While bringing the plants indoors, my daughter remembered to shake the blooming Wonderberry plants against each other, to give them a chance to pollinate. I still don’t know of they’re self pollinating our not, but we’re doing it just in case. Then my daughter commented that it seems to be working. We have berries.
What????
It turns out all three of the plants are starting to form berries!
Of course, my camera didn’t want to focus on the ones I was trying to get a picture of. After the photo was uploaded, I noticed more I hadn’t seen.
The instructions I found for these said to start them indoors very early, which we did. Now it’s looking like they were started way too early! I have no idea how they will handle being transplanted outdoors, which still won’t happen for at least a week and a half.
They are looking strong and healthy in their pots. Though we did pot them up into larger pots that can be directly buried into the ground, they’ve gotten quite large, and now those pots look so small!
There’s not much we can do about that for now. We’ll just have to see how they do.
While uploading the picture of the berries, I realized I’d forgotten another picture I took of something I FINALLY managed to get done, while tending the burn barrel. I cut away the trees that were growing around, under and through the old Farm Hand tractor sitting in the outer yard. My brother thinks it can be fixed up, so I wanted to make sure it doesn’t end up like so many other old and abandoned antique equipment lying around.
I was able to get most of it cleared with a pair of loppers, including one surprisingly large maple that was growing through the engine compartment. There was one large maple in the back that I had to come back with the mini-chainsaw to cut away. This one was not only larger than all the others, it had formed around part of the tractor.
The dents in the trunk piece are from growing around the bottom corner of the hydraulic fluid tank, and the hose attached to it.
Maple suckers will grow back, but it will be easier to keep clear, now that the big ones are out.
It’s a shame no one’s been able to keep this old crank-start tractor up. It’s been sitting so long, you can see lichen growing on the tank! There’s lichen growing all over it. As you can see, the hoses are degrading, too, and it’s all rusted. The front end loader attachment is so covered with moss and grasses, I can’t even tell which attachment is on it.
I’m glad I managed to at least get this job done. It’s been on my to-do list for three years!
Oh, my goodness, I feel so totally drained today. It’s all I can do to stay awake, and my body aches from top to bottom. Especially my fingers. Especially that one finger that I thought I might have broken at some point, but now I’m thinking it’s “just” arthritis. It feel different than arthritis pain, though.
I still managed to get some things done today. I’m testing out a Boston Baked Beans recipe for the slow cooker. We’ve never been big bean eaters, but it’s been handy to have canned beans on hand, for a quick meal. Those little cans are getting expensive, though, so if we can start making our own and like it enough, it’s something we could start canning ourselves. I set beans to soak overnight, and got the rest going this morning, while my husband was a sweetheart and fed the outside cats for me. His pain levels have been really high for a long time, now, but he can usually at least manage to feed the cats.
This baked beans recipe is cooked on low for 10-12 hours, so it’s going to be a while before we get to try it out!
Once the slow cooker was going, I headed out to do the rest of my morning rounds.
Today, I was followed by a Nutmeg! At least for part of the morning. Rolando Moon took over following me, later one.
I did remember to take a closer look at what the girls have been doing.
So many of the holes they’re digging to plant the bison berry are not only filled with water, but roots as well. It’ll be easier to come back with some pruning shears and cut them all clear at once.
It was pleasant enough that I finally got a burn going in the barrel. I usually try to get it done after the girls have cleaned out the cat litter sawdust, but with all the rain we’ve been having, I haven’t been able to, and it was getting pretty full. I get a good fire going with branches from the huge pile not far from the burn barrel, then cover it and let it smolder. The cat litter sawdust slowly dries out and burns over several days.
While I was using the loppers to cut some branches from the pile, I was very surprised to hear a kitten meowing! I thought the mamas had moved their kittens out of there!
It wouldn’t stop meowing plaintively, but there is no possibility of reaching it. The branch pile is just too huge. After a while, though, the mamas did show up and go into the pile, but the meowing didn’t stop. I finally covered the barrel and left before I was done, hoping the mamas would calm the kitten down and maybe move it to wherever it was they moved the other kittens.
No such luck. I came back some time later and got the barrel going again, and the meowing started again. When I got too close to the entrance, though, I also heard growling, so at least there was a mama in there, with the baby.
Among the other things I managed to do was get the transplants outside to continue hardening off. Then, after seeing quite a bit of traffic going by, I decided to make a quick run into town to pick up a few things. I was just leaving, when I got an alert on my phone.
A frost warning for tonight.
*sigh*
Looking at the long range forecast, which now extends beyond our average lost frost date, it does look like things are finally warming up at least somewhat. Hopefully, it won’t be long before we can start transplanting things. It’s a long weekend right now, and a lot of people traditionally put their gardens in this weekend, but for us, we’ve got another week and a half, at least. We should still be able to direct sow some of the hardier seeds, but even that is touch and go right now.
Huge gardening goal is to accumulate what we need to protect our beds and extend our growing season.
We are, at least, able to cover the high raised bed. With the hoops lowered as much as I have, I was able to fold the sheet of plastic in half and still cover it, so that will help, too.
For now, however, it’s time for the girls and I to bring the transplants back inside for the night.
What I really want to do is take some pain killers, crawl into bed and sleep for a week.
I was hoping we wouldn’t get a lot of wind, but it was gusting pretty wildly when I came out to check on the garden beds.
The cardboard did not get as saturated as I’d hoped, but it also didn’t get blown away as badly as I’d feared it might.
The cover on the high raised bed, on the other hand, was all over the place.
I fought with it for a while, using bricks to try and weigh down the edges, and the pieces of garden hose we cut last year as crimps on the hoops. The main problem was how high the hoops were. Ideally, I would have just laid the plastic flat across the top, but I have no way to fasten it down right now.
I did push the hoops deeper into the soil, but they are right along the walls, and the lower logs are thicker than the top ones, so I kept hitting the wood and having to adjust. There wasn’t a lot of wiggle room to avoid the onions.
Thankfully, onions are very hardy.
By the time I finished mulching, though, I just took the plastic off.
The only reason the plastic was being added was in case it snowed (I did actually see some flakes!), but by then, the temperature had risen enough that it wasn’t an issue.
Gathering up and folding that sheet of plastic was interesting. I usually try to use the wind itself to help, which usually works well, but not this morning! The wind kept coming from all directions, and I found myself as likely to suddenly have plastic wrapped around me as having the wind blow it straight out.
The future potato bed now has a nice, deep mulch at least a foot deep. I had wanted to chop the straw first with the shredder chute on the wood chipper, but there’s no way to get the chipper out there through the mud and water.
The straw bale has been left exposed to the elements all winter. Layers of it were sloughing down and, as you can see, it’s wet and starting to decompose. Which is exactly what I want for mulching. Straw takes quite a while to decompose, which is the main reason we wanted to put it through the shredder, first. The wet straw is also not going to blow away. Normally, after laying the straw down, we’d be taking a hose to it, but between how wet it already is, and the rain, it should be pretty moist.
Well, crud. I just looked at the weather forecast, and it’s changed again. We might get rain with snow again this evening! We’re supposed to hit 0C/32F overnight, with the wind chill making it feel like -4C/25F. Then more light rain tomorrow. I guess we should cover the !#$%!$# high raised bed again.
When I headed out to feed the yard cats, I found a rather alarming surprise.
A cold, wet kitten wandering up the side walk and into the equally cold, wet grass!
Not a mother in sight.
We were cold enough to get a few snowflakes this morning. Cold enough that I was wearing my parka and a toque, so of course I picked it up to warm it up.
It did hiss a tiny bit.
Then it started to slither up my neck before burrowing down my shoulder and into my sleeve.
I brought it inside so my husband could help me get it out of my sleeve. I found a super soft winter hat to use as a nest, tucked it into my coat, and went looking around the yard for Mama. There were a number of cats around, but this is one I recognize as Junk Pile’s kittens, from when they were in the cats’ house. I couldn’t see her, anywhere. I had things to do outside, so I returned the kitten to my husband and kept looking while I continued my morning rounds.
I spotted Junk Pile, watching me from the branch pile she’d moved her kittens to, as I went to switch out the memory card on the gate cam.
This is nowhere near where I found the kitten.
With the amount of water and much in between the branch pile and where I found it, it had to have been carried. Was she moving her litter again? Why was it alone in the middle of the yard?
I went and got the kitten again, still carrying it in its next, but Junk Pile was gone when I came back.
With more work to do outside, I had to return the kitten into the tender care of my husband.
The kitten was okay with that.
While I was working in the garden (which I’ll post about separately), I asked the rest of the family to keep an eye out for cats the appeared to be looking for kittens! I was almost finished laying down mulch when one of my daughters came and asked me to come over. She’s seen the mamas eating in the kibble house – Junk Pile and the cat the looks like her that also had her litter in the cats’ house – and brought the kitten over. They sniffed at it, then went away, and the kitten went under the cat’s house. I went over to help, though there wasn’t much I could do. My daughter lay a floor mat on the muddy ground so she could get down and try and see the kitten and maybe get it out. It’s pretty wet under there, too, but from what little my daughter could see, the kitten was able to get on top of the sledge the main part of the cats’ house is sitting on top of. We’ve got bricks under the sledge to keep it off the ground and level it as much as we could, and there would be space under the floorboards, so there’s a fair amount of room under there.
There was no way to reach the kitten.
We decided to watch from a distance. I had only one or two fork fulls of mulch to lay down, so I quickly went to finish that while my daughter stayed to watch. By the time came back around the house, Junk Pile was on the mat that was still by the cats’ house, looking under. Then the other mama came up. Sure enough, the kitten came out to them, and off they went!
We kept watching from a distance as the led the kitten away, with Junk Pile sometimes trying to drag it by the scruff of the neck.
Once in the outer yard, I thought they’d go into the pump shack, but the mamas led the baby behind it, and we could no longer see. They might have found a place for their kittens under the warehouse, or maybe in one of the junk cars out there.
I’m glad we were able to warm up the kitten, then reunite it with is mother – and that the two moms are still sticking together and co-parenting their litters. If they hadn’t come back for it, of course we would have taken it in, but it’s still too young to be weaned. We’d have had to get supplies to be able to feed it.
The kitten was much more mobile, after getting warm and dry! That was good to see, too.
Chances are we won’t see any kittens again until the moms start bringing them to the kibble house. Probably in July. Maybe even August. Then we can see about catching them for adoption. I’ve just been in contact with out Cat Lady, who is currently out of province – someone dumped a pregnant cat at her door while she was gone, and it had its kittens! What is it with people??? Anyhow, she’s been able to procure free spays, and when she comes back, we’ll be working on getting more done and on the adoptions page.
I’m glad the kitten is now safe with its mothers, but I’m also kinda glad we were able to spend some time with it. Maybe, when it’s older, it will have some memory of being safe and warm with humans, and we’ll be able to start socializing it.
Welcome to my second “Recommended” series. Here, you’ll find various sites and channels that I’ve been enjoying and wanted to share with you. With so many people currently looking to find ways to be more self sufficient or prepared for emergencies, that will be the focus for most of these, but I’ll also be adding a few that are just plain fun. Please feel free to leave a comment or make your own recommendation. I hope you enjoy these!
After my recent post about being able to get a generous amount of cardboard to start new garden beds, I wanted to share about a resource I found fairly recently. Perma Pastures Farm. You can visit their website here – definitely visit their About page – or peruse their YouTube channel here. You’ll find more links in the description boxes of their videos.
I must really be a sucker for punishment, following all these homesteader channels that are in much warmer climate zones than we are! I’m loving it, though, and a lot of what I’ve been learning from them can be used in any climate zone. Like this video on creating an “instant garden”.
Which is basically what we’re doing right now, in what will be this year’s potato beds.
I’d love to have a broad fork like that! I’m not sure how much use we’d get out of it in our old garden area, though, considering how rocky it is. It looks like a really awesome tools, though.
Permaculture is one of a number of things I’ve been discovering, where I was already working towards it as a goal, without knowing there was a name for it. :-D
I like how they’re finding ways to make use of areas that often get forgotten about or ignored. I look forward to seeing how things work out with their hügelkultur hill. I also appreciate how he encourages doing things unconventionally.
Suddenly, I’m thinking of my mother and how she gets because I’m gardening differently than she did! :-D
What an amazing polytunnel they’re working on, all from recycled materials!
Hearing them talk about comfrey, and that it’s something they sell, I got curious and looked it up. I was already familiar with comfrey for wound healing. After we home birthed our second daughter, my midwife provided us with powdered comfrey to apply to my perineal tear. It worked incredibly well. What I didn’t know was all the other things it’s good for! It looks like something we might even be able to grow in our zone, too. Definitely something to include, as we start incorporating more herbs into our gardening.
Of course, not all their videos are about about growing things, and sometimes they cover other topics completely. In fact, it was one of those videos that showed up in my YouTube feed that first introduced me to the channel. It was this video…
Yeah. THIS. 100%
After seeing this video, I just had to check out their channel and subscribed in a heartbeat.
Being Canadian, when I spotted the title, I just had to check this one out.
This was made in early February, 2022, not that long after the Freedom Convoy began making it’s way across Canada, to protest for our constitutional rights and freedoms in Ottawa. Which, by the way, is still going on, in various ways, even after our Prime Dictator illegally invoked the Emergency Act and continues to hold political prisoners. At the time of this writing, Canada is still under a de facto dictatorship. I’m glad he was able to come to Canada before we went completely insane.
Other topics you’ll find videos for include things like how to care an eating spoon, all sorts of videos on chickens and pigs – vital parts of their permaculture – butchering deer or lamb, cooking videos; pretty much anything homestead related.
And for those of you who would love to buy some land for potential homesteading, I leave you with one more video…
… an alternative way to be able to buy some land. Well worth checking it out.
Except the sun isn’t shining, and we’re raining again, but I did get to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity.
This morning was mild enough that I was able to get our transplants outside to harden off. I also took advantage of the lack of rain to work on the old kitchen garden some more, trying to get as many roots as I could out of the L shaped bed, then in a couple of tiny little plots we may or may not plant in. In one of them, I noticed asparagus coming up! There’s just the one plant there, but I knew there were more on the opposite side of the garden, so I went looking. Sure enough, there were some spears coming up there, too. These are asparagus that have been there since before my parents bought the property, in the early 1950’s! I weeded around them as best I could, then checked under the straw much of the purple asparagus bed we planted last year. Still nothing there, that I could see.
After the transplants were brought back indoors, I started to settle in with “breakfast” (it was past noon. LOL) and check my computer, when I got a message telling me about someone who was offering up some carboard for mulch. There is a food waste reduction program that collects food that cannot be sold for human consumption for one reason or another, and distributes it to people to feed to their animals, thereby keeping it out of the landfills. Much of this is in cardboard boxes, which can pile up pretty fast! I was able to get in touch with this person and, before I knew it, I was heading out to pick up some cardboard!
That muddy spot on the road near our intersection is getting worse. With the upcoming expected rain, I’m not sure we’ll be able to get through for much longer. We shall see.
The person I met up with was absolutely awesome, and we ended up chatting for quite a while about the things they’re doing on their farm. I was really interested to see some of their fencing; particularly their buck and pole fence. No post holes required! That would be ideal for the temporary fencing we want to make. I just showed the girls pictures and talked about it, and they thought it was a good style of fencing to use, too. Over the next while, as we work on cleaning up dead trees and collapsed sheds, we’ll set aside the materials we’ll need to make them.
The town I went to, to pick up the cardboard, is a town I’ve never been to before. One of many places we drive past on the highway, see the signs and think “gee, we ought to go there one of these days”, and never manage it! While there, I drove past an antique store and flea market that happened to be open today (they are open only 3 days a week), so I had to stop by on the way home.
One of my favourite things about visiting antique stores is seeing all the stuff that I grew up using. Like this.
We used a saw like this to cut our firewood. We had an old tractor with a wheel on it that the belt attached to, to power the saw. That thing made short work of a big job!
There were so many things in there that I either used as a child, or that we have here at the farm, including a couple of pink glass antique oil lamps, like one we’ve had here at the farm for as long as I can remember. It’s still tucked away in a storage space near the ceiling in the kitchen, though we’ve had to block it off to keep the cats out of it. Ours is missing the chimney, though. I asked about it, and was told they are VERY hard to come by. They are a very different size and shape. There were a lot of other really awesome things there. I definitely want to come back with the girls.
Once at home, I backed the van up near the garden – unfortunately tearing up some of the lawn in the process, because parts of it are so muddy! At first, we were thinking of leaving the van there,, with the cardboard stored inside, but I knew it was going to start raining soon. So, while the girls started supper, I went ahead and started going through the boxes to take off any pieces of tape or labels that would come off.
I was able to set up the rolling seat and a garbage bag under the lift gate, and mostly stayed out of the rain once it started. :-D
Yeesh. Laying that black tarp down really doesn’t do much to kill off the grass and weeds. Normally, I would have taken the weed trimmer to the ground, first, not our weed trimmer is corded. This far from the outlet on the house, I’d have had to use at least a couple of cords, and there’s a puddle of water in the way. Not going to happen! The tarp I took off is now pegged down on top of the second tarp. The two of them together will do a better job in killing off the grass, until we can start laying cardboard down under there, too.
I was able to lay down such a nice, thick layer of cardboard! When we were laying cardboard down under previous beds last year, we had to be rather parsimonious about it, because we just didn’t have all that much cardboard. It was better than nothing, but not enough to make a really good weed barrier. Some of these boxes are made out of a really thick cardboard, and I was able to overlap the edges really well, too.
It has been left like this to be rained on. Normally, we’d be taking a hose to it, to saturate the cardboard before laying the straw on it. It can take a really long time for the cardboard to get wet all the way through. It would take even longer, with such thick cardboard and so many layers. These boxes had been stored outside, though, so some of them were already damp, which helps.
This is all the cardboard that’s left!
I’ve already been offered more, if I want it. Which I will happily accept! We’re still supposed to get rain all night, with a mix of rain and snow by tomorrow morning. At least now the forecasters are saying the rain will stop tomorrow morning, and we aren’t expected to get more for the next 5 days. That should give the road enough time to dry up and be more accessible, I hope. The municipality might even have a chance to fix it before we get another expected 4 days of rain! At least it’ll be warmer by then, and we won’t have to worry about snow.
Speaking of which…
The high raised bed now has its plastic cover, to hopefully keep things a bit warmer if it snows. Both the onions and spinach under there should be able to handle the cooler temperatures, but I’d rather give them what protection I can.
After taking the picture, I noticed the plastic already has a hole in it! It’s a pretty thin plastic. Or perhaps the hole was already there, right off the roll. This was the last of a roll, so the very end of it was a bit mashed up.
This should be the only time we’ll want to cover the high raised bed with plastic. After this, if we ever need to cover it again, it’ll be with netting or something like that, to keep the critters or the insects out.
As you can see in the back on the left, the garlic here is doing really well! The other two beds are still barely showing, and very few of them. I’m starting to wonder if I’d planted them too deep or something, though these ones were planted at the same depth, so… I don’t know. We’ll see how they do as things warm up.
This was not the only step ahead we got in our garden and growing plans. While I was out, my daughter started digging holes for planting trees in. Holes that are now half full of water, but that’s to be expected right now. Hopefully, that won’t be an issue once the trees actually get here and we start transplanting them.
I’m so glad I was able to head out to get this cardboard today! Having a flexible schedule, and the girls to take care of things while I’m gone, is something I really appreciate. That and people like Wolfsong, who let me know about the cardboard being offered up. Thank you so much! You’re awesome!
While working on the old kitchen garden, I stepped a way a moment and came back to find this.
A chickadee was gathering some of the cat fur we’d tried leaving in the garden beds to deter the groundhogs. It didn’t work, but now a chickadee is gathering it to line its nest!
Early this evening, the rain finally stopped, the sun came out, and the temperature warmed up several degrees higher than forecast. We took advantage of the break and quickly put the transplants outside to harden off for a couple of hours. Normally, I would have added an extra hour, but it was getting too late in the day for that. (I’m trying something different again with my photos; please let me know if you have any problems viewing them.)
There is SO much water all over the yard. Even areas that don’t seem to have puddles in them have standing water, hidden by whatever green growth is managing to emerge.
One of the things I wanted to get done was reinforce the hoops on the high raised bed. The problem was, I didn’t have anything long enough. So I made do.
We have some bamboo stakes that are getting pretty old and fragile, including some broken ones, so I was able to tie one full length one together with a shorter one, then attached it to the hoops. It’s now ready to have some plastic put over it, tomorrow evening, before the temperatures drop low enough for possible snow.
I also had a chance to clean up one side of last year’s squash tunnel. We’d only managed to do the other side in the fall, before the snow arrived. This year, we will be planting pole beans to climb the tunnel.
Here we’ve marked the future sea buckthorn locations. You can see the gaps in the lilac hedge, where the deer are getting through. It’ll take a few years, but the sea buckthorn should fill that in nicely.
Here, where the corn and sunflower beds were last year, we’ve marked where the silver bison berry will go. (At some point, we’ll even take out the old sunflower stems the deer didn’t finish off. :-D) Each will be about 3 feet apart in their rows. We are still debating how far apart to make the rows – certainly not the 16 feet recommended! We were thinking 4 ft apart at first, but might go with 5 feet apart. We also changed our minds about the 2 highbush cranberry, and will be adding those to the far end of the the bison berry. One of the reasons these are being planted here is for a privacy screen, which will eventually extend as far as the row of crab apple trees. The saw horse you can see in the distance is next to the last one of them in the row. The cranberry bushes will help extend the privacy screen a bit, and we will plant other things over the next few years to keep extending it.
The branch pile in the distance is completely surrounded by water right now.
Where I’m standing to take the above photo is roughly where the phone line is buried, so we will be leaving an open lane, wide enough for a large vehicle or heavy equipment to drive through, as we plant more trees and shrubs.
As the berry bushes we plant fill out and start creating that privacy screen we want, we’ll start doing more to clean up the fence line, which is in serious need of repair. It has trees growing on either side of it, some of which will be taken out completely, while others will have their lower branches pruned back. There are a few dead trees in there, too. In one area, there are wild Saskatoon bushes. I want to clean up around them so that they are not as crowded, and have better growing conditions.
Gosh, it felt so good to be able to get at least a couple of hours of work done outside! I’m just loving being able to finally do some decent manual labour again!
It’s been raining off and on throughout the night, and will continue to do so for the next couple of days. We still have predictions of some snow overnight, two days from now.
After I was back inside from doing my damp morning rounds, I heard the distinct beeping and rumbling of heavy equipment. Someone was working on the really bad spot on the road near our intersection. I was happy to see that, since I needed to pick up a parcel at the post office.
That first mile of gravel road was absolutely awful. It’s so saturated, it’s just being destroyed. I still had to skirt around the really bad spot near our place. I could see that the road had been worked on for a full 2 miles. I hate to think how bad it was before it got fixed! Well. Fixed as much as possible for now.
Not a whole lot accomplished outside today! I did get some hoops up on the high raised bed, so it can be covered overnight when we’re supposed to get snow. Later on, the girls and I went back out to where we are looking to plant the trees when they come in, marking off where we need to dig holes with orange paint, though a couple of spots didn’t get marked, because there are puddles where we need to dig. Working out the distances and where we will start from, we’ll actually be able to plant all 30 silver bison berry in two rows where we had the corn and sunflowers last year. Where the sea buckthorn will go, and the highbush cranberry that is coming from another supplier, also got marked off. We also talked about where the 6 Korean pine will go, though there’s no point in marking anything there.
I had been thinking if using the netting we got to create a temporary fence around the whole garden area and where we will be planting the trees, but my daughter, who bought the netting, pointed out that it isn’t suitable for that. It’s a finer mesh that is meant to be used like the mosquito netting she got last year. So many insects got trapped under those, many of which were beneficial insects.
So… no temporary deer fencing around the entire area. We’ll be protecting individual beds and plots, instead, and getting something else to put around the trees to protect them from critters.
Well, at least all this rain will make it easier to dig the holes we need for all those trees.
The Re-Farmer 