Okay, so I did finally make it outside yesterday to do some work. I may have been mentally drained with all the BS going on with our vandal, but not going out was actually making me feel worse. It was later than I normally would have gone out, but the weather was still good, and there was still enough light.
For a while, anyhow.
My first task was to fill the wheelbarrow with material to add to the bed. The compostable bag of kitchen scraps went in, along with the Spoon tomato and pepper plants from the old kitchen garden, and all the squash and pepper plants from the main garden bed. I also pulled up the potato plants from the grow bags, which meant the Purple Peruvian fingerling potatoes would need to be harvested.
All that material went on top of the straw layer, followed by a layer of leaves and finally a sprinkling of grass clippings.
The grass clippings were more to keep the leaves down for when I tromped all over it, after this picture was taken. Then the whole thing got a thorough soaking. After that, I emptied my last half bag of manure over the grass clippings.
My plan had been to empty the soil out of the kiddie pool the melons were growing in, then use it to collect the soil from the potato bags while harvesting those. I got one load in the wheelbarrow, but the soil in there was very damp, sticky and heavy, and I was starting to lose the light. So I just emptied the one load into the bed, then shifted gears.
One thing about spreading even that small amount of soil onto one end of the bed: those layers REALLY start to sink under the weight! The bed looks over full in the photo, but those layers will probably settle to only half the bed, by the time the soil is added.
The feed bags used to grow the potatoes in are good for only one year’s use. They were all starting to tear apart as I tipped them over and dumped them out. The straw from the top and bottom of each bag could be easily set aside, leaving just the soil to sift through and pile up before moving on to the next bag. I got a decent amount of potatoes out of it. More than either of the other two varieties, and they were decently large for a fingerling potato, too. It was so dark by then, it was getting hard to find the dark purple potatoes in black soil in fading light! I will not be at all surprised if I find ones that got missed, when the soil is transferred over to the new bed. I did try to get a picture of the harvest, but it was a sucky flash picture, so I won’t inflict that on you. 😄
Today has turned out to be a less pleasant day, weather wise, so I’m extra glad I got as much done yesterday as I did. This morning, as I was finishing my rounds, I harvested some Uzbek Golden carrots to go with a roast I was wanting to do today. A nice big hunk of beef roasted with all three types of potatoes that we have, a whole bunch of our smaller yellow onions, and the golden carrots. Those were so big and juicy that, as I was cutting off the tops and tails, several of them would suddenly make a popping noise, and split from end to end!
I checked on the roast before I started this, and it was done – and the house smells delicious!
Last month I did a garden tour video on Sept. 10, which is our average first frost date. At the time, forecasts still had us looking at frost free nights well into October.
We got light frost over the next two nights after I recorded the video.
So when we got a harder frost exactly a month later, I figured it would be good to do another garden tour video. I managed to get it put together last night, started uploading it to YouTube, then went to bed. I got up a few times (drinking a liter of tea before bed was probably not a good idea) and checked on the progress, removed a kitten from the keyboard and repaired her editing of the description box, before finally falling asleep for the rest of the night.
When I checked my computer in the morning, I found it had been restarted.
Thankfully, whatever caused it to restart happened after the video finished uploading, so I didn’t have to start all over again. I just had to finish going through the settings and hit publish.
Here it is! I hope you enjoy it. 😊
In other things, once I was done my morning rounds, I grabbed our water jugs and headed into town to refill them and get a few groceries. The post office and the store it’s in closes at noon today, so I made sure to stop for the mail on the way out. I knew my husband had a package waiting, but I had one, too – and a lovely surprise it was!
My absolutely awesome friend sent me a new thermometer! I just love those nice, big, easy to read numbers! The hygrometer is going to be handy, too. Especially when it comes time to start seeds indoors again.
The reading on here is straight out of the box, after being in the car for a while, so it doesn’t reflect the ambient temperature and humidity of the house in the photo.
While in town, I popped over to the garage briefly, since it’s just across the street from the grocery store. I wanted to let our mechanic know how much we now have available as a down payment. Probably still not enough for that truck, but there were a few SUVs I looked at along the way. One, I didn’t bother checking out as it was too small for our needs, but there were two others that caught my attention. One turned out to be sold already, and the other was a new acquisition that he hadn’t even gone over yet, so he had no price for it, yet. From what I could see, though, it’s probably outside of our budget, anyhow. Ah, well.
Getting a vehicle in October seems very unlikely but, in November, we’ll be able to contribute more towards a down payment, so that might finally get us to monthly payments in budget. My daughter does plan to contribute towards the monthly payments but, with her income being mostly commissions, I’m not going to count it in my numbers.
It’s a cooler day today, and it’s been trying to rain all morning, so I will be focusing on indoor stuff today. The next few days are supposed to be warmer, sunnier – and drier! – so I hope to catch up on things outside, then.
Today looks like a good day to make a pot of tea, pop on some videos and catch up on my crochet!
The turkey is almost ready, so I thought I’d make a quick post.
It’s not the only thing that’s quick today. From this morning’s harvest…
… of orange and yellow carrots, turnips and radishes to…
… a quick pickle! A few carrots, turnips, radishes, garlic, whole cloves and whole cardamom. I made this first thing, so it would have a few hours to pickle before being included in our dinner.
I hope it’s good. 😆 I am no fan of radishes, but I will try it.
Yesterday was damp and chilly, so some outside stuff had to be postponed again. One of the things I did get to, inside, was de-kerneling the popcorn cobs. I’ve had them drying in a cardboard box until now. So I popped on the Roku and found a show on food history to watch. Sadly, there was a fair bit of modern projection inserted that made some claims patently false. It frustrates me when people reframe the past to suit their ideological stance.
Anyhow.
I got through 3 episodes, so that is about 1 1/2 hours to get the corn done. Doing all those tiny cobs started to get rough on the fingertips, but it did allow me to keep just the good kernels.
I got more than I expected, to be honest! Almost exactly 6 cups.
Yes, I did test pop some, but almost none popped. They need to dry more. I currently have them in a container with a desiccant, since the oven still has peppers dehydrating in it. Those are ready to put away. We just haven’t gotten to it, yet.
In other things, we still have no hot water. It’s Thanksgiving weekend, so unless I call an emergency service number, we aren’t going to get a plumber for a while. No hot water may be inconvenient, but it is far from an emergency.
Today and the next few days are supposed to be a bit warmer and, more importantly, dry. A good time to catch up on things outside.
Last night, the forecast was for just above freezing, but I covered some things, anyhow. I’m glad I did. Before one of my apps updated, I saw we had actually dipped below freezing. The peppers and eggplant I covered seem okay. With the volunteer tomatoes, any parts that had grown above their plastic rings had frozen, but the parts below look fine. How long those survive is just a curiosity, since they will not have time to mature.
I have no complaints, though. Our first Thanksgiving here got a blizzard. It’s not at all unusual to get snow in October, so I am appreciating even the rain that delays some jobs.
So this day turned out completely different than planned!
The morning was pretty routine. While doing my usual morning rounds, I did a harvest. We are dropping close to freezing tonight – every time I check the forecast, it keeps changing, but not enough to make a difference. Even if we don’t get frost tonight, the few things that are not cold hardy out there are unlikely to continue to ripen, with a few possible exceptions.
One thing I was hoping to do was get one of our few friendly female cats, probably Beep Boop, into the carrier. If I’d managed that, I would have taken her straight to our egg lady for adoption. Of course, this would be the morning when she didn’t show up! In fact, “only” 17 cats showed up this morning, which is a little unusual these days. Caramel showed up and was being friendly, but when I tried to pick her up to put her into the carrier, she would have none of that!
So I let her be and did the rest of my rounds and the harvesting.
I harvested all the remaining melons. Most of them are probably not ripe, but we won’t know for sure until we cut them open. There’s also the last couple of patty pans that were large enough to be worth harvesting.
We had only three of the purple Dragonfly peppers, and I grabbed them all. All the other peppers in the grow bags, I left. The Sweet Chocolates in the old kitchen garden had a fair number of ripe peppers, but I also harvested most of the green ones, too. There are still a few on the plants that I didn’t bother with.
I didn’t harvest the eggplant, and I hoped to be able to put up the one hot pepper in the wattle weave bed, as it seems to have the most mature peppers on it.
I also picked through the last of the ripening tomatoes and brought them in, along with the yellow onions that were curing beside them.
Once inside, I had breakfast, then started on some dishes. With the hot water tank dead, we’ve been heating up kettles of water to use for everything. I was starting to heat more water for another batch of dishes when my mother called.
I’d mentioned to her that I was taking her car in to the garage, so her first question was, how was the car? Turns out, she thought it was still at the garage. Why, I’m not sure, since we only have her car now, so I’d have no way to get home if I left it at the garage!
Once she knew it was running find, she asked what my plans for the day were…
*sigh*
Yup. Even though I ask her repeatedly if she’d need a shopping trip, every time we talk, she always tells me no, she’s fine, she doesn’t need anything – even when I try to preplan a shopping date. She refuses to, because she still has food, so she doesn’t need to. And she doesn’t want to shop before she runs out of things, because then it’ll all go bad unless she eats it all right away…
*sigh*
Honestly, I think she just likes the idea that she’s messing with my day when she does this. It’s a control thing. Of course, part of the reason we’re living here is so that I’m available to help her with this stuff, and she’s not making my brother book time off work to come over (with my sister, she goes out of her way to only call on the days she knows my sister isn’t working).
So I was soon on the road to her place, earlier than usual, as she also needed help with some household chores that are getting too hard for her to manage on her own.
I don’t know that my mother was all that happy with me today, to be honest. I helped her with her household stuff, then we sat for a bit to chat. She started going into her usual manipulative rants, and I was having none of it. At one point, she started off on how everything is so expensive, and it’s because all the stores are cheating people. I tried to explain inflation to her, but nope. It’s because all the stores are cheating people. She knows this because, years ago, someone at the grocery store helped her with her shopping, and when she checked her receipt at home, she found she had been charged for a watermelon she didn’t buy. This happened probably 10 years ago and frankly, I don’t think it happened the way she claims. The grocery store by her place prints receipts that include featured specials. One time that she went through her receipt while I was there, she thought she was charged for a pie she didn’t get, but when I looked at the receipt, I found she was looking at the featured sale on pie and thought it was part of her purchases. Or, the maybe guy made a mistake about the watermelon, and punched in the wrong code. She got mad at me for not agreeing with her, then tried to blame me for her being cheated “last week”. I’d helped her with shopping and she wanted to get a case of mushroom soup. They’d been on sale the week before, but they’d run out. There were no cases, but I found a staff member and asked. She found one for my mother in their stock room. The cheat? My mother looked at the receipt and the price was not the sale price she wanted it to be – a sale that was over already. I’d even told her it was over, but in her memory, she now thinks I told her the price was the sale price from the previous week. I never told her a price, because I never saw a price for cases, only singles. This also happened more like 2 or 3 weeks ago, not last week, as she claimed, because my brother had visited and helped her with shopping last week, not me.
Then, after going on about how this guy had cheated her over a watermelon she never bought, she turned around and tried to make excuses for our vandal, of all people. She still tells me how we all need to get along and forgive each other, yet still allows him to talk to her in spite of all he’s done, and his open expression of hatred for me in particular, not to mention blatant lies to her about me. Somehow, my siblings and I are at fault that we all don’t get along like we used to.
Things even went sideways when I made the mistake of telling her about the truck we have been trying to get financing for. This was her cue to say that my FIL, who lives on a pension in an assisted living building, should be “helping us”. She’s got it in her head that he’s got a “good pension” (whatever she things that is; I don’t care to find out), and if she can help us out, he can, too. He does help us in other ways, but when I said that, she demanded to know in what ways. I told her it was none of her business, just like his finances are none of her business. Oh, and she even tried to use the fact that she paid for the new roof as ammunition against me! We’ll be getting that one rubbed into us for the rest of her life, I’m sure. She never does anything good, without finding some way to use it as a weapon. She and our vandal are very much alike in that regard.
Things went down hill from there, and instead of rising to her bait on so many things, I pointed out that she was being psychologically abusive, and I wasn’t going to accept that. She then tried to gaslight me, and I called her on that, too. Finally, she just stopped talking and sat with her eyes closed for a few minutes, apparently praying. Then she started doing a few other things in preparation for running errands, and wouldn’t answer me when I offered to help or asked her questions.
Then we just went and did the errands, and everything settled down. We even went out for lunch part way through. I made sure to pay, because she never tips.
By the time we were done, my mother was quite tired. I did stay for a little bit of a visit after everything was put away. Since I’d gone to her place to much earlier than usual, though, I decided to do our last stock up shopping trip. I needed to go to Canadian Tire and Walmart, and her place was already half way there.
Before heading out, though, I messaged my family about the change in plans. That’s when my husband updated me on the plumber situation.
He’d called our usual guy again, and it went straight to voice mail. So, he called another company we’ve dealt with and left a message there. That company called back.
I think we know why we haven’t been hearing from the first place.
This is the time of year when everyone is getting their cottages ready for winter. Which includes draining the plumbing, so nothing freezes and bursts pipes over the winter. This second plumber is fully booked draining cottages for the next two weeks. Given how many cottages there are around the lake, every available plumber would be booked solid right now.
We are going to be without hot water for a while! Over Thanksgiving, at the very least.
I have not told my brother we don’t have hot water at the moment. I didn’t want him to worry as they go to visit their son and grandsons for Thanksgiving. If we don’t hear anything after Thanksgiving, though, I’m going to have to ask him if he can come out and install the new tank. The frustrating thing is, it’s really not a difficult thing to do. We just don’t have what we need to do it. Particularly with the electrical part of it.
Ah, well.
On that note, I headed out and did the final shopping I needed to do, and even picked up a couple of treats for Thanksgiving dinner. The only other stop was to get gas on the way home. It doesn’t look like getting the air filter and new sparkplugs done are helping with the poor mileage my mother’s car has been getting, though it does seem to be running noticeably better! Also, that tire with the slow leak they couldn’t find is still holding air, so that’s good. Mind you, it took about 3 weeks before it leaked enough to be noticeable, last time, so it’s really too soon to say, and I need to keep an eye on it.
When I got home and drove up to the house to unload, the yard was just filled with cats! All the ones that didn’t show up for breakfast were very hungry.
Beep Boop was among them.
So after everything was unloaded and the girls were putting them away, I fed the outside cats, which lured at least three of them out from under the car! The carrier was in the sun room, and Beep Boop was among the cats eating kibble in there, so I put some in the carrier, then picked her up and dropped her in through the top (I love that this carrier opens up at the top!). She immediately started eating again, so I closed it up, then messaged the egg lady to see if she was home.
She was, and eager to welcome a new cat!
So, off I went again! Beep Boop was not happy once she realized she couldn’t get out of the carrier, but she did eventually settle in for the ride.
She now has one of the chicken coops, all to herself! It’s roasty toasty in there. Food and water were already waiting for her – and she’ll have all the mice she can catch! Just getting into the coop, which has a small vestibule with some feed storage in it, we saw several mice running around. Beep Boop (who will surely be renamed!) will get to stay here for a while, and arrangements will be made to get her spayed right away. My friend’s mouse problem is so bad, she thinks she might need three more cats! So we will work on trying to get some of the other females, as she doesn’t think her one male would be happy with more males around.
By the time I got back from delivering the cat, it was getting dark. I was just able to get the eggplant and the nearest peppers covered for the night. I had a couple more covers, so I went ahead and covered the peppers in the grow bags, too. As I write this, the forecast says we will stay above freezing, but the “RealFeel” will be below freezing.
We shall see what we get for real!
Oh, and while all this was happening, I started getting messages from the cat lady. One of the last kittens will be going to her new home tomorrow. There were 17 people interested in that one tiny kitten – but none interested in the other that’s not so tiny. That one doesn’t want to leave them, anyhow, it seems. There’s also someone interested in Ghosty, but that person wants a male, and Ghosty is female. I’ll find out tomorrow, if it’s still a go. I passed on a picture of Tiny, Pom Pom and Soot Sprite to pass on – make sure to mention Soot Sprite is not up for adoption, and she’ll put the word out for them, since the tiny ones seem to have more interest.
So not only are we looking at having as many as 3 more female yard cats adopted out soon, we might have some kittens adopted out, too!
She’s also going to let me know when one of the clinics has their neuter discount day, to start getting some of the outside males done.
And now it’s almost 10pm, and I need to see about some supper! I just realized, I haven’t eaten since having lunch with my mother at noon. Nothing involving the oven, though. My daughters prepped the ripe Sweet Chocolate peppers while I was gone and now have them dehydrating in the oven.
Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll get to do the work outside I’d intended to do today!
Yesterday evening, I was able to work on one of the three raised beds in the south east yard, where we grew popcorn this year. Aside from weeding and preparing the soil for next year, I wanted to see if I could do something about the bowed out sides.
In the first picture of the slide show above, you can see I had a line across, already. That was enough to keep it from bowing out more, but not to pull it in. For that, I needed to move the soil more than I had, when I put the line in, in the spring.
The first thing to do was dig through the entire bed, removing all the weed roots I could. Once that was done, I shovelled soil away from the side walls, then redid the line. The original line actually broke while I was working with it, so I brought the roll of mason’s line and did it again. This time, instead of just doubling the line, I took used enough to fold it three times, making for 8 strands. After opening up the metal thing I can’t remember the name of, I put the lines on and pulled the sides in. One side was worse than the other (on the left, in the photos), so I focused on that one more.
Slight problem, though.
This is built out of scrap wood I found in the barn. One of the corners was already deteriorating more and, when I pulled the side in, I think I snapped the screws in the top board!
The corner is still holding, though. I’ll add more screws later.
Once the line was secured, I also tightened the metal thing (why can’t I remember what it’s called?? 😂), using a nail for leverage. That pulled the sides in a little more, too. I didn’t want to pull it in too much, though, because things would start breaking.
The next step was to level the soil again. By that time, I was losing light, too. To get a good idea of how well the sides had been straightened, I took the cover off the carrot bed, which isn’t needed there, and popped it over the prepared bed.
I had to come back today to get a picture, though, because the one I took last night did not turn out in the low light!
All these beds, and all the covers, are 9′ x 3′ (technically, 9′ 1″, counting the width of the end pieces). Which means the covers should fit exactly over the bed frames.
Well… it almost does!
The side walls now match the sides of the cover, but the corners, not so much! The corners on the bed have shifted. The one that broke is actually lower than the others, too! No surprise, considering there was so much flooding in the paths last year. However, it’s all close enough that it doesn’t matter much.
So this bed is now ready for next year’s garden!
Now, if we can just get to the others, and finish the trellis beds, before things start to freeze. Today is supposed to be the last rainy day for a while, so I should be able to break out the power tools and extension cords again. Current forecast also calls for lows of 1C/34F, 2C/36F, 1C/34F, then -1C/30F, over the next few days. Which means that, tomorrow, we need to either bring in the last of the stuff outside that isn’t frost hardy, or cover them for the night. Tonight, at least, is only supposed to go down to 6C/43F. We’re also supposed to get more heavy rains. Right now, it’s a damp and chill 12C/54F.
I’m glad we got the septic tank done yesterday, that’s for sure!
Lots of work to do out there, and time is running out. It all comes down to the weather.
So here we are. October. Thanksgiving weekend is coming up.
Our first year here, we had a blizzard on Thanksgiving weekend.
Yesterday, we rained quite a lot, all day, and we’re supposed to continue to have showers off and on today. It should be good for the septic truck to come in, though, and not sink into the ground. I’ll have to give him a call later on.
It was pretty damp while doing my morning rounds. Not as many cats made appearances when I started putting food out. Nosencrantz was there, which I’m happy about, even if she still won’t let me bring her back into the house. Oh! I had a surprise last night. I saw Driver! We haven’t seen him in months! Even his sister, Adam, isn’t around as much, now that there’s no need for a creche mother, but she was around last night and this morning, too.
Now if only Butterscotch and Marlee would make appearances!
Speaking of appearances, that poor dog is still missing. The owner still has a trail camera set up in my brother’s driveway, across from ours, but I don’t know if the dog is coming by. I’m seeing posts on our local community FB page from the owner, every now and then, and he’s mentioned having a feeding station set up, but not knowing if he’s feeding the dog, or the wildlife! Wherever that’s set up, it’s not near our place. We have never seen the dog triggering our own trail cams, but it would have to come pretty close for an animal that size to trigger the motion sensors, given how our cameras are angled.
While going through the garden beds, the rain seems to have been well enjoyed by what’s left! Looking at the melons, I think we may as well harvest some under ripe ones, since their stems appear to be drying up completely, but some of them are still on live vines! Even the peppers are still surviving, though with the cooler temperatures, they don’t seem to be ripening. Not that I can tell with the Dragonfly peppers. They are completely dark, right from the start. I could probably have harvested a yellow patty pan this morning, but decided to leave it to get bigger. Even the green zucchini and zucca melon vines are showing fresh new growth! Even the Spoon tomatoes are still producing, the the transplanted volunteer tomatoes have had a growth spurt, and most are now taller than the plastic rings protecting their bases. Not that I expect any tomatoes from them, but I’m curious to see just how far they will get before it gets too cold. Several of them are even blooming! The Sweet Chocolate peppers in the wattle weave bed have more ripe brown peppers on them, and many more green ones developing.
What amazes me are these.
Yes! We have strawberries! The strawberries we started from seed are blooming and producing berries! Very tiny berries. Not much bigger than wild strawberries. I don’t remember the kit packaging these came from has having a variety name on it. If they survive the winter, we’ll see if the fruit it produces will be any bigger, next year.
This berry was quite tasty, though!
I’m even more amazed by these Classic Eggplant. Our one surviving transplant of this variety is now the only one with eggplants growing on it! The Little Finger eggplants by the chain link fence are still stagnated, and just a fraction of the size of this one.
Well, we now know we can’t plant gourds or eggplants in the blocks that make up that bed!
We don’t expect the eggplant to reach full size, this late in the season, but they can at least be eaten at this stage.
Looking at the forecast, we’re supposed to get another rainy day tomorrow. The day after, the rain is supposed to finally end, but overnight temperatures are supposed to reach a low of 2C/36F. Which means potentially frost. I think we may actually make the effort to cover some things, like this eggplant. I think, with the peppers, it’s time to cut our losses and just pick what we can. The only ones that did well are the ones we started really early, indoors. The other 4 varieties were short season varieties that, in theory, we should have been able to direct sow. Yet some of the plants are just starting to bloom now, while the others that have started to set fruit have done so so late, they no longer have time to mature. Even the hot peppers, which were so much further ahead, are completely green. They should have started turning red quite a while ago. We might just dig one of those up, bring it indoors and treat it like a house plant. We did that once, during our attempts to garden in the city before we moved, and it worked really well.
Oh, for crying out loud. I just momentarily looked at the weather app again, and the overnight low expected on Friday just changed to 1C/34F.
I understand why the weather predictions keep changing, but it does get frustrating. Especially since they tend to be off by quite a bit, in our area, since the weather stations are all so far from us.
Everything in the garden is on borrowed time right now, but it would have been nice if the warmer temperatures predicted on the long range forecasts a while back had actually been at least close.
After the almost constant rain yesterday, it was too wet to be working on the trellis bed. So today, I got the remaining tomato beds cleaned up. Or, at least the trellis set ups removed and the tomato plants pulled. Both beds still have other things in them.
In the foreground is the bed that had the Black Beauty tomatoes in it. It still has the Uzbek Golden carrots in it, and those don’t need to be harvested for quite some time. The volunteer sunflower was headless this morning, so I pulled that. The volunteer lettuce among the carrots had been going to seed, but that got eaten, too!
The next bed had the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes. Now, there are still the Gold Ball turnips, and the sad little beets that never really started to grow.
Both beds still had a few yellow onions in them, so those got picked and are set on the bed cover over the radishes in the background. It still has netting on top of it, so they are secure on there for now.
Both beds also had sprinkler hoses in them, so those got taken out, too.
While pulling things out, I saw SO many slugs! They have even started eating onion greens, and very few things will eat onions!
The mostly empty high raised bed is a convenient place to set things aside! Here, you can see the three T-posts and boards that were used to trellis the Indigo Blues, and the bundles of bamboo were used to support the Black Beauties. I made sure to keep all the garden twist ties, clips, etc. Some of the twist ties were long enough to use on the bamboo bundles. This all got put away into, or leaned against, the old garden shed, along with the soaker and sprinkler hoses.
We’ve been wanting to build a larger garden shed as a cordwood practise building. This old shed has a leaky and rotting roof, and there’s a rotted out hole in the back corner that the cats get in and out of.
Taking a closer look, though, the frame is still pretty solid. Some pieces on the roof may need replacing, but that’s about it. We could take off the roof and walls, and repair it.
After moving it. It may have been in a good spot when it was first put there, but the trees it was squeezed in between have gotten much bigger, and the whole thing is tilting.
Something else we could salvage and reuse, instead of get rid of completely! We’ll still be building a larger shed, but you really can’t have too many sheds!
With the popcorn harvested, I needed to find someplace to put the box cover. While removing the chicken wire, I figured out a great spot for it.
The onions had a cover simply because I had one. It made weeding impossible, but with onion tops growing through it, it couldn’t be conveniently moved aside.
Since these covers are all 9’x3′, it fits perfectly on top of the box cover. This would be an ideal set up to protect taller plants! I just used the twist ties that were holding the chicken wire to fasten the two covers together. The onion bed is basically a storage spot for them, but now I can access the onions for weeding!
And yes. Those are new squash blossoms in the compost ring in the background!
While checking the other garden beds, I had a little surprise.
The largest melon had picked itself! 😆
I even found a pattypan large enough to harvest.
That’s the size we enjoy the patty pans best.
My daughter gets back from house sitting soon. We will save tasting the melon for when she gets back. 💚
In other things…
When feeding the outside cats, I tried to do a head count. It takes a while for them to all show up. I eventually counted thirty – then three more kittens ran into the yard!
After my rounds were done, I did a dump run. The car was already loaded, because when I tried to do it 2 days ago, it was closed.
I was glad to be able to air out the car, later!
As I was returning to the house, I spotted Nosencrantz slinking away from the kibble under the shrine, and disappear behind the pump shack. She is looking big and fluffy, and is acting incredibly shy. I wish I knew why! At least we know she’s still around.
Now, if only Butterscotch and Marlee would show up!
While doing my morning rounds, I found some new critter damage around. Both corn beds were hit, though not too badly. A few other things were nibbled on, including the way too under ripe Boston Marrow that I had left on the vine. It had gotten about 6-7 inches long and was even looking like it was trying to ripen since the plant was hit by frost. Now, there’s just a bit at the end of the stem left.
Thankfully, the critters seem completely uninterested in the peppers, melons, carrots and onions!
So this morning, I harvested the corn, starting with the popcorn.
In the first couple of photos above, you can see the damage. The slugs were quick to take advantage of the situation!
I did gather all the fallen kernels I could find. I don’t want them reseeding themselves in this bed.
There were still a decent number of cobs to harvest. The stalks will be used in the layers filling any new beds we manage to get done this year.
I took advantage of the chicken wire on the box frame and set out the cobs to dry out in the sun and wind. I moved the pinwheels over, to keep the birds out. We’ll bring them inside at the end of the day, as we have no place to set something like corn to cure, outdoors. Things like onions and tomatoes get ignored, but the skunks, racoons and birds would have quite a good time with the corn!
Obviously, this is still not a lot of popcorn. This is a test crop. Once things are will dried out, we’ll make some popcorn from in and see if we like it. If so, we’d be wanting to plant a whole lot more than this, to provide enough popcorn for the family! If we don’t find it’s worth it, we’ll test other varieties until we find something we like enough to keep growing.
Even with having a few critter damaged cobs that were worth salvaging, the losses were a lot higher in this corn. Some of the stalks didn’t even develop cobs in the first place. The few cobs we had were also set out on the wire to dry. In the second photo, you can see spots of white in places. Those are kernels that were chewed on, revealing a snow white interior!
Again, there isn’t much there, but we’ll have enough to make some corn flower to try out. I still want to try growing the South American kulli corn and acclimate it to our area, but if this corn’s flour turns out nice, I’m certainly not going to turn my nose up to a glass gem variety that’s bred for norther climates.
When it comes to growing something like corn with the goal of self sufficiency in mind, once we have found varieties we like, we would need to grow a LOT more to have enough to preserve/store. This year, we didn’t even have the space to try any of the sweet corn seeds I got! If we are going to be growing sweet corn, flour corn and popcorn, not only would we need more space to get the quantities we would need, but they’d have to be kept well apart from each other, so avoid cross pollination. Which may not be too much of a problem, since the different types of corn would start pollinating at different times of the year, but it would still be a good idea.
The bed with the purple corn still has beans in it that survived the frost. They are just there to fix nitrogen in the soil, as corn is such a heavy nitrogen feeder. I don’t plan to harvest any more of them, and the plants and roots can be left in the soil to break down, when the bed is prepared for the winter.
On a completely different topic…
As I was about to bring the purple corn to the chicken wire, with the popcorn, when I saw Broccoli going by – with three kittens following along! This would be a second litter for her, as she was among those that had kittens really early in the season. One looked like a tortie, one looked like a tuxedo, and one seems to be a long haired black and white – more black than white. I saw that one later on, in the shelf shelter, where I’d put some kibble earlier in the morning. I was only able to get a brief video, but my hands shake quite a bit, which is greatly exaggerated when zooming in.
So… three more babies. 😑 I’ve lost complete track of how many there are this year!
My next surprise was not as adorable.
I came into my room to find a couple of small bins filled with crafting material, and the stuff that was on top of them, crashed onto the floor among other things that got dragged down as they fell. A couple of the kittens have discovered the top of the wall shelf and are very determined to get up there, no matter how much I try to block it off!
After cleaning that up, I went to my computer. I don’t know what they stepped on, on my keyboard, but all the shortcut icons in my task bar were gone. Even the start button was greyed out, like when you put the cursor over it. Except, the cursor wasn’t even near it. I tried clicking on the start button, and nothing. I did get that spinning icon that shows when the computer is busy with something, but it wouldn’t stop or go away. I ended up having to do a hard shut down and just hoped it would revert to normal when restarted. Thankfully, it did, and I was able to upload files from my phone and start this blog post!
We really need to start letting the bigger kittens out of the “isolation ward”. I’d hoped to have at least a couple adopted out by now, but still no takers. The problem with letting them out is, they’d eventually make their way into the new part basement, where we keep a number of litter boxes. The girls will need to kitten proof it as best they can, first. There are places the kittens could get into that the adult cats can’t fit in anymore, where they could potentially come into harm or just plain get stuck.
Speaking of the girls, my house sitting daughter will be home in a few days! It will be good to have her back. I’m not sure she’ll feel the same, though. She’s been in a cat free house, with no one to clean up after but herself, for several weeks now! 😂😂
They’ve already got plans for a Hannibal marathon when she gets back, so she’s at least looking forward to that! 😁
Well, time to grab a late lunch, then get back outside. It’s a beautiful day out there, and I want to get as much done out there as I can!
The Re-Farmer 