I managed to get it done and uploaded!
So many things in the garden are way behind, and I don’t know why. If anyone has any ideas, please leave a comment!
The Re-Farmer
Author: Re-Farmer
Our 2026 Garden: MI Gardener seeds are in
Our order actually came in last week, but we weren’t able to get to the post office while it was open.
Here is what we got today.
In the bottom row, we have Tricolor Mixed bush beans, Rainbow and Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard, an Assorted Mix of beets, White Egg turnip, White Icicle radish and a rainbow blend of carrots.
In the middle is Bi-colour Pear gourds, my “just for fun” item, yellow scallop squash, Gill’s Golden Pippin winter squash, green scallop Bennings squash, Spring Blush peas and White Vienna kohlrabi.
In the top row is Red Beard bunching onions, Borage, American and Giant Noble spinach, Kandy Korn sweet corn, Purple Vienna kohlrabi, and an envelope to collect and store our own seeds in.
From this batch, these are the ones that will be planted this fall, before the ground freezes.
- Rainbow and Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard
- Assorted Mix beets
- White Egg turnip
- White Icicle radsih
- Rainbow Blend carrots
- Spring Blush peas
- White and Purple Vienna kohlrabi
- American and Giant Noble spinach
I am not sure about the Borage. I’ll have to do some research before deciding if those will be planted in the fall or started indoors in the spring.
Everything else except the corn and bush beans will be started indoors.
- Bi-colour Pear gourds
- yellow and green patty pan squash
- Gill’s Golden Pippin winter squash
- Red Beard Bunching onions.
Hopefully, starting the summer squash indoors next year will work. Direct sowing hasn’t been working out for those, for some reason. We didn’t have a slug problem this year, thanks to the many, many frogs, so that wasn’t the issue. We should be able to winter sow summer squash, but when I tried that for this year, none germinated. Most were old seeds, but there were new seeds in there, too. When I planted potatoes in that bed later, I did find a few seeds, but most seemed to have just disappeared. I did have to cover the bed with netting because of the cats, so they might have had something to do with the failure, too.
This, all on its own, is the makings of a decent garden for next year. We have other types of beans, winter and summer squash, melons, peas, corn and our own onion seeds. Of course, we’ll also be getting seed potatoes in the spring, and will probably try the little bell peppers and orange eggplants again. We have herb seeds that I might start indoors, if we have space, or we might cheat and buy transplants again, instead.
So there we have it! The beginnings of next year’s garden, much of which will actually be planted this fall.
Hopefully, we’ll have a better growing year than this one, because something really weird is happening with this year’s garden. It’s been so frustrating. We should be at the peak of growth and harvesting right now, and there’s basically nothing – and not just because of the deer! I’ll be talking about that in my garden tour video, and you’ll be able to see exactly what I mean.
Speaking of which, time to try and record some video. The rain has stopped, but we’re supposed to get thunderstorms later this evening!
So happy with all the rain!!!
The Re-Farmer
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Feeling thankful
I finally made it to the post office today. I knew there were three parcel slips waiting, but when I got there, there were two more!
Two of them were for these.
The purple bags were in one smaller box, with the two bigger ones in one big box that the inside cats are currently enjoying. 😄
Feeling so very grateful and thankful for the cat food donation. The Cat Lady sent them to us using her Amazon coupons to get a good deal. Considering how overwhelmed she is right now, and that she’s dropping out of rescue completely by the end if this summer, I so appreciate that she still thinks of us. I spoke to her on the phone today and she was telling me that she’s just had to use up their spay and neuter schedule on trapped strays that keep showing up at their place. The vet is not happy with all the ferals she’s bringing in, but they need to be done!
Also, a cat got into their house and refuses to leave. A neighbour recognized it as a cat they saw getting dumped in the area a few months ago, and she hadn’t seen it since. It first showed up on their critter cams, lounging on a catio roof. Now it’s inside, and they haven’t been able to lure it out. Some of their other cats are incredibly unhappy with the new addition! They’ve got a lot going on in their lives, so I really, really appreciate she took the time to help us out in the middle of it all, too.
The Re-Farmer
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Morning kitties, plum recovery, and we have rain!
My plan had been to take some recordings for my July garden tour video. It was raining a little bit while I was feeding the yard cats and doing my rounds, so that got postponed. I’m happy to say that the rain became heavier, and it’s still raining, several hours later. It’s supposed to continue to rain for at least two, maybe three, more hours.
This is such a good thing!
So my recordings will wait until later today – as will my trip to the post office to pick up my package of seeds from MI Gardener. I’m really looking forward to seeing those!
For now, here are some adorable kitties.
Sprout is there with three of the four feral kittens. I did see the tortie, but it was hiding when I took the images.
The white and black cat nearby is Ink. I can tell she’s nursing, and it seems that she is keeping her babies in the unoccupied farm across the road from us. I do wish they wouldn’t go there. Crossing that road can be quite dangerous for adult cats, like the late Poirot, never mind for kittens!
The next picture is of Pinky and her two, in the garage. I had to zoom in from well outside the garage to be able to get that shot. If I come any closer, the kittens run off.
As I was finishing up and about to head back inside, I spotted the adorable trio in the last photo, all snuggled together. That cat bed is supposed to be a cat cave, but it always collapses. I finally just rolled down the side, and the sides still collapsed! The kittens seem to like it, though, so that’s good.
Havarti was hanging out in the sun room doorway, and I wasn’t able to get a picture of him. When the weather is good, I have the outer door secured open, so it doesn’t blow around in the wind. With the rain, I secured it mostly closed (there’s a brick to make sure it can’t close all the way) to keep the weather out, but the cats and kittens can still get in and out as will.
So we currently have four socialized kittens, six feral kittens, and several cats that I can see are nursing, but no sign of kittens. From what I can see, they have small litters. Maybe two or three active nips, though it’s really hard to tell at times. Adam will jump up on the cat house to eat kibble and will let me pet her. She might have one active nip, but I really can’t tell. I get the sense the Brussel has had a second litter, but that’s based strictly on behaviour. She doesn’t seem to have any active nips, though with her long fur, I could easily be wrong. Then there’s Slick. I am sure Slick had an early litter that she lost, then got pregnant again. She isn’t pregnant now, but I can’t see if she has any active nips. Does that mean she lost another litter? Or maybe has just one kitten, and I can’t see the active nip? She has been letting me pet her while she is eating, but only when there are other cats I can pet at the same time, so there’s lots of movement. If it’s just her, she won’t let me close enough to touch her.
While doing my rounds, I was very happy to see how quickly the Opal plum is starting to recover so many leaves being eaten by deer.
At the base of every leaf that was eaten, a new leaf is emerging. Pairs of leaves, actually.
I really need to figure out some sort of fencing around the garden. The remaining beet greens, more radish plants, and even some carrot greens, were gone this morning. I do have a cover – two, actually – that will fit this raised bed, but not with the radish plants being so big.
Not that they’re going to stay big for long, at this rate.
The peas also look like more of them have been eaten. I did add the pinwheels, but those are a deterrent only if there is a wind to move them. Same with the wind chimes. The new lights I added are working – I can see them from my bedroom window at night – but they don’t seem to be much of a deterrent either.
One of the suggestions I’ve read is to have a radio set to a talk radio station playing all night. I think we even have some old “ghetto blasters” that we could use (anyone else remember those? They were so popular in the 80’s), but I’d have to set up some sort of shelter to put one in and protect it from the elements. I don’t think I’d want to do that, though. Hearing talk radio from outside during the night would not go over well. Usually, when we hear voices in the night, it’s something to be concerned about and check on, not ignore.
With the garlic bed empty and waiting to be cleaned up, I’m considering. Should I bother trying to plant something in it? In theory, we still have enough growing season to plant something like bush beans. Perhaps a late planting for a fall harvest will actually work. The beans we planted earlier all seem to have stalled and stagnated.
We could also try planting anything that either needs about 40 days to harvest, or handles frost well. So we could try growing peas, beets, chard or spinach, too. I could even try zucchini. Anything we plant now would have to have a cover over it, though, since these are all things the deer like to eat.
With how things I direct sowed this year have been stagnating, though, is it even worth planting something? Either things will stagnate again, or it will give us at least something to harvest. We should be harvesting all sorts of things right now, and there’s just nothing.
I’ll look through my seeds again and decide. I might just leave the bed and save it for winter sowing, so we will have something next year.
What do you think?
The Re-Farmer
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Morning kitties, and afternoon jacka$$es
Okay, let’s start with the cute stuff!
Kittens!
This is what I saw out the bathroom window this morning.
I’m not sure which of the adult cats is in there, snuggling with Eyelet, Sir Robin and Havarti. It’s not Colin. Maybe it’s Mochrie? Well, whoever he is, he does enough a nap with the littles!
When it was feeding time, I got to see Sprout and her four ferals.
When I come back with the kitten soup, after putting out the dry kibble, Sprout always hisses at me. It’s been years, and we’re no closer to socializing Sprout in any way. I hope we have better luck with her babies, but the tortie and the calico in particular are a lot like their Mom!
Today was setting out to be a slightly cooler day with the possibility of rain this afternoon. All we got was some light cloud spit. The smoke is really bad today. I’m hoping the rain missed us and hit the wildfires, instead!
My husband had called in a prescription refill yesterday, that couldn’t wait until a Thursday delivery. One of his “controlled substance” meds that he can only refill when he’s down to 3 days of being out. So a trip to town was in order.
The pharmacy opens at noon on Sundays and I got there about 15 minutes early, so I popped across the street to a small department store that was open. I ended up getting a different type of sticky tape to trap insects that I’m used to. The old kitchen is so full of mosquitoes that when I go to get the cat stuff ready in the mornings, I can actually hear the whining of them, and I get surrounded by clouds of them. Thankfully, we have insect repellant now, so it wasn’t too bad this morning! We needed something to get rid of them, and I’m hoping this thing works.
I came out of the store just before the pharmacy opened, and there was a whole crowd of people waiting for the doors to open! Weird.
It didn’t take me long to get what I needed, and I was soon off to my next stop, which was the grocery store to refill a couple 18.9L/5 gallon jugs of water.
The grocery store parking lot was looking pretty busy, so I made a point of parking well away from the store, with no vehicles around me. With the large jugs to get in and out of the vehicle, I like to be able to bring the cart right up to the door to unload it into the space behind the front passenger seat. The space behind the driver’s seat is where we keep our hard sided and hard sided, insulated, reusable grocery bags. In the middle is where we keep the emergency kit and other supplies.
Yes, this is relevant. The main thing is, the only space for the jugs is behind the passenger seat.
I went through the store to see if there was anything else we needed, but only picked up a small package of stew meat and an energy drink for the drive home. So it wasn’t long before I was heading back to the truck with the full water bottles.
There was, of course, a large truck parked right next to me. One the passenger side.
The truck was facing the opposite direction, which means it drove through an empty parking spot to pull into the spot beside me. There was an empty spot on the other side they could have gone into, but nope. the biga$$ Silverado just HAD to park next to me.
I get to the back of the truck and assess the space for a moment. Then I grabbed the stew meat and went to put it in the bag with my other stuff, on the front passenger seat. There is a woman in the Silverado passenger seat, so she could basically just look down at me – the Silverado is quite a big taller than my Sierra! I put the meat and my energy drink in, then went to the back door on the passenger side. Did I have enough room to load the water jugs?
I opened the door and checked. If it opened all the way, it would be against the Silverado. If I left it half way open, I figured there was just enough space to fit a water jug through. I got the first one in fine.
While I was doing this, a guy came over and got into the driver’s seat of the Silverado. So I now had two people in the truck that could see what I was doing, and how little space I had between the vehicles. I figured they would move.
Instead, the guy started unwrapping his half a Dagwood sandwich and started eating.
Needless to say, I’m pretty irritated by this point, but whatever. I just and the second jug to put in, and then I could leave.
As I was settling the water jug into place, I heard a “tick” behind me.
Putting the jug in shook the truck enough that my door opened the rest of the way, and was now touching the truck.
I didn’t see if the woman even looked down to see if there was contact. I moved my door and checked them, but could see no damage. So I closed my door, then went to return the cart to the cart corral.
When I got back to my vehicle, the guy was standing between them, still carrying his sandwich, looking at his door. As I came around to see what he was up to, he looked at me and said that there was some damage.
My response was, so?
I mean really. The guy parked is biga$$ truck next to me, with tonnes of space he could have parked in, instead, didn’t move when he could see I was trying to load large, heavy jugs of water through the narrow space, and now he’s worried about a ding?
Then he said that he was going to have to file an insurance claim.
Really? For that?
My first thought, of course, was “scammer”. If he meant to intimidate me, it didn’t work. I just got more pissed off.
I told him, I deliberately parked far from the store so that there would be no one around me. He’s the one who decided to park right next to me. He made a gesture to the space, as if to suggest it was enough. Which it would have been, if it was just a person getting in and out. Not so much for carrying large water jugs and trying to squeeze them through the half open door. Particularly since, with the weight and awkwardness of them, I should have brought the cart right up to the door, not carry them from behind my truck, squeezing myself and the jug through that little space.
He then started going on about, what else can he do? He has to file a claim. This is an $80,000 truck. It’s a brand new truck. What else can he do? As he was talking, all I could think of was how smarmy he sounded. Smarmy and condescending.
And yes, I did flat out tell him at one point that he was being an a-hole.
At some point, I told him, you’ve got a working truck, and you’re worried about a little bit of paint? He got all huffy, asking me if I could see any tags or stickers showing that this is a “working truck”. WTF was he even talking about? My truck is a working truck, and it’s got no tags or stickers.
Then he went on again about how he’s going to file a claim, no matter what, and went to take a picture of my license plate, saying he was going to be giving me his information, etc. After all, what else could he do? It’s a $100,000 truck.
…
So we were going to exchange our information. Fine. He was going to get his registration papers. Okay. We’re at the back of my truck and I looked at my passenger side door.
Do you really want me to go get mine, and risk hitting your truck again?
Nope. He told me I needed to get them through the driver’s side door.
Right. He wanted this short, fat, middle aged woman to crawl over the console to reach the glove compartment from the driver’s side.
I scoffed and just went and got the papers.
No, I didn’t hit his truck with my door again.
So we took pictures of each other’s registration papers and driver’s licenses, using my tail gate as a table. I’d already taken a picture of the paint from my truck on his door – and of him, walking around with his phone and his big sandwich, taking pictures. Before leaving, I made sure to get a couple more pictures showing the space between and around our vehicles.
Then I got into my truck and started updating my family, before heading home. They left while I was still doing that.
Guess he didn’t need to sit in his truck to eat his sandwich, after all.
The family updated, I headed home and unloaded the truck by the house. Which is when I remembered to get a better look at my own door.
Sure enough, after a bit of searching, I could find a bit of grey paint from the Silverado on my door.
Which I don’t care about, of course.
Once everything was settled inside, I made sure to settle down and write an incident report while everything was still fresh in my memory.
Sadly, I’ve got a lot of experience when it comes to writing incident reports. Usually, it was for the police or the courts, though, not insurance companies.
I made sure to include my photos with the report. The photos of his driver’s license and registration papers as well.
Oh, my.
I really hope this guy doesn’t try to file a claim – for his sake.
First up, after looking at what his vehicle was, I did a quick search. The value, in Canada, maxed out at under $83,000. If he’s stuck to $80K, that would have worked, but he then upped it to $100K
Then I noticed who the owner was.
The truck was owned by, and registered to, a drywall company.
It really was a “working truck”. It’s not even his truck. The company itself is in the city, so he was probably an employee using a company truck… on a Sunday. In a resort town and hour away. With a woman.
The company doesn’t have a website. No email address. Just an FB page. Nothing has been posted on is since 2020.
Then I noticed his license. He’s from a town bordering the city, but what was that X under “restrictions”? Mine has a 1, since I wear glasses. Restrictions also includes things like “maximum speed of 70km/h”, “daytime only”, “hand controls”, “commercial class”, etc. I’ve never seen an X before.
So I looked it up.
It turns out to be a driver’s restriction “addendum”.
It’s used when someone has more restrictions than there is room for on the license.
A list and description of those restrictions must be carried by the person, by law, at all times.
Interesting…
Eventually, I took a look at the photo I took of the ding on the door.
The door of that precious, new, “$100,000” truck…
The first thing I noticed was the pair of scratches in the paint, above the ding I caused.
Then I had to zoom in because… were those… so many…
Chips in the paint?
Yup.
The first photo above is the one I took, untouched. The blue paint from my truck is in the “clean” spot, where he’d dragged his thumb across.
In the second picture, I used red to mark the scratches, and put a dot beside every spot that was clearly a chip in the paint. There were others that I didn’t mark because I couldn’t be sure if it was a chip, or road dust.
As someone who lives off a gravel road, I recognize stone chips in paint. Except the chips were really high up the door. I’m short. That’s a tall truck. Some of those dings at the top of the photo were almost chest height on me. Normal driving on a gravel road shouldn’t result in paint chips, that high up.
According to the registration papers, this truck has only been driving since the end of May of this year. Not even two months, yet. It’s also set to expire at the end of August, so it’s only registered for 3 months, plus a couple of days in May.
That’s a LOT of dings for just a couple of months driving – and that’s just in the area in my photo, on the passenger side door.
There’s also a smear that I am not sure if it’s a smear of dust, or if it’s a smear of paint or something.
Now, I did ding this guy’s car. I tried hard to keep my door from opening all the way, but couldn’t stop it while I was settling the water jug in place.
With the guy’s behaviour and attitude about it, any possibility of apologizing disappeared. Plus, I was already ticked that he’d parked so close to me, when there were so many other places he could have parked and not had anyone next to him, then didn’t move when he saw that I was struggling to get the water jugs into my own truck.
Of course, a polite, able bodied young gentleman would have offered to assist the fat old lady lugging 5 gallon jugs of water and trying to get them into a vehicle. Not that I needed it, but it would have been polite. I’ve certainly done as much for others, when the opportunity rose. At the very least, if he was so worried about the truck, he would have moved it before I started hauling over that second water just.
I somehow doubt that the company that owns the truck is going to think it’s worth paying the deductible to file a claim for negligible damage, while it was being driven by, presumably, an employee (not the owner, since the company name is a surname that isn’t his) using it for personal reasons during off hours.
Well, as my husband put it, if they do file, we’ll let the insurance company sort it out.
What a way to end my time in town today!
Thankfully, the rest of the day has been far less… interesting.
The Re-Farmer
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Our 2025 garden: deer damage
I could see that the deer have been visiting our yard for a while now. The flowers on one side of the vehicle gate into the yard have lost all their tops. The winter sown garden bed in the east yard had its lettuces eaten, and then some of the radish plants and seed pods.
In the main garden area, they’ve been walking past the pea trellises and helping themselves to the greens. I’ve still been finding posts along the trellis wire but the outsides of the plants have been pretty decimated.
What really disappointment me, however, was the plum tree. It was growing so well, and growing taller than the protective tomato supports I’d set around it.
The top of it was stripped of its leaves, this morning.
I am so unhappy with this. Thankfully, they just ate the leaves and not the stem, but still… that’s a huge set back for the tree.
The other new plantings were untouched. They also are nowhere near large enough to outgrow their protective supports.
While at the Dollarama today, I was going to get more of the same tomato supports and just add a new one on top of the old one, to make a sort of tower.
Then I went looking at their display of garden stakes, where I found much taller versions of the same things.
I got two.
It was all I could do not to pick up a whole bunch more garden stakes.
Aside from the height, the new supports are pretty much the same as the old ones. They just needed three sets of cross pieces instead of two. I put the two sets together and set them around the plum tree. Then I used the cross pieces from the smaller set and put them in alternating spaces at two levels, to discourage deer from sticking their heads through.
Last of all, I set a couple of pinwheels at the top, facing in different ways to catch the wind from different directions.
I had another pair of pinwheels and set those up at each end of the pea trellis. I had also picked up a couple of lawn decorations with solar powered lights in them that I added to one end. I’m hoping the lights will discourage the deer, too. Finally, I got a wind chime we’ve had set aside for quite a long time, and hung that off part of the red noodle bean trellis, where it could hang freely. I didn’t bother taking a picture of that. This wind chime is made of bamboo hanging from half a coconut, with a wooden clapper in the middle. I much prefer the sound of wooden wind chimes over all metal ones.
Of course, the pinwheels and wind chimes won’t do a thing, if there’s no breeze to move them. At least the new frame around the plum tree with do that job.
By the time I was done setting all that up, the heat and smoke from the wildfires was starting to get to me, and I had to get back inside. I still need to water the garden, but it’s not supposed to start cooling down for at least another hour. We aren’t exacting rain for a couple of days and even then, who knows if any of it will actually reach us, or go right past.
I am so tired. I’m falling asleep at my keyboard as I write this. I’m glad we made it in to the city to take care of things, but it just sucks the energy right out of me.
It’s just about 7pm as I finish this, and I could go to bed for the night right now!
*sigh*
The Re-Farmer
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Morning kitties, and a mid month shop
Well, I won’t be working on the wattle weave bed today, as we ended up making a trip into the city for are mid month shopping.
The day started, of course, with feeding the outside cats and doing my morning rounds.
That orange and white one, Colby, will come SO close when I’m putting the food out, but won’t quite let me touch him! The little tortie is the shiest of the bunch. Still can’t get near the mama, though she will sometimes come to the house for food.
Pinky, the garage kitten mama, always come to the house at feeding time, leaving her kittens in the garage. She does NOT like any of the other cats, and is quite aggressive towards them. If they come to the garage, she will chase them off. I did move their food tray closer to the the door between the middle and the side where the back door is, and have been seeing both kittens. I saw the white and grey one outside the garage, near the back door, this morning. Hopefully, that means they will soon make the trek across the yard and discover the wonders of regular food, water, shelter, toys and other kittens to play with.
The dump opened at 10 today, so I didn’t want to do anything that needed more time. I watered the garden beds last night, so they were okay for the morning. I’ll need to water them again, this evening.
My younger daughter’s desktop – currently the oldest in the household – has been dying, and she’s been looking online for a new one. She settled on one at Best By, but they would not accept any version of our mailing address. Not the physical address, no postal boxes, not even the physical address of the store the post office is in. No shipping company alternative that services our area. Nothing.
Oh, and they won’t ship to one of their own physical stores, either.
Their methods of contacting someone through the website were useless, so my daughter hoped to be able to talk to someone at an actual store about it.
That meant a trip to the city. There was a brick and mortar location near a Walmart we go to during are monthly stock up trips, so that worked out.
After loading up the truck with a couple of weeks of garbage, we headed out. When we got to the entry to the pit, my daughter got out and walked ahead of me. The area in front of the pit hasn’t been cleared since the last time I was there, 2 weeks ago, and it was bad, then! My daughter made sure there was nothing that could puncture our tires so I could drive in, stopping me when she reached and area of shattered glass. I did have room to back up towards the pit, at least. Well. To the pile of garbage and what looked like the remains of a small, busted up shed, in front of the pit.
I don’t understand why no one has gotten the front end loader to push all this into the pit. The custodian can’t do it; she’s a senior with mobility issues, so that’s not part of her job, but arranging it to be done should be part of her job! Unless council, for some reason, is refusing to get someone to do it? I don’t know, but it’s getting really bad in there.
That done, our next stop was the post office. The post office itself is closed today (Saturday), but my MI Gardener order of seeds is in, and I thought it might be in the mail box.
It wasn’t.
In fact, there were three parcel slips in there. I was only expecting one package. I’ll have to come back on Monday, when the post office opens again, and see what’s there!
That’s what I get for not going to the post office, after getting our truck back.
After picking up what mail we were able to, it was off to the city.
The first stop was in a mall with a tiny Best Buy shop in it.
My daughter explained her situation to the guy there, and it was clear she was not the first person he’s talked about this. He knew the answer right away.
Basically, there is no way to get something as large as a desktop computer purchased from their website delivered to a PO box, nor with they deliver to a physical address as far out as we live. Including the store the post office is in.
We’re just too far from the city. He did acknowledge that they lose a lot of sales because of this.
Apparently, it comes down to security and theft. They can’t assure that a large package delivered to a rural area won’t get stolen, so they just don’t do it anymore.
It makes me wonder just how often things had been disappearing for them to go that far!
Their own stores, however, will cannot accept personal orders for pick up, either.
The only alternative, other than buying a computer somewhere else, is to find someone in the city that was can get it mailed to, then pick it up ourselves later.
We have a few options on that, with the best one being my brother and his wife.
By the time we were done talking to the guy, it was about 1, and the only food we’d had were a couple of cheese buns I picked up at a gas station, along with a couple of energy drinks, for the drive in.
The cheese buns were from a bakery in the town north of us, and they were awesome.
So we went to the food court for lunch. As we were eating, I messaged my brother, asking if we could have something shipped to their place. It turns out they have a lock box for deliveries, so they don’t get left on the front step. The problem is, delivery companies and Canada Post mostly ignore the delivery instructions and just leave things at their door, in full view. However, with Canada Post, they might also just leave a card for pick up at the nearest post office. If necessary, my brother also has the option to work from home on the day something is supposed to be delivered.
They were good with it, though, so that was a relief for my daughter!
After lunch (I packed more than half of mine up to finish at home, the portions were so large!), I popped into the Dollarama to look some stuff for the garden – that will be in a separate post – before we finally headed to the Walmart.
I am not bothering posting a picture this time. We had a lot of bulky stuff, so the cart was full, even though we didn’t actually get a lot.
We got more cat food; a couple of 32 packs of canned cat food – we made a very large dent in our supply when we ran out of dry kibble and the inside cats were getting wet cat food only, until I was able to use my brother’s car to pick some kibble up. Then never drive it again, because of the brakes issue. I’d run out of canned cat food for the kitten soup outside, and have been taking from the inside cat supply, too.
We still have feed store kibble for the outside cats, but I got two more 9kg bags of kibble. One for the inside cats, one as a spare.
The cat food alone was about $120.
Then we got toilet paper and paper towels, which we’ve also been going through faster than usual this month.
Then it was three loaves of rye bread, two 18 packs of eggs, a small jar of mayo, three cheeses (gouda, Havarti and Old Cheddar), and a package of hoagie-type sausages. At my husband’s request, we also got some Crystal Light water flavours and a couple of large bags of pretzels. Oh, and we got 6 cans of Monster; two each for me and my daughters, and a jug of orange juice for my daughters. I did remember to get insect repellant, so we got a 2 pack of that. For the drive home, we got a couple of cold drinks.
All of that, plus $5 to the Red Cross, came out to $322.83 after taxes.
*sigh*
That done, we headed home, stopping to put in $40 in gas before leaving the city, as the prices were a bit cheaper there.
Once home and unloaded, I had to feed the outside cats to get all the kittens away from the truck, so we could move it away from the house again! By that time, it was late enough that they were being fed only a little bit early.
It was also supper time, so I have me leftover lunch, then headed outside to make use of my Dollarama purchases. I’ll be doing the watering, once things have cooled down a bit more.
Next up: finding ways to deter the deer!
The Re-Farmer
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Our 2025 Garden: harvesting garlic
By the time I headed out in the late afternoon, I was recovered physically enough to get a bit done in the garden. It was time to harvest the garlic!
In the first image above, you can see the potatoes in the background. They are yellowing and dying back, even though they’ve never flowers, and there are no signs that they ever will. I’ve looked around and have been able to rule out insects or fungal disease, which pretty much leaves heat and lack of water. I’ve been trying to keep up with the watering, but it’s very possible I wasn’t able to keep up, with the heat that we’ve been having. Mind you, the wildfire smoke probably hasn’t helped anything, either.
I’ve avoided watering the garlic bed for a while, so it could dry out before harvesting. A quick loosening of the soil with a garden fork, along both sides, and they all came out quite easily.
We got some of the biggest garlic heads we’ve ever grown in there!
In preparing this bed before planting the garlic, I did trench composting with whatever organic matter was handy. Including kitchen compost and grass clippings. These garlic have the biggest, strongest roots we’ve ever had, and a few of them pulled up partially broken down grass clippings, and even some egg shells, with them. The roots seemed very happy with the trench compost!
Once picked, I brought them over to the canopy tent I’d set up for them, and sorted them on the bench. Some of the garlic was picked too late, and were starting to split. There was one garlic where the scape never made it out, and instead got stuck in the stem. The bulbils formed in there and broke through the stem. We could keep those and plant them, if we wanted.
Or eat them.
The remaining garlic was strung up on two lengths of twine and hung across the canopy tent to cure.
The garlic that got too big and starting to split was cleaned up and trimmed, and are now in the kitchen for immediate use.
That done, I was finally able to give the garden a solid watering. I even had a full rain barrel to use on the old kitchen garden. I didn’t do the new food forest trees, though. I wasn’t feeling that good, yet!
Tomorrow, the dump is open and, now that we have the truck back, we’ll be able to do a dump run. I’m also going to have to do a shopping trip large enough to make it worth driving to Walmart. I’m hoping to get that done early enough in the day that I can continue working on the new wattle weave bed later on. Since I have an abundance of willow switches in particular that are too short for the distance the verticals are set at now, I’m going to take advantage of those chimney blocks and go the completely the opposite direction. Each of the concrete blocks has a series of openings around the sides. The posts are inserted in those openings along one side, with four empty ones in between each post. It was an easy way to evenly space the verticals.
I’m going to try adding verticals, using thinner posts, in each of the openings between the posts that are already there. I’ve got six posts now, which means there are five sections where I can add four more verticals. Since these will be sitting on top of the retaining wall, there will be no need to debark them, which will certainly save time, and be easier on my hands!
What this should do is allow me to use the shorter, thinner and more flexible willow switches we have so much of, adding new lengths along the way, held in place more securely. Right now, with what I’ve got so far, the overlapping ends just sort of sit there, loosely. I could probably tie the overlaps together, but that rather defeats the purpose of weaving them in the first place!
One of the things I am planning to get, to plant in the outer yard, is basket willow. Properly coppiced, these can produce an abundance of really long, flexible willow. It seems weird to buy more willow, since we have so much of it around, but they are a different variety, and surprisingly not-straight, unless they’re really, really young. I was originally thinking to get basket willow so that we could… you know… make baskets. However, if the coppiced willow is allowed to grow long enough before harvesting, they would be ideal for wattle weaving, too.
That’s at least a couple of years in the future, though. For now, we make do with what we have!
And right now, we have garlic.
Lots of lovely garlic, curing in the wind! 😁🧄
The Re-Farmer
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Morning kitties and tiny harvest
Okay, I definitely over did it yesterday. Which happens a lot faster these days, then it used to!
I was preemptive on things, though. Before going to bed, along with my usual painkillers, I made sure to treat all the usual muscle groups that I’ve had Charlie horse issues with, with Tei Fu lotion. Just in case.
Once outside this morning, I did my usual rounds, starting with feeding the kitties. Including these hungry little wildlings.
The forth one did show up, eventually.
As I was finishing up, I spotted these two full belly babies, being adorable.
I didn’t see the garage kittens until much later, and not both at the same time, but they are there, and getting their own bowl of kitten food. I should start moving the bowl closer to the back door, to encourage them to go into the yard and discover all the amenities, awaiting them!
I should have watered the garden this morning, but my body was giving me a great big FU on the subject. I did manage to get a tiny little harvest, though.
Just a few Spoon tomatoes. In the next photo, there’s a few sugar snap peas, the Spoon tomatoes, a few tiny little strawberries from the old kitchen garden and some raspberries. I was able to leave a bowl full of berries and tiny bowl with the Spoon tomatoes for my husband, as a morning treat when he woke up.
Once back inside, I pain killered up and went back to bed for a few hours.
Being old and broken really sucks sometimes – and I’m still almost the most able bodied person in the household! Both girls are feeling better, though, hence the “almost”. My younger daughter still has to watch herself with the wrist, and has been doing mild recovery exercises. I heard her talking with her sister today, marveling at how much better her wrist feels, even with the remaining pain and discomfort from the surgery, without Squidly wrapped around the bones. She’s so happy to have been able to get that done!
On a completely different note, thanks to some assistance from my older daughter, I was able to pay the deposit for getting the main door and frame replaced. We had 30 days to accept the estimate. After that, we’d have to get a new estimate and, with the way prices are going up, the cost would likely increase if that happened. I’m okay with them taking a while to get the job done, though. That’ll give us time to raised the balance without having to use more debt. *sigh* It needs to be done, though. It’s not like we can go a winter with nothing but a storm door there!
Ah, well. It is what it is. We’ll manage. We always do!
The Re-Farmer
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Finally building the new wattle weave bed
Spoiler alert.
It’s not finished, and won’t be for a while!
The first thing I did was harvest our unexpected maple coppice by the pump shack. It’s been a few years since I cut the suckers back from the old tree stump, so they were getting pretty big – big enough to start getting into the power line for the pump shack.
Time to take them down.
I cleared out all of it, including the smaller suckers. It’ll grow back, as maples tend to do, and the first ones should grow pretty straight, without having others to grow around.
The two stacks in the last picture of the slideshow above are the largest, longest and straightest ones. All the rest went onto the branch pile for future disposal.
The ones I was keeping got dragged into the inner yard, where I could work on them in the shade. I’ve been setting aside things in two piles there. One of longer, straighter poles and branches that can go into the chipper chute. The other is leaves, branches, etc. up to 1/2 inch, which can go into the shredder chute. Once I’ve got quite a bit built up, I’ll be bringing the wood chipper over to clean them all up.
The first thing to do was cut away all the little side branches and twigs.
The resulting pile looked so much smaller!
Since these are going to be in contact with the ground, my next job was to debark them.
Which took such a very long time.
It had to be done, though. Otherwise, the maples could start growing again. Willow and poplar – the other two materials we have for this – do the same thing. In the current wattle weave bed, I used stripped wood on the bottom layers, while the rest still had their bark. Amazingly, even without contact with soil, I spotted some fresh leaves growing!
I have to admit to feeling conflicted on this job. The job itself went well; stripping the bark on freshy cut wood went quite well and was almost meditative. I still felt like I was wasting time, when I could have been working on the bed so much faster, if I just left the bark on! I’m glad I took the time to do it, but gosh, it took forever.
I started stripping bark from the largest ones, leaving the shortest pieces with their bark on. By the time I was getting to the last few, the thinner ones were starting to dry up enough that I had to use my utility knife to strip the bark off, more and more.
I’ve got quite the pile of leaves, twigs and bark started for the shredder chute!
The largest of these were going to be the vertical supports. I measure the bed and worked out that I needed 12 for the long sides. I debated whether to just have one more for the ends but decided to have three smaller verticals at the ends, slightly offset from the long side’s posts. I decided to make the verticals a bit taller than the other bed, too, and cut them to 2’6″.
The posts then needed to have points made. For that, I went into the side of the garage where we store the lawn equipment. My late brother had set up a workshop in there, and there’s still an old vice on the counter. I was able to use that – wrapping the posts with an old cloth grocery bag to protect the wood from the vice – and the draw knife. That green wood cut so nicely!!
Ideally, I would then have treated the wood with oil, or charred the points, but I didn’t have oil for that sort of thing, and we’re under fire bans. So they went in as they were.
I’ve decided to add some wattle weave on the retaining wall blocks as well. With the spaced in the old chimney blocks, it was easy to evenly space out where the verticals would go, then hammer them into the soil. I then had to re-level the edge of the bed, since critters have been playing in the lose soil. I used one of the posts to measure roughly 2 feet from the retaining wall to set the corner posts, then set a line between them. I then used the line and the posts in the retaining wall blocks to set the remaining posts, before hamming all of them into the soil.
Then I dragged over the remaining maple pieces to start weaving.
The longest ones were used up in no time. Two were needed for each level.
The verticals are roughly 2 feet apart, like the other bed. In videos, etc. that I’ve seen about it, they tend to recommend 1 foot apart. When they’re that close together, it’s harder to bend the horizontals around the posts, and they are more likely to crack. However, with them being about 2 feet apart, the narrower ends get pretty loose before they stop. I’d do one from each end per level, which meant running out of length in the middle, making for loose ends and a bit of a mess. Some of that will be hidden once the soil it returned. Adding extra length per level would be more secure and less messy in the overlaps if the posts were just 1 foot apart, though. Which doesn’t help much if the wood ends up snapping, trying to bend them around the verticals that close together. Even using flexible green wood. In fact, I still ended up snaping one, trying to secure it, so the end wouldn’t be sticking out.
I’m glad I decided to do the ends as separate little walls. I was able to use those to help secure the ends of the long side pieces.
I ran out of the longs ones quickly, and the shorter ones were too short to be able to secure them between the verticals. They’d weave between 3 posts and just sit there, loosely.
Which is when I decided it was time to harvest some willow.
Once again, this was needed to get branches away from the power line to the house. I took only the largest ones for now; the smaller ones will need to be done, but I don’t have a use for them just yet.
After stripping off the leaves and shoots, there was a very small looking pile left behind! However, several of them were more than 12 feet long. I was able to weave those in from end to end, and just trim the tiny bit of excess with loppers.
But first, they got debarked.
The kittens LOVED playing with the ends while they were being debarked, and had a blast in the pile of leaves and bark.
Once I got as much as I could, woven in – leaving quite a few shorter pieces behind – it was time to call it a day.
I’m going to need a LOT more material to finish this.
The problem is finding lengths that are long, thin, flexible and straight.
The “straight” part is the hardest to find. Typically, the branches and suckers grow straight for maybe three feet, then branch off. Or there’s been some sort of damage that cause them to grow a new “top”.
For the retaining wall side, I could probably get away with adding more vertical posts, then use up all the skinnier, shorter pieces to weave onto there.
Tomorrow, if I’m up to it, I’m going to go into the edges of the spruce grove to start hunting down some of the poplar that has regrown. Hopefully, I’ll find some nice, long, straight pieces.
We have so many willow, maple and poplar suckers that I’d hoped to harvest for this, but the majority of it isn’t actually useable. I need to really hunt for what will work.
Which means this bed is going to take quite a while to finish. Which is fine. It’s not being used this year, and will be ready for next year. I also plan to leave the vertical supports tall, so that things like hoops or whatever can be added, if the bed every needs to be covered, to protect anything that gets planted there.
I am so tired and sore now, though, I might have to take tomorrow “off” and give my body a change to recover.
For now, I’m ready to take some pain killers and go to bed!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 