get very hot, even with an LED bulb. The bulb would be cool, but the fixture would get hot. I kept it and we even brought it along when we moved here. So this morning, I dug it out, then went through a bag of bulbs we have. We replaced almost all of the light bulbs here with LED bulbs, plus we still had some that the movers accidentally included when packing our stuff. Lo and behold, I found a full spectrum incandescent light bulb in the mix.

Perfect!

So I set the light fixture up on the edge of the tank, with the lid propped on it to hold it in place. I also dug around our aquarium supplies and found the little tank thermometer. The suction cup doesn’t work anymore, but I could still set it up inside the tank so that we could monitor the temperature.

It worked. In only a few minutes, I could feel a significant difference! (The thermometer will need more time to read accurately, since it was in the old kitchen, where it’s below freezing temperatures.)

We can only have this light going while someone is there to supervise, since it could literally melt the plastic of the lid. Since the tank is lined with insulation, once it warms up inside, it will stay warm for quite a while, so a few minutes here and there will be adequate.

On the down side, the cats still try to jump on the lid, even when it’s propped up over the light fixture.

I did not expect the small tank to be less cat proof than the big one!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: Layout

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Okay, so my last post actually uploaded, so here’s hoping this one works, too!

I mentioned previously that the girls and I have been going over the layout of the grounds we have to work on, trying to figure out where we will be planting things. Today, I worked up a new diagram on the computer, this time keeping the satellite image in the background.

This is what we’ve got to work with; what I call the inner yard.

The long blue lines at the bottom (which is South) are fences. Black lines are around the house, storage house and garage. The one yellow line extending from the house is an important one for us to remember, when it comes time to making our permanent garden beds in the outer yard. There are pipes buried under there; water from the well next to the house, leading to the barn and to water fountains that were used when my parents still had cattle, and the septic pipe that diverts to the septic field, well away from house and barn. Since we plan to build accessible raised beds, and hopefully a polytunnel and/or greenhouse, we need to make sure to keep that area clear, in case we ever need to excavate it for repairs to the pipes.

The masses of green are treed areas. The spruce grove is on the right. The little yellow dot in there is where we will be planting the mulberry tree that will be arriving in the spring. We need to clear away dead spruces and underbrush, but there will be enough mature trees around it to protect it from the elements. Necessary, since it is a zone 4 tree and will need extra protection.

The blue rectangles are existing beds. The two little ones along the spruce grove are where the hard neck garlic is planted. I’ve marked where I will be making a third bed in that area. This is the only place we have soft soil, exposed when I cleaned up where the wood pile used to be. While clearing away the dead trees and underbrush around there, we will also be clearing the space where we are planning to build a cordwood shed to be used as an outdoor bathroom with composting toilet. No pit! The existing outhouse is between those beds and the garage to the south.

The blue next to the house is the old kitchen garden area, with its retaining wall of chimney blocks that we planted cucamelons in, last year. This is a bit of a problem area, overshadowed by two ornamental apple trees. There is also a double lilac, a honeysuckle and some roses in there that we will have to work around.

Then there is my mother’s old garden area!

The existing beds marked in blue are where we grew our squash and potatoes. The two little beds to the right are where the potatoes where. Summer squash were in the larger, North-South oriented beds. The long skinny bed on the north side had birdhouse gourds in it, but those got killed off by frost. The three East-West oriented beds had started out as pumpkin mounds, but when I cleaned it up for the winter, I turned them into larger beds.

The green rectangles are potential new plots. The slightly darker green ones are pretty much decided on, while the lighter green ones are in areas that are probably not worth putting beds in, but we could if we needed to. There is a row of self sown trees to the North of the existing beds that we really should take out; they should never have been allowed to grow there. They split my mother’s old garden area in a way that made a substantial part of the garden unusable. There’s also a chokecherry tree growing, all by itself, in the gap between two light green squares.

There is also a green garden area marked along the fence line to the south of the house. There should actually be two of them, on either side of the person gate, which is near that yellow line. On one side is where we will be planting cucamelons, using the chain link fence as a trellis. The other side will have tomatoes. Hopefully. The seeds have not arrived yet, so that will depend on whether they get here in time to be started indoors.

The bed I will be making next to the hard neck garlic will probably be for our 2 varieties of beets. Either that or carrots, given how soft the soil is there. We have 4 varieties of carrots to plant, so we’ll see.

The garden by the old kitchen will likely have our poppies, lettuces, and possibly the pink celery that will hopefully arrive in time.

The three beds that used to be pumpkin hills are where we will plant our three varieties of spinach. The longer beds on either side will have the bulb onions, likely interplanted with the purple Kohlrabi (onions repel insects that go after plants in the cabbage family). The former potato beds will have the shallots and bunching onions, and will likely have something interplanted with them, too. Possibly kale. We got purple kale as free seeds from Baker Creek, and we seem to be going with a pink and purple theme this year, so … we’ll see.

Speaking of purple, to the left of the existing beds is where we are planning to plant the purple corn. There are areas that can fit potential beds to the north and south. This whole area has to be carefully planned. Where the current beds are now will be permanent garden areas; I’m not so sure that where the corn will be planted will be included. With the horrible plow job that was done before we moved here, the area we’ll be putting the corn is the roughest (another reason we need that load of soil!), but where I’ve blocked off space for the corn is the best part. To the south, there’s too much shade from trees, so if we do make beds there, only shade friendly vegetables can be planted there. To the north, it’s basically lawn, and was never part of the original garden. I’ll touch on those areas, later.

Let’s leap over to the massive area on the right (east). There will be alternating blocks of corn and sunflowers there. We have 3 varieties of peaches and cream corn, and 2 varieties of giant sunflowers. We may interplant our 2 varieties of peas with the sunflowers, which can provide very strong supports for the peas to climb, while the peas fix nitrogen into the soil.

Legumes are supposed to be good to plant near corn, as corn depletes soil of nitrogen very quickly. We have 3 varieties of bush beans and, while I am considering staking them (which is supposed to help prevent fungal disease, rot and insect infestations), they are not climbers, so we won’t be interplanting them with the corn. They will go where I have two long strips near the big block. They are not as long as the block for corn and sunflowers, because of shade from the row of crab apple trees.

The other blocks will be used to plant summer squash, which I want to try staking this year, plus winter squash, gourds and melons on trellises and/or arches. Possibly peas, if we end up not interplanting them with the sunflowers. We have one more variety of corn that will be among those blocks, too.

We have two types of radishes, which will be interplanted with other things. Likely corn. Even though we will be able to buy soil that will enable us to do all this (barring some sort of emergency that takes up the funds), much of this area will later have fruit and nut trees planted in it. Anything we do to break up the soil will make it easier for us to dig holes to plant trees into.

It is with that in mind that we are breaking ground in areas that were never part of my mother’s garden. The area where we will be planting the corn and sunflowers is all grass, as is the strip along the north side. That row of self-sown trees is in the old garden area (my mother had a raspberry patch there, and when she transplanted the raspberries, she left the saplings). The old garden area extended a small plow’s width past them – and they are probably why the plow job on that side is as rough as it is (though it could also be that the person who did the plowing may have been drunk at the time). Planting on that north strip is another area we need to be wary of, as there are telephone lines buried somewhere in there.

There are a few other things we will be planting that are not on the layout. There are no potatoes on there. We are going to try using grow bags, or something similar, for our 4 varieties of potatoes this year. They will likely be set up in the south yard, near the storage house (the building marked off to the west of the house in the middle).

We also have to consider where we want to plant the purple asparagus. It has to be somewhere where they can stay for their 20 years of productive life! We also need to think about where to plant the strawberry spinach, which I’ve learn will self seed! So for those, we need to think about more permanent locations.

As you can see by the dark green lines around the inner yard, we are surrounded by trees. The spruce grove will need a lot of cleaning up, as it has so many dead and dying trees. There are a lot of poplars that are taking it over the south side of the spruce grow, and along the fence to the road, where my parents had planted elms and more apple trees. The apple trees there are too shaded to be able to produce. As I clean up all the little poplars, they will be used to build trellises and arches. As we can, we will plant more spruces in the spruce grove again! :-D Eventually, I want to take out the fence leading to the road – it’s barbed wire, and many of the posts are already rotted and falling over. For now, though, it is needed in case the renter’s cows get through the fence around the outer yard again. :-D

The area on the far right, past the fence line and trees, is a flat area next to the ditch by the road. The north side of that area is going to be prepared for planting a mix of wildflower seeds in the fall. I want to make sure this area doesn’t get taken over by trees, as has happened on the other side of our driveway, which causes a number of problems, so we’ve been mowing it. Which is hard on the mower! Introducing native wildflowers will help solve that problem, while also encouraging native pollinators. That will be good for our future fruit and nut trees.

One of the problems with figuring out where to put things is that it’s really hard to maintain a perspective of just how much space there is, versus how much space we’ll actually need for what we’ll be planting! Things might change quite a bit, even based on how many of what we start indoors germinates. Everything is flexible, but this does give us a general idea of what we have to work with.

Oh, and somehow, we need to keep the deer out of all this!

That will probably be the biggest challenge of all.

The Re-Farmer

Let’s give it a try!

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Okay, so it looks like our internet is working, at least somewhat, so this is a sort of test post!

Today was a beautifully warm day! We reached -13C/9F, which was awesome! They are now forecasting Monday will be 4C!! (40F) It’s going to be amazing! The girls will be going out onto the roof to get as much snow off the second level roof as they can. There isn’t a lot, but once it starts melting, we don’t have to have water leaking into the house at the window again.

As I was doing my rounds, the spice boys and Creamsicle Jr. were happily rough housing in the snow. Creamsicle Jr’s eye looks all clean and healthy now, which is good to see. There was quite a crowd of cats this morning, and I even saw Rosencrantz. I haven’t seen her in weeks! Nosy was on his warm spot on the tire in front of the garage side doors, meowing plaintively. He’s looking better, overall, but now both his eyes are leaking. Poor thing.

While checking the trail cam files later, I was most impressed. The new camera, which includes a temperature reading along with the time stamp, had an internal temperature of -3C (27F) at a time of day when I knew it was about -16C (3F) outside. Moving it out of the shade has made a huge difference. It got below -25C (-13F) during the night, but it still kept shooting stills, even when the batteries got too cold to be able to record video. The older camera, meanwhile, had no problem with the cold.

I used my mother’s car to go into town and pick up a few things, then we later made a much needed dump run. Somewhere in between there, something happened to Potato Beetle! He had been fine this morning, when he joined me for my rounds and I carried him around. He came around while we were unloading the car, and was looking a mess. Literally. He had dirt all over, and his fur was matted. He was also walking as though limping with his back legs. We found dried blood in the fur on the inside of his ankle, but could see no wound. We’ve been putting our garbage bags in the old kitchen, where they can freeze, but no animals can tear apart the bags. I went through the sun room to load bags into the car, and he followed me in. By the time I was done, he’d settled onto a old pillow under the swing bench – his favourite spot in there – so I left the doors partly open and let him be. Unfortunately, this evening, my younger daughter heard a commotion, and found Nicky the Nose in the sun room, going after Potato Beetle. :-( I think we can guess who messed Potato Beetle up!

We’ve got to do something about Nicky the Nose! We’ve had quite a few other toms, from who knows where, come by but none have been as aggressive towards our yard cats as Nicky.

Well, time to see if we have a stable enough internet connect for me to post this! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Disconnected

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I am currently writing this in town, on my phone, where I can get a data signal.

Our data limit on the primary account reached 90%, so we switched to the secondary account. The connection on that satellite is so bad, it may as well be no connection at all. In fact, most of the time, there is no connection at all! I tried to catch up on blogs that I follow and most won’t load completely, and I can’t leave comments.

With the primary data plan, we will be rationing it so that our daughter can still do business online. Other than that, we will make do with the secondary account as much as possible. Thankfully, I still have quite a few Critter of the Day posts scheduled, but I have no idea if I will be able to do anything else. So if posts are few and far between for the rest of the month, that is why!

The Re-Farmer

Oh, I’m so excited!

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It’s easy to get excited about things today. As I write this, we are at a balmy -18C !!

Okay, the wind chill is at -27C, but that’s okay. We’re at -18C! And our predicted high is -15C! It’s feeling like spring out there!

For my friends in the US, -18C is 0.4F, -27C is -16.6F, and -15C is 5F.

Last night, we did hit temperatures of -33C/-24F with a wind chill of -37C/-35F, so this is a huge increase in the space of about 14 hours. Not only that, but by the 22nd, just 5 days from now, we’re supposed to reach 2C/36F

I don’t know how we’re going to handle all that heat. LOL

Even the deer are happy. I took these shots, after I’d done the morning rounds.

I had seen two deer at the feeding station, but by the time I came back with my phone to take pictures, there were three!

Cabbages was watching them – and didn’t run away when I came close to take pictures!

When I headed out this morning, there wasn’t a yard cat in sight, which concerned me a bit. With the increased temperatures, I expected to see them all over. Then I saw the fluffy white flag in the outer yard! :-D My brother’s dog had come to visit the kitties, and they were all in hiding. They did eventually come to the kibble house, and indulge in some warm water, though.

I’m starting to think that the terrarium heat bulb inside the cat’s house has stopped working. I can see by the red light on the timer that it is still getting power when the light sensor is triggered. However, that spot on the roof where the snow would melt is not clear, even after I shoveled off most of the snow and things have warmed up in general. We have no thermometer inside (something we intend to add, later in the year), so the only way to tell would be by lifting the roof and manually checking the ceramic bulb.

Which is not going to happen, any time soon! Unless the heated water bowl gets unplugged again, we are not lifting that roof. :-D

I ran our van while I was switching out the memory cards on the trail cams. The coolant levels are where they are supposed to be, which is good. It’s still making a whining noise, but I no longer think it’s the cold serpentine belt. I think it’s the power steering, right next to it. Something else to get checked. *sigh*

Trading the locations of the trail cams seems to have worked. When I switched the memory card in the new camera, the display screen inside activated without my having to warm it up with my hands, first! We had a busy day at our gate, yesterday. The older camera, which is set to take only short videos, had 44 files for me to check. The new camera, which is set to take 3 stills, then a short video, had 233 files waiting for me! It did have a hard time with night shots, but it was taking stills with an internal temperature of -25C/-13F before stopping completely. The other camera was still recording, and I finally saw what has been close enough to trigger the motion sensors, but too far for the infrared flash to light up. I could just barely see the shadow of a deer walking though the far end of the driveway, by the road.

So the camera set up is working better now, which is the important thing.

And now for the thing that I’m really excited about!

As the girls and I were pouring over the diagram of the property, our need to buy soil – and a lot of it – is something we just can’t get away from. It’s not even that we don’t have the years it would take to build up the soil, as we originally planned, but that we don’t have the organic material to do it. We just don’t produce enough compost, don’t have enough yard waste, and don’t have access to the amounts of manure and other amendments we need, in the quantities we’ll need.

I’ve tried to find out how much it would cost to get a dump truck load of garden soil through various sites, but I don’t know how much a dump truck would hold in the first place. We don’t plan to have a load spread onto the garden area. We just want a pile that we will spread ourselves, where we need it, as we need it. Most of where we are planting this year is going to be temporary, anyhow, so we will be very selective on where we put purchased soil.

Then there are all the different mixes you can get. Some sites I found offered a basic 3 part mix of soil, compost and manure, while others offered up 4 and 5 part mixes, with additional amendments. Of course, the more in the mix, the higher the cost, but without knowing how many square yards I’m even after, there was no way to figure out how much it would cost. The only thing I really had to go by was how much my older brother paid for loads of soil, but he wasn’t buying garden soil. He was buying things like fill and gravel. Still, it gave me the closest thing to a ball park figure I was able to find.

Today, I decided to call a local company. They have a yard just a couple of miles away from us, and we pass it every time we go to town. I knew they did gravel, but in passing the yard, I could see they had soil, too. Was it fill? Topsoil? Garden soil? I had no idea.

So I called them up and asked if they had garden soil, and was told, yes, they did. Then he began rattling off four of the five part mix they have! He couldn’t remember the last one, but it includes both cow and sheep manure, as well as a type of sand, to make it lighter. I’m guessing the one he couldn’t remember was compost. With the companies I found online, this would be their high end premium mix, but for this company, it’s the only mix they have!

I asked about load sizes, and their truck holds 10 – 12 square yards of garden soil, and we would be charged only $25 a yard.

And because we are so close, that would include the cost of delivery!

A load of 12 square yards would cost about $300. I’m assuming there would be taxes on top of that.

That is about half of what I was expecting it to be.

My older brother happened to call not long after, and when I told him about it, he was astonished at the price. He also wondered if a single load would be enough, but at this price, we’ll be able to get two!

I’ll be calling the company back to arrange delivery around April. That gives us time to figure out where we want to have the soil dumped. If we’re getting two loads, I’m thinking maybe get one for the inner yard, and one for the outer yard, but I really can’t think of where we can place a truck load in the inner yard.

We’re already looking forward to what we’ll be able to plant this year. That we’ll be able to afford the soil is just icing on the cake! We were talking about waiting until we get our tax returns to do this, but the cost is so much lower than expected, we could even be able to do it from our normal budget, even if we’d have to split it between two months – so long as we don’t have anything break down! :-D

I just realized something.

We can get a dump truck full of premium garden soil for less than the cost of getting a cat spayed.

Something seems wrong about that!

:-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: bunching onions started, and sprouts!

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Finally! The last of our onion seeds have been planted!

These were the bunching onions; a variety called Red Baron, from Veseys. They have red root ends instead of the usual white.

Using the dampened blunt end of a bamboo skewer made planting the seeds really easy. I could pick up a single seed at a time (two, if I really wanted to), press it into the growing medium, then cover the seed, all with the skewer. I put two seeds in each cell (though I think I might have lost track and double planted a couple! LOL), which left me with about half a package left over.

Then the trays went into the 20 gallon fish tank. It’s a bit snug, and I’ll likely have to fight a bit to get them out again later, but there is enough room at each end to move them, to get a grip under the tray supports.

This tank has a lid with the light fixture attached under it. I had thought that would be enough, but my daughter has already caught a cat on the lid, reaching through the opening in the back for the filter and hoses. I’m going to have to find a way to block that off, while still allowing air circulation!

Meanwhile…

The first onions we planted, the Norstar bulb onion, now has sprouts large enough to see in a photo. :-D

You can also see how some of the K-cups are drier on the top. I’d already sprayed them this morning, and we’ll likely have to spray them again this evening. The peat pellets, at least, are holding their moisture quite well.

Special note: when using loose peat to start seeds, soak it with water before putting it in pots or cells!

As an aside, I am happy to say that my husband’s prescriptions got delivered today. I had asked for them to call first, so I could unlock the gate, only to get a phone call saying they were already here! So I quickly threw on some boots and a coat and dashed out to meet them.

Of course “dashing out” doesn’t mean the same thing on the farm than it did when we lived in the city! LOL

When I mentioned I had been expecting to be called in advance, so the gate could be unlocked for them, I was told they’d actually tried to call from the driveway, but couldn’t get a signal. They had to drive up the road about a quarter mile before they could get enough signal to call me.

The driver then commented that he recognized me, and he even remembered my name, as well as my parents! Unfortunately, even though we were outside and on opposite sides of the gate, he was wearing a mask, so I had no clue who he was. It turned out he was the principle when I was in school! He even remembered my husband from high school. Small world! :-) I have no idea why he and his wife were delivering prescriptions for the pharmacy, but I was happy to see them. :-)

My husband has gone over the new meds, and it turns out that the changed prescription isn’t for something he’s on right now. Another medication he used to be on years ago has been added back on, which is why I remembered the name when talking to the doctor about it. I’m losing track of them all! There are some very serious possible contraindications, mostly respiratory. With the setting on his CPAP as high as it already is, that, at least, is not as much of a concern while he’s asleep. It explains why the doctor was so hesitant to change my husband’s medications. He’s already maxed out on the doses of most of his other medications. Hopefully these changes, which will continue to be slowly adjusted over the next few months, will finally get the pain levels under control, and his quality of life will finally start to improve!

Among our goals with our permanent garden beds is for them to be accessible. High beds with wide spaces between them. It would be good for him to be able to get out with his walker, among growing things. :-)

There is more benefit to gardening than being able to grow food!

The Re-Farmer

Van stuff, and we have emerged… :-D

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Yesterday, I made a point of running our van and my mother’s car for a while, to warm up the engines.

The doors to where my mother’s car is parked are sagging, so they open on their own unless they are blocked with something heavy. I’ve been using one of the many tires scattered about to do that. The cats have been loving it. Even in the cold we’ve been having, the black rubber gets quite warm in the sun!

Potato Beetle really wanted attention! :-D

The van keeps making a noise, even after it’s been running a while, so I popped the hood to take a look.

The noise is coming from the serpentine belt, which is what I expected, but then I noticed something else.

I was basically out of coolant/anti-freeze. ?!?

I had some in the garage and topped it up a bit, but decided to check under the van to see if there was some sort of leak. The most efficient way to do that, for someone who can’t get down on the ground, is to use my phone to take pictures.

I didn’t find a leak, but when I uploaded the photos to my desktop so I could see better, I did find a mystery.

What the heck is that? This is under the driver’s seat. I don’t know enough about what’s under vehicles to know what that is. I’ll have to look it up.

Meanwhile, I hooked up the OBD II reader and it actually worked this time, so I did a scan.

One thing came up as an issue, code P0404. I looked it up, but what I found really didn’t tell me much. The EGR valve is what got recently replaced, so this could related to what the mechanic told me about how carbon in the lines he couldn’t reach to clean might come loose and cause some stuttering, etc. I’ll have to give him a call.

On the plus side, my mother’s car was running better, so when I headed out to do my rounds this morning, I made sure to grab the keys and get it warming up.

This morning was the first time in a long time where the temperature and the wind chill were both warmer than -30C for a change!

The cats were quite enjoying the comparatively warm conditions! Poor Nosy is still looking miserable, and he really wanted attention. When holding him, he’s actually taken to grabbing my hand and pulling it to his face, for me to scritch his neck.

It’s warmed up enough that I will be switching out the memory cards on trail cams regularly again, though I had to take the new camera inside and switch to warm batteries again. I took the opportunity to reverse it’s location with the older camera. It is now in full sun, which should help with the frozen battery problems.

Once that was done, I used my mother’s car to go to the post office/general store. It’s just a few miles away, so I felt confident it would be fine.

My mother’s car is a hatch back, and always makes rattling noises in the back. It makes a lot more rattling noises when it’s cold! :-D

While getting the mail, I picked up some more coolant/anti-freeze for the van. Once at home, I topped up the reservoir a bit more. Later today, I’ll run it again for a while.

Meanwhile…

It’s been over a week since we were able to get the mail, so we had lots waiting for us. Including…

More seeds! Packed by Emma. Thank you, Emma! :-D

This was from the order I placed as birthday presents for the girls. :-D The purple asparagus crowns and the black iris will be shipped later, just before it’s time to plant them, for our zone. As of now, the only seeds outstanding are from my last minute order from Baker Creek. They have been shipped, so it’s now in the hands of the US and Cdn postal systems. We’re not expecting them for quite a while. I just hope we’ll get them early enough to start the spoon tomatoes indoors!

Last night, I used a satellite image of the property to create a line diagram of the inner yard, marking off where the house, storage house, fence lines and trees areas are. After printing it out, I drew in where we have existing beds and a few other details. The girls and I have been going over it, trying to figure out what to plant, where, and sketching it in. There is going to be a fair amount of inter-planting – especially with the Daikon radishes, which will be used to help break up the soil. I was amused to discover this type of radish is known as “pile driver” radishes. :-D Among the things we need to consider are the permanent locations. The asparagus, for example, can be expected to produce for 20 years, and the strawberry spinach is self sowing. Once we have a better idea of what we’ll be doing, we’ll make a bigger version of the line diagram to consult as time goes buy. We fully expect to change things up when it comes time to actually plant/transplant, but at least we’ll have a general overview.

Another thing we got today was the catalog I ordered from T&T Seeds. This is the seed catalog from my childhood. :-D I’m glad I got the physical catalog, because I find it much easier on the eyes than their website. :-/ There are quite a few things they carry that few others carry. One of them that caught our attention is the Forage Radish. From their website:

Help loosen your soil! Forage Radish or Bio Drilling. White radishes are quickly becoming a popular cover crop, as growers planting them are seeing benefits beyond commonly used cover crops, such as rye and clover. Forage radishes can improve the soil and environment. With taproots that can grow several feet deep, forage radishes bore holes into the ground, loosening the soil, hence giving them the nickname “tillage radishes.” The deep roots penetrate many layers of compacted soil, with the thin lower part of the taproot reaching 6 feet or more during the fall. After the cover crop dies in the winter and roots decompose, open root channels can be used by subsequent crop roots to grow through compacted soil layers.

Which is exactly what we need. They also carry sugar beets, which can also be used to break up soil like ours, though that’s not a selling feature. Plus, if we wanted to, we could actually try making our own sugar. Or just use them to feed the deer. At some point, we will be getting animals, so it could be one of the feed crops we can grow. Just one of the possibilities we will keep in mind, over the years.

In going over our map and figuring out where to plant, it really is hitting home how much we’ll need to actually buy a whole lot of soil. We will also have to find a way to efficiently water plots that will be well away from the house. Our current 300 ft of hose will not be enough! Things like drip irrigation, soaker hoses, or even lengths of PVC pipes with holed drilled into them that we can attach a hose to, are things we’re considering. For some things, just burying plastic containers of varying sizes, with judiciously placed holes drilled into them, next to plants that need deep watering are an option. They just need to be filled with water, which will slowly drain into the soil near the plants. We have already been keeping all kinds of containers that can be used that way, ranging in size from small water bottles to 5 gallon water jugs so, for us, that will probably be the easiest option.

At one point, I was amused by the realization that, while we are planning our garden for this year, we are also already planning our garden for next year… and the years after! We’re having a blast with it, too. :-)

I have one last photo to share with you before I finish this post. It’s completely off topic, but I can’t resist! One of my constant battles with the cats is that, as soon as I get up from the computer (which is frequent), my (very worn out) chair gets instantly occupied by a cat. Usually Cheddar.

Last night, I had this group waiting for me. Beep Beep and her babies, Saffron and Turmeric. :-D

Those faces! They’re like owls. :-D

It’s a lot more challenging to remove three cats, since any one I’ removed jumps back the instant I’ve turned my back while removing the next one!

They are certainly entertaining. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: shallots are started!

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Well, the shallot seeds are finally planted! Yay!

After adding more water and letting it soak overnight, we were left with a sort of peat slurry! :-D No fear of the seeds not getting enough moisture, this time!

To contain any potential mess, I set up inside the under-bed storage container that will eventually be used to hold the beer cups that I will be using as larger pots, when it’s time to start the squash seeds. It won’t be needed for some weeks, yet, and it was the perfect size and depth for this job.

It’s a bit hard to see in the photo, but you can tell why having something under the trays to support them was so essential. The first tray I filled is the slightly darker one on the left. It’s darker, because the cardboard is completely wet! Which means it’s also very floppy. There is no way these trays could be handled, without something solid under them.

When I planted the bulb onions, I was left with about half a package of unused seeds.

Not the shallots! I had just enough seed to put two in every cell, minus 1 seed. :-D

Though the peat was well saturated, I still sprayed the tops, more to settle the surface than for actual watering. When it came time to move the trays, I tipped them side to side a bit, to allow excess water that had soaked through the cardboard to spill off.

To get the trays into the tank, I had to take the light fixture off completely. All the trays fit perfectly, from end to end. If I wanted to, I’d be able to fit pots or egg cartons (dozen size, not 18’s) in the space at the front. That isn’t needed now, but when it’s time to start other seeds, we might find ourselves crowding the space as much as possible.

We freed up an 18 count egg carton this morning, so I checked out the fit in the smaller tank. One carton fits, of course, but only in one direction, and it’s long enough that we would not be able to fit in a second one. So I went back to my stack of flats and picked out two. The trays are 5 x 6 cells, and I cut them down to 5 x 5. That will allow two trays to fit in the smaller tank.

I will be adding a bit more peat to the container to absorb some of the excess water and leave it overnight. Tomorrow, I’ll be able to use the cut down trays and start the bunching onions in the small tank. :-)

Between these and the onion sets we’ll be getting in the spring, we should have enough onions in total, for fresh eating and for winter storage, to last us a year, if all goes well. With the bunching onions, I plan to dehydrate a lot of them, but will probably freeze some, too. We do use a lot of onions. I stopped to figure it out, and estimate we use about 200 yellow cooking onions a year, alone. Those are the ones we buy regularly. On top of that are the red onions, bunching onions and leeks we get more irregularly. We don’t usually buy shallots at all, because they are a fair bit more expensive. So it’s well worth the time end effort for us to grow a lot of onions! We won’t be trying this year, but I am hoping that by next year, we’ll be able to try growing leeks, too.

By the end if this year’s gardening, we’ll have a better handle on whether it’s worth it to keep growing from seed, or to go with buying sets. Growing from seed, for the amounts we’re after, takes up a lot of space, but there are more varieties available in seed than in sets. Either way, it’s going to be a trade off.

As a side note, we had company while I was working on the seeds.

Three white tail deer.

I love that they’re coming around during the day now, when we can actually see them! :-D They are so beautiful!

The Re-Farmer

It’s a start!

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This morning, for the first time in a while, I did my morning rounds in temperatures warmer than -30C/-22F! :-D

Granted, it was -29C/-20F, and the wind chill was -36C/-33F, but… I’ll take what I can get!

As I write these, we are at -23C/-9F, with a wind chill of -31C/-24F. We’re still getting “extreme cold” alerts, but we’re expected to reach -21C/-6F with a wind chill of -29C/-20F. It seems the polar vortex has finally released it’s grip!

I had a lot of cats to greet me when I came out, eager for warm water, and generally playful. Nosy was looking better today, as he settled into a sun spot in front of the door.

Yes, that’s him looking better!

I picked him up for a while, and he just settled into my arms and started to knead the sleeve of my parka. I saw Junk Pile, and she was looking much better, too, and Creamsicle Jr’s eye is looking good. He seems to even be managing to clean the fur around it a bit more.

As bitterly cold as it has been lately, our winter has been mild overall. This really shows in the deer that visit our feeding station.

The past two winters were bitterly cold throughout, and last winter had us bludgeoned by waves of polar vortexes. By this time of year, when the deer showed up at the feeding station, they were very thin, and we could see the ribs on many of them. The deer in the above photo was the fifth one I saw yesterday. We had two show up, including the three point buck that is in today’s photo of the day. He was the smaller of the two! After they left, two others came by that I think are a mother and her yearling, then this one showed up on its own. All of them were looking hale and hearty, with plenty of meat on those bones. There was almost no feed left by the time this last one showed up, but she does not look like she is going to be too hard done by, without the little snacks they get in our yard. It has been an abundant and relatively easy winter on them, for a change.

At some point, we are hoping to build a deck with a wheelchair ramp at the door of this side of the house. Something with enough all season shelter that will allow us to store things like feed bags, or even my husband’s walker. Currently, his walker is in the sun room, where it is easier for him to get outside, since there are no stairs at that door. Heck, if we design it right, a deck on this side could be a green house, too. It wouldn’t get as much sun throughout the day, but there should be enough sun in the morning to be able to grow some salad greens.

If/when we do get it built, I think it would be great if we could find a way to include a feed trough for the deer. Maybe something with a hopper that can be filled from the deck side. If we can keep the deer coming to the house, hopefully they’ll be less interested in our garden beds!

Gotta win that lottery! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Just one more…

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I couldn’t resist one last post for today! I must be crazy, considering how hard it has been to upload anything, with our internet constantly flicking out, but I’m waiting for bread to rise, anyhow, so I’ve got time. :-D

I just had to get some photos of Fenrir, sitting on the light fixture over the seed starts! Thankfully, only the featherweight cats have been sitting on it, to warm their butts and cold little toe beans. :-D

I was able to head out and start up the vehicles and let them run for a while. That gave me time to get a meter reading on the power pole, as well as spend time with the yard cats. Potato Beetle showed up! I haven’t seen him in almost a week, so I was very glad to see him. He seems to have a runny nose, but no leaking eyes, like Nostrildamus and Junk Pile.

Butterscotch came over for pets, too. I was able to see her back leg a little bit. The wound has healed enough that I can’t see it at all. The shaved patch on her leg is just as nekkid as ever, unfortunately.

When I went back to check on the vehicles, the van was certainly sounding better. It didn’t want to start at all, but at least it didn’t stall. When I leaned over the steering wheel to check the gauges, however, it complained rather loudly! It sounds like the power steering fluid has frozen again. We’ve had that problem with this van before.

My mother’s car was sounding better, overall. When the time comes for us to head out, we’ll be using her car for now!

Tomorrow, we’re supposed to get as warm as -20C, so they should be fine, but I plan to run the engines again. Even just having the doors open to let the sun in helps warm them up a bit, since the winds are coming from the North. Hopefully, they will be running fine by the time we need to actually use them again.

Insulating the garage is rising higher on our to-do list! :-D

What a face! Those eyes!

Fenrir looks ready to bite my head off for disturbing her. :-D

For those who are new to following this blog, Fenrir is the first cat we brought in from outside. She showed up as a kitten, about the same age as the kittens our own yard cats had at the time. We suspect she was dumped. There is no way she came from any of the local cat populations. Even the little yard cats, like Beep Beep, are far hardier than she is. We called her The Outsider (a game reference) for the longest time.

Our own yard cats and their kittens absorbed her into the creche. We were never able to socialize all of the kittens from those two litters, and were barely able to get Fenrir to let us come near her. That winter, we turned the sun room into a cat shelter. It turned out to be a brutally cold winter and, unlike the local yard cats, she did not develop a thick undercoat. Nor did she put on any winter weight. We finally brought her inside, because we knew she would not survive the winter, otherwise. Eventually, she settled in, learned to get along with our two cats that had moved here with us, and is now quite settled. She can still be an ornery cat at times, but she’s a real sweetheart.

She is still incredibly thin under all that fur, so I can’t fault her for using the light fixture on the aquarium to stay warm!

The Re-Farmer