apple trees

Cold, wet and windy, and how we said goodbye.

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Today turned out to be pretty unpleasant, overall. Our high of the day was supposed to be 9C/48F which, according to the hourly forecast, was supposed to happen around 9am, with temperatures slowly dropping since yesterday afternoon. When I headed outside at around 8am, it was 5C/41F and still slowly dropping. As I write this, at past 5:30pm, we are currently at 3C/37F, the wind chill is -10C/14F, and it’s still supposed to drop more.

When doing my rounds this morning, I plugged in and turned on heat lamps in various shelters. The kittens will certainly need them! The bigger, mobile kittens have all been hanging out in the cat house together, instead of the sun room. The heat bulb in there is on a light sensor, so it’ll turn on as it gets darker, when they’ll need it the most.

The forecast for the overnight low has wobbled from -2C/28F to the current 0C/32F, but the coldest temperatures are not supposed to hit until 7am tomorrow. Meanwhile, high winds and rain continue. Yesterday, I’d uncovered some of the garden beds so they could get rained on. I goofed with the high raised bed, by lifting the sides. The plastic was all bunched up on top, so it wouldn’t get hit too hard with driving rain. This morning, I found the weight of water collected in the plastic was enough to bend the hoops all out of shape. I was able to re-cover the beds, but that one took some extra fiddling with. I never did take the plastic off the bed in the old kitchen garden, which turned out to be a good thing in the end. The sump pump is going off pretty regularly now, so that bed is getting watered from below, at least.

As I went out to do the morning rounds, there was only minimal wind damage found so far. The chunk of maple in the West yard, in the first image, was the worst of it.

The second image, which is focused in totally the wrong place, is of the Liberty apple leaves! It has survived its first winter with the coldest of Zone 3 temperatures (last winter was pretty mild). Not too shabby for a Zone 4 tree! This suggests that the micro climate in the location we chose for it is actually helping.

In the next photo, also focused in all the wrong places, you can see the leaves on the new apple tree we planted this spring. Good to see that it has taken.

After that are some leaves on one of the mulberry bushes – they both now have tiny leaf buds unfurling! I had been starting to wonder about those. They both definitely have some cold damage to the tips of some branches, but they have survived their first winter. While these are supposed to be hardy to our zone, they are also tucked in gaps of the lilac hedge, which should act as a protective microclimate, too, until the mulberry get bigger. They were planted where they are, partly to fill the gaps the deer were getting through.

The very last image is of something completely different. That is a sugar snap pea shoot! I found several of them coming up already.

We’re going to have to put something around/over that bed soon, to keep the deer from eating them.

Which confirms to me that any peas that were winter sown in the bed against the chain link fence are toast. The one sprout I did see is simply gone. I thought I saw some bean sprouts, but now I can’t find them. Just some weeds and onions, really. No sign of any of the corn or sunflowers planted in there.

So I will replant that bed, but not quite yet. The Chinese elm seeds are starting to fall and, while the netting is helping keep them off, the seeds are collecting along the edges, which will need to be scooped away. Also, between the cats and the wind, the netting is getting slid up the hoops, allowing the seeds to get under. What I will probably have to do is pull the netting off completely, straighten out the hoops as best I can, then use ground staples along both edges of the netting when they are being replaced. I’ll do that when I resow into the bed. We have quite a few ground staples, but this bed will need a lot, so I’ll be getting more as soon as I can. I still have a packet of Hopi Black Dye sunflower seeds I can sow, and I’ll probably plant pole beans along with them. If they survive and start getting too tall for the netting, we’ll have to find some other way to protect them, because the deer really love both beans and sunflowers.

The kitties, meanwhile, are doing okay in the cold and the wet. I’m not seeing anywhere near as many adult cats these days. I haven’t tried to do a head count lately, but I’m thinking under 20 in total, for the adult cats, for sure. Even Brussel isn’t around as much, leaving her babies to the other creche mothers!

A lot of the fixed cats have lost their collars, so today, several of them got brand new necklaces.

Even Kohl got her first necklace! We’ll have to keep an eye on her, as I don’t think she has reach adult size yet, and I had to make it pretty short to fit her. The Grink and Magda are still way too small.

Poirot, meanwhile, as been spending a lot more time with her babies, now that it’s gotten cooler!

We have chosen names for her babies.

The mostly white one is Miss Lemon. The white and grey is Captain Hastings. The black with white spots on the belly is Inspector Japp.

In other things…

My husband had a medical appointment this morning. This was the appointment we had to reschedule last time, because my husband was in too much pain and walked out before ever seeing the doctor (and where the appointment times were messed up). There must have been some notes added to his file, because they got him into the examination room 5 minutes early, and someone came in to take his BP right away. The doctor came in a bit on the late side, but only by a few minutes. We went over his most recent lab results, and another medication is being applied for (it needs approval for coverage with our province’s pharmacare system) and will be added to all the others he’s already taking. He’s got his first appointment at the new pain clinic next month, so we’ll see if they change up any of his other meds. At some point, they might actually find a pain killer for him that does more than just take the edge off.

My husband felt well enough that we even stopped at the grocery store and picked up a few small things. The next time we go to a city shop, we’ll need to pick up more flour, but that’s not something to buy locally. It costs almost twice as much. I might actually make a trip to the nearest Walmart tomorrow. Tomorrow is Saturday, and I didn’t get to do a dump run last weekend, so I’m hoping to get that done. We’ll just have to get a tarp or something to secure the load, now that we no longer have a box cover, so we don’t end up losing bags of garbage on the highway. I still need to gather the required info together to file a claim with our insurance and see if they’ll cover a replacement. I did notice damage to the truck I hadn’t seen before. Where the remaining piece of the box cover was twisted out of shape, I realized that a section of the box frame itself was twisted, too. It was just partially hidden by the remaining piece of the cover. The amount of force needed twist that is amazing!

One thing about today’s overcast dreariness is that I have been feeling incredibly sleepy. Once we got home, I went straight for a nap. The house has been cold enough that we actually turned the furnace back up. I’m noticing that, while my phone and desktop weather apps are both saying we’re at 3C/37F still, the old tablet I have set up as my clock and weather monitor, is telling me we are at -1C/30F right now, and that our expected low will be -2C/28F! It really makes me wonder where the weather station that app is connected to is! It almost always reads colder than the other apps.

A dreary day for a dreary mood, continuing from yesterday, and our trip to the vet.

Our elderly Freya had been declining for some time. Even before her more obvious physical decline and something going very wrong inside her mouth that we were never able to see, she was at that stage where we would see her peacefully sleeping, thinking, awww… how cute. Then checking to see if she was breathing.

We knew it was time but, lately, between trips to my mother, stuff with the truck, other running around, etc., I just hadn’t gotten around to calling a clinic. The Cat Lady recommended the clinic we’ve been doing the spays and neuters at, as having lower prices.

I actually called them up twice, yesterday. The first time, I was put on hold and, as I was waiting, I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen Freya all morning. Nor all night. The last time I’d seen her, she’d gone to the dining room to eat cat soup, and I found blood in the tray after she was done. She had been spending more of her time sleeping in my room and, at feeding time, I would take a bowl of soft food, just for her, go to where she was curled up (usually in her favourite box bed) and hold it until her chin until she either started eating, or moved away and didn’t eat at all. She hadn’t eaten when I brought her some cat soup, so I was glad to see her leaving the room to eat later, but she never came back to my room after that. She wasn’t around when I did the morning feeding. So when the receptionist got back on the line, I briefly told her why I was calling, but said I would have to call back later… maybe. It was entirely possible Freya had found a quite corner somewhere and passed away. The receptionist was very understanding.

I searched ever spot in my room that she normally went to, and there was no sign of her. I searched various possible hidden corners in the dining room. Nothing. The other areas she might have gone into were closed off. I let the family know to look for her, then went into the basement to check on things there (we’ve got both blower fans going in the old basement, to try and keep the seepage down; today, I added another fan), while my daughter looked for her.

My older daughter finally found Freya, asleep on her sister’s bed. My younger daughter was in the shower and missed all this.

Freya hadn’t gone up those stairs in months, so no one expected to find her up there!

My older daughter then brought Freya down, and she immediately curled up in her favourite box on my bed, while I called the clinic back.

After explaining the situation, they asked how soon we wanted to do this, and I said sooner was probably better, given the pain she was having.

Knowing we were in another town, she asked how long it would take us to get there. They could take us in pretty much right away.

It takes a little under and hour to get there, so we booked the appointment for during the noon hour. I also got the cost (just over $200, after taxes). On informing the family, my younger daughter said she would come along. My husband and older daughter had time to give Freya goodbye cuddles, and then we were off.

Freya was comfortable in her box bed, so we just put her, box and all, into a cat carrier with a side opening door. My daughter was able to open it and pet her as we drove. She never quite settled during the drive, though. It’s amazing how much you notice the bumps on a road, when you know they are causing pain.

We left early enough that I stopped and ran into a store to get some squeeze treats for her. My daughter gave her 2 of them (there were only 4 in a box) as we drove the remaining distance to the clinic, and Freya was quite enthusiastic about the treats!

Once inside, all the paperwork and paying was done at the start. The clinic has a separate room, with its own exit door, used for times like this. It’s larger than the other examination rooms, and has comfortable seating available. Once all the paperwork was done, we were set up in the room, and given a few more minutes alone with Freya. We opened up the carrier, and she quite eagerly went exploring. She did stop to enjoy the last two squeeze treats, though!

The vet came in after a while, along with a second vet that was just starting at the clinic and along as part of her orientation. While I wasn’t in their system until today, we’ve been here many times through the rescue, and the vet recognized us.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had to do this, so she explained the entire process to us. Things have certainly changed over the years. They were to give two injections; the first was the same used to put animals to sleep before surgeries. Then, after about 10 minutes, she would get a final injection, and not feel a thing.

My daughter got to hold Freya while she got the first injection, then the vets left. Freya was soon asleep with her chin tucked onto her paws on my daughter’s shoulder. We both got to cuddle with as she slept, before the vets came back, gave the final injection, and listened with a stethoscope until she could tell us it was over.

From there, they left us, saying we could spend as much time as we needed. They started to assure us that, as we left through the other door, a chime would go off, and someone would come get Freya right away, so she wouldn’t be left alone, but that was if we were going to do a cremation. We were taking Freya home with us, so that was not an issue.

I have to say, I really appreciate how well the clinic handled all this. The last time we tried to have a cat put down, we were still living in the city. We tried calling the Humane Society. The first issue was how long it would take to get an appointment. Almost a week. The next was that they were going to charge extra if we wanted to stay with our cat while it was done. !!! The cat passed away before we could get her to the vet. We tried to make her as comfortable as possible, but it was pretty hard to watch. My older daughter was pretty traumatized by the whole thing, really. So how things went yesterday was really about as good as things could be, under the circumstances.

Once we got home, my daughter and I went to the space I’d prepared for our incoming plum tree (which, according to the tracking, just got processed in the city today, so it should arrive locally on Monday). We dug the planting space out again, then kept going so we could bury Freya in her favourite box bed, and have room above her to plant the plum tree.

We have ridiculously rocky soil, but I think the physical labour was helpful for my daughter.

When we were done, my daughter picked a bouquet of dandelions to place on top.

The whole thing was a lot more comforting. We’ve lost a few cats since moving out here, both indoor and outdoor, and those circumstances were considerably more difficult. My daughter and I have both comforted cats and kittens as they passed in our arms. I’m glad we were able to give Freya a peaceful end, and she is no longer in pain.

The cold and dreary skies, however do suit our mood right now.

The Re-Farmer

Food Forest progress!

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Finally! I got the new apple tree and gooseberry bush planted!

Here is the final result.

It turned out to be a ridiculously huge job.

The first thing I had to do was use the weed trimmer to clear the area they were going into. It hasn’t been mowed all of last year – I got tired of breaking lawnmowers – so there was a lot of tall dead grass. Before I could use the weed trimmer, though, I had to use the loppers to cut out all the little poplars that were coming up.

Then come back to get the ones I missed.

The dead grass was so long, there was only so much our little electric weed trimmer could do, so I got it mostly done, then raked up all the dead grass and clippings, then used the weed trimmer again, then rakes again. I got quite a lot of dried grasses that could be used as mulch, later on.

I decided to plant the apple tree 6′ away from where the plum tree will be planted, with the gooseberry in between. Part of the area was where we’d grown squash previously, so there were layers of straw and mostly decomposed cardboard to rake up. That part should have been easy to work in, but there were so many poplar roots extending through there, it took a LOT longer than it should have! Then there was about three feet of sod that needed to be dug out to where the apply tree would go. More roots. Lots of rocks. It was insane.

After stopping for a lunch and pain killer break, I brought the saplings over, unwrapped and in a bucket of water. I’d made sure to add a wet paper towel to the plastic bag they were wrapped in so the roots wouldn’t dry out, but considering how long it’s been since we found these, I wanted to make sure they were good and hydrated before planting.

This area gets full sun in the summer, and any rain drains off quickly, so I also made sure the planting holes were filled with water first. The holes got shovel fulls of a mix of garden soil (from the pile we bought a few years ago), sheep manure, cattle manure, and some of the rehydrated coconut fibre brick. With how shallow the soil is before reaching rocks, gravel and clay, I tried to build up where they were planted a bit. Once they were in, I mulched with the grass I’d weed trimmed and raked up. To protect them from deer, I set up the dollar store tomato supports I’d picked up a while ago. Then, to keep the mulch from blowing away, while also trying to keep the weeds from growing back, I added a layer of cardboard weighted down with sticks that used to be part of our old pea and bean trellises. I set the old rain barrel up closer to the area. When we set up the hoses, I’ll keep it filled with water so we can water things with ambient temperature water rather than the cold hose.

Oh, before I forget… the apple variety is a Cortland apple, and it’s grated onto a Siberian Crabapple root stock. I made sure the graft was well above the soil line.

Along with the plum, we will be getting two cross pollinator haskap varieties. So we’ll need to dig holes for those, too. I haven’t quite decided where they will go, yet. I was thinking in front of the apple and plum trees, but they can grow 4-6 feet tall, with a 3-5 foot spread, while the gooseberry can grow 3-4 feet tall. I don’t want to shade out the gooseberry, so they will probably get planted in line with what I planted today.

The next job, however, will be to plant the walnut sapling, plus the 8 walnut seeds. These will be planted in the outer yard.

It’s going to be even harder to plant out there than it was to plant year!

In the long term, though, it’ll be worth it!

We’re planting a LOT more trees for the food forest this year than originally planned on. This will put us years ahead of “schedule”, so that’s a good thing. Ideally, we would have done this years ago, but there’s only so much we can do at a time!

The Re-Farmer

Stock up shopping, and future food forest! This is what $666 in total looks like.

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$666.59, to be exact!

Plus some extras not pictured.

It was a long day today, that’s for sure.

My daughter and I left rather early to take in a homesteading event near the city. We stopped for gas on the way out and picked up some sandwiches (made by the one restaurant in our little hamlet) and drinks for breakfast, and some pastries (from a very popular bakery in the town to the north of us) for later on. I picked up some lotto tickets, too, so that totaled about $76 and change.

I’m glad we gave ourselves extra time, because the entrance to the location was really hard to see! We drove right past it – then had to find someplace we could turn around!

It was held in a building that was on grounds that included a church and cemetery, and was surrounded by trees. The few parking spots were full, plus there were the vendor vehicles parked closer to the building, rushing to finish unloading. We found a spot to park, though I’m not entirely sure it was actually part of the parking area! We were early enough that we stayed in the truck for a while before going in. Things hadn’t started yet, but it was already full. The room was not particularly large, but it wasn’t small, either.

One vendor caught my attention very quickly; someone local had saplings for sale. He was talking to a customer while frantically trying to put labels and signs up before he had to dash away, so I heard him talking about a few things he had. His was the first talk of the day, though, and he soon had to disappear. I had to ask one of the other vendors where the talks were happening, as I thought it was in another room, but I couldn’t see any other rooms. It turned out to be behind a curtained off area at the far end of the room. When we got there, all the seating was full, and more people were crowded against the far wall, blocking off the canteen! Unfortunately, with all the people talking in the market area, I could hardly hear anything he was saying, though I could make out some of it. My daughter tried going to the opposite corner of the curtained off area to see if she could hear better. She couldn’t, but she did end up talking to the vendor that was there. She had a display of skin care products next to a display of honey products her husband was covering. It turned out they were the organizers for the event! With my daughter discovering she’s allergic to ingredients in a lot of shampoos, deodorants, etc., she was very interested in the skin care display. After I finally gave up trying to hear, I joined them. The vendor not only made all of the products, but grew all of the plants, berries and herbs used in them, plus honey from their own bees. We ended up getting a sample pack of their products, plus a tube of hand lotion made with sea buckthorn, among other things, for the scraggly skin on my hands. Both together cost about $45. I didn’t bother getting a receipt for it.

The vendor with the skin care products was also doing the next talk, which was on regenerative farming. My daughter and I snagged a couple of seats right in the front. It was a very enjoyable talk. It was a lot of stuff I was already familiar with (what is now called regenerative farming was what used to be called subsistence farming, when I was growing up here), but with her, it was all from the perspective of planting for their bees, so heavy on successive flowering plants to provide pollen and nectar from when the bees first emerge in the spring to when they settle in for the winter.

After each talk, there was 10 minutes scheduled for Q&A. I left my daughter to that while I went to hunt down the tree guy. He was busy with customers, so my daughter caught up to me before it was my turn. We ended up looking at another vendor nearby that had soaps, bath bombs and other related products. We ended up getting a bar of herbal soap there that cost about $12. I would normally never spend that much on a bar of soap, but I’m willing to do it once in a rare while!

Then it was my turn with the tree guy. Quite a few of the things he had, we already have, but what really caught my attention was the walnut. I’ve been looking at getting walnut for years, but while they will grow in our zone 3, our growing season isn’t long enough for the nuts to fully ripe.

Well, he not only had year old saplings, but walnut seeds, already cold stratified. He grows them himself, in a smaller city a few hours drive to the west of us. If he can grow walnut to the seed stage there, that means we can, too!

This is what I ended up getting from him.

Bundled together is a gooseberry and a zone 3 variety of eating apple; he showed me so many different ones, I forget the name of the variety I chose. I’ll be able to see the tag when it’s unwrapped. In the pot in a year old walnut, and the bag has 8 walnut seeds in it. He said the trees grow pretty fast, too, and can get up to 40 feet high. He recommended planting them about 20 feet apart. I already know where I intend to plant those. The gooseberry, which already have leaf buds, and the apple tree will go into our food forest area, where we already have highbush cranberry, silver buffaloberry, sea buckthorn and mulberry.

All of these together cost $73.50 after taxes – the total before taxes was actually higher, but he gave me a discount, simply because the mental math was easier! 😄

While there were many other talks my daughter and I were interested in, it was too busy and too noisy, and we were already reaching our limit. They definitely need a larger venue, and a separate room for the speakers. Which is a good problem to have! As we were trying to leave, I ended up having to exit through the entrance simply because parked cars were blocking my way to the exit. When we got to the highway, we found more cars parked on the shoulders!

From there, we headed to another area of the city to do our non-Costco stock up shopping. By then, it was almost noon, so we went to the international grocery store, first, where we could have some dim sum and sushi for lunch. I honestly can’t remember how much that cost, but it was under $30.

There wasn’t a lot that we needed at this store, this time. This is what $175.36 looks like.

We got the short grain rice my daughters prefer (and it does very well, cooked in the Instant Pot), plus some salmon, frozen cooked and frozen raw shrimp for them. I got a bunch of teas that were on sale, including something called Breakfast in Paris. There is also a bag of instant milk tea. We picked up a goat gouda with honey to try, regular milk plus oat milk for my lactose intolerant daughters. There’s the oyster sauce they prefer, plus the soy sauce my husband prefers. We two pieces of slab bacon, one applewood smokes, one regular smoked, a flat of eggs to tide us over until we get our usual double flat at Costco, plus I got myself a Cherry Coke Zero, since I neglected to get myself something to drink with our lunch. Our loyalty card savings came out to $23.54, which was nice.

After we were finished here, our next stop was the Walmart. That turned out to be a much larger trip. This is what $417.73 looks like.

The main things we needed to get was cat food to last us until Costco and feed store trips. There are three 7kg bags of kibble, plus two 32 packs of canned cat food buried in there. My husband requested some sours, but they didn’t have the kind he prefers in stock, so we got two packs of mixed sours that hopefully will still work. There’s a case of Coke Zero and a package of facial tissues under the basket, plus a small package of paper towel buried in the cart.

We went a bit nuts on the frozen heat and eats. These are all things that my husband can cook himself in the multifunction air frier/toaster oven we got to replace the broken microwave. With his medications, his hunger cues and appetite are pretty messed up, so having something he can cook for himself when he does feel able to eat comes in handy. So there are a whole bunch of $10 bags of different types of stuffed chicken, popcorn chicken, meatballs and even corn dogs. Plus, some Pizza Pops to be our heat and eat supper when we got home.

There is a bag of carrots in there, two clamshells of strawberries, four different types of cheese, frozen Basa fillets, three different flavour packs of bouillon cubes, a couple of loaves of bread that my daughter chose and, completely hidden in the cart, a dozen cans of Monster energy drinks, to be split three ways. Last of all is a cold Gatorade my daughter got for the drive home.

So, including the items not pictured, we spent around $830 in gas, groceries, etc., though the food forest items did come out of a completely separate budget.

By the time we got home, it was late enough to feed the outside cats for the evening, but our day wasn’t over yet! My brother and his wife had come here to the farm while we were gone. They had a few things to do around their trailers and stored items, but they also did a huge job that I was able to help out with – which I will cover in my next post!

The Re-Farmer

Finally done!

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I put together a video of the work I did yesterday. No audio, so I wanted to add music to it today.

I spent so much time trying to find public domain music that fit the mood I wanted. Then my daughter came in and helped me pick music that was already in the software I’m using, in a matter of minutes.

She’s now interested in making videos. I have no doubt she would do a better job than me! So at some point, you might start seeing better quality videos getting posted.

For now, this is what I got done yesterday.

We settled on this location for the new Liberty apple tree for several reasons. The main one is, it is a zone 4 tree, which means it will need more protection in the winter. Where I was thinking of planting it originally is far more exposed, and will remain so until the silver buffalo berry reaches maturity.

Here, it will get full sun, but also be sheltered from the north by the lilacs. It also needs another variety of apple tree for pollination. While I took down the one crab apple tree, there are the ornamental crab apples in the old kitchen garden, plus another crab apple tree, though we’ll see how well that one does. It will likely be taken down, eventually.

The little plum trees were also removed; we’ll see how the larger ones do this year. These are not edible plums, though my father did use them for wine making sometimes. They have almost no flesh around their pits.

If all goes well, we’ll start having apples to harvest in a few years. The new apple tree can reach a mature height of 18-20, so if we do plant any other fruit trees here, we will need to keep that in mind. If we do end up taking out the one crab apple, and possibly the remaining inedible plums, I figure we have room for one more fruit tree here.

My parents planted so many things in this little area over the years; I remember there being mountain ash (there are none left at all now), a pear tree, other crab apple trees, plus I thinned out caragana and lilac. Oh, and there’s the big linden tree at one end, now. It’s one of the few things that is doing well! I’m sure there were other things that came and went in the 30 or so years I’ve been away.

Now that I’ve cleared as much as I have, the lilacs will hopefully grow better. When I first cleared the area of dead stuff back in 2018, I found most of the lilacs had stretched to very unusual heights. They had leaves pretty much only at the top, as they struggled to get sunlight. They are recovering, but still a lot lankier than lilacs normally would be.

The main thing, though, is that the new apple tree and the tulips have that barrier around them. It’s small enough that I hope no deer will consider it worth trying to jump it. Over time, we will add things to the wire to blow, flash and make noise in the wind.

One thing I noticed only after watching the time lapse video I took.

I had a LOT of cats running around while I worked!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: first order in, with Veseys

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We haven’t even done a thorough assessment of our 2022 garden, nor fully decided what we plan to grow next year, but I’ve gone ahead and made our first order for next year’s garden, today.

The main reason is, there are things I wanted to order before they have a chance to be out of stock. Particularly with trees for the food forest we are slowly developing. These will be shipped in the spring, and we won’t be billed until they are shipped. I ordered seeds as well, because I used a sponsor promo code from Maritime Gardening, which gives free shipping if there is at least one package of seeds in the order.

This is what I ordered today. All images belong to Veseys, and links will open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place. 😊

The new Trader Everbearing Mulberry is the main reason I wanted to place an order right away. We tried a different variety before, that promptly got killed by an unusually cold night shortly after it was planted. Cold enough that even if we had this variety, it likely would not have survived, so soon after being planted.

Here is the description from the site (in case you’re reading this years later, and the link is dead).

Morus alba x rubra. There are so many things to love about ‘Trader’ Everbearing Mulberry! First, the tree itself is absolutely beautiful and can be grown as a single trunk or multi-stemmed shrub. Big, glossy black fruit are present throughout the summer and are an irresistible blend of sweet and tart. Even the leaves are starting to be considered a super-food and can be made into a powerfully healing tea. ‘Trader’ is winter hardy (Zone 3-4), vigorous, long-lived and disease and pest resistant.  We ship 8-12″ non-grafted tree.

Please note: Due to a crop shortage, we are not able to supply the Mulberry in a 3.5″ pot. We can supply in a 2.5″ pot. Since these are smaller, we will send 2 of the smaller size for spring 2023.

That last bit about pot sizes is another reason we wanted to order the mulberry right away. They may be smaller, but we’ll be getting two trees for the price of one. Which means chances are better for at least one of them to survive!

The other tree we ordered was Liberty Apple. From the website:

Malus. Superlative variety resistant to a host of diseases. This apple has outstanding flavour and is aromatic and juicy. The conical red fruit is among the very best and as an added bonus is excellent for cider. Crispy, juicy apples right in your back yard. Good Scab resistance, making them much easier to look after. For best results, two varieties should be planted. We are offering 1 yr. whips. approximately 18-24″ in height which have been grafted onto hardy rootstock. They should mature to about 15-18 ft. Hardy to zone 4.

Yes, it says zone 4 and we are zone 3, but we will just have to take extra care in where it’s planted, and to protect it while it’s small. We have crab apple trees, but no regular apples. One apple tree should be enough to provide for our needs, and the crab apples will be the second variety pollinator.

Then there are the seeds.

While we didn’t have much to show for peppers this past summer, that had more to do with our horrible growing year in general. My pepper loving daughter had thought we would be ordering several varieties for this past year, but I’d only ordered the one type. I think we learned enough about growing them to order more varieties, so I ordered a sweet bell pepper combo.

This is Vesey’s Sweet Pepper collection, and here is their description:

A few of our favourite sweet peppers! This collection contains 3 pkgs, 1 each of Early Sunsation, Early Summer and Dragonfly sweet peppers.

Early Sunsation: Bright yellow and big. Very heavy yielding with thick, juicy walls. This variety stays nice and crisp even when fully yellow. 3 lobed fruit. Resistant to Bacterial Leaf Spot races 1-3. 65 days to green; 80 days to yellow from transplanting.

Early Summer: Elite, early and extra large! Early summer is an early maturing, yellow bell pepper. The fruit are large at 5″ and an elite disease resistance package gives Early Summer a winning combination.

Dragonfly: Sweet and colourful. Dragonfly’s early production was a standout for our trial staff. Fruit emerges green and turns deep purple when mature. Dragonfly continues to produce fruit into the fall even after temperatures have dropped.

The Early Summer is new to Veseys for the 2023 growing season.

There was another new for 2023 item I just had to order.

The Caveman’s Club Gourd! This is definitely something for the “just for fun” list. 😁

Truly different! This 12-16″ gourd produces a dark green, ridged, alien-like, bulbous fruit that are not like anything we have seen before! Growing them on a trellis ensures a straight neck. Plant early for best results. Matures in 120 days. Approx. 15 seeds/pkg.

I just couldn’t resist. This will be an ideal thing to try growing on the new trellis tunnels we will be building in the spring.

After we’ve taken the time to assess things from our 2022 garden, then gone through what seeds we still have, we’ll start making final decisions about what else we want to order for the 2023 growing season. One thing we will almost certainly be ordering are different raspberry bushes, that mature at different times. Any raspberries we order won’t start producing until their second year, so what we order to plant in 2023 will be to have raspberries in 2024. As we add to our perennial food producers, while still staying in budget, it’s a balancing act between ordering things that will take years before they start producing, like the apple and mulberry trees, and things that will start producing more quickly, like the raspberries.

Little by little, though, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up progress

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I had originally been thinking of working in a different area today, to remove more dead and damaged trees in the West yard. That pile of apple branches, however, was bothering me.

So I started breaking that down, instead. Here are the before and after pictures.

This is as far as I got, before it started to rain.

I’ve been breaking it down to firepit sized pieces, to make it easier later on. I have to admit, as I cut some of the larger pieces, I find myself thinking that … some of them look pretty good … maybe I could salvage some of them… It seems like such a waste to burn this beautiful apple wood! I wouldn’t even want to use it for a cookout, since I don’t know how the fungal disease would affect the smoke. But gosh, apple is a beautiful wood!

I made very good use of the new long handled pruners I got not long ago. It was going through nice thick branches like nothing! I used to have to use a saw for a lot of these. I noticed, however, there was a rattling noise that seemed to increase. And was that anvil supposed to rotate with the cutting blade like that?

Nope.

At some point, we lost a bolt. There is no nut at the other side. It looks like a proprietary shape, too. Or at least not something I have seen when perusing the section at the hardware store.

It has a lifetime warranty, though, so I looked up the website and sent an email with the above photo and another of the bar code (because, of course I don’t have the receipt anymore… LOL) as proof of purchase. We’ll see how that goes. I might just zip tie it in place for now.

Hmmm… It looks like the rain has already passed. I might be able to finish breaking down the pile today, after all. :-)

The Re-Farmer

How things are this morning

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After our adventure last night, I’m rather impressed by my current lack of pain this morning! :-) I expected to at least be stiffening up by now, but at the moment, there’s just some minor tension in my neck and shoulders. I’m taking pain killers, anyway, but that’s really more for my arthritis.

I really don’t know a whole lot about my mother’s car, but my older brother had tried to help her with it a lot over the years, and knows it a lot better than I do. I wasn’t able to fill him in on what happened last night, but he was able to take a few minutes from work and call me this morning.

I was reminded of another reason it’s a good thing this happened in my mother’s car, and not our van.

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Dramatic skies, and apple tree down

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Yesterday, after picking my daughter up from work, the girls and I went straight to visit my awesome, amazing older brother and his wife for the evening.

The storm warnings had returned, but the skies were clear at the time, if incredibly windy all day.  The winds died down enough that we were able to eat outside, then have a fire going to toast marshmallows.  It was so wonderful to just sit outside together, talking and enjoying each others’ company.  I just wish my husband had been able to come out, too, but if he had, he would never have been able to handle the length of the visit.

Chronic pain really sucks.

While we were outside, we did see some pretty dramatic skies!

20180714.dramatic.clouds

The clouds were moving fast, so we saw all sorts of interesting shapes passing by.  When it first started to rain, though, the sky above us was clear! :-D  After a while, though, it started to come down a bit harder, so we packed up and went in.  By then it was late enough to start heading home, which was about an hour and a half’s drive.

While we were away, my husband sent us some updates to let us know it was coming down pretty hard at home.  It was all done by the time we made the drive, but as soon as we turned off the highway onto the gravel road, we drove through a bit patch where the road was covered with twigs and branches from someone’s willow.  Some smaller trees along the road were downed.  (Interestingly, I later found out the my husband’s dead CPAP machine, which he has left plugged in, actually flickered to life during the storm.  Just a flicker.  Odd.)

When we got home, we decided to park in the yard by the house, instead of the garage.  As I drove in, the first thing I saw in my headlights was a branch on the ground.  So while the girls brought things into the house, I grabbed a flashlight and did a circuit around the house.  Nothing major, but it was clear it was going to be another day needing a wheelbarrow to clear up everything that came down.

Then this morning, as I glance out the north facing bedroom window, I see this.

20180715.apple.tree.down

One of the apple trees had come down, too.

I don’t think this one was doing very well this year.   It never really bloomed, and I couldn’t see any apples on it when I checked it out.  Most of it had already been pruned away, before we moved out here.  I’m not surprised that this one came down.  I’m more surprised it was the only one.

Thanks to my brother, though, I have chain oil for my birthday gift – summer and winter oil, even, and enough to last a very long time! – so later today I will break it down and haul away the pieces.  When making plans to visit, I’d asked about what stores were near their place, after entertaining them about why I needed more oil so quickly (see link above), and my brother was sweet enough to pick some up before we got out there. :-)  That meant we didn’t have to rush to any stores before they closed, and could go straight to visiting.

I have awesome family!

Since it’s an apple tree, I will keep the pieces separate, so I can use the wood for crafting purposes. :-)

I will be sticking to just the necessary clean up for today, though, since I do try to keep Sunday as a day of rest, even if we haven’t found a church yet out here.  There will be more than enough to catch up on, later!  Things are supposed to cool down for the next week, so I’m hoping to be able to continue clearing out the rest of the maple grove and not risk heat stroke! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: Maple Grove, evening progress

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I wrote up my last post while taking a hydration break from working in the maple grove.  By the time I was done, I found myself nodding off at the keyboard.  I figured lying down wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Three hours later… :-o

But, I’ve got it done as much as I can for now.

Here are the before and after pictures of the two North rows.

I cleared out two of the tree spruces in the foreground of the second picture.  The two I took out had a few green sprigs here and there, but were otherwise dead.  I also cut off the dead branches from the one in the middle.  I am hoping that, now that it’s open and clear, it will survive.

The remaining spruces in that northernmost row are doing pretty good.  I trimmed the lowest branches, as well as the dead ones that I could reach with a hand saw.  The dead ones were mostly on the south side of the trees, where they had no light.  The other living spruce trees, I only took off what was in my way as I moved around.  I will finish cutting away the dead branches when my birthday gift comes in. :-)

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.raspberry.patch

This is the remains of a row of raspberry bushes.  I can see some dead canes from years past, but no fresh canes in this area.

To the right, you can also see a gooseberry bush I found.  I had cleared out a broadleaf tree that was between two spruces, and discovered the gooseberry under it!

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.big.gooseberry

Then there’s this gooseberry bush, in dire need of having the deadwood cut away.  It’s growing next to a chokecherry tree, which was also overgrown and in need of pruning at its base.

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.gooseberry.chokecherry.cleared

It was amazing how cutting just one sucker at the bottom of the chokecherry tree cleared almost everything up!  A few downward hanging branches to clear away, and various saplings, burdock and stinging nettle to clear away at the base, and what a difference!  I even found some raspberry bushes with baby berries on them.

The gooseberry, on the other hand, has almost no sign of berries on it at all, and what little it does have are not looking good.

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.appletree.before

This is the very end of the “raspberry” row, with an apple tree near the compost pile.  There’s even a lonely little asparagus fern growing in here!

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.appletree.after

I found more salvageable raspberry canes.  After cutting away some lower branches and saplings at the base of the apple tree (including maple and elm saplings), it was basically just weeding and removing old raspberry canes.  There are some plants in there I recognize as flowers my mother planted, so I tried to avoid taking those out.  Lots of creeping charlie and burdock in here.

At this point, I called it a night.  Which worked out perfectly, because that’s when I got a call from the second tree care company about coming over.  It was another father and sons team. :-)

When they got here, I showed them the areas I wanted work done on, plus the trees to come down.  He asked questions about how far back I wanted to cut things (basically, enough to not have to do this again for 5 years).  He wanted to know about the overhanging branches, which would normally be left if they are not touching the lines.  One of them is a very healthy maple tree, and cutting it back would mean removing pretty much half the tree.  When I pointed out it was from those overhanging branches that we got the burned branch from, and that it had happened before, causing a power outage, he understood why I didn’t want ANY overhanging branches at all.  They even measured the trunks of the trees that will be taken down, including the dead spruce.  They had to take into account being able to get their equipment in, too, and I told them about the three different gates that were available.  We also talked about cleanup.  He charges extra if they bring in a chipper, but I did say I wanted to keep the chips for mulch, and to keep the bigger wood, too.  He mentioned they don’t usually chip dead branches, because it dulls the cutting edges, but the stuff they’ll be cutting back will mostly be life branches.

He took a whole bunch of notes, and I will get the estimate emailed to me.

I told him about how we don’t own the land, and that I am getting estimates to talk to my mother and brother about before a decision is made, and that I’m hoping to get it done in the fall.  Or spring, if the cost is higher (which I suspect it will be, with these guys, but we shall see).  He was good with fall, mentioning after August is when they’d be available to do the work, so that works out.

And that’s it for the next while.  Tomorrow will be a trip to the city for my daughter, which should give my body time to rest.  Feeling pretty stiff and sore right now! :-D

The Re-Farmer