Analyzing our 2023 garden: peppers, herbs and greens

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We tried a whole bunch of new things in this category, this year! It was the peppers that we were particularly interested in getting going.

Peppers are something I’m growing for the rest of the family – I can’t eat peppers myself, much like I can’t eat fresh tomatoes. Which is unfortunate. I love the shape and smell of them, and when I’m prepping them for the family, they look so fresh, crisp and delicious! Yet every time I’ve tried to eat a pepper, it makes me gag. Even when they’re cooked, I still find myself wanting to gag, which is not a problem with cooked tomatoes. Oddly, though, I can eat jalapeno poppers, and quite love them. How does that make sense? My husband and daughters, meanwhile, love their fresh, raw peppers. So I wanted to try a variety of bell peppers this year, plus my daughter specifically requested hot peppers.

We did try to grow peppers last year – our terrible, no good, growing year! – and almost got some purple peppers. Just a few tiny, misshapen ones off of plants that did not thrive in a bed where nothing really grew well. They pretty much did the best of all the stuff we planted in that bed.

We did still have some of last year’s seeds left, but this year we went with new varieties.

One was the Sweet Chocolate bell pepper. I also ordered a collection of early sweet peppers, for their short growing season – Early Sunsation, Early Summer, and Dragonfly, all of which are different colours. For the hot pepper, we got a variety called Cheyenne.

With our short growing season, the Sweet Chocolates got started indoors quite early, along with some gourds and herbs.

The German Winter Thyme and the Lemon grass both needed an early start, too. Lemon grass is a zone 8, heat loving plant, so those were going to go into a pot in a sunny and sheltered location, when it was time to transplant.

With our short growing season, these were all started in early February. A lot of people on my local gardening groups started their peppers in January! The other varieties we had were specifically for our short season, and I must say, I had to really fight with myself to not start them until much later! Those got started in late March. In theory, I could have direct seeded them.

After filling 4 rows, I filled the last two rows with Spoon tomatoes.

We started a lot more seeds than we needed, on the assumption that they wouldn’t all germinate.

Well, we had pretty much a 100% germination rate!

As for other herbs, in early April we started oregano, spearmint and the Roma VF tomatoes.

We tried these in toilet paper tube pots, which we hoped would allow us to pot them up/transplant them still in the biodegradable tubes, without disturbing the roots.

Finally, we started chamomile seeds and a nameless variety of thyme, towards the end of April.

The first ones to be transplanted outside were the Sweet Chocolates, into the new wattle weave bed.

The peppers got protective plastic rings around them, as this was well before our last average frost date. I eventually needed to add sticks to keep the wind from blowing them askew, later adding supports for the peppers as well.

In front of the peppers, you can see where the German Winter Thyme was planted. At the end of the bed are the last spindly shallots. Beyond the thyme is an onion that came up on its own! Later, the chamomile would be transplanted near where the single onion is, as well as the strawberries from seed planted in between things all along the front of the bed.

As the days flew by and we weren’t getting other things ready as quickly as planned, I ended up planting more peppers in the wattle weave bed, just in case.

I chose one each of the early bell peppers, and one hot pepper. They got plastic rings to protect them, along with a couple other things I will cover in a different post.

We did eventually transplant more of the peppers in grow bags, together with Red of Florence onion, but we had so many seedlings, they were included in the Great Transplant Giveaway!

Some things, however, did not need to be transplanted at all, and could be direct sown. When it came to greens, we were actually going to skip trying to grow lettuce this year, and just grow spinach.

Spinach can be sown before last frost, so they went in, in late April.

After the seeds were sown, the bed got a floating row cover, to protect them from critters. This was just a dollar store row cover, and it tore astonishingly easy!

We did enjoy some nice harvests of the spinach, too. At least, with these first ones. After the garlic was harvested, spinach was one of the things we planted for a fall crop, and we got nothing. I think something ate the seedlings!

We found ourselves with some free seeds that we decided to try. One of them was a tiny variety of Bok Choy called Hedou. The other was a Czech variety or lettuce called Jebousek.

So how did it all work out?

It was a mixed bag!

The Peppers

The Sweet Chocolates, having been started indoors the earlier, had a head start, grew quite large and were the first to have mature peppers we could harvest.

The first ones we harvested were in August. They can be eaten while still green, but we waited until they turned the chocolate brown they were supposed to, when mature. They bloomed continuously, right up until the first frosts started to hit. We did try to cover the peppers on chillier nights, and that helped. Their location in the wattle weave bed was also much more protected than the grow bags in the garden.

As for the short season varieties, they did not do as well. The ones in the grow bags started off all right, but then sort of stagnated. We did get a few Dragonfly peppers to harvest, and there were other peppers developing when the first frosts hit.

The hot peppers had the most fruit developing, but all of the peppers planted later were slow in maturing. In the end, we harvested everything unripe and set them to finish maturing indoors.

We had mild temperatures extending for quite a long time, though, and the final harvest was in October! In the photo, you can see a couple of purple Dragonfly peppers, and the rest that are visible are the Sweet Chocolate. There were hot peppers under there, too. Unfortunately, we covered grow bags too late one night, and the frost caused too much damage.

Once indoors, the green peppers that were not frost damaged did continue to mature. As I write this, we have a few hot peppers left that have turned red. The Sweet Chocolates are the only remaining bell peppers, they’ve all matured, and are currently strung up to dry. The rest were either already eaten, or had to be tossed due to frost damage causing them to start molding.

When cleaning up the garden beds for the winter, I discovered what I think may have been the reason the grow bag peppers and onions failed to thrive. I discovered the soil was filled with tiny tree roots that had grown in from below!

They were all like this grow bag, turned inside out.

No wonder they didn’t thrive!

As for the ones in the wattle weave bed, the hot pepper seemed to do fine, though late in developing, but the others seems to stagnate, too, and I’m not sure why!

Final thoughts on peppers

When it comes to the bell peppers, the family isn’t really finding enough difference in flavour to say they like one variety over another. They all just sort of taste the same, so they don’t really care what variety we grow next! I do have a request for hot peppers again. We still have seeds for all of these, so we don’t need to buy more, if we don’t want to. If we do grow the short season varieties again, I will most definitely start them indoors earlier. We’ll also have to be more thoughtful on where to plant them, to ensure they get shelter and a warmer microclimate. We might use grow bags again, but if we do, it won’t be anywhere near those trees again!

The Herbs

Our eventual goal is to turn the old kitchen garden into mostly an herb garden, along with other things that we might use in the kitchen frequently. This garden is right next to the house and sheltered, and gets lots of sun, except where the ornamental crab apple trees are an issue. Those will be pruned back more, over time. It also now has all low to mid height raised beds, with the possibility to add height to some of them, as needed.

The German Winter Thyme did quite well in the wattle weave bed, except for one transplanted group that suddenly died part way through the summer. The Chamomile also did well, and was blooming enthusiastically.

The spearmint got its own pot. We had only one oregano seedling survive – barely – so it was planted in the middle of a pot and surrounded by the other variety of thyme. The Lemon grass got its own pot, too. Everything in the pots seemed to do surprisingly well, though the Lemon grass didn’t get anywhere near as large as they should have.

Final thoughts on herbs

There’s really been just one problem with the herbs we grew.

We keep forgetting about them.

Which means, we weren’t using them.

Oh, we did use some thyme, oregano and a bit of spearmint, during the few times we remembered them. We didn’t use the chamomile or lemon grass at all. We weren’t sure when to best harvest the chamomile, which we wanted to dry for tea, and I never got around to looking it up, because I kept forgetting they existed. My daughter were wanting to try the lemon grass, but weren’t sure how to use it with the type of cooking we tend to do.

I don’t know about the chamomile, but with mulching the wattle weave bed like we did for this winter, it’s possible the German winter thyme will come back. The chamomile may have reseeded itself.

We never bothered doing anything to the pots. I suppose it’s possible the spearmint and thyme will come back in the spring; we’re having a very mild El Niño winter, so the pots shouldn’t freeze solid. I doubt the oregano will survive, though being in the middle of the pot, it’s more protected than the thyme around it.

These are all herbs I want to continue to grow, though, and as we further develop the old kitchen garden, I think we’ll get into the habit of using fresh herbs and not forget that they exist!

The Greens

With the spinach, they did better after we gave up on the floating row cover. Thankfully, no critters seemed interested in them! We’ve had spinach do both really well, and really poorly, and that happened again this year. The spring sowing was fine. The fall sowing was a complete fail.

We’ll definitely keep growing spinach, though. It’s just a matter of where, and making sure critters don’t get to it!

As for the lettuce and baby Bok Choi…

What a disaster!

Oh, they started sprouting just fine.

Then the Chinese elm started dropping their seeds.

There are four of them along the chain link fence, plus one by the house, plus more past the garage.

When those seeds start falling, everything is covered. The emerging seedlings were buried and choked out, and there was nothing we could do about it!

Those trees have got to go. They are causing all kinds of damage, with their billions of seeds and their sidewalk heaving, basement wall cracking roots.

Much to my surprise, however, a couple of baby Bok Choy actually survived and promptly bolted.

I left them be as they developed seed pods that managed to dry before the first frost hit. I was able to save some seeds!

There was a surprising number of Jabousek seedlings that survived! Enough that we even used some of the leaves in sandwiches. They didn’t seem to get bitter, even after bolting.

Once they started blooming, I left them be. Unfortunately, it took such a long time for their seeds to develop, they got hit with frost, first. I suppose it’s possible the earliest bloomers dropped seeds, but that bed is going to be reworked in the spring (I held off to let them finish producing seeds) to make it narrower, so it’s unlikely that any seeds dropped will germinate. We probably won’t grow any lettuces next year, but I certainly won’t complain if this variety shows up on its own!

I most definitely want to try growing the Bok Choy seeds we kept. We never got to try them, and I’m very curious! We do like Bok Choy, but very rarely buy it.

So that’s it for peppers, herbs and greens and, I must say, getting this written was brutal! It took me all day, just to get started, as so many things kept popping up that needed to be done. Then, once I did finally get started… I swear, I’ve never been interrupted while writing so many times in my life! Most of which was because I saw on the critter cam that racoons were in the sun room. !!! I did try using the talk feature to yell at them, and they did leave at first, but after a while, they’d just look towards the camera, then ignore my voice!

If anything I’ve written here seems at all disjointed or not to my usual standard of writing or its full of typos that I’ve missed, that would be why! 😄😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Hidden

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It wasn’t until I was cropping the picture that I saw it.

That face.

No, that one.

The other one.

The one in the back.

!!!

I was cropping the photo on my phone, right after taking it, so I looked again. From the same angle, I could just see a dark shadow behind the fuzzy kitten. The box has a side opening, but when I tried to see it through there, there was nothing visible. It was jammed way into the back corner.

Creepy stalker kitty! 🤣🤣

Also, I counted 34 this morning, then spotted number 35, hiding behind a tree trunk, as I did my rounds.

The Re-Farmer

Back home

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Well, we’re back!

My daughter and I left really early for my eye exam, just to be on the safe side. The drive is normally about 45 minutes. Road conditions were good, but the farther south we drove, the denser the fog and the worse the visibility. The town my appointment was in was completely enveloped in fog. The city, another 15 minutes drive away, would have been even worse!

Since we got there so early, we had time for lunch, and to check out a couple of stores. I still got to my appointment almost an hour early. I’m glad I did, because they were able to take me in early. There was the pre-test stuff, which included a field of vision test, this time. I haven’t had one of those in well over 20 years. Then I got the eye drops and stayed in the waiting room to give them time to do their work. Even with all that, it was still earlier than my appointment when the doctor came to get me. I have some extremely mild hemorrhaging in my eyes that she wanted to check again. They seem pretty much unchanged. My field of vision test also seemed fine, though she didn’t have any previous tests to compare to, of course.

She wants me back again in 6 months, partly for a regular eye exam, but to do the field of vision and dilation tests again, and be able to compare.

Since I was taken in so early, it was still light out for our entire drive home. Being a passenger for a change, I tried to get some pictures out the window. In town, the visibility had actually gotten worse, but once we were on the highway and heading north, the visibility improved.

One good thing with everything being covered with hoarfrost. Deer are highly visible!

We even got back early enough to pick up a parcel at the post office, before they closed.

So now I sit here wondering if my eyes can handle working on another garden analysis post.

Considering how they feel, just from writing this, I think they’re still way too dilated!

Ah, well. I’ll catch up tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Full little bellies

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Ah, it feels so good to be using a keyboard again! I really don’t like using my phone to tap out blog posts. 😄

Would you look at this bunch?

There’s always quite the rush of cats in the sun room when I first come out with my little bin and scoop to feed them. They’ve usually tossed things about over night (or the racoons have!), so I now put the bin down in the ground and let them have at it, while I pick things up and put them back where they belong. Then take scoops of kibble from around usually 3 or 4 cats eating out of the bin to fill the feeding areas in the sun room. Even after that’s done, I usually still have one or two I need to bodily remove from the bin so I can take it outside. There is a black cat that now lets me pet it and even move it around while it’s eating. I think it’s the one I posted a picture of recently. I’m not 100% sure, though.

This morning, every time I tried to do a head count, I got a different number. However, my first head count, done while they were all still voraciously eating, rather than running around all over the place, I got 38, and I’m almost positive I did not double count any of them. Once they’ve had at least some food, though, they start running around and then some start disappearing.

Then there are the ones that don’t disappear. They instead settle down in the sun room, with full little bellies, and settle in for a nap!

I’ve managed to touch the back of that fluffy grey tabby in the top right a few times while eating. He (she?) would run off, but not as quickly as usual. When not eating, I can’t get close enough to touch.

I think my daughter and I will need to head out earlier for my eye appointment today. I can see on the security camera live feed that the fog is getting thicker. We had fog alerts starting last night. After my mother was done at the hospital, we were hitting fog on the drive to her place. In one stretch, I turned off the main highway to cross over to her town and immediately drove into a wall of fog. We kept driving in and out of fog banks the whole way, but it did seem to clear up as we reached her town.

When I was driving home, I started driving through fog banks again. In some places, the ground was clear, but the fog hung like a ceiling, above.

When I came out to do my rounds this morning, there was a light fog. The trees are covered in light hoarfrost. I expected it to get lighter as the day went on, but nope. It’s getting denser!

So glad we’ll be taking the truck, and not my mother’s car!

The Re-Farmer

A quick update

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Oh, what a long day.

My mother and I ended up in the ER for just under 6 hours.

She got her scan done – it turned out to be another ultrasound – and we were sent back to the ER waiting room until the results came in.

The problem is, for people waiting for scan results (we weren’t the only ones), they get squeezed in between patients with more urgent needs. Plus, only a doctor can discuss the results, not the nurses, and they were really busy. All 14 ER beds were full.

So what I thought might take a couple of hours, ended up much longer!

On the plus side, the cafeteria was open, so my mother did actually get a chance to eat. It was closed when she was there with my brother, yesterday. It was a real demonstration about just how hungry she was when she agreed to have a quesadilla, the only hot food option available. She had to ask what it was and agreed to have one. My mother will normally flat out refuse to try anything new, so this was a big deal!

I also almost drained the battery on my phone, distracting her with things on Pinterest. We tried watching a few short videos, but that was pushing her attention span to the limit, so I went back to Pinterest.

End result, when they finally called her in?

Nothing.

They found nothing wrong in their scan.

Now, with her symptoms, there is obviously something wrong, but they have no idea what. They took a sample for a culture test, which takes 5 days, so see if there’s a bacterial cause. They will phone my mother only if they find something wrong. Meanwhile, all the data will be sent to her doctor, and I will be booking an appointment for her in the near future – but not too near. We’ll see how it works out, with the Christmas holidays.

As for my mother, it seems she’s ridiculously healthy. Not bad for someone who is 92, very round, with busted up knees, and constantly complaining to us about various health problems, and is convinced the doctors are hiding things from her, like that she has cancer or something (she doesn’t). At one point, as my mother was being taken to an examination room, even the nurse that was supposed to be leading the way, only to have my mother race off ahead of her, commented on just how fast she is!

Anyhow.

Once she sees her regular doctor, she might get referred to a specialist to try and figure out what the heck is going on.

Funny how my mother complains about her health so much, but she’s had these symptoms for months and ever thought much of them. She figured they’d go away on their own.

*sigh*

Meanwhile, tomorrow we have to go to yet another town for my eye appointment, which means I won’t have the time I need to finish any of my 2023 garden analysis drafts. It might be a couple of days before I can get back to those.

This has got to be the busiest December for outings we’ve had since moving out here!

The Re-Farmer

That was fast!

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My mom was sent home from the hospital after many hours waiting and several tests. What she thought was the problem turned out to not be the problem – but there is a problem! They couldn’t get a good scan, so she was told they would phone her on Monday with an appointment.

Well, they must have gotten a cancelation or something, because they called this morning! I was planning to phone her this afternoon and let her know I would get her there whenever they called her for. Instead, I got a call from her while in the middle of breakfast!

She is booked for this afternoon. She told them she would need to arrange transportation, and they gave her a number to call if she could not get any.

Then she phoned my brother. The one who is farthest away!!! There was no answer, so she called me. She said they were ignoring her calls. I told her, he was with her all day. He’s got a lot to catch up on and was probably outside. She refuses to believe that. *sigh*

Anyhow.

I will be driving her. I just got back from taking her car out of the garage so I could check her tires. They are fine. It’s still a mystery why they were so low, last time!

I messaged my brother and he called me soon after. It turns out they hit the ground running, early this morning, and have already been to several places in the city. At the time my mother called, they were most likely at the gas station, tanking up. They will be out again for more errands before he can finally catch up on things at home.

My brother just goes, non stop!!!

I had a few things I wanted to get done today, but I will have to get the girls to do most of them. They can’t, however, do my garden analysis posts. My last scheduled post went up today, so my buffer is gone. If there I’d no post tomorrow, it would be because things took longer or something, with my mother!

Now to go see how the gravel roads are with her little car. I’m not looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2023 garden: corn, peas and beans

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Corn and beans, in particular, were things we had so many seeds for, in so many varieties. Especially the Red Swan beans, though that was a mistake. I’d ordered a different, purple variety, because purple everything seemed to do quite well here. When I got Red Swan, instead, I contacted Veseys and they sent me another package.

Of Red Swan.

That happened a couple of times before I finally read on the website somewhere that they were out of the purple variety, and Red Swan as what they were sending out instead!

Oops.

When it came to beans, I’d hope to plant both bush and pole beans, in a variety of colours. I also wanted to try the beans my mother gave me, that trace back to what she used to grow here, when I was a child.

That didn’t happen. We simply didn’t have the space to plant many beans at all this year.

It was much the same with corn. We had many varieties to choose from. Mostly, I just wanted to have three types. The purple Montana Morado, the Tom Thumb popcorn, and one of the short season sweet varieties for fresh eating.

Well… two out of three is pretty good.

The purple corn.

As much as I’d like to grow the kulli corn, the seed source I’d found was out of stock. We’d grown the Montana Morado before a couple of years back (though we though we were getting an acclimated variety of kulli at the time), and they did well until something destroyed them.

This was all that survived from our 2021 garden.

The kulli corn we’d grown last year did absolutely amazing, growing into massive tall stalked that looked so strong an healthy – though high winds did try to take them down!

We had to add a lot of supports to the kulli corn and yellow pear tomatoes, after strong winds.

What they didn’t develop, however, was corn! Not a single tassel or cob!

So we went with the Montana Morado instead.

The Montana Morado got their own bed in the main garden area. I ordered a couple of packets of seeds, because there weren’t many per packet. It still wasn’t a lot, as far as corn goes, but this is an experiment for us. While the plants certainly didn’t thrive like the kulli stalks did last year, they at least produced cobs that we could harvest!

I waffled back and forth about interplanting beans with the corn as a nitrogen fixer, and did end up planting some Red Swan with them, late in the season, but more on that later.

Bonus for wanting the corn to use for flour is, no harvesting until the very end of the season.

There are a couple of things I wanted to do with purple corn. One was to make and try chicha morado, as the very concept of a drink made out of corn fascinated me. The other is to try making corn flour. For this year, the goal was just to have corn to try making flower, though we did try a few cobs for fresh eating.

So after the harvested cobs were left to dry even longer, the kernels were finally removed.

We got almost exactly 1 cup of kernels. Just enough to try to make into flour, though we don’t have a mill. We were debating where to try the spice grinder in small batches, or the Bullet processor we’d been given, but were concerned the hard kernels would break them.

Then, one night, I heard a terrible crashing noise and went to investigate.

I found the container of kernels on the floor. A cat had somehow knocked it down.

We lost them all.

Every. Single. One.

*sigh*

Final thoughts on Montana Morado/purple corn:

Yes, we plan to try again but, gosh, that was disappointing to lose them all like that! We might wait another year or two before trying again. My source for the kulli seeds has them again, but they are insanely expensive – and in US prices, so quite a bit more, plus shipping, in Canadian dollars.

So that will wait.

The popcorn.

We got the Tom Thumb variety, which only gets a couple of feet tall. This is actually the second year we tried to grow them, but the location we grew them in last year, flooded. This year we planted them in a completely different area, both from the flooding and the purple corn. The two types of corn pollinate at different times, but the extra space reduced the chances of cross pollination, should we want to keep seeds.

When it came time to build frames to cover the raised beds, a priority was put on one that could go over the Tom Thumb corn, to protect it from deer or racoons. I’m rather happy with how it turned out, though I do want to stabilize the corners better.

As with the Montana Morado, these were grown to be harvested after they’d dried on the cob. These didn’t even get taste tested for fresh eating, so it was a very low maintenance crop! One we got a surprising number of cobs out of.

After they had their chance to dry on the cob indoors some more, we got a surprising amount of kernels.

We got almost exactly 6 cups out of them!

Final thoughts on Tom Thumb popcorn

We did a test pop, of course.

They didn’t pop. They just burned.

So we left them to dry longer, and stored them with a desiccant, before doing another test pop.

They still wouldn’t pop.

They’ve had more time to dry out and I’ll try again, but they should be dry enough. I’ve looked up about how to harvest and process kernels for popcorn, and we’ve done all that. The only thing I can see that might be the problem is that they still have too much moisture in them. Yet, they do need to have a bit of moisture in them, as that’s basically what makes popcorn pop.

I don’t know what to make of it!

I think we still have seeds left, but I don’t think we’ll try them again. In a way, it was a waste of space to grow these two varieties of corn, instead of a sweet corn that we could eat, freeze or can. We just didn’t have the space available to grow a third variety.

In the future, I think we’ll try a flour corn again when we have more prepared spaces. If we do find that we like having flour corn and actually use it, we would need to have a much larger space available to grow in, to make enough flour to be useful. That is still years in the future. Until then, we will continue to try small amounts as testers.

Next year, I want to focus more on growing a good, short season variety of corn, and we have seeds for at least two different varieties that fit that bill, ready and waiting to be planted.

Bush beans

In previous years, we have had great success with beans. The first year, we grew three types – yellow, green and purple – in rows about 25 feet long. The purple beans did especially well!

Last year, we grew pole beans and shelling beans.

This year, I wanted to grow some bush beans, for their earlier harvest, pole beans for their later harvest, and shelling beans for dry storage.

Once again, we just didn’t have the prepared space for them.

In the end, we planted yellow and green beans in the high raised bed, which is only 9 feet long.

The yellow beans did okay, though a lot of the green beans in particular did not germinate. Most seeds were planted to fill the gabs, they they grew all right this time.

Then… this happened.

Turns out this bed is the perfect height for a hungry deer’s buffet!

We rigged a cover for the bed with poles and netting. Amazingly, the beans recovered, and we actually got some harvests!

Not a lot, but enough to include in our meals. Nowhere near enough for freezing.

Eventually, we were able to cover the bed with one of the garden bed covers we build this summer.

This worked out really well, as the netting could be lifted, and the openings of the fence wire used in the cover were wide enough to fit our arms through, so we didn’t have to remove the cover to harvest the beans. The only down side is that this netting is insane for catching on things!

One thing I found was that the slugs managed to get up into that bed!

This was a very bag year for slugs, but that will be covered more when we talk about the squash.

Still the beans did remarkably well under the circumstances!

Final thoughts on bush beans

While we will probably continue to experiment with varieties until we find ones we really like and can save seeds for, bush beans will probably be a staple crop for us. Especially purple ones, which seem to do best for some reason. Bush beans don’t need much done for them, and they are ready to harvest earlier than pole beans. Since we planted so few of them this year, we may not buy more for next year at all, and just go with what we already have.

The Red Swan beans.

There was some confusion when we got these, as I’d forgotten what I’d ordered, then realized what I ordered didn’t come in, and then… well…

I think we ended up with three bags of them, in total, by the time it was figured out!

These are a variety of bean that can be used for both fresh eating, and as a dried bean. They are also climbers. Since we had so many, when I decided to go ahead and interplant beans with the purple corn as nitrogen fixers, this was the variety I planted. I honestly did not expect them to have enough season left to produce edible beans, so it was a real surprise when they did!

They even got big enough to harvest!

They do turn green when cooked, rather than keep their red colour.

While they managed to grow pods, there was no chance they’d reach full maturity for harvesting dried seed pods. Which is okay. Having any pods at all from these was unexpected! They never even got big enough to climb the corn stalks.

Final thoughts on Red Swan beans, pole beans and dry beans

We will definitely be planting these again, with some left to mature for dry bean collection, and some for fresh eating, so we can figure out if we like them enough to keep growing. After all, there’s no point in letting all those extra seeds go to waste!

As for pole beans in general, we still want to try other varieties to see what we like, though for next year, we’ll probably go with the ones we got for this year, that never made it into the ground! Pole beans start to reach fresh eating maturity about the time bush beans are done, so having both will keep the harvests coming.

I also want to plant dry bean seeds we saved from last year that we didn’t have the space to plant this year, as well as experimenting with other varieties. We won’t go in that direction too far, though, as none of us enjoy dry beans quite enough to warrant having a lot of them. Mostly, having them will be part of our food storage and self sufficiency goals.

Peas.

Finally, we get to the peas!

This year, we planted a variety of pod peas we’ve grown somewhat successfully before, Dalvay. Previously, we’d grown them on trellises near the pole beans, way off in what will be our food forest area, as part of our efforts to amend the soil. Peas have yet to do very well for us, though they were growing in far from ideal conditions in that location. We didn’t plant in that area this year. Unfortunately, we didn’t have an alternate location ready for this year, either.

For the peas, though, I decided to plant them along the chain link fence this year, so they already had something to climb.

This area had had tomatoes growing in it for two years previously, and I felt it was time to switch up to a nitrogen fixer.

They did… okay. They certainly didn’t thrive in this location, which I found a bit strange. In fact, nothing did really well in this bed this year.

The peas did start climbing the fence, and we even got a few pods to harvest. Mostly, though, there were just a few pods I could snack on while outside.

Then one morning, I came out to do my rounds and discovered all parts of the pea plants that grew through to the other side of the fence, were gone. They all got eaten down to the same height, for the entire length of the fence!

Yup. It was the deer, again.

They did somewhat recover, only to get nibbled on again later on. We aren’t feeding the deer anymore – it’s just too expensive – so we don’t get the number we used to, but there are still a few that regularly come by. Usually, they just raid the compost pile, but every now and then, they help themselves to our garden.

*sigh*

So not only did they struggle in the new location, but with being eaten by wildlife, too!

Final thoughts on peas.

I like this variety of peas – the few times we were able to harvest them. At some point, I’d like to have enough pod peas to be able to can or freeze them!

As for why they didn’t do well in this location, when things had done well there before, I think the answer is above them.

We’ve been trying to cut back the branches on the Chinese Elm inside the fence, but in some places, that just resulted in new branches growing back even bushier. They are also too high to reach with our extended pole pruning saw.

Basically, that bed no longer gets as much light as it did over the past couple of years and, for the peas, that was a problem.

Since these trees also drop damaging amounts of seeds every spring, they are on the hit list. At some point, they are going to be taken down completely. They do, however, shade the yard and are among the few trees that are a partial wind break for winds from the south. I would rather not take them down until we have something to compensate for what we would lose when they’re gone.

However, given how much damage they are doing, we might just get rid of them and deal with the other issues later.

As for peas, I hope to plant them in different beds next year, and I’d like to try edible pod peas again. Eventually, I’d like to have both as staples in the garden.

In the end, when it comes to peas, beans and corn, the main hurdle we have is prepared beds to plant them in. We need to build a lot more raised beds of varying heights. We do have plans to build pairs of raised beds joined by trellis tunnels that has been started, and will continue to add more as we are able.

It’s the “as we are able” part that’s the problem.

Well, we do what we can with what we have available.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

Eventually.

The Re-Farmer

Practise

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This morning was pretty routine. As I was finishing up my morning rounds, I was able to get a picture of this handsome fella. Or lady. We don’t know!

One of quite a few black and tuxedo kittens for this year.

Yes. That’s a kitten!

We can’t get near most of them. Unless they have very distinctive and easily seen markings, we can’t tell them apart enough to give them names. I counted 34 cats outside this morning.

This afternoon, my daughter and I headed into town so that she could get used to driving the truck. For all that we saw the grader making passes down the gravel roads twice yesterday, the main road was still sheer ice! You could see snow ridges on the sides of the road and parallel scrapes in the ice in a few places, but for the most part, it looked untouched. WTF? Thankfully, the truck handled it much better than my mother’s car did.

With gravel roads, everyone typically drives down the middle of the road, unless there is oncoming traffic. Most of the roads are just barely wide enough for two vehicles, but we’re next to the “main” gravel road, which is wider and gets more maintenance, due to the higher amounts of traffic it gets. As we were going down that last half mile to our place on the way home, where the ice is the worst, my daughter moved aside as far as she could to let an oncoming car by. She had traction, but we could see the car start to fishtail, while trying to move to one side!

Once in town, we parked and walked to a few different places. I am still trying to find craft materials for the Christmas decorations I’m crocheting this year. I’m almost out of fibre fill, and I hoped to find tiny decorative items I could add to them as finishing touches. At the very least, I hoped to find some Styrofoam balls to use, if I couldn’t find fibre fill. So one of the places we tried was a dollar store. I found a bag of “snow” that I could have used as fibre fill, but it was insanely expensive for what was in the bag. I did find some packages of foam balls, but only needed one. I’ve been using cash lately, so I didn’t even have enough change to buy it. They have a minimum purchase to use debit, and I wasn’t going to buy something I didn’t need, just to use debit, so I didn’t get anything. My daughter found some knitting supplies she wanted, though. With that done, we went to a local store that has the only other supply of yarn in town. While the dollar store has the big name brand yarns, this place has a section of high end, imported wool yarn in remarkable range of colours. Expensive, of course, but worth it for my daughter. I can barely touch the stuff, as it’s a type of wool I react to. I had no idea I was allergic to wool until I tried a high end brand of 100% virgin one time, years ago. I was working on a scarf and had the length draped over my arm as I worked. I developed red welts where the wool touched me that were so defined, you could actually make out the stitch pattern in my flesh! My daughter was able to get a couple of skeins, and then we tried another store. No Christmas crafty stuff there, either. It’s been so strange. I’m looking for stuff I used to be able to find easily, every Christmas, for years. Now, it’s basically just finished decorations, jingle bells, or ornament and craft kits for kids. I might have to go to a Michaels the next time we’re in the city. They are the only dedicated craft store franchise choice we’ve got. I should be able to find at least something I can use, there!

While we were out, I discovered my daughter hadn’t even had breakfast yet, so after dropping her purchases off at the truck, we walked over to one of the restaurants in town that doesn’t close for the winter. We went to a Greek place and ate in, then grabbed a couple extra meals for take out for my husband and other daughter at home.

My daughter, meanwhile, LOVED driving the truck, after we’ve had to use my mother’s car for so long. Excellent visibility, better traction and handling, and no weird noises from the back all the times. Plus, she’s figured out where everything is, so she’ll not have to worry about that when it’s time for her to drive me home after my eye appointment, when my eyes will still be dilated.

While all that was going on, I was keeping in touch with my brother. When I was with my mother yesterday, one of her errands was to talk to the pharmacist. After asking her some questions, he told her she would need to go to a doctor before he could help her. She balked, because the doctor that took her on after our previous doctor moved to another clinic, is not someone she likes. My mother’s racism aside, she has a very strong accent, speaks very quickly, and tends to talk over people instead of listening. My mother mentioned not being able to understand what she was saying. The pharmacist started nodding along. It turns out quite a few of his clients are having troubles understanding this doctor. I had troubles, too, but that’s normal for me, with my auditory processing issues. I’ve only seen her a couple of times; once with my husband and I think only once with my mother. She might be a good medical doctor, I can’t say, but it doesn’t do much good if her patients can’t understand what she’s saying.

So I was going to start making calls on Monday, since I still need a new doctor, too, and see if the closer clinic has the new doctors they were expecting, and if any were open to two new patients. If I couldn’t have made an appointment then, I would have gone back to the other clinic and made an appointment for my mother.

Then I updated my brother on this. He and his wife were quite concerned. A family member had a similar issue that was left untreated for too long and developed sepsis, which is insanely dangerous. They survived, but I believe they were permanently damaged by it. My brother was planning on visiting my mother anyhow, so they looked up a quick care clinic that would be open, and my brother was going to take her there. After calling her first and she agreed, he was on the way when my SIL called the quick care clinic. She was told they had no room to fit her in !!! So my brother decided to take her to the emergency, instead.

They are still there, and it’s been about 4 hours. Another patient there was complaining because they’d been there since 4am and still hadn’t been seen, which means they were in the ER for something like 12 hours before they were seen! Other patients were triaged and rated more urgent and treated first.

My brother has been keeping us updated as much as he can, but he’s basically on baby sitting duty. My mother has said they should just leave a couple of times already, on top of her usual snarky comments, nasty assumptions and insulting behaviour towards others. There’s nowhere they can get food or drink while waiting, without leaving the ER entirely, and then they’d probably have to start all over again, so that’s a problem, too. My brother is going to be completely worn out by the time he gets home! Meanwhile, she’ll probably just get the prescription that the pharmacist couldn’t give her on his own and be sent home. Something the quick care/walk in clinic could have done, too, if they’d been willing to take her.

Hopefully, they will get in soon and be on their way, though it’ll mean my brother will be driving home in full dark, and there are a lot of deer crossing the highways of late! *sigh*

The worst of it is, I know my mother won’t appreciate what my brother is doing for her at all.

Oh, dear. I just found out she got away from my brother, stormed over to the nurses desk and made a scene. The nurse ended up going to the waiting room to make an announcement to everyone to explain their waiting times. It’s at 6 hours now, but had been at 12 hours overnight. To be fair, they’re making a 92 year old woman wait for… going on 5 hours now. You’d think their triage would take that into account, though my mother is easily mistaken as being decades younger.

Welcome to “healthcare” in Canada.

*sigh*

Okay, time to get off the computer for a bit and get some work done, while keeping my phone glued to my pocket as my brother updates us!

He is such a saint.

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2023 garden: four kinds of tomatoes

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Last year, we grew tomatoes that were processed into tomato paste, rather than sauce. Cooking them down to a paste took many hours, and we filled a case of 125ml jars that got used up nice and fast! So this was something we were quite interested in doing again.

The variety of paste tomatoes we grew – Sophie’s Choice – was chosen partly because it was a rare variety. Yes, we saved seeds. The flavour was a bit on the bland side, so we wanted to try something different this year. So for paste tomatoes, we chose Roma VF.

We also wanted to have tomatoes that were good for fresh eating. I’m the only one in the family that can’t do fresh tomatoes. For these, we went a completely different direction and chose black tomatoes. Indigo Blue Chocolates for an indeterminate variety, and Black Beauty for a determinate variety.

Then, because they did so well a couple of years ago, I went ahead and got more Spoon tomato seeds. We did have a few seeds left, but when I saw the price per packet, and the number of seeds in them, drop to reasonable levels again, I ordered some.

Since then, I’ve started to see people and seed companies talking about Spoon tomatoes, so these miniscule tomatoes seemed to have found a following! These are also the only tomatoes that I can eat fresh, without gagging.

With wanting to have plenty of tomatoes to process into pastes and sauces, the original plan was to grow quite a lot of them. The first seeds we started indoors were the Indigo Blue Chocolate and Black Beauty, in March.

The black beauty sure started sprouting fast!

Towards the end of March, we had space in a tray and planted the Spoon tomatoes.

By this time, we had built the cat barrier, which allowed us to set trays on shelves, at least temporarily, and not have to worry about them getting destroyed.

We had a very high germination rate, which meant that when it was time to pot them up, we needed a lot of space!

With the red solo cups, they were first potted up with the soil only half way up. Once they grew big enough to need “potting up” again, we simply added more toil to the top of the cups, burying the stems so they could form more roots.

With our new indoor set up, we were able to start quite a lot of things indoors, but none thrived as well as the tomatoes! Not only did we have a very high germination rate, but we had almost no losses as they were potted up!

Eventually, when things were warm enough, the seedlings were transferred to the sun room, and then hardened off outside, before transplanting into the garden.

We soon found ourselves with a problem.

We were not able to get enough garden beds ready, before all those seedlings needed to be transplanted! The tomatoes got much bigger, faster, than we were ready for.

In the end, we got them into three of our long, low raised beds in the main garden area. One bed was filled with the Roma VF, with only a border of onions around them. We wanted to make sure to have the most of those, for processing later.

With the other two, they were each planted in a single row in the beds they were in, filling the beds half way, length wise, so that the other half could be used for the root vegetables we would plant later and, of course, room for the onions planted as a border around them.

That left the Spoon tomatoes, and at that point, I really didn’t know where to put them. In the end, I stuck a few of them into the retaining wall blocks in the Old Kitchen garden.

There wasn’t a lot of free space for them, but we got a half dozen in. Later on, a last Jiffy Pellet that had Spoon tomatoes in it finally germinated, so I stuck it at the end of the retaining wall, with a tomato plant that had broken in the wind.

That still left us with large numbers of tomato seedlings of all varieties – and nowhere to plant them!

I did find someone we could give a bunch of them to, but there were far more than they needed. In the end, I got permission to leave them outside the general store and post office for our little hamlet, with signs saying what they were, and recommending that seeds be saved. We had lots of peppers to give away, too!

I’m happy to say, they were all taken. I hope they grew well for people!

With the tomato beds, we were able to wind a soaker hose and sprinkler hoses throughout the beds so that they could be watered from below, which did free up quite a bit of time! I could just hook up the hose and go do something else, for most of the beds.

As for how ours did, I’ll talk about each variety.

The first that we were able to start harvesting from were the Roma VF. While they did start out rather well, they did get hit with tomato blight, and we ended up harvesting all the tomatoes, then pulling the plants for burning, rather than composting.

If you go through the Instagram slideshow of photos, you’ll see we were also able to harvest some Indigo Blue and Black Beauty tomatoes, too.

Both varieties of black tomatoes took a long time to ripen. Because of their colour, it was really hard to tell when they were ready to pick! Both were supposed to get a red blush on their bottoms, but ultimately, we had to go by the squeeze test to see if they were ready.

Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes

The Indigo Blue started to ripen first. These are a smaller tomato which, unfortunately, did have a tendency to split rather quickly, once they ripened. They have a nice, smooth shape to them, and their colours are lovely.

The Black Beauties, on the other hand, took a lot longer to ripen. They got so huge, so fast, and then… nothing. We kept checking them and they were rock hard for the longest time. They also had a tendency to split, more than the Indigo Blues did. Then, when we could finally pick some, their uneven shapes made them harder to work with. As for the flavour, my family was unimpressed. They did not live up to their descriptions on the website.

Then there were the Spoon tomatoes!

Where they were planted was not an ideal spot at all. It’s shaded by one of the ornamental apple trees, on the south corner. While they did grow quite tall on their bamboo stake supports, they did not get as lush and healthy as they did the first time we grew them, against the chain link fence. They were transplanted a bit late, too, so they took longer to ripen than before. As a result, we didn’t get a lot of them, relatively speaking, but there were certainly enough to snack on while we were out and about in the yard.

At the end of the season, when we got hit by our first frost, we harvested all the tomatoes left (except the Spoon tomatoes; we left them alone), bringing in the ripest ones, then spreading the greenest ones out on screens under the market tent to ripen.

Here, you can see the last of the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes set out in the sun, before they got transferred to screens.

We were able to process a sink full of Roma VF tomatoes into sauce for the freezer.

Those are already gone!

We had too many other things going on, though, and ended up freezing a lot of the tomatoes whole, to either cook as they are, process into more sauce, or into tomato paste. These can wait until slower, winter days.

The frustrating thing was all the left over, slowly ripening tomatoes. We just didn’t have the space to store them and keep them handy. Last year, we had a bin full in the dining room that the family snacked out of regularly, We weren’t able to do that this year. The end result was that many tomatoes started going bad before they could be eaten. Ultimately, way too many of them ended up in the compost heap, simply because they were forgotten.

Surprise tomatoes!

The last two years, we grew tomatoes in a bed along the chain link fence. This year, we grew other tings in there, but several self seeded tomatoes showed up, too!

I decided to transplant them into the empty bed the Irish Cobbler potatoes had been in.

It was September 8 when I transplanted them, and our average first frost date is September 10, so there was no way they’d have time to mature, but I figured I’d give them a chance! They did actually start to bloom. Even when the first mild frosts did, they were protected by the plastic rings I’d put around them and survived.

Final Thoughts on Tomatoes

As far as starting the seeds goes, they did amazingly well! I’m still blown away by the almost 100% germination rate. The transplants did really well, and I’m glad we were able to give the last ones away. Once they were in the ground, they all did mostly good, but I think our growing conditions and soil issues prevented them from doing as well as they should have.

Roma VF

As these ended up being harvested early due to tomato blight, I don’t know that they reached their full flavour potential. The family enjoyed them, but didn’t find the flavour exceptional. The tomato sauce we made was good but, again, the tomato flavour was nothing to write home about. We will try a different variety of paste tomato, next year.

Black Beauty

These are a pretty tomato, for sure, but they took so much longer to ripen, and had a real problem with splitting easily. My family was unimpressed with the flavour, and didn’t like working with the lumpy, bumpy shapes. I’m glad we tried them, but we will not be growing them again.

Indigo Blue Chocolate

These went over much better. They’re a smaller tomato, but still adequate for slicing and using in sandwiches. My husband likes to just eat the tomatoes with some salt, and quite enjoyed these that way. They were nicely productive, too. We will be growing these again.

Spoon

For all the set backs these had, they did surprisingly well. They’re also just a really fun tomato. I look forward to growing them again, just for the fun of them. Plus, they are the only ones I can actually eat, and it’s fun to have these tiny little tomatoes to snack on while working in the garden. Plus, being a rarer variety, I like the idea of keeping them going.

The challenge is going to be having enough space to grow the amount of tomatoes we would need for our long term goals. At some point, we want to be able to can and freeze sauces and pastes sufficient to last a year – basically, from harvest to harvest. For that, we’ll need to grow more tomatoes, which means we need to have more space to grow them in.

Which means we need to get our butts in gear to have enough raised beds for everything we want to grow. Even the low raised beds we have now, which have been amended for several years, will need to be made at least a little higher, with more amending.

All in good time. Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Glad to be home

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First, the cuteness!

The cats are quite enjoying the box I found to better stabilize the platform I rigged up for them as a way to store the wire mesh door we made to keep cats out of the old basement in the summer. The one that reminds me of Nosencrantz so much especially likes to just be a loaf in it! I’m constantly seeing cats milling around under there, though, and they do like that rigid insulation!

Also… I’m not 100% sure I recognize the cat on the left. It’s getting so hard to tell some of them apart!

I counted “only” 34 outside cats this morning.

As for the inside cats, Tiny, aka: The Beast, is now big enough that it’s safe to let her out of isolation. With the loss of Snorri, we no longer have to keep the door to my bedroom/office closed, even overnight. Tiny has been thrilled with her new freedom to explore the rest of the house.

The rest of the cats are thrilled to be able to go into my room again. As I write this, there are currently 8 of them asleep on my bed, with all but one of them in a single, huge pile of fur!

Gotta get more adoptions done!!!

Anyhow…

The plan for today was to help my mother with errands so, while doing my rounds, I took the time to open the doors to where her car is parked and give it a quick check.

I almost immediately noticed the back tire on the driver’s side looked awfully low. The tire that had gone flat before was the front driver’s side tire, so this was not expected at all.

The car barely fits in this addition to the garage, so I backed it out, then checked the tire pressure.

It was only 10psi!!

So I pumped it up, but saw no sign of a leak anywhere. I checked the front driver’s side tire, and it was really low, too, though not enough to be noticeably flat.

Of course, I checked the other two, and they were slightly on the slow side, too.

The bizarre thing is, when I took the car in to get that tire checked, the employee that worked on it thought it was the passenger side tire that was leaking and was done checking it when I returned to the garage. I told him it was the driver’s side tire, so he took that one off. He could not find a leak in either of them. All the tires, however, were topped up with air, just in case. I was there to see it done.

So why would all four tires be low, with one practically flat? We even used the car a few days ago, when we had to pick the truck up from getting its new battery.

I’m so glad I took the time to check on her car, so far in advance of needing it! With all the driving around I did with my mother, the tires have held their psi. No evidence of leaks, anywhere.

Very strange.

If it weren’t for the fact that we have snow on the ground that would have given evidence, I would be concerned that a certain “someone” made their way into the garage and let the air out. As it is, the only foot prints in the snow have been our own.

Another reason I am glad I checked the tires.

Road conditions sucked.

But only the gravel roads, and only those sections shaded by trees. They were sheer ice! Even though I was driving slowly and cautiously, ever now and then, the car would suddenly start fishtailing. Not much, thankfully, and not for long, but enough to be a concern. The last thing I’d want is to hit either ditch on the sides of these roads. They are very deep and very steep! The chances of being able to drive out, even with 4 wheel drive, are very low.

We got a light and fluffy snowfall overnight, which didn’t help matters.

Even on the highway, for the first while, I was not confident driving at the speed limit for quite some time.

Oh, how I wished to be driving the truck, instead!!!

Thankfully, today turned out to be warmer than forecast – again – and the paved roads melted clear by the time I was heading home.

Except the gravel roads, where were even slipperier!

As I was reaching the intersection by our place, though, I saw the grader coming through. Our section of the road had just been done. He had to move aside for me to be able to turn in, so at least the last 200 ft or so was good!

This should have been done long ago. People are really upset with our current municipal counsel. For some reason, they didn’t go with the usual company for road maintenance – a local company that has all the equipment and storage facilities on hand, and had done an excellent job of keeping our roads cleared and safe as quickly as possible, every year we’ve been here. Instead, they’ve decided to lease a grader, rent someone’s space to store it, for a ludicrous monthly fee – and a 125 hour limit. Oh, and they’d have to hire a driver each time, too. They only got the grader today, which means for the past while, roads like ours have been just left as they were. It got so bad in areas that the school division would not allow buses to drive on them, for safety reasons.

Which means parents on these dangerous roads had to drive their kids, however many miles, to meet the bus at the highway, instead.

Hopefully, it will no longer be an issue for the rest of the winter.

Anyhow.

Since I was there with the car, my mother wanted to do as many errands as she could, so we stopped at quite a few places. For all that my mother is 92, uses a walker, frequently complains about how bad her knees are (but won’t wear her brace), and is clearly struggling at times, once she gets going, she is really hard to keep up with! At the grocery store, we’ve switched from her using the shopping cart as a walker, to her using her walker and me pushing the cart, so that she has the option of sitting down if she needs to. Once she gets going, though, she just races off! Unfortunately, she’s one of those people who doesn’t really watch out for others or, if she does see them, all but barrels right through them. Yikes!!

We got it all done, though, and she was quite glad to get home and finally rest!

For me, it was just a stop at the gas station, then home, and I was sure glad to be home, too!

I thought I could look forward to taking it easy for the next while, but…

There was an answering machine message when I got home. A reminded for my eye appointment on Monday. I was very glad to get it! I have my phone set to send me a reminder 1 day in advance, so I wouldn’t have forgotten or missed the appointment. However, my eyes will be dilated for a field of vision test, which means I have to get my daughter to drive me home.

Other than parking in the garage, she has yet to drive the truck.

So tomorrow, we’ll be heading out for her to do some practise driving. Pretty much everything is in different places from any other vehicle we’ve driven. It’s also just a few inches wider and longer than the van – just enough to really affect getting in and out of parking spaces, or taking turns. It won’t take long for her to get used to it, but better to do that in advance, then when I need her to drive me home because I’ll essentially be blinded.

I just checked my calendar and see I have a reminder to get my bloodwork done on the same day my husband’s CPP Disability comes in, before Christmas instead of after. That, at least, is not an appointment. I just need to show up at the clinic and ask for the requisition for that should be on file, then step across the hall to the lab to do the tests. Since I will likely be doing our first January stock up shopping that day, and don’t usually have breakfast until I’ve reached the city, I can swing by on the way and get the bloodwork done while still technically fasting.

Then there’s the extra city trip that my daughters will need next week.

Good grief. I try to keep the winter months as close to home as possible, but this year it looks like our December is going to be filled with outings!

I just want to stay home and hybernate!

The Re-Farmer