Gardening

Finally building the new wattle weave bed

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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

Pickled radish pods taste test

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I meant to try these after they’d had a day to pickle in the fridge. Instead, I went to bed!

So I tried them out this morning, and included them in with my sandwiches.

That picture looked so much better on my phone.

They were still nice and crunchy, which is nice. There is still that very mild radish flavour. They were much sweeter than I expected, though. Not a complaint, but I did expect more of a vinegar flavour, considering it used two types of vinegar. It was quite good, tasted on its own, and would be a nice little something on the side of any meal. In my sandwiches, they added a bit of a crunch, but are mild enough in flavour that they really weren’t than noticeable.

This is definitely something I would do again, and try out different brine recipes. I think they would do nicely with a garlic and dill brine.

For now, we’re just doing quick pickles. I am thinking that we might try to grow more for next year, to have enough to make it worth breaking out the water bath canner, to have some shelf stable jars for the pantry.

As someone who doesn’t really like radishes, I’m happy with how these turned out, and I think they may become a regular in our garden – as long as we’re able to sow the seeds in the fall, since they don’t tend to survive spring sowings.

Definitely a win.

The Re-Farmer

The morning so far, and last rhubarb harvest

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I was going to simply say “the morning,” until I realized it’s not even 10am yet. 😄

We had the crock pot going all night, making food for the outside cats. I was up early to take the bones out and finish making the “cat soup”, so it had more time to cool down at least a bit before it was time to feed the kitties.

They really miss their kibble! Even the inside cats. You’d think they would find having all wet cat food would be a real treat for a change, but no. They keep begging for kibble!

I’ve heard from my brother this morning. They’ll be able to go into the nearest town to switch the insurance, so we can drive their vehicle legally. That’ll take a couple of hours so, once I get the word, I’ll be making a trip to pick up kibble. Which is good, because we’re almost out of the meaty bones we’ve been using to make the cat soup base for the outside cats. Doing this has certainly made more room in the chest freezer!

The yard cats still seem a bit perplexed about the cat soup they’ve been getting. They’re eating it, but they don’t prefer it. Except the really feral ones. The ferals will scarf down anything.

I did leave a bowl of food in the garage for the secret kitties, just in case. I have no idea where the mama moved then, but she still comes back to the garage – that’s her “home”, it seems – and I’m hoping her kittens are old enough to come out on their own and go back to a familiar place. Or, better yet, discover the inner yard, and all the things in there for the kitties.

I did see three of the four other feral kittens this morning. Colby is definitely the bravest of the bunch.

I love that first picture! I caught him in a yawn (just guessing he’s a he, because gingers are more likely to be male). He watched me from the tree and let me come pretty close. Later, I saw him going into the isolation shelter, where there was still some food left in the bowls in there.

I was able to get a surprisingly good picture of his torie sister. I had to zoom in from quite a distance.

As far away as I was, she still wasn’t comfortable with me being there, and ran off soon after.

The calico was even harder to spot, once she was done eating.

While I was slowly trying to get close to her brother in the willow, I heard a bit of a rustle and realized I was being watched through the vines.

Once again, I had to zoom right in.

I might have seen the white and grey, but I’m not sure. We have several really small adult white and greys, and this kitten is almost as big as they are. When they’re running around all over, it can be very hard to tell who I’m looking at.

After the kitties were fed, I did my morning rounds. I did not need to do any watering today, so they didn’t take too long. I did pick some sugar snap peas this morning, but it wasn’t really enough even for a day’s meal.

So I ate them for breakfast.

I thought there would be raspberries to harvest, but not really. There are lots of red berries, but they’re not “ripe”. Between the heat and the lack of rain, the berries don’t have a lot of moisture in them, so they aren’t letting go when I try to pick them, unless they’re almost over ripe. I’ve been trying to water the patch when I can, but it would need me to set up a sprinkler for an hour, every few days, to make up for the lack of rain this year. So I’ve been snacking on a few raspberries in the morning, but there really isn’t enough to do an actual harvest.

While checking on the eggplants, looking for flowers, I found this.

A little volunteer tomato!

Give the location, I would guess it is a Black Cherry tomato, as that’s what was growing here, last year. No chance of it reaching maturity, this late in the season, but I’ll leave it be. If the eggplant seems to be covering it too much, I might transplant it to where it can get more light, but that’s about it.

I did find some eggplant flowers, on another plant.

They were set back quite a bit by that one cold night last month, so it’s good to see them recovering. Hard to say if they still have enough season to produce eggplants to full maturity, though. If we get a long and mild fall, they might have a chance.

Before heading inside, I did one last harvest of rhubarb. I’ve been leaving them without harvesting for quite a while, giving them plenty of time to recover from the previous harvest. After today, they will be left to recover and store their energy to survive the winter.

I trimmed the leaves and ends outside and took advantage of their huge leaves, using them as a mulch around where my daughter’s surviving double daffodils are trying to grow. Just one cluster has emerged, and they’re not doing well. We certainly won’t be getting any flowers from them this year, but if they can last long enough, hopefully their bulbs will have enough energy stored to grow and bloom next year.

Once the rhubarb was trimmed outside, they got a thorough washing inside before being cut up.

I now have a big bowl of these in the fridge. What doesn’t get used for baking or whatever today will be put into the freezer.

And that’s my morning so far! Considering how early I was up this morning, it already feels like it’s been a long day.

Hopefully, this afternoon, we’ll finally have plenty of kibble for the cats for the rest of the month! They will certainly be happy about that.

Who knew that they would prefer dry, crunchy kibble over canned or home made, meaty food like that?

The Re-Farmer

Quick Pickling Radish Seed Pods

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Yes! Finally!

Years ago, I read in a homesteady/pioneer living type book (I no longer remember where; it wasn’t in the book I thought it was in) that growing radishes for their roots only is a pretty recent thing. Our pioneers more often grew them for their seed pods, and that they were often pickled.

I am not a fan of radishes, though my family is okay with them. I was curious to find out if I would like the seed pods, instead, and wanted to know what they were like, pickled.

The past few years, I’ve tried to grow radishes with very little success. They either didn’t germinate, germinated but got eaten by something, or when they finally did grow, they didn’t grow well. The one time a radish bolted and went to seed, it was too late in the season for any pods to develop.

This year, I put the last of my old radish seeds, plus some from a seed pack I was given, into my root vegetable seed mix that was direct sown in the fall. I can’t remember exactly, right now, but there was at least four, possibly five, varieties in the mix.

For the first time, we got radishes! Including yellow ones. Some of them immediately bolted – with the heat we had, that is no surprise – which I was quite happy with.

They do grow into a rather large and pretty plant! The seed pods that have been developing have ranged from a little, round pea sized ball to long and slender pods. Some all green, some with red stripes. The branches of the plants tend to be somewhat fragile, though.

I’ve been snacking on radish pods while doing my rounds or tending the garden for a while now. I definitely like them better than radish roots. I find they have a mild radish taste, and just a hint of a kick to them. They have a nice, satisfying crunch.

Since I never found where I’d read about pickling the pods, and the recipe I think was there as well, a friend was a sweetheart and sent me this link. Interestingly, the beginning of the post describes the pods as being more intensely flavoured than the roots. I wonder if the variety makes the difference, because I find it to be the complete opposite! It does say “winter radishes” tend to be milder than spring or summer ones, but I can’t tell if they mean varieties, or sowing time. If it’s sowing time, then that would explain why I find ours to be milder, not more intense, in flavour.

Last night, my older daughter was able to mixed up a double batch of the brine from the website, so that it would be fully cooled down by morning.

The recipe calls for both rice vinegar and white wine vinegar. I’m not sure if we had any white wine vinegar left, and keep forgetting to ask my daughter, but if we were out, she would have used basic white pickling vinegar (5% acidity).

This morning, I picked a whole bunch of the larger pods, shooting for about 4 cups worth, in total.

I collected from the bed in the East yard garden first, which is most of what you can see in the colander in the first photo above. The pods there were all long and slender. The big plant in the high raised bed was mostly the round “pea” looking ones, but there were a few longer ones. Plus, there are a couple of other plants in there.

After collecting the radish seed pods, I also gathered some sugar snap and super sugar snap peas as well. I’ve tried and compared both varieties. I find the flavour is pretty much the same, but the sugar snaps tend to be a touch for fibrous. Stripping the top of pod, where the flower is, and removing the string gets rid of that.

Once inside, they all got a good wash and I left the radish pods to soak while I separated out the peas and put them in the fridge for later.

When it was time to set everything up, I lifted the seed pods into a measuring cup, and it seemed to be just a bit under the 4 cup mark. I was using two 500ml jars for this, so I thought I might be a bit short. In the end, I found I had some left over! They aren’t easy to pack into the jars. I didn’t want to crush them.

Since this is just a quick pickle, I filled the jars with the brine to the top, and used screw on caps instead of lids and rings.

I found myself with some extra brine, too.

I ended up making a third jar with the pea pods jammed into the bottom, then the last of the radish seed pods on top, then emptied most of the leftover brine into it. I didn’t bother taking a picture, though. All three jars are now in the fridge, and we will taste them tomorrow.

One thing I can say from the start about the difference between growing radishes for their roots, or their seed pods. Growing them for their pods would be more efficient. You can grow lots of radishes for their bulbs, and each one is one bulb, and it’s done. They’re all used up. When growing for their pods, one radish plant can provide a surprising amount of edible pods. So just a few radish plants would give you enough pods for both fresh eating and for preserving.

As long as the deer don’t eat them first!

If all goes to plan, I’ll be writing about how they turned out, by tomorrow evening!

The Re-Farmer

More deer damage, stuck at home, kitten sightings, and burning out

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While doing my rounds this morning, I discovered something.

When the mild stuff is eaten, the deer will eat the radish greens, after all!

It was just at one end of the bed in the east yard, and there’s still plenty left. What I ended up doing is gathering pretty much the last of my support stakes to create a carrier around three sides. Hopefully, it will be enough of a deterrent.

This morning, I “stole” kibble from the inside cats and made a big bowl of cat soup for the outside cats. There isn’t enough kibble to do that again. There’s plenty of wet cat food for the inside cats, but not enough for the outside cats, too, other than what I had already been using to make kitten soup on top of the dry kibble feedings.

I made sure to leave a bowl of food in the side of the garage where the kittens are, leaving one of the doors open. This would be their first taste of anything besides what their mama has been bringing – and she’s been acting very hungry when she comes to the house by herself. I did see the kittens run and hide but that was it.

My plan was to head to the feed store, using my brother’s vehicle, when they opened at 9am. I found their website and they’re open for short hours on Saturdays and closed on Sundays.

Thankfully, my brother messaged me, first.

I thought they’d gone into town yesterday about the insurance on their old vehicle stored here, but it turns out they ran out of time because they stopped to help me with the broken down truck, instead. They checked the insurance this morning, and saw they had only storage insurance on it. It can’t be legally driven.

The public insurance company wouldn’t let them change the insurance online or over the phone. They would have to come in, in person.

They are at a campsite with their son and grandsons right now, and the nearest insurance place is closed on Saturdays.

After much searching to find another location that was open today, the nearest one turned out to be over 2 hours drive away. Which meant at least 6 hours to do the drive, switch the insurance, then drive back again.

No. Not going to happen.

My brother was so apologetic!

I assured him, the only thing we needed was dry cat food, and we’ve got wet cat food we can use for now.

We are, however, completely stuck at home, with no transportation.

The feed store website said they could do deliveries, though. So I called them up and left a message, saying what I needed and asking if they could deliver to where we are.

Because they were on short hours today, I tried again about an hour later, and left another message.

They never called back.

So, no kibble delivery.

After looking at our options, we got some meaty soup bones out of the freezer and started those going, boiling the bones for a couple of hours, then putting the meaty bits back into the stock. I ended up making a very modified cat soup, thickened with a bit of rice, using the immersion blender to make the meaty chunks smaller, plus adding and a couple of cans of regular cat food. I even tossed the bones out for them to pick at, and for the raccoons to chew on, later in the night.

When I set that out, the cats were… confused. They would eat it, but not for long. They seemed to like it, but maybe not like it, but they did like it? But not… 😄

The more socialized cats, that is.

The more feral cats inhaled it. I ended up moving a tray I’d put on the cat house roof that was being ignored, under the shrine for the feral kittens, because they’d already finished off what I’d put there earlier. I wanted to make sure there was enough for the two shier ones. I also put a bowl in the garage again.

When I went to check on the bowl I’d left in the garage, it was already empty, and the mama was licking it clean.

I did my evening rounds, then came back to retrieve the bowl.

I got to see the kitties.

Both of them.

The mama, Pinky – a grey tabby with white, and a very pink nose – is one that has let me pet her at times. While I was in the garage, she was acting totally feral, but wasn’t quite ready to run off and abandon her babies.

The babies ran into the stuff in the corner, but did come out to take a look at me.

I thought the one was looking very Siamese, but maybe not? From the red glow in the picture (no, the flash did not go off), I’m thinking it might have eyes like Ghosty. That fur colour is soooo interesting! It gets darker towards the tail, and the tail is almost black.

When I had the chance, I messaged the Cat Lady, who is out of town right now. She’s mentioned to me that she only makes her own cat food now – and that’s for a LOT of inside cats – so I asked her for her recipe. I’ve tried looking up recipes, especially for “costs less than store bought!” recipes.

Yeah… no.

Not only did they tend use expensive meats, like rabbit, but they all included supplements that would require a trip to a health food store, and are also very expensive. Yet these recipes all claim to be cheaper than store bought cat food?

It turns out the Cat Lady just uses chicken drumsticks. That’s it.

She had less than flattering things to say about the online recipes.

The only exception is The Wolfman, who is allergic to poultry. He gets a salmon fillet a day, plus some herring dry kibble.

Oh, the tragedy… 😄😂

We actually do have a big family pack of drumsticks in the freezer right now, but we won’t use that unless we absolutely have to. We can use a meaty bone broth as a base, along with some leftover cooked meats and other suitable ingredients.

To make things easier for tomorrow, we’ll put more bones in the crock pot overnight, for the morning cat soup.

There were, of course, all the other usual things that need to be done, but by the time I was doing my evening rounds and seeing that the garden needed to be watered, in spite of rain we got early this afternoon, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do it. The last few days have drained me completely, and I’m burning out.

The worst of it is, I’m the most able bodied person in the household right now.

My younger daughter is still limited in what she can do while her wrist heals. She does as much as she can, though. Her sister, however, is down with PCOS related… issues, shall we say… She can’t lift, bend or stretch in any way at the moment, without unfortunate consequences.

My husband, of course, is pushing it just to go from his room to the kitchen or to the bathroom.

Thank God my daughter was able to get us all that early birthday take out food before we lost use of the truck! All we’ve had to do for the past couple of days is just reheat leftovers.

Still, I can feel myself giving out. I’ve tried to rest as much as I can, taking naps when I get the chance, but there’s just been too many things in too short a time.

I need to slow down and pace myself, but there’s so much that needs to get done. Thankfully, the temperatures will continue to be more reasonable for the next while, so at least I’ll be able to have some progress with the outside projects I’m falling behind on, little by little. We just have to watch for the smoke. We’re still under air quality warnings, and it’s still pretty bad. Everything is under a haze of smoke right now.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

I just wish it wasn’t quite so little, some times!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: deer damage and froggy friends

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After a morning that turned out to be way more hectic than it should have been, going out to water the garden was a much needed stress reducer!

It actually did start raining a bit while I was watering, and it’s rained a bit more since then, but so little, the watering was still needed.

What I’d really like to see is a whole lot of rain going over all those wildfires. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be happening in the near future.

When watering the beds in the south east yard, I noticed more missing tops of greenery along one side of the winter sown bed. I’m actually not too worried about that, as the deer aren’t eating the radish pods I want to keep. I do have some lettuces I’m leaving to go to seed, though, so I might have to do something to protect what’s left in this bed. The other two have netting around them, and the little square bed has plastic around it. The deer can reach over, but I don’t think they like winter squash or corn plants. Corn cobs, yes, but not the plants.

It was when I got to the main garden beds that I found more damage.

Most of the damage was in the high raised bed, which is really just the right height for a deer buffet. A whole lot of beet greens disappeared. In the trellis bed (the next image in the slide show above), a single Hopi Black Dye sunflower lots its top. It will probably grow a new one, though.

While doing the watering, I was seeing all sorts of frogs coming out of the mulch. Some of them were huge! Well… huge for our native varieties of frog, that is.

There was one tiny one that emerged that really caught my attention, though. Would you look at that colour!!!

The second picture is a bit clearer.

What an incredible green! That is not a common colour for frogs here, at all. It’s almost metallic.

I did the trees in the outer yard, too. To do that, I drag the hose out to the outer yard, where it almost reaches one of the Korean pines. Then I go back to get a couple of watering cans. I keep those next to the rain barrel (which still isn’t even half full) with water in them, so they don’t blow away.

Since they already have water in them, I got straight to the two furthest walnut trees. The one seed that had been almost dug up did survive, and a seedling has finally emerged!

As I was watering it, I notice the watering can seemed to be getting clogged. That happens a lot with this can. It has some algae, I guess it is, stuck to the inside that I haven’t been able to get off. It comes off in bits, which then clogs the holes in the rose. When that happens, I take the rose off and use the water to rinse off the stuff clogging it while still watering the plant.

Except that there wasn’t anything clogging the rose.

Then something landed in my hand before falling to the ground.

It was this handsome fellow!

He was very cooperative and posed for pictures. The second image in the slideshow above shows off his handsome face!

I like frogs.

The last thing I did before heading inside was try to put some sort of protection on the beds in the main garden.

First, I grabbed some support posts and traded them out for three of the post I have with pinwheels at their tops. I put a couple in the corners of the high raised bed, where the beets are, and one at the end of the trellis bed where the sunflowers can be reached. The other end doesn’t have anything the deer like near the end, and the side that doesn’t have the trellis netting is lined with onions, which are a bit of a deterrent for deer, so it was really just the one end that needed something.

In the high raised bed, I put overlapping hoops on the sides, and one at the end. I set the hoops under the radish plants, so they’re not hanging almost to the ground anymore. Then I added a hoop to each end of the trellis bed, including the one that didn’t really need it. The asymmetricy without it was bugging me. 😄

I deer can still stick it’s head through, but they don’t have good depth perception, so I’m hoping the extra things in the way will prevent more carnage.

There is one massive turnip in the high raised bed. I’d left it to go to see, but it’s not bolting. What I thought was from the turnip turned out to be from another radish.

I need to look up recipes for pickling radish pods. I’ll have enough to harvest to be able to fill at least a pint sized jar or two, to do a quick pickle. Now that we finally have radish pods, it’s our grand experiment to see if we want to do this again next year – which would mean planting them this fall. I did order icicle radish seeds, but those won’t be grown for their pods (thought I might let one go to seed to actually collect seeds.

Anyhow. We’ll see how the new additions to to keep the deer from chomping more of my veggies!

The Re-Farmer

Morning cuteness, morning harvest

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After what happened with our vandal yesterday, my older daughter joined me while doing my morning rounds. My own personal bodyguard.

Nothing was untoward; he didn’t come back and vandalize anything in the night. I’ve gone through the trail cam files. It was interesting to see that he had stopped at the end of our driveway with his tractor, when going in the other direction, before my incident with him happened. He didn’t actually do anything other than look like he was about to climb down, but then kept on going. It’s like he was just looking to start something, so the timing of my coming home as he was returning was an “opportunity” he couldn’t pass up on.

This morning, however, has been routine, other than extending my rounds to include more of the outer yard. My watering last night was thorough enough that I didn’t need to water again this morning. Which is good, because we never really cooled down during the night. We apparently briefly dropped to 20C/68F at about 6am, and immediately started heating up again. We’re supposed to hit 31C/88F or higher today. We’ve got severe thunderstorm warnings and, to be honest, I’d love a good thunderstorm right now. It’s really muggy out there. Everything seems to be passing to the north and south of us right now, but there is a large system making its way across the prairies that might reach us, maybe by tomorrow. We shall see.

The yard cats were already feeling the heat. They got their kibble and kitten soup – I actually saw Sprout eating inside the isolation shelter, though she ran off right away. I refilled the garbage can “heat sink” reservoir in the greenhouse, as it will actually help cool things down during the day. The luffa pots are on the ground, where it’s coolest, and they are heat loving plants, but I don’t want them to get cooked!

After filling the reservoir, the water in the hose was almost cold (our well water usually gets ice cold, even in the summer), so I refilled all the cat water bowls. The one in the sun room was filthy. I heard distinctive racoon noises in the sun room last night. When I went to chase out the racoon, I spotted the two baby racoons, struggling to hide between the lower window and the counter shelf. One couldn’t quite squeeze in after the other. So I left them be. They do leave the water bowls incredibly filthy, though!

I also put frozen water bottles in all the water bowls. By the time I finished my rounds, they were almost thawed out already. I will switch them out, once the previous ones have had a chance to freeze again.

While checking on the grapes before coming inside, I spotted an adorable Eyelet.

That top step to the storage house is a favourite spot for many cats!

With the heat, manual labour outside is not going to happen today. So we made other plans. My older daughter is treating us to Chinese food, as I have a birthday this month. We’ll be loading up on the proteins, as we can do the vegetables and rice ourselves. The girls are thinking of doing a stir fry, so I went out to gather a few things to include with some of the vegetables I harvested yesterday.

Just enough for today. There’s a variety of radish pods from both beds with them, plus a few of both types of sugar snap peas. Then I figured, why not? and gathered a few herbs. The plants aren’t very big, so I didn’t want to pick much. On the right is some basil, with a few lemon balm leaves, sage in the middle, a few sprigs of thyme – just one sprig of the lemon thyme, as it’s smaller than the English thyme – and then some dill fronds on the left. These are self seeded, so picking these was a bit like weeding. There are even some poppies coming up – most likely the “wild” double poppy that’s been growing in that area since before we moved here. I did try growing bread seed poppies in this location before, but when it comes to self seeding, it was the old variety that has been coming up, just like the dill has been, for years!

We’ll be heading out this afternoon, when the post office reopens, to pick up a package along the way. We had tried to get my daughter a cane for her birthday, ordering one from Etsy, but that never made it, thanks to the delivery company f*****g with us. My husband contacted the maker about it and they took our physical address, but nothing came of it and, as far as I know, my husband was never refunded the money.

So he bought another cane for my daughter, from somewhere else, and it came in yesterday. The store the post office is in closes at noon on Wednesdays, so by the time my husband got the email notification, we couldn’t pick it up anymore.

We’ll pick it up today, then go to town to pick up the food order. My younger daughter will be coming with me.

Her surgical site is doing fantastic, as is her recovery. So fantastic, she’s had to wear a wrist brace, just to keep from using her hand too much. She has full mobility, and the pain of the surgery is far less than the pain of the ganglion. She is so thrilled to have finally evicted Squidly!

She also finally got the call back from the endocrinologist today, confirming an appointment in October. We’ve looked up the clinic address in the city. I am not looking forward to trying to find parking! It’s basically in the heart of downtown. There are plenty of parkades to choose from, but the streets are all one way and it’s always a hot mess of stupid traffic, a major transit hub and suicidal pedestrians. I used to work in the area, many years ago, and even lived across the river from there. So I still sort of know it.

Really not looking forward to driving around there. We’ll have to make sure to leave extra early, to give plenty of time to drive in circles to get into where we want to go.

I am, however, looking forward to this afternoon!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: first large harvest, first flower bud, and a kitten fix!

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Gotta start with the kitten fix!

Eyelet is so flipping adorable.

Today and tomorrow are supposed to be in the 30C/86F or higher range. I made sure to water the garden beds last night. This morning, I gave everything another watering, including the food forest additions that need it. I even watered the raspberries growing on the old compost pile. I’m starting to see the first red berries, and might even be able to pick a few by the end of the day! The garden will get another watering tonight, and the whole shebang will get watered again in the morning. After that, we expect to be staying below 30C/86F again, at least for a few days, so I will probably just water in the mornings again.

While watering the high raised bed, I decided to do some thinning of carrots and beets.

I ended up harvesting some of the biggest beets we’ve ever grown!

The one white thing is also a beet. There were some albino beet seeds in the mix, but very few germinated, it seems. The Uzbek golden carrots are from the same bed. Some of those bolted, and I’m leaving one of them to go to seed.

In the other root vegetable bed, I’d included our collected lettuce seeds that basically took it over. More than we can possibly eat. I’ve been thinning those out and found several turnips crowded together, so I picked those. I found two others that have bolted and I’m leaving those to collect seed.

All along one side of the bed, the tops of plants have been monched. Looks like a deer has been snacking on the way by. !! The damage isn’t too bad and, after one got eaten, they seem to be leaving the radishes and their pods alone! All that extra lettuce is now protecting other things in the bed from deer.

In the greens bed in the old kitchen garden, after the spinach bolted and I pulled most, leaving some to go to seed, the Swiss Chard has started to grow. They were being choked out, before. There aren’t a lot of them, but a couple have leaves and stems large enough to harvest. Just a few.

While watering the flowers next to the high raised bed, I spotted some colour this morning.

Our very first nasturtium buds are appearing!

The Cosmos are getting tall enough they were starting to grow through the protective netting, so I removed that. I left the hoops, though, just in case I need to add something on the sides, to keep the cats out.

I have to figure out what I can add to the sides of the trellis bed. Along the edge on the side with no trellis net, and thankfully where no seedlings were affected, I found evidence of cats burying their “treasures” in there already.

I had been thinking that today, I’d be cutting the maple suckers I’ve been allowing to grow larger, so use in the wattle weave bed. With how quickly it’s getting hot, I might not get to that. It’s also getting really windy.

A trip into town to refill water bottles is going to be needed, so I might do that and avoid the heat, and the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are insane right now!!! Oddly, I get attacked my mosquitoes more in the old kitchen, while preparing the food for the outside cats, than outside. There’s one window that’s open just enough to allow extension cords through, so I assume that’s where they’re getting in, but so many of them? It’s brutal. Every now and then, I’ll see the back of my hand or part of my arm, and there will be five or six mosquitoes, sucking me dry. Thank God I don’t react much to mosquito bites!

I keep forgetting to look for our cans of bug spray, too.

I’m very happy with what is our first substantial harvest. All of which is from beds sown in the fall. Without that, we’d still have next to nothing to harvest!

Yup. Direct sowing in the fall is definitely going to be a regular thing for us from now on!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: MI Gardener seed order

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Yup.

You read that right.

I’ve ordered seeds for next year’s garden already.

There’s a reason for that, though. For starters, we can already see how things went with direct sowing in the fall, and how they’re doing now. So while these are for our 2026 garden, some will be planted this year, before the ground freezes.

Another reason is, MI Gardener has refused to raise their prices making them more affordable, even when taking the dollar difference into account.

As low as their prices already were, they also have a 20% off sale, and free shipping to boot.

I took advantage of that.

Well. Just for the seeds. Everything in their site is on sale for a week, but ordering things bulkier than seeds over the border is not something I plan to do.

When I did the winter sowing, I made seed mixes using up a lot of our seeds that were starting to get old. All our radish seeds, spinach, a summer squash seed mix I’d accidentally bought extras of a few years ago, beets, Swiss Chard, etc. were all finished off when I made our seed mixes for the winter sowing.

Here is what I ordered today. I ended up taking three screen caps of the entire order, to get all the little thumbnail images.

Borage: this is an herb I’ve been meaning to get for a long time. Many uses, and a great pollinator attractor.

Kandy Korn Sweet Corn: I have the super short season Yukon Chief for next year already. Having a longer season variety means we can have a longer season for corn, and no overlap on pollination times, so we can still save seeds.

Fordhook Giant and Rainbow Swiss Chard: the same types that I finished off in my winter sowing seed mixes, these will be planted in the fall.

Giant Nobel and American Spinach: while I am looking to save seed from what we have now (we didn’t eat much spinach this year; they bolted too quickly), these are new varieties that I hope will do well. They will be planted in the fall.

White Egg Turnip: all our turnip seeds were used up, so I will be trying this interesting looking variety for our fall planting.

White Icicle Radish: these will be sown in the fall, but not for their pods, though I will probably allow at least one go to seed. My younger daughter likes the daikon radish, which was sold out. This is a smaller relative, and I think she will enjoy these. I recall seeing a variety of radish sold specifically for their large seed pods that I’ll keep an eye out for as well.

Spring Blush Pea: a new variety to plant in the fall, along with other peas we still have.

Bi-Colour Pear Gourd: my “for fun” item.

Purple Vienne Kohlrabi: I used up the last of our old kohlrabi seeds to plant in the fall, and most of the ones that are growing now are the purple ones. Definitely doing to plant more in the fall!

Red Beard Bunching onion: I’ve tried a red variety of bunching onion twice before, and they didn’t succeed. I want to try again with this variety. For bulb onions, we will have our own seed.

Assorted Beet Mix: I planted the last of our beet seeds in the fall, and have the most robust beets growing right now. I decided to go with a mix this time. I like variety!

Green Scallop Benning’s Squash: we’ve got white scallop squash, but they don’t seem to like germinating here. We have more seeds for next year, but I want to try a green variety, too.

Gill’s Golden Pippin Squash: a new and versatile variety to try. I have lots of different types of winter squash seeds, still, both large and small. I like variety!

Tri-colour Green Bean mix: we have a number of different beans left, but the first bush beans we ever grew were a tri-colour mix, and they were the most successful we’d ever grown.

Rainbow Mix Carrot: to plant in the fall. We still have a couple of varieties of carrot seeds left, so we could also start some in the spring, as space opens up, too.

White Vienna Kohlrabi: of our old seeds, it looks like only a couple of the white kohlrabi germinated. These will be planted in the fall. I think they will fair better, not in a mix.

Yellow Scallop Squash: because I like variety, and I really like patty pan squash!

While I will probably pick up other seeds for next year between now and spring, between this order and what I still have in my seed bin, we don’t actually need anything else, besides things like potatoes. It may still be July but, with fall planting in mind, plus working on getting more beds either reworked or made new, I hope to have a larger garden next year, and get a head start on it, this year. After all, almost half of our growing season is already gone!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026? garden: prepping the next wattle weave bed

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With today’s heat, I chose a job that had me mostly in the shade.

It was still way too hot, which was bad enough on its own. Being eaten alive by mosquitoes while I worked was brutal! Gotta find our cans of bug spray!

The goal for today in this bed was simply to weed it and move the soil away from where the wattle weave wall will be.

The first couple of pictures in the slideshow above are the “before” views. Then I removed the sticks that were used to hold the logs used as walls in place. Most of them were broken, but a few looked salvageable.

I had intended to leave that bottom log in place, but I think I’ll leave it out. It’s not the complete length of the bed, for starters, and there were shorter logs and pieces of logs added to the ends. Plus, one end of the longest log is looking pretty rotten. I think it can still be used somewhere else. Just not here.

This bed has had a few years of amendments in it so, while it was somewhat compacted, it didn’t take much to use a garden fork and loosen it again. Which is good, because this is the first time I’ve put my left arm through this level of work since I injured it. I can use my right arm, if necessary, but it doesn’t hold out as well, and the motor control is not as good. It was more of an issue when using the garden fork. I never really thought about it before, but it turns out I use that mostly left handed. Once I was doing the actual weeding and using the little hand cultivator, though, it was less of an issue. Turns out I use that mostly with my right hand.

There weren’t actually a lot of weed in there. It hasn’t been watered, other than by rain, all year, so it was incredibly dry. What weeds did make it were easy to pull up.

It was the roots that were the main problem.

Some of the roots were from the ornamental crab apple trees. All along one section, I was pulling up smaller roots that were clearly attached to a much larger root running down the length of the bed, deeper down. From the direction others were coming from as I pulled them up, I think they were probably from the lilac bush. A few may have been from the rose bushes.

Wherever they came from, most of the debris in that wheelbarrow is tree or bush roots, not weeds!

After the weeding and loosening of soil was done, I used a hoe to pull the soil towards the retaining wall, then level out the ends and the edges, where the wattle weave will be done.

I’ve decided to make the bed shorter. At each and, I will find something I can lay down to use to step on to go into the garden from the other side of the retaining wall.

I’ve also decided I will use the retaining wall itself and add a short wattle weave wall along the middle of the bed, right on top of the blocks. I figure, if I’m going to be redoing this bed anyhow, I may as well make it a fair bit higher, so it’s easier on the back. It’s already only about 2 feet wide, which should be good for reach, but the lower the bed, the further the reach. As it has been, I could reach across, but it would get pretty painful, pretty fast. It will depend on how much material I can collect, but it would be really good if I could get this bed’s walls at least two feet high. Getting posts to weave around at that height will not be a problem, but the weaving takes a LOT of material.

I’ve been monitoring various willows and poplars and maples for potential material. For the vertical posts, I will be using maple again; the inadvertent coppice by the pump shack needs to be cleared away from the power line anyhow, and it looks like there are some nice, strong suckers suitable for the job.

With the first wattle weave bed, I kept running out of materials, so in there, I ended up using mostly poplar, but also some maple and willow. This time, I think I will have a decent amount of willow I can harvest, but I should have a fair amount of useable poplar, too. The problem is that a lot of the switches that I’d be harvesting aren’t straight all the way, but either branch off or completely split off, part way up. Since I plan to have closed ends on this, I’ll need quite a few pieces that are only about 2 feet long, so they would still be useable.

I plan to gather the materials as I need to use them. The vertical posts will be done, first, which I’m hoping to get done tomorrow, weather willing. For the weaving, I want cut and use the switches right away, so they are still green and flexible. The weaving will loosen up as they dry out and shrink, but at least they will be less likely to snap on me as I weave them around the vertical posts. Alternatively, I could harvest the switches and let them dry out completely, then soak them before use, but I don’t have anything long enough to soak them in. I’d need a water trough of some kind. Which we probably have, lying in the junk in the outer yard or beyond. Something we might plan for in the future, as I expect to make more wattle weave structures over time.

So the soil part of the job is done for now. Once the walls are built higher, more will need to be added, which will be a good time to amend with sulfur granules for next year. I might even have a chance to pick up a bale of peat to add to it as well. It’s going to take years of amending to get our soil less alkaline, never mind slightly acidic.

Since this garden is right up against the house, over time it will become our culinary garden, with herbs and greens and fast maturing vegetables that we can just pop out and harvest as we need. Herbs for tea and/or medicinals will also be included. There are a lot of herbs that can be used as all those things. I’d like to transplant the rhubarb to a better location, though. They are very handy where they are, but they’re at the foot of the crab apple trees, which keep them from getting adequate sun and rain. We’re not quite ready to get rid of the ornamental crab apples entirely, yet, and I don’t know that we’d be getting rid of both of them. It’s the one in the south west corner that is causing the most problems, but they do provide nice shade, look amazing when in bloom, and the grossbeaks love those tiny little apples.

All in good time.

For now, I’m just glad I got as much done as I did, in the heat!

The Re-Farmer