Our first order of seeds from Veseys arrived in the mail today!
You can read about why I ordered what I did in this post.
We got our two types of pole beans and the corn in baggies. There are quite a lot of seeds in each, which is pretty awesome. After this past summer’s gardening, I’ve decided there is no such thing as planting “too many” of anything! The pole beans will be planted at the squash tunnel, and will probably take up the whole thing.
Bulb onions, bunching onions and shallots. I plan to order a variety of red onions I have my eye on, when we place another order next month. For this year’s garden, I plan to start the onions indoors much earlier. In the local gardening groups. many start their onions from see in January!
I’m not sure what happened here. We were supposed to get two varieties of winter squash; the candy roaster, and Winter Sweet Organic squash, not a summer squash! I ordered 40566A, not 40556A.
I will have to contact them about it. The squash I got is a pattypan squash, so I’m actually happy with this, but I do want my Winter Sweet!
We’ve got our two types of turnip to try. I’ve never grown turnip before, nor do I remember my mother ever growing them, either.
And finally, the beets, ground cherry and cucumber.
I’m really looking forward to growing the ground cherry!
Since I also plan to order more peas, and dry bean varieties, on top of the pole beans, cucumbers, and vining squash, we are going to need to build more climbing structures for next year’s garden!
These are still from the 2021 catalogue. A lot of seed companies don’t have their 2022 inventory available yet. I may be jumping the gun, but I’d rather order early. There’s a lot of talk about food shortages coming up and, while that is for the next few months, it is just more incentive to plan ahead for next year, and growing as much of our own food as possible.
Today turned out to be a lovely day. Sunny, and at a high of 8C/46F, warmer than predicted. It made it very hard to believe that there is a storm and blizzard coming our way, starting tomorrow! While my phone’s weather app has been saying a blizzard was coming since yesterday, it was only until early this afternoon that my desktop app changed its forecast and began giving weather alerts.
After losing so much time yesterday, today was a day to scramble and get the essentials done. The rest will wait until spring.
Last night, the girls lifted the roof on the cat’s house, cleaned it out and replaced the old straw with fresh. Unfortunately, the heated water bowl had to be removed; the cord’s sheath had cracked, right where it contacted the bowl itself, exposing wire. That is unfortunate, as the heated water bowl made a huge difference last winter! So far, however, we are still expected to have mild temperatures, so we won’t need to plug in the electricity to the shelter. Which is good, because I forgot to buy a new 9V battery for the fire alarm we have in there. The ceramic terrarium bulb we have in there for warmth is well shielded, but we still want to have the alarm functional as a safety precaution.
I don’t know of the cats are happy with the clean up. I haven’t seen them in there, yet!
When I headed out this morning to do my rounds, I counted 20 cats.
But only Nosencrantz was willing to pause for a photo! :-D
One of the things I took care of while doing my rounds was to finally scatter some wildflower seeds.
I had two packages of wildflower seeds that were meant for the area outside the yard, in front of where the new sign is. Eventually, I want that entire strip to be filled with wildflowers for the pollinators – and so I don’t have to mow it anymore! I used a bulk sized spice shaker and some soil to scatter the seeds evenly.
This was something I expected to do in the middle of September, but it was just too warm. I didn’t want to risk the seeds germinating too early, and getting killed off when winter temperatures arrived. With the storm coming, these will get covered with snow and should be good to lie dormant until things melt in the spring.
Last night, the girls also used the insulated tarp we found in the garage a while back and used that to cover the septic tank, instead of straw. It’s large enough that it could be used, folded in half. It was full dark by then, so they just weighted it down with some fence posts. This morning, I shifted it a bit to get it right up against the house, then pegged it down.
As you can see by the two pegs on the right, I hit some rocks in the process!
By the time I pegged that down, I was done my rounds and headed inside to go through the trail cam files while eating breakfast. It was rather funny to see all the files of my mother and I, when I took pictures of her at the new sign. It feels so weird to see myself on video! :-D
By the afternoon, things had started to warm up nicely, so I headed outside.
The first thing I wanted to get done was scatter a different wildflower seed mix in the yard.
This one was an alternative lawn mix, for shade and partial shade, of flowers native to Western Canada. This double row of trees is really hard to tend, so I settled on this as the location for the seeds. Unlike the area in front of the sign, though, this one needed to be raked, first.
The first raking was to remove the leaves and debris, then it got raked again to loosen the soil surface a bit. There were some maple and willow suckers coming out of old stumps that needed to be pruned as well.
Then the packet – one larger packet of seeds – got added to the shaker with some soil and thoroughly mixed before being scattered on the raked ground.
Then, the leaves got raked back, as a mulch. I look forward to seeing if this works in the spring!
One of the priorities on our to-do list was to finally repot our house plants. They’ve been hit with overnight frost, but amazingly, the aloe vera was still alive! They were overgrowing their post, though, so most of them ended up in the trench of the third low raised bed, to break down, except the biggest one that was too big to be buried in there, so it went to compost. I ended up transplanting 4 or 5 strong, healthy little aloe vera for the girls to bring inside later. The umbrella tree looked dead, but I pruned it back and repotted it, because it does actually seem to still have life to it! I would hate to have lost that thing. It had been doing so well, even with the cats constantly trying to get into it!
One of my daughters was working on commissions, so she could only come out to help briefly. My other daughter tried to help, but she was feeling sick and looked so horrible, I sent her inside. Poor thing felt so bad! She did, however, get the last hose put away for me, and was kind enough to run into the basement to shut off the water to the taps.
Once the water was shut off, I opened the back tap and put one of the new insulated hard covers for the taps on it, then finished putting up the rest of the insulation we put around the bottom of the house. This area had been left until we were done with using the taps, and the septic was covered. The front tap still needs its cover, but it is much more convenient to get at, so it can wait a bit.
Along with some other clean up, I did finally make it to the squash tunnel to prepare it for next year, but was only able to do one side before I had to go in for an expected phone call. The rain barrel was turned on its side and weighted down, the long tools and rolling seat went into the old garden shed, and the storage bin we kept to hold shorter tools and various other things we might find handy, went into the sun room. The things we have left undone are all things that will be okay if they wait until spring. It was just time to finally put the tools away!
Then I made a quick run into town to get a few things we thought we might run out of. The predicted storm is supposed to hit the south of our province, but it’s hard to know if we’ll get hit by it as well, or just catch the edges of it. At the very least, we expect to lose internet more often. That happens any time there is bad weather to the south of us. Though it is supposed to start with rain, we might get about a foot of snow, over two days, at which point we won’t be going anywhere for a while! I had already planned on tomorrow to be a baking day, and the last thing I wanted was to runout of ingredients in the middle of something!
Meanwhile…
I got an email from our vandal’s lawyer asking if I were available for the case management session on Monday. That went back and forth for a while. It turns out it will not be with just me, him and our vandal. It will be with the same judge that we’ve been in front of, this whole time.
My brother will not be able to make it, but we don’t want to delay this any more, so I took it. I feel more confident knowing that the judge will be there. The unfortunate thing is that it is going to be at 9am – in the big city, not the closer, small one we’ve been going to all this time. Worse; the court offices are downtown. So not only will I have to leave unfortunately early, just to make sure I have time to get lost among all those one way streets, but it’s going to cost more in fuel, and I’ll have to pay for parking. Minor things, but with costs going up, there just isn’t much wiggle room in the budget! Very annoying. But, it’s that, or wait a year for a trial. :-/
So that has been confirmed.
I am both looking forward to getting it done so quickly, and dreading it.
At least, by then, wherever snowfall we get from the storm will no longer be an issue. There will be plenty of time for any road clearing needed to be done by then!
As for our scramble to get stuff done, no, we weren’t able to finish it all, but the essentials are done, and the rest should be all right to wait until next year.
Speaking of next year, we’re made progress there, today, but that will be the topic of my next post! :-)
As if I weren’t feeling ticked off enough for the wasted day, with so much work to do outside, I look at the forecast and find this.
Granted, only the app on my phone says we’re going to have an actual blizzard, whereas my desktop weather app says we’re only supposed to get less than half a centimeter on Wednesday, then possibly 5-10cm of snow on Thursday, but sheesh.
That means we have only tomorrow to get the work done, and what doesn’t get done before the snow arrives will not get done until spring.
Here’s hoping this is another one of those times where the predicted weather passes right by us again.
I had a very enthusiastic crowd waiting for me this morning. Including the new edition. I was even able to pet her a few times, though she kept moving away when I did.
But yes, I was able to confirm. Our new addition is a she.
I just hope that, wherever she came from, she’s already fixed.
In the end, I counted 19 cats this morning. Only Rosencrantz was missing. :-)
My morning rounds now include going to the very corner of the property to check on the sign. No vandalism! (yet?)
What I found interesting is that the squash tunnel was shaded. It is only this time of year that the shadows from the spruce grove reach this far. In the summer, the squash tunnel gets full sun, all day. The main garden area’s beds, meanwhile, are now in pretty much full shade all day. What a difference, time of year makes!
The transplanted mint is looking just fine; not at all droopy from being moved.
One of the empty blocks, however, seems to attracted a critter. Possibly a skunk digging for grubs. Whatever it was, it lost us some of the soil in those openings around the edges! I want to fill those with sand or gravel.
After I finish my rounds, I spend some time going over the trail cam files. We had a long list of things to work on outside, while it is still relatively warm in the afternoon. I was going to head out right after having lunch, then calling my mom to arrange to bring her to see the sign tomorrow.
She called me first.
She wanted to come today.
I told her I was thinking of tomorrow, because it’s such a warm day, and we have lots to do outside. She said the warm day was why she wanted to come today, because it would be harder for her when it was cooler. And I could spare an hour for her, couldn’t I?
Which would mean just driving her over to see the sign, taking some photos of her next to it, then driving her home. Was that what she was wanting to do?
Yes.
Okay.
So off I head to the town she lives in, and when I get there, she is cleaning out her purse and preparing a list of things she needs.
Since I’m there with her car, anyhow…
Okay, so we’ve added grocery shopping to the list. No worries.
We head back to the farm and as we come to our driveway, my Mom suggests we go straight to where the sign is from the road, not in the driveway. As we get closer, however, she suggested we keep going to look at the other quarter section, first. Just a drive by. This was something she had talked about wanting to go before, so I was expecting it. We did the drive, saw that it looks like the renter has moved his cows to that quarter, since there is a hay bale, salt blocks and a feeder set up near the gate. At the far end of the property is an intersection I can turn around at, then back we went to the sigh. I pulled over on the road, and there was thankfully a nice level spot she could go over with her walker. We got several pictures, and then back to the car.
Did she want to see what I did with the outhouse? I ask.
Oh, yes! was her enthusiastic reply.
I am such an idiot.
First, we drove over to the old workshop that is now completely filled with all my parents’ stuff we cleared out of the house. There was an old framed print she wanted. This was something else that had come up in past conversation, so we too the opportunity to grab that. Then we drove into the yard, and I backed up towards the outhouse.
My mother being ticked off that I did that, instead of parking further ahead, as usual, should have been my first warning.
To make it short, because I really don’t want to relive the experience, my mother decided to tour the inner yards, starting with the newly finished brick lined bed where the tomatoes were (she liked that, at least), but not until after making snide comments about the newly framed low beds where we have two types of garlic planted (so this is where you’re putting the garden now, is it? Uhm… no, Mom. It’s just the garlic).
I tried several times to redirect her to the outhouse, and she ignored me every time. As she worked her way around the yard, she made sure to give me a hard time about the garbage pile, which we need to hire someone to haul away for us (she didn’t have much to say when I pointed out this was garbage we found all around the yard that’s now in one place), acted surprised about the tire planters being moved, even though she’s been here since they were moved, and had just walked past the one that isn’t wrecked and could be used again), made sure to tell me to leave the spruce tree she planted at the chain link fence (I’s talked about transplanting it, before it gets so big it tears the fence apart, shortly after we moved out here, and she went ballistic on me, so I didn’t say anything this time). I commented on the second one that had been there dying, and she lectured me on how I should have watered it (it was killed by the cold, two winters ago), made numerous comments about the things I should have done around the yard (things I would have been doing, if she hadn’t asked me to bring her over), asked why I’d cut down the crab apple tree by the old compost, and when I told her it had died of diseased, lectured me about watering things again. Because, in her mind, if you water the trees, they won’t get disease. Then she mocked and laughed at me for building the high raised bed, the squash tunnel, the trellises and the low raised beds. No one does things like that, you see. They just plowed the whole thing.
Then she nagged me about various other things as she worked her way around the yard. When I thought she was finally going to the outhouse, she ended up going to the back door of the garage. She wanted to see the wood chipper.
That door leads to where her car is parked.
I tried to get her to go around, but she wrestled her walker through to door, so she could snoop in the garage. Which was have not even come close to cleaning up. I got the chipper out for her to see, and she really liked that, but then complained because there were still branch piles. Then she complained about how ugly they looked, and how ugly the post pounder my late brother built looked. I’d covered it with a tarp I’d found in the barn that was big enough, but after several years, the wind has torn it to shreds. We don’t have anything else big enough to protect it. But it looks ugly, and people can see it from the road, so it needs to be covered.
Eventually, we made our way back into the yard and…
She went to the car to leave.
By then, I’d opened the door to the outhouse, but hadn’t put the mat back because I wanted her to see how nice the floor looked, too.
She wouldn’t go near it. She just glanced over and said she could see it through the door. Then got into the car.
So, I put the mat back, closed up the outhouse, put her walker into the car, then we headed out.
Along the drive home, I tried to chat and mentioned the electric chainsaw we got. She mocked me about it, but in such a way that I didn’t understand her “joke” at all. Which then led to a whole slough of mockery.
I shouldn’t be using a chainsaw. I shouldn’t be doing men’s work. I need a man. Also, I’ve done nothing at the farm at all. Apparently, I’m a weak, useless, stupid woman who shouldn’t do actual work, except for the stuff that she used to do on the farm (while everything else magically did itself, apparently), which I am not doing right, because I haven’t done it yet, but she thinks I should have done it by now, or I’m not doing it the way she did, therefore I’m doing it wrong.
Oh, I forgot. At one point, when I told her that I’d lost a day of work by having to drive her around, she told me, what work? I don’t have cows to milk! What work am I doing? I don’t have any work.
Well, I called her on her behaviour, and pointed out that she shows no appreciation, gratitude or kindness. To which I got a sanctimonious, “yes, yes, get that off your chest” response. Because, clearly, I’m the one with the problem, and her cruelty and insults are neither cruel nor insulting.
*sigh*
Still, when we got back to her town, we were civil. I helped her with her grocery shopping, though she brought up getting an apple pie to have with tea when we got back to her place. I told her I didn’t have time to stop for tea, but she could get one if she wanted.
She didn’t.
Once at her place, I put her groceries away and she was going to give me some money for gas, which I do appreciate. She then brought out a bill (almost enough to cover the amount of gas spent in driving, but I do still appreciate it!) and told me, if I’d invited her inside for tea, I would have gotten more.
I told her, I didn’t realize that was an expectation.
By the time I left and put some gas in the tank, it was so late, I couldn’t even stop at the post office to pick up a package. My day was wasted. There was no time to even start anything when I got back, because I wouldn’t have enough time to finish before the light was gone.
I’m just so ticked off right now. After talking with my husband and telling him some of how it went, his response is, not to have her back here again. And at this point, I can’t disagree.
My mother is why we are living here. We came here to take care of the place for her. Now that the ownership has been transferred to my brother, I still try to respect her wishes as much as possible, and keep her informed of how things are going. In the end, though, she doesn’t own this place. My brother does. And he is very happy with what we are doing, and with our various plans for improving the place. He is our “landlord”. Not my mother. She has no actual say in how this place is run, and she certainly has no right to verbally abuse me.
I am lost past the stage where she can actually hurt me anymore, but my goodness, she can drain every bit of energy out of me. I feel more exhausted from a few hours with her – and it wasn’t even an unusually bad visit! – than I would have felt if I’d spend those same hours doing manual labour. Mental exhaustion is far more difficult to recover from than physical exhaustion. Still, to look at the bright side, at least there wasn’t a single racist rant or shouting about political issues she doesn’t understand, either.
Thank God my brother now owns this place. He and his wife more than make up for all the trouble my mother causes. They are such awesome people, and make it all worthwhile.
When I headed out this morning, along with the usual crowd of yard cats swirling around in front of the sun room door, was our new furry visitor! The stranger is still with us, but not acting like a stranger at all!
In fact, after I refilled the kibble trays, I was even able to pet a furry butt, before he realized he was being touched, and jumped out. Which is more than I can say for most of our own cats!
Except…
He, may actually be a she. It’s hard to tell with the black fur and fast moving body!
This is clearly a cat that is no stranger to humans, even if a bit shy. This could mean it’s a cat from one of the surrounding farms that is expanding territory, but if it’s a female, I find that less likely. The other possibility is that this is a cat what got lost or dumped in the area. Which means that he or she may already be fixed.
Either way, it looks like this cat has been absorbed into the yard cat family!
With today looking to be our last warm day before winter, we wanted to get as much done outside as we could. This time, our focus was on the pea trellises, as they will be used again next year.
This is how it looked before we started. My older daughter isn’t working on commissions for the weekend, so she was able to come out and help, while her sister did bread baking.
I hate to think how long it would have taken me, if I didn’t have the help! My goodness, there were a lot of roots to dig up!
It took us a couple of hours, but we got it done! There was one five foot section that was so filled with crab grass and creeping charlie, it took me longer to do that one spot than it did to do several other sections, together!
Later, we will cover all the beds with a straw mulch.
It was so pleasant to be working outside. The high predicted for today was 8C/46F on one app, or 12C/54F on another. By the time we came inside, the temperature had reached 15C/59F! In fact, the last few days all turned out at least a few degrees warming that predicted. If that keeps up, it’ll make continuing the work over the next couple of days much more pleasant. Tomorrow is supposed to be a very decent 9C/48F, then a couple of days at 8C/47F, all with overnight lows above freezing, before things are supposed to get colder. There is much work to do, as long as the weather holds, and cooler weather is just fine when doing manual labour. The more we can get done now, the less we have to do in the spring!
Speaking of which, my first seed order should arrive by the end of the week, and I’m just itching to make my next order, in next month’s budget! Hopefully, by then, inventory for 2022 will start to become available, and I won’t be seeing so many “sold out” notices.
He came over this morning, his truck loaded for bear, to install the sign I made to replace the one that was stolen. And, wow, did he ever go all out!
Once we decided where to put the sign, he used the little legs on the back of it to mark how far apart to set the posts, in the ground.
He started working from the outside of the fence, clearing away some brush growing at the fence line, using the soil auger bit on his drill to make post holes, then using the metal bar to widen the holes. He hit rocks, of course, but was able to either break right through them, or move them. He did have to cut away a section of spruce root, though.
While he worked on the outside of the fence, I worked on the inside.
The area was pretty overgrown, and I worked on cleaning it up so we could access things. This also gave us a chance to take a good look at the corner post, which turned out to be quite solid. It’s just tilting. You can even see how one of the support boards has broken from the pressure!
He ended up setting the 8′ fence posts slightly more than 2′ deep. He brought his post pounder and a level, and had to do a bit of back and forth-ing between them, to get them level at the top.
While he worked on that, I continued clearing undergrowth.
I continued clearing into this area, wanting to have access to the telephone company’s post. My brother confirmed that the green wire is a ground wire.
When planning for tree planting, we need to make sure not to plant over the buried phone wire. In our brother’s property across the road, there is an open alley through the trees. I had figured we just needed to line up with that and we’d be good. However, this post it not at all lined up with the alley.
My brother remembers when the phone lines were buried, and was able to tell me why. My father had asked them to move where they were laying the wire down in the quarter section across the road, so as not to take down the large, mature spruces they would have gone right through. They agreed. Once they crossed to the home quarter, they shifted back to being closer to the north property line. There is another one of these posts near our second gate, right at the north fence line, and my brother says the line was laid from this post to the other.
Which means it continues to shift diagonally, northward, along the way.
It also means the lone chokecherry tree that was allowed to grow in the open grass along the lilac hedge, it directly over the buried phone lines.
*sigh*
I am so thankful that my brother is able to tell me this stuff. He’s the only living person left who knows it! This will help us in working out where to plant trees and bushes.
Here is the corner, all cleared of underbrush. Even the trees that were left to grow got a bit of a necessary trim.
Gosh, it look so much better!
As for the posts, my brother took soil from the ditch to put around the posts. In the process, he cleared the ditch a bit, so that any water in there would not be as obstructed.
We then used his pounder to pack down the soil, with him doing the outside while I did the inside.
What an awesome tool!!! I want one!
I also want one of those steel bars (there was one here, but it got disappeared before we moved here) and a post pounder. :-)
Then it was time to attach the sign. The legs were trimmed off, but the wood attached to the back was left. Between us, we worked out exactly where it would sit, so that the the remains of the legs on the back lined up with the roundest part of the post. While I held it in place from the inside, he marked the based and drilled a couple of screws at the line, to support the weight of the sign. Then he screwed the sign to the posts at the top, using deck screws, right where he would later add the carriage bolts. Once it was secure, and I didn’t need to hold it up anymore, he drilled pilot holes at the bottom, then enlarged them to the size needed for the bolts.
A perfect fit!
After helping put the washers and nuts on the bolts, I continued cleaning up the undergrowth while he finished attaching the sign.
This is the “after” by the telephone company’s post. I didn’t want to clear out all the small trees, as we do want what little privacy they can give us. Several dead branches from the pair of spruce trees got trimmed off, too.It’s remarkable how big the pile gets, and how quickly!
Then, while I hauled the branch pile away, adding it to the one that’s out by the spruce grove, my brother added some final touches to the back of the sign.
A board was added for extra strength and stability.
We’re just assuming our vandal is going to try and do something to it, so he also added extra locking washers to the back of the carriage bolts, and other things. They cannot be taken off now!
He also attached the barbed wire to the post and…
… in what seemed like the space of a heartbeat, installed a new fence post. The old one beside it is free floating; completely detached from the ground.
He even added a second one.
In this spot, the fence was so unsupported, my brother was able to lay the barbed wire on the ground, so it would be easy for us to cross the fence. After we were done and he was straightening things up, he installed another post. This time, I was able to provide the post, from the collection of fence posts I’ve been finding as we clean up. Just a couple of new posts, with the old posts keeping the barbed wire properly spaced, the fence is surprisingly more secured, and the wire was taught enough to actually make it difficult to slip between them as we crossed in and out!
Speaking of secure…
For some reason, there was an old post lying loose on the ground, not attached to anything. So we used that to add support to the corner post. My brother brought out a post maul – yet another of his many tools that he brought, just in case! – and was even able to straighten the corner post, just a little bit. Then he added some screws to the support post we added, as well as the one that was already there, to secure them even more. The last thing that was done, was installing the mounting hardware for the newer security camera. It took a while to find a good place for it. I wanted to make sure it covered the area in front of the sign, but also not face the main road. There is enough traffic around there that we’d ended up draining batteries like crazy, from the motion sensor being triggered so often. The mounting hardware also allowed me to adjust the camera even more, to make sure it was aimed exactly where I wanted. Of course, it also has to be set up so it can be reached easily, to switch the memory card and change the batteries.
If our vandal does decide to do something to the sign, we’ll have it on file. The camera isn’t exactly hidden, and may act as a deterrent, too. Unless our vandal is drunk again, at which point, he wouldn’t care if he was being recorded. I’m just hoping that if he does decide to do something to the sign, he’ll see the camera and stop.
Since the sign has our name an address on it, obviously I’m not going to post a picture of it here, but my brother is very happy with how it looks, and I’m very happy to have it up, so much sooner than I expected!
In all, it took us about 3 hours in total, to install the sign, a couple extra fence post, the trail cam, and clean up. Then my brother headed straight home, because he had so much to do at his place this afternoon, too!
Have I mentioned I have the best brother?
It deserves repeating.
Later on, when it’s dark out, I want to go back out and take a photo of the sign with flash, to see how the reflective paint shows up behind the lettering. I know my brother will want to see how it looks, too!
I am so happy this is done and – as a bonus – that corner got cleaned up. It looks so much better. We’re not cleaning up the rest of the fence line until we have planted the berry bushes we intend as a privacy screen.
It’s starting to look really nice out in that corner!
I wasn’t able to get pictures of the cats when I first came out, as it was still dark at the time. I’ve already had a long morning, but I will post about that later. It wasn’t until the job was done that I could get a picture of…
… out new addition! He’s still here! When I was working in the old kitchen garden yesterday, he was prowling around along with the other cats.
The other cats have no issues with him at all. They act like he’s always been around! Even with the adult cats, there is no aggression towards the new cat. They’re nastier to each other, than to this guy!
Hopefully, the peace will continue, and we’ll be able to keep another cat safe and well fed!
When it was time to feed the ginger bug, I decided it was time to start our first batch of fermented pop (aka: soda).
In looking for recipes and instructions on how to actually use the ginger bug, I found myself with some issues. One was the ratios of ginger bug to liquid, which tended to be for only a quart of liquid. Which seems a ridiculously small amount. Mind you, there’s four of us that will be drinking it, so that might have something to do with my perception. ;-) The most useful I found was to use 1/2 cup of ginger bug to 7 1/2 cups of sweet liquid. Pretty basic.
It was the fermentation container that seemed to be all over the place. Some sights said to ferment the ginger bug in a jar covered with cheese cloth or coffee filter. Others said to put it in a sealed jar and open it up every day, to release gasses. Some said to put it in a container with an airlock. All of these then said to bottle the finished beverage, usually recommending swing top bottles, but sometimes plastic bottles. Then there were those that said to pour the mixed liquid straight into swing top bottles for the fermentation period.
In the end, I decided to use one of my husband’s distilled water containers. We get distilled water for his CPAP humidifier, and I’ve started keeping the empty bottles to use in the garden.
We’re accumulating quite a few of them.
So this gives me a food safe container in a gallon size that has a sealable cap.
We started by measuring out 7 1/2 cups of the Cranberry Raspberry Cocktail I got for the purpose and pouring it into the jug, to judge if we would be doubling the recipe or not. We decided to go ahead and do another 7 1/2 cups, for 15 cups in total.
This is the ingredients list for the Cranberry Raspberry Cocktail. Which also has juices from grapes, pears and apples. The important part is that it has sugar in it, which means I did not have to add any sugar to feed the yeast during fermentation.
Pouring and straining the ginger bug out of the 750ml canning jar we are using would be messy, but we happen to have a ladle small enough to fit into the wide mouth jar, so we used that to ladle the liquid into a measuring cup through a strainer. Very few ginger pieces got caught in the process, so that worked out very well.
I found the amount in the juice bottle odd. 3.78L? A gallon is 4.5L, isn’t it?
Then I remembered; US gallons and Imperial gallons are not that same. LOL That is 1US gallon of juice. The distilled water bottle, however, gets referred to as a “gallon”, but is actually 4L.
Whatever. The end result is, a decent amount of headspace at the top of the water bottle, even after adding a cup of ginger bug liquid.
There was still some juice left behind, so the daughter that was assisting me, chugged it. It may be “cranberry raspberry” cocktail, but she tasted mostly apple!
No matter. It should still make an interesting carbonated drink!
We then replaced the cup of liquid removed from the ginger bug with our drinking water – the stuff we buy, rather than our well water – and fed it with some more ginger and sugar before putting it back in the cupboard, safe from the cats.
Then the fermentation bottle got labeled and dated. I figure we can wait a few days and, if the ginger bug is nice and bubbly after being used, we’ll start another batch.
For now, this bottle will stay out at room temperature. Every day, we’ll give it a squeeze. As long as it has give to it, it’ll stay out, but once it feels hard, that means it’s fermented enough and will be transferred to the fridge, so it doesn’t explode. From what I’ve read, this can take anywhere from 4 to 10 days. The house is fairly cool, so I predict it will be closer to 10 days.
Once in the fridge, it will need to be drunk within a few weeks, or it will lose its carbonation.
If it tastes any good, it’s unlikely to last that long. Not between four people!
I’m looking forward to seeing how this works! If it does work well, we will experiment with other liquids to ferment and keep track of which ones we like. :-)
I headed out early today, for my court date with our vandal. It’s been a year, minus a day, since my first court date regarding my application for a restraining order was scheduled.
It was a very, very long day.
No, it’s not resolved.
But before I get into that, I will talk about something more therapeutic. I was so mentally exhausted by the time I got home, I needed to do some good old manual labour to get some “rest”.
I feel so much better, now!
With the day being several degrees warmer than forecast, I focused on the area that caused problems before, because the ground was too frozen. The old kitchen garden.
Before our old garden fork finally bent from the mostly frozen ground, then broke when my daughter tried to straighten it, she did get a start on the retaining wall before moving to an area where the ground was not frozen. This is the area that gets the most shade, plus I wanted to transplant some mint out of another bed into some of these, so the blocks got first priority. The ground was quite thawed out, today.
After the groundhog ate the lettuce that was planted in these, they basically got abandoned until now. Happily, there wasn’t too many weeds and roots to dig out.
After I did the blocks from the chives to the opposite end, I dug up some mint and transplanted them into every other block, again starting from the chives. When I thought I was done, I walked back and found some mint that got dropped from the bunch as I moved along the retaining wall, so I cleaned up one of the blocks in the foreground and planted it there. We had buried a mystery bulb in it, earlier in the year, but there was no sign of it when I dug into that block, so mint it will be!
I don’t know if they will take, but we shall see. After they were transplanted, they got a thorough watering, and that section is now done, unless we decide to mulch it with straw, now that there is mint in the blocks. We shall see how things go over the next couple of days.
This is the somewhat triangular bed we had planted carrots in, and where the garden fork met its match. The bed is too wide in the foreground, and that is also where the mint was coming up. Mint was even coming up through the paths we covered in straw and were walking on! There was one mint plant visible in the foreground that looks frozen, so I didn’t try to transplant it.
For this bed, the carrots that had bolted got buried in the middle, while the wider end was narrowed.
I stopped before getting too close to the pink rose bush at the “point” of the triangle. We’ve pruned the ornamental apple tree that was overshadowing it, and last year it finally bloomed, but this year, like so many other things, that one cold night in May killed off any developing flower buds, and it did not bloom at all. Hopefully, next year, it will have a chance to do better!
These are the mint rhizomes I found while clearing and resizing the bed! Even the rhizomes smells strongly of mint.
I then moved on to the L shaped bed we planted beets in. This one end in the foreground was particularly bad for weeds, but the rest was much easier to clear out.
My older daughter was able to come out and give me a hand part way through. She brought the logs over to frame the resized bed. The log at the end was originally cut as an end piece for the high raised bed, but the measurement got goofed, and it was more like 3 1/2 feet long, instead of 4 ft. So it’s perfect for here! The other two logs were from the remaining tops of dead spruce trees we’d used in the high raised bed. They are too thin and wonky to use in a high raised bed, but they will work here for now. In time, this will get replaced with something more permanent, and higher.
Then my daughter helped me finish weeding the L shaped bed. Once that was done, a shallow trench was dug along the middle, and the beets that were too small to harvest got buried.
The final step was to even out the soil in the framed bed, then I used the hose to wash the soil against the logs and level it out more. As gaps were found under the logs by the water, I stuffed them with straw.
These beds are now ready for next year. There is just the bed along the retaining wall to clean up, and later the paths will get a new layer of straw to keep the weeds down.
By the time I was done, I was feeling much rejuvenated and refreshed.
The day in court was so much longer than expected. Because of the fairly long drive, plus the need to get some gas, I left before 8am. It was still dark when I left, and there was one redeeming factor during the drive. I got to see a gorgeous sunrise. We do live in a very beautiful area!
On the down side, by the time I got home, I’d burned off all the gas I’d been able to put into the tank! :-( I used my mother’s car, as it has not been driven much at all, lately. It does not have good mileage!
Anyhow.
I got there so early, I was the first person there, and the security guard didn’t even have the docket yet. We ended up chatting for a while, until the other security guard came with the docket. They both remember me by now! While we were talking the next person who showed up was our vandal. I almost didn’t recognize him at first, because of the mask (I wore my Mingle Mask, making me both recognizable and memorable, it turns out!). His lawyer was going to call in, so our vandal was on his own.
So we waited.
And waited.
Court started at 10, and they went through the docket.
We waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
The security guard called our vandal over and told him he might want to talk to his lawyer about calling in, because he was next on the docket and I heard him say the lawyer was already on the phone, waiting, too!
An hour passed.
Two hours passed.
The second security guard, who was calling people in, came out and called for anyone who was there for the first time, but was not represented by a lawyer.
Someone else went in, and we waited.
Then someone else got called in, and we waited some more.
By the time we got called in, it was well past noon.
Our vandal was asked about his lawyer, and he explained that he had been on the phone for an hour already. The judge called into the mike, but the lawyer wasn’t there.
So they took the next files while waiting for the lawyer to call in again.
Several files later (they went by very quickly) and still no lawyer, so our vandal finally offered to text him, and they went on to the next file, with the understanding that it would be interrupted if the lawyer called in.
This one took longer, and then they moved on to another that was even longer. That one did get interrupted as the lawyer finally called in, with apologies.
The judge spoke to the lawyer for a while, then asked our vandal to clarify some things. I had agreed to suspend my application, if he agreed to seek psychiatric help. It turns out that his first referral was to the bigger city, but they are so backlogged, they are not accepting any out of town patients. His doctor then referred him to the smaller city we were in for court, but they are backlogged at least 3 or 4 months.
Given the way things are going, in my mind, it’ll be twice that, at least, but who knows?
So that left us in a quandary. The judge asked me how I wanted to proceed, and I told him that I understood the issues with backlogs, but until he is getting help, I don’t feel safe. He has already caused damage and been threatening towards me, which was acknowledged. I told them I felt that the only reason we have peace right now is likely because of my application, but it’s already been a year. The problem is, if it goes to trial, we won’t have a court date until…
A year from now.
All the previous cases that got rescheduled while we waited were going to November of next year, so I was not surprised by this.
Given how long it has taken, the lawyer suggested going to Case Management. The judge explained that this would be me, our vandal and his lawyer in a room, trying to work things out. I asked if I could have someone with me. The judge asked who, and I suggested my older brother, who owns the property. I had to explain that we are basically caretakers, and my older brother owns the property; the safety issue is about me, while the vandalism affects my brother. The judge agreed. So I won’t have to be alone and bullied by our vandal and his lawyer.
So, in the interest of speeding things up, the lawyer will have to show up in court a week from now, a date for case management will be worked out with the judge, and the lawyer will inform both of us.
By the time we left, it was nearly an hour, for what is normally a 10-15 minute session.
Near the end of it, our vandal tried to interject that there was a “bigger picture” involved and brought up his civil suit against me. He started to say how the property was transferred to my brother “behind his back”, that I’m keeping him from his possessions, and that I am using the courts against him. Which is a rich claim indeed, considering he is the one that caused damage and took so many things from this property, and he is the one who has filed vexatious litigation against me, in retaliation for applying for a restraining order. However, in his mind, he is the victim. He doesn’t even deny that he vandalized things. He just acts like it hasn’t happened, and my family and I are just persecuting him. He doesn’t deny that he’s taken things, either. He truly seems to believe he was entitled to it all. But then, he also believes he’s “maintained” this place for 30 years (my parents were still actively farming 30 years ago), my parents bought the property in 1952 (they weren’t even married yet), and they somehow managed to fun a fully functioning farm, without owning anything on it (he’s told me 90% of everything here belongs to him). It’s all part of why I want him to get psychiatric help.
The judge pretty much brushed his comments off as something to be dealt with in Case Management.
Given his mental state, I don’t expect anything to be accomplished by Case Management. But, at the very least, it will show the courts that we tried.
The year long delay for things to go to trial, though… good Lord! So much can happen within that year! Even then, ultimately it’s just a piece of paper. But it’s a tool that will, hopefully, get him help for his mental health, and maybe stop drinking (which hasn’t even come up, yet). The judge may even choose to have our vandals guns removed. Not that it would stop him from doing something like setting fire to the house.
*sigh*
The police recommended I apply for the restraining order back on 2018, when I first laid charges. It was already stressful enough to press charges – which got stayed, anyhow – and I didn’t want to go through it all. On the one hand, it feels like I shouldn’t have bothered now. On the other, I wish I’d done it back in 2018, before the world went crazy.
*sigh*
What’s done is done. I can’t stop now, or things will just get worse.
Meanwhile, we just keep on going, taking care of this place, and improving it any way we can.
The Re-Farmer 