food

Garden clean up started, and water woes update

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Today is the first of a short spell of warmer days we are expecting. As I write this, at almost 7pm, we are at a lovely 12C/54F. The weather app says it feels like 5C/41F, but it doesn’t seem that chill around our home.

This afternoon, I took advantage of the warmer temperatures and finally got to work, cleaning up in the main garden area. What I’m shooting for is to get some beds ready to try some fall planting – because garlic, that is. I’ve been inspired once again by Gardening in Canada.

The more we can get done in the fall, the easier it will make things in the spring!

I’m surprised by just how much can be planted in the fall, with our zone 3 winters. Her list includes wildflowers; particularly poppies, hollyhocks, sunflowers, coneflowers and columbine. Now that I think about it, all of those make sense; we’ve had all but coneflowers sow themselves here, and the only reason we haven’t had coneflowers overwinter here is because we don’t have them anywhere to begin with. I do still have a native wildflower mix that needs to be sown, but those will have their own space to be seeded in.

For vegetables, she listed them in groups. One is the alliums; onions, leeks and shallots. We’ve got our own onion seed this year, so that is an option for us. We should also be able to use our own garlic for planting this year, too.

She mentions root crops like turnips, carrots, radishes and beets, all of which benefit from winter sowing by becoming sweeter and more flavourful, the following year.

Peas is something she plants all over, as she uses them as an indicator plant. You can tell how warm the soil is becoming by when they germinate.

The next group she mentions are brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, kohlrabi and possibly cabbage.

Last of all, she mentions squash and pumpkins. Considering the squash we had in our compost pile last year, we’ve already had those by accident!

They are normally a hot weather plant, but our compost tomatoes shows that, in the right conditions, tomatoes could be added to the list, too. Hmm… so can beans, for that matter.

Looking at her list and remembering what I have for seeds right now, we could plant onions, turnips, carrots, radishes, beets, peas, spinach, kohlrabi and both summer and winter squash.

What I might end up doing is just mixing up the seeds for onions, turnips, carrots and beets and planting them randomly in one bed – mostly because the onions could protect the things it’s planted with from deer. I could probably interplant onions with kohlrabi, peas and spinach, too, though I’d have to watch the spacing more. Squash… well, they take up so much space, they would be on their own, for the most part!

In order to do this, there are two things I need to get ready. First, is prepare the soil by increasing organic material. Compaction is a huge problem with our soil. I can do trench composting again, which really seems to make a big difference in production, but the soil itself needs to be amended as best we can.

Then, once seeds are planted, the other thing they will need is a light and fine mulch. Grass clippings and leaves would be what we have on hand to use. She recommends piling snow over the seeds in the winter for added insulation, but for the main garden area, I don’t see us needing to do that. That whole space gets well covered with snow over the winter!

Right away, I can see that we would have a very different garden next year, if we do this fall sowing.

We shall see if we can get to that point over the next week or so!

With that in mind, I focused on the main garden area. Here is a slideshow of today’s progress.

I started off using the weed trimmer. I hadn’t been able to do much clearing of the paths, once the winter squash, pumpkins, drum gourds and melon bed vines really took off. In some paths, I could barely walk through them without stepping on a vine.

I started to use the weed trimmer in where the next raised bed that will be part of a squash tunnel will be built, but not too much, just yet. I’ll clear into there more when I have to access the stack of what will be vertical support poles attached to the existing bed.

After trimming one side of the high raised bed, I stopped to pull up the winter squash vines. All the squash got powdery mildew towards the end of the season, so all of these were for the burn pile, not the compost. In fact, the only squash that did not get powdery mildew was the Crespo squash, in a completely different area.

I ended up spending most of my time on the pole bean trellis. There were only 5 surviving plants but, my goodness, they sure took over that trellis netting!

Also, folding up that netting for storage is a lot easier when you lay it out, then weave a bamboo stake through one short end.

After the first squash bed was cleared, I moved the corn stalks over from the other squash bed, so I could get at the vines under them. Later, I plan to trench compost the corn stalks.

Pulling up the squash vines was truly interesting, at times. I couldn’t believe how long some of them had gotten! These would have been so awesome on a trellis tunnel!

The only two beds I did not clear this time were the high raised bed, and the first trellis bed. I did finish weed trimming the paths, though. Right now, the bed that needs the least amount of work is the westernmost one, where I’d already prepped half of it after harvesting the onions and covered it with plastic.

The solarization doesn’t seem to be working, though. I’m seeing a lot of green growing under one end. The problem is, that end of the bed gets a lot more shade, this time of year, so it doesn’t get a chance to get hot enough to solarize. At least not at the south end. There may be greater success towards the middle of the bed.

Around the time I finished the weed trimming, I found some messages from the family. My daughter had spent some time going through all the fittings I picked up, working out which would be needed, which wouldn’t, etc. In the end, we were going to need more of two fittings – and will likely have quite a few to return to the store, once the job is done.

It was past 3:30 by then. The store we needed to go to was the second one I’d gone to, yesterday. Thankfully, they weren’t going to close until 5:30 – the local one closes at 4. My daughter came along with me.

While she was looking at the fittings, I looked around for the hot water tank element tool I needed, then asked for help, because I couldn’t even find the section. It turned out to be tucked away in a corner. 😄 I also asked about a socket large enough to remove the anode rod but, in the end, I think the same heat element tool will fit the anode rod. I’ll test that out, later.

Then my daughter needed help, because one of the fittings she was looking for was behind locked doors! Quite a few displays in this store were behind glass. I would not have expected theft to be more of a problem in this location, that the store I usually go to!

After we got what we needed and were heading home, I missed my turn to cross over to the other highway – the streets look no different than driveways in this town! That meant we ended up driving to the town closer to home.

My daughter hadn’t eaten anything since early in the morning. Since we ended up in town anyhow she, being the sweetheart that she is, sprung for some Dairy Queen for all of us.

It now looks like we have everything we need to replace the pipes and faucet set for the tub. The hard part is going to be cutting the copper pipe to get the old pieces out. There is very little room to work in. Especially since the cutter needs to spin around the pipe.

While I might be able to assist, this is a job mostly for my younger daughter. She’s the most able bodied among us – and considering she has PCOS and all the joint pain that can come with, that’s not saying much!

Hopefully, I will be able go get more progress in the garden instead, and if all goes really well, be able to plant things for next year in a few days!

If all goes well for my daughter, we might even be able to use the tub and shower again, soon, too!

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 garden: Thanksgiving dinner harvest, plus, this is what $230 looks like

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Tomorrow is Canadian Thanksgiving, but our turkey needs to be cooked, so we will be having our dinner today.

But first, I had to make a trip to the nearer city for a few things. Only about half of today’s shopping came out of our regular budget, though, as my daughter sent me funds for the other half.

Not pictured was my first stop at Canadian Tire. There, I was able to sanitize two of our 18.9L/5 gallon water jugs and refill them – the price at Canadian Tire is much lower than locally, so if I’m making the trip anyhow, it’s worth getting our refills done at the same time.

The main thing we needed to get at Canadian Tire was some mold and mildew resistant primer. We will use that on the exposed bathroom walls, before putting on the tub surround.

I was also able to get a few other things as well. One was a tube of transparent Kwik Seal, which is both an adhesive and a caulk that is waterproof. We’ll be using it on the overlap of the catio and isolation shelter roof panels. I also picked up some 6×3/4 inch wood screws, as we ran out, and a latch that I think should work on the ramp-door on the isolation shelter.

Before doing to the till, I checked out the display of vehicle organizers and accessories for the truck. What I found, though, was an emergency hand crank flashlight and FM radio that was on sale, so I grabbed that for our emergency kit. I think it has a port for charging a cell phone, too, but the packaging didn’t have a detailed list on it. We’ll need to test it out, later, anyhow, and will be able to see, then. Eventually, I want to get a version that can also be charged with a solar panel. I’ve got a couple on my wish list that have different charging ports, different lighting options, etc. that I want for the house.

The Canadian Tire purchase totaled $81.91 after taxes, with the most expensive item being the quart of primer.

After that, it was across the street to the Walmart. This is what $232.58 looks like.

The kibble is for the inside cats, with an extra for the outside cats – I put our last 40 pound bag into the bin today, and that will last about a week. The shelf is the other thing I needed to make the trip for. With the wardrobe out of my husband’s room, he still needs a shelf. I’d have preferred to get a better shelf, but when it came to the smaller higher quality shelves, I was looking at twice the price for half the shelf! So this will do for now.

There are also some supplements; some Vitamin D and some Magnesium. On my daughter’s list was the coffee, creamer and energy drinks, plus some sort of heat and eat. Until we can get the hot water tank fixed, we’re trying to avoid dirtying dishes as much as possible!

Then, because it’s cheap turkey season, I got a frozen turkey; the medium turkeys are $22. I also got a couple of packages of bacon, one of which is for the turkey.

Oh! I almost forgot. I also got a collar with breakaway buckle for the cats. Syndol still has his collar, but I want to get collars on the other cats that got neutered, so it’s easy to tell them apart. Unfortunately, the first collars I got for them have disappeared. They were likely on too loose. I’ll start with getting one on Stinky, since he is one of the crowd of white cats with grey that can be so hard to tell apart at times.

Once I was home and everything was put away, I headed outside to do a bit of harvesting for our Thanksgiving dinner.

I started off with getting some German Butterball potatoes, and the last Uzbek Golden carrots (not counting the ones that went to seed).

I also harvested a few sunchokes, and the last Purple Caribe potatoes. There were two plants I’d left to grow longer, and between the two of them, I found a whole 6 potatoes, and one of them was really small.

If you click through to the next picture, you’ll see the squash I selected for Thanksgiving. Being part of the Wild Bunch Mix, I don’t know what kind it is. We only had the one survive to be harvested. It looks like it could be an immature Long Island Cheese.

We shall see how it tastes!

Since we’re trying to use as few dishes, pots and pans as possible, I was shooting to make our Thanksgiving dinner a one roaster meal.

I almost made it.

I started by oiling the bottom of our big roaster, then lined the bottom with slices of onions and shallots. Then all the carrots, potatoes and most of the sunchokes were laid out over the onions as flat and even as I could make them.

I say “most of the sunchokes” because, as I was cleaning and preparing them, I found several of the largest ones had some sort of worm in them!

Ugh.

The turkey itself was kept plain. After getting a thorough washing and the wings tucked under, it went on top of the vegetables. Then I took a package of bacon and wove the strips over the top of the turkey.

With all that in the roaster, there really wasn’t room for the squash. My husband doesn’t like winter squash, anyhow. So that got cut into chunks and peeled, and put into its own smaller roasting pan.

The good thing about winter squash getting harvested too early, because of frost, is that the shell is soft enough to use a vegetable peeler on!

I kept the squash simple, too. The chunks got pieces of butter spread out over them, then they all got sprinkled with brown sugar.

The turkey went into the over at 450° for 15 minutes, uncovered. Then the heat was reduced to 350°, and the roaster covered with foil (the turkey is too high to use the lid). The squash was put into the oven at this time, too.

As I was writing this, the oven timer went off. The squash is now ready and out of the oven, but it will be a while before the turkey and vegetables are ready.

Along with all this, I also picked up a pumpkin pie at the local grocery store/post office. We’ll just need to whip some cream to go with it.

When the time comes, we’ll be eating off of paper plates, so there’s less to wash.

It’s not going to be fancy, but it doesn’t need to be. We have much to be thankful for!

Speaking of which…

I got a voice mail on my phone from home care, letting me know that no one was available to do my mother’s evening medication assist. So I called my mother to let her know – not something I was looking forward to, after her mind games, yesterday. I made the call just before I started on cleaning the vegetables, so I told her I was going to be quick, because I needed to go to the kitchen, and passed on the message.

Before she let me go, though, she said she had something she needed to tell me. She said she didn’t want me to worry. She would pay for the septic repairs.

She then said she forgot that she had promised to pay it, earlier.

I did tell her, I never asked her to pay for it. She offered, and I was very grateful, because we would have have been able to cover it ourselves. She kind of waffled a bit, and just repeated that she would take care of it, and stopped just short of actually apologizing for her behaviour. Which is fine by me. I don’t expect her to.

Then she mentioned that she spoke to my brother last night. I asked how that was and again, she waffled. She finally just said, it was a short call, and that they talked about him coming out to put away her air conditioner, and that it would be good to do it before winter arrives.

I reminded her that my brother had been saying he needs to come out and take care of that for her; he just has no idea when he’ll be able to. I also reassured her that, even if we got snow (it’s not unusual to get a blizzard in October where we are), he did such a good job sealing the window around the AC vent, it wouldn’t matter. No weather is getting in through there! She agreed that he did an excellent job.

Ah, my timer is going off again. Time to check on the turkey!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a surprise harvest! Plus updates

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Okay, so the garden is pretty much done.

The red onions have been left, since they can handle the cold nights, and still aren’t quite ready for picking. With various distractions related to our plumbing issues, the potatoes still need to be harvested. The sunchokes are still green and growing, so they won’t be harvested for a while. Mostly, the beds are ready for winter clean up – once we can get to them!

What I wasn’t expecting was this.

That’s right. I harvested tomatoes this morning!

When my daughter harvested this bed, she left behind the really tiny tomatoes, or the damaged ones. However, as more of the foliage died back, I could see some green tomatoes that looked fine, and seemed to have gotten missed. The foliage in this bed was so dense, that’s no surprise. I basically ignored them, though, figuring they were frost damaged by then.

This morning I could see they had continued to ripen! Hidden in the middle like that, it seems they got protected from our first frost and following cold nights, too.

So I picked them and added them to the bins and boxes of green tomatoes in the old kitchen to ripen.

We have quite a few things slowly ripening. Yesterday, my older daughter grabbed all the ripe hot peppers, cleaned and prepped them, then set them in the oven to dehydrate. Eventually, they will be made into a powder.

Now… my older daughter is pretty much the only one that can eat these. My husband used to love spicy food, but the medications he’s on have really messed with his ability to taste or tolerate foods. My younger daughter can handle a bit of heat, but not as much. My, I can’t tolerate spicy food at all.

So she has taken over preparing the hot peppers as they ripen and, once dehydrated and powdered, she will have enough to last a very long time! We won’t need to grow hot peppers for some years. 😁

Now, these are hot peppers, but not exceptionally hot peppers. They’re not the kind where you need to wear gloves or anything.

Normally.

It turns out that, after processing about a dozen remarkably large hot peppers, that becomes a problem.

Not right away, though. My daughter had no issues at all while working on them. She was careful about washing her hands before touching things, too.

Then she made herself a sandwich.

The pepper oils from her hands – even after being washed – got onto her sandwich, and it was so spicy, it started to burn her mouth. She ended up having to drink straight cream to reduce the pain!

Then her fingers started to burn.

It happened slowly, over several hours, but eventually she could barely even use one hand.

She sprung for take out for supper, so I went into town to pick up the food. By the time I got back and she regaled me on what had happened, I could see the tips of all her fingers were bright red!

Lesson learned. Even mildly hot peppers can become a problem, if you’re processing enough of them at once!

Gloves needed!

Meanwhile, even her lungs were starting to burn!

These were being dehydrated in the oven. We had the kitchen window open and the fan running. The house smelled amazing, but we still had to stay out of the kitchen as much as possible, so as not to breathe too many of the hot pepper fumes. Even the cats were staying out of the kitchen!

Speaking of cats, they added another distraction. My younger daughter tried to go to bed early, only to discover a cat with a messy butt made a mess on her bed. She had to wash all her bedding.

We had been working to clear my husband’s bedroom, and started doing his laundry, too, so that was already set up (yes, we are still running the hose out the window for the washing machine to drain into the yard). The girls were going to start the laundry and my younger daughter was going to use her sister’s bed for the night.

Which is when they discovered more mess in the middled of her sheets, from a cat or cats that squirmed its way under her covers.

So they were both up all night, doing load after load of laundry. Some things needed to be washed twice, just because of their size. They didn’t get to bed until past 6am.

We’ll be more laundry today, too. My husband has set up his CPAP in my bedroom so he could sleep with me.

Sleeping in the same bed as my husband! Imagine that. 😄

That will give us a chance to strip his hospital bed and wash things like his pillows and body pillows, along with the extra blankets he puts under his sheets. The mattress for the hospital bed has a sort of thick vinyl instead of fabric, so it’s easier to clean. Unfortunately, it doesn’t breath, and causes my husband to sweat. The extra layers under the sheets help prevent that.

I did finally find an XL twin fitted sheet on Amazon for his mattress, which is several inches longer than a standard twin mattress. We’ve confirmed the new sheet fits properly, so we’ll need to get a few more. For now, though, he has only one fitted sheet that actually fits the mattress on his hospital bed.

We’ve been working most of yesterday on clearing his room so we can access the corner behind the plumbing for the tub. This is where we will be cutting an access panel, but it’s still covered by the wardrobe. My husband doesn’t really use the wardrobe, and the girls have said they’ll take it upstairs – but they will need to move out their little bar fridge for the space. They don’t use that much anymore, so we were already talking about moving it to my room. I’ll have to find space for that, though.

Once we get that figured out, we can start moving things around but, for now, we still have one more corner of husband’s room to clear and clean, where has his own tiny fridge to store his injections. This will give us the opportunity to defrost and clean it, too, then move it to where it will be more easily accessible.

The bonus of moving the girls’ fridge out from upstairs, to make room for the wardrobe, is that it frees up a grounded outlet.

That means they can get an air conditioner and actually be able to plug it in! The upstairs gets so insanely hot in the summer, they really need one up there.

That will not happen for a while, though, since my daughter will be paying for what we end up needing to get the bathroom walls repaired.

So all of this rearranging and cleaning and figuring things out is happening at the same time – all because the hot water tap in the tub broke.

There is nothing we can do in the bathroom itself right now. The fan it still running to dry the rotted aspenite. My brother will be looking at it when he comes out on Friday evening (today is Wednesday).

We will have to pull out the tub to be able to find and cut away all the rot, and I’m not even sure how that will be done. It does seem like the tub is in two parts; the tub itself, resting on top of a flat panel that hides the underside of the tub.

Well, we’ll find out when the time comes.

Until then, we’ll just take advantage of the disaster and do the clearing, cleaning and rearranging we need to do, anyways.

On the one hand, I’m glad this has happened now, and not in the middle of winter.

On the other, this keeps me from getting outside stuff done, and from finishing the cat isolation shelter!

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some of that done today, since there’s only so much I can do in my husband’s bedroom before I need my daughters to help out. It’s so close to being finished, too!

Ah, well. It is was it is.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: yes, we have a harvest! Plus, we will have warm kitties this winter

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No harvest this morning, though. I had time to do my usual rounds before heading out to my mother’s, and that’s it.

I did find these hardy little jewels, though!

Yes, the tiny strawberries are still growing, still blooming and still producing berries! Only a couple were ripe. Whatever variety of strawberries they are, they are certainly appropriate for our climate! It should be interesting to see how they do, when they are transplanted somewhere they can grow wild.

My trip to my mother’s was productive, though she was physically not up to climbing in and out of the truck to go to the bank. Hopefully, my sister will visit on one of her days off and can take her with her car. It’s much easier for our mother to get in and out of her vehicle.

At her request, I picked up a large pizza for our lunch. Today was her first day on the Meals on Wheels program, though. We were done eating before it arrived, and my mother still has half a pizza. That will be two or three meals for her, right there, and the Meals on Wheels will be her supper.

The place that cooks the meals usually sends out invoices at the end of the month, but my mother wanted to pay in advance. She doesn’t trust the post office, though, so she asked the volunteer delivery person – who happened to be one of the social workers that hosts all sorts of activities in the building – to hand deliver it. My mother has been making use of their services on an as-needed basis and always paid cash per meal directly to the delivery person, so we knew this was acceptable.

Lack of volunteers means they only deliver meals three days a week. As we were talking about the delivery days, the social worker told my mother that, if she wanted, she could request more than one meal. She could, for example, order two meals each on Monday and Wednesday, then order three meals on Friday. This way, she could have a meal for every day of the week. My mother was happy to hear that, and said that she would think about it. For now, we’ll just see how the three days a week works out for her.

The meal comes with a container of soup, which my mother wanted to eat right away, leaving the rest of the meal for later in the day. So I headed out with her list and did her shopping for her. It didn’t take long, even with going to both the pharmacy and the grocery store. My mother is set for a good while now.

By the time all was done and I was heading home, I noticed that I would reach our area in time for the post office to reopen for the afternoon. I knew one package was expected today. Another was due in a couple of days, but sometimes they come in early.

There turned out to be three packages waiting for me!

This is what was in two of them.

One was the pair of clamp lamps, the other was the ceramic bulbs. I tested both lamps and bulbs, then set them aside for now. We won’t need to set them up for a while, yet, and one of them is meant to go into the cat isolation shelter. We have a larger clamp lamp that we used last year, but the bulb didn’t make it through the entire winter. When the budget allows, I should pick up another two pack.

The other package was a chainsaw sharpening kit. My husband, sweetheart that he is, sharpened the chain on the mini-chainsaw (battery powered pruning saw) for me. I’ll have to find the spare and get him to do that one, too, plus the chain for our larger electric chainsaw.

My husband likes sharpening things. 😁

After having the supper my older daughter prepared, I headed outside to take care of the eggplant and pepper bed. I removed the plastic that was surrounding it and rolled it up around a couple of narrow boards for storage. We might use one section to put around the catio for the winter, so for now, they’re being stored on the catio roof.

The eggplant leaves were definitely killed off by the cold, but I was surprised by how well the eggplants held out.

Even some really tiny Little Finger eggplant seemed salvageable. Only a few were too frost damaged to bother picking. There were only three Classic eggplant left to harvest, and all three had minimal frost damage on them.

That plastic did the job, even if it couldn’t completely protect the plants!

The Cheyenne hot peppers in the middle of the bed fared better. There were SO many peppers, and none of them were too frost damaged to pick!

I should have used the bigger colander! It’s being used for something else, though. When I brought them inside, they almost filled the basin I’d dug out of the old kitchen recently.

We don’t have the space to spread them out, so I guess we’ll have to string them and hang them. They should continue to ripen.

We most definitely don’t have the space for all the things that need to ripen indoors, though!

Which is a good problem to have, I suppose!

I’m just happy to have a harvest in October.

After this, the potatoes need to be harvested. Oh, and the red onions are still hanging in there!

The sunchokes should also be harvested, but they are still quite green and growing. The frost hasn’t really bothered them at all. I’m curious as to how well they did, after not harvesting them at all last year.

In a few days, we’ll be bringing the rest of the winter squash from the garage to the root cellar.

The root cellar is going to be pretty full this winter!

Not too bad, considering what a rough start the garden had this year. I’m quite pleased!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: harvest before first frost, and getting a lot done!

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My younger daughter and I were able to get so much done today, all before our expected first frost.

Depending on which weather app I look at, we’re supposed to drop to either -2C/28F, or 1C/34F tonight.

Either way, we’re looking at frost tonight.

Strangely, there are absolutely no frost warnings. Perhaps the humidity is too low. The temperature alone is enough to cause damage, though.

Last night, my older daughter helped me cover the two beds that actually can be covered, and I’m glad we did. We dropped to 3C/37F last night, and that was enough to kill off the last of the squash and melon leaves. Even the Crespo squash was droopy, and they were the only ones that were still lush, green and growing.

My daughter started off by checking on the biggest Crespo squash. As she rolled it aside, the stem broke right off its vine.

This is what it looked like, underneath.

We made sure it wasn’t sitting directly on the ground, but this damage still happened.

That’s okay. We’ll just cut that part off and eat it first!

This one is mature enough that we should be able to save seed, too! It took four years of trying, but we finally got a mature Crespo squash!

The two that were growing in the bean trellis didn’t get to full maturity, so they’ll need to be eaten sooner, too. Or we could cut make a puree to freeze or something like that.

My daughter started off harvesting the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden ahead of me. She’d collected all the Forme de Couer and had moved on to the Black Cherry tomatoes by the time I was able to start helping her. The Black Cherries were so tangled up in the lilac branches, we had to cut our way through to be able see, never mind reach, the tomatoes. After a while, I grabbed a pile of cut up tomato plants to take it to the compost pile when I realized, there were plenty of tomatoes in the compost pile to gather.

So I grabbed another bin and worked on those.

I found a surprise!

I knew there were two types of volunteer tomatoes in there. A few Indigo Blues, and a whole lot of Roma VF from last year’s harvests.

I found a third type, completely buried by the others!

They look like a slicing tomato of some kind, but I don’t remember growing a red variety of slicing tomato last year. It was also the only one that had an almost ripe tomato.

You’ll notice a lot of the Romas are very pale – almost white – in colour. These were essentially blanched from being under so many stems and leaves. I’m really surprised by how many we got in there!

It’s a shame they never got to ripen. A few of the Romas had started to show a blush. Who knows how many of these will actually ripen once indoors.

By the time I got the compost tomatoes done, my daughter was almost finished the old kitchen garden, so I moved on to the main garden area, bringing the wagon with the Crespo squash, to start harvesting the squash and melons. Then my daughter joined me and started harvesting the rest of the San Marzano tomatoes.

I found several melons were already “harvested”! One had a hole in it and was essentially hollowed out, so I’m guessing a mouse got that one. The others looked more like racoon damage.

Once the squash and melons were picked, plus a few patty pan squash, I cut down and went through all the corn stalks to find the cobs I’d left to go to seed.

*sigh*

This was all the racoons left me, and it’s not even dried out enough to have viable seeds.

Ah, well. Live and learn!

That done, I got another bin and helped my daughter with the last of the tomatoes. There were so many San Marzanos in the main garden area! Then we did the tomatoes that were at the chain link fence.

Here is the entire harvest.

The bin with the cat next to it has the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes from the chain link fence in it, plus the tiny tomatoes from the volunteer tomato plant that I found among the potatoes. There were so many perfect little tomatoes! Not a single one had a chance to ripen. We have no idea what kind of tomatoes they were, either.

My daughter had already moved the previously harvested winter squash from the garage to the house, so now these squash are set up in the garage. It looks like some of the blue squash did get to fully mature, but most of them seem shy of full maturity, so they won’t be able to properly cure. They are still quite edible, though. They just won’t last as long in the root cellar than if they had fully matured and cured. Still, some time set up like this in the garage will help them last a bit longer.

Once we were done with the harvesting, my daughter uncovered the box of the truck, and we loaded up with as many bags of cans as we felt we could properly secure.

Which turned out to be maybe a third of the pile!

The whole thing got covered with a tarp and strapped down with ratchet straps. We set two up in an X across the pile, plus two more across the front and back. It was pretty windy, though, and once we got to highway speeds, the tarp was billowing under the straps more than I liked.

We stopped at a gas station to tuck the tarp back in place, then secured it more using Bungee cords. It still billowed, but nothing that was a potential problem.

This is the first time we’ve gone to this salvage place, but they were easy to find. I’d called for instructions yesterday, so we knew where to go to start. After talking to someone in the office, she directed me to where we should pull up, and staff could unload the truck.

My daughter and I started taking the straps and tarp off while they brought over a couple of bins with a forklift to bring them to the scale. All the cans are in transparent bags, so they could see that there were some tin cans in there, too.

That was okay for them, but good for us.

The tin cans go for 10 cents per weight.

The aluminum goes for 50 cents.

When they’re mixed up like this, they basically figure out something in between.

After everything was unloaded, we moved the truck again, and I went back to the office to wait. I had thought I stopped out of the way, but I turned out to be wrong, when a very large truck pulling a very long trailer came in! One of the office staff asked if we could park on the street. When I moved the truck, though, there wasn’t enough room to get by the trailer. I went back inside while my daughter waited until the truck could pull ahead, then she found a place to park.

As I was waiting in the office, I heard some staff going back and forth and saying something about “getting her a magnet”.

Then a guy came up to me and handed me a red keychain with their company name and number on it. It turns out, I was the “her”, and the keychain has a strong magnet on its end. This is for the next time we bring in a load; when we back stuff up, we can use the magnet to make sure there’s no cans with steel in them mixed in.

It means we’ll have to re-bag all the cans again, but the difference in price makes it worth is. With sooooo many cat food cans, plus the pop and energy drink cans, it is quite a loss to not get full price on the aluminum because there’s half a dozen tin cans scattered among them.

In the end, we brought 208 pounds, which got us just over $17. While they did give us an in between price, we still could have gotten quite a bit more, if we didn’t have those tin cans in there.

Live and learn!

It was very nice of them to give us the magnet, too. We have magnets, of course, but this one will be much more convenient!

That done, my daughter and I made a quick stop at a gas station, then headed home. We made a point of not covering the box again so that, once at home, we could give it a cleaning. The truck has screw holes in the bed from when it was a commercial vehicle hauling trailers. A remarkable amount of dust from the gravel roads gets in there!

I know it’s just going to get full of dust again, but it sure did feel better to finally wash that out with the hose!

Then we filled the truck again, this time with our garbage. We were overdue for a trip to the dump!

I had planned to go to a different landfill in our municipality, but I don’t know the area it’s in, so we went to our usual one.

I was really glad to have my daughter with me! The pit area is a real disaster. My daughter got out before we went into the pit area to make sure there wasn’t anything that might puncture a tire. While she kicked things out of the way, I slowly crawled along behind her with the truck until she could guide me in backing up to the pit. Not as close as we normally would have gone; too much broken glass!

And nails.

She was finding and kicking away nails, the whole distance!

This place has really gone downhill. The previous municipal council had fired the guy that used to take care of the landfill. I don’t know what the new council is doing, but the attendant that’s here now is not someone physically able to maintain the pit. Which is fine, if being an attendant is the only part of her job description, but whoever it is that’s been hired to use the heavy equipment to clean where we’re supposed to drive up to the pit is not doing a good job at all. Even the equipment being used is different, and the tracks on that front end loader is just destroying the gravel driveways.

But, we got the job done, and so far, it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any flat tires, thanks to my daughter!

As we were leaving, my daughter wondered about being able to go to town and pick up something. It had been a long time since either of us had eaten, and she was thinking of perhaps treating us.

After talking about it, we decided that, between the two of us, we could pick up some fish and chips for all of us for supper.

Which was about when we got a message from my husband. The pharmacy called. When he had his prescription refills delivered, they didn’t have enough to fill one completely. They now had the amount they owed him.

Well, that was handy! We would have time to do that, before the pharmacy closed at 6pm.

A trip to town, it was!

As we were going along, we ended up stuck behind some slower moving traffic, so it took a bit longer to get to the pharmacy. I was going to just dash in, anyhow.

As I was walking in the door, behind two other people, a staff member let us know…

…they were closing in one minute – and she locked the entry doors behind us!

It turns out, they close at 5:30.

Thankfully, my husband’s prescription was quick to find, and it was already covered, so it just needed to be handed to me, and I could go!

From there, we went and got the fish and chips to bring home, plus a quick stop at the grocery store for something else my husband needed. We could finally go home!

We weren’t quite done yet, though!

One home, my daughter took care of bringing in the hot food, while I started bringing the bins of tomatoes into the old kitchen.

I have no idea what we’re going to do with them all.

In previous years, we kept a bin of green tomatoes out and my family just snacked on them as they ripened. They were all small grape, cherry or pear type tomatoes.

I know there are lots of things that can be done with green tomatoes; we’ve just never done them. I wouldn’t be able to eat them, so it’s a matter of finding things the family would like.

What we don’t have is the space to lay out so many green tomatoes in what should be a single layer, to ripen indoors. It would have to be in the living room – the cat free zone – but it’s a disaster right now.

Until we figure that out, all five bins are now laid out on the chest freezer in the old kitchen. That room is too dark and gets too cold to be able to leave them there to ripen.

Once we were finally able to have our supper, things still weren’t done!

It was back outside to recover the two beds for the night, so the peppers and eggplant will survive. The hoses had to be prepped so they wouldn’t have any water in them to freeze, and I even remembered to close the doors in the side of the garage the squash and melons were in, so they won’t get as cold.

And now I am FINALLY done for today.

I’m hoping to actually get to bed before midnight and get some real sleep for a change. My attempt to do so last night was a total failure! 😄

There is, of course, lots to do outside. This is one of the busiest times of the year, as we get ready for winter, while the weather holds!

The Re-Farmer

Stock up shopping at Costco: this is what $680 looks like

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Good grief.

With today being a new holiday, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I first checked to make sure Costco would even be open, and they were, for slightly shorter hours. They will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, which is the second Monday of October – 2 weeks from today – so I figured it would either be pretty dead, or insanely busy.

It turned out to be insanely busy.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I left for the city before having breakfast. I considered eating at the Costco, but there really isn’t anything they have at their cafeteria that I can eat, anymore. I don’t care for their hot dogs or pizza, and the coating on their chicken strips has just enough spicy heat that I can’t tolerate it.

There is a mall nearby, though, so I figured I could go to the food court.

Nothing was open, yet. With the holiday, they weren’t going to open until 11, and I was there shortly after 10.

The Dollarama beside the food court was open, though, so I went to see what I could find there. I ended up getting one of those little snack packs with a tin of chicken salad, a few crackers and a stick for a spoon, plus a drink.

That actually tided me over until I got home!

The parking area for the mall shared access to a Canadian Tire, so I went there, next, and got 4 bags of stove pellets for the litter boxes. That came out to $33.56

My next stop was the Costco gas station. The price of regular there was $1.229/L, while the other stations in the city were generally $1.299. Much to my surprise, there was almost no one at the gas station, and I was able to get to a pump right away. I was at a bit under 3/4 of a tank, and filling cost $41.03.

I always reset my trip meter after filling at Costco, so I have an idea of how much we drive in a month. When I reset it, we were at just over 2400km – about 1000km more than usual for us! All that extra driving I’ve been doing for my mother really added up!

With how quickly I got through the gas station, I figured the store couldn’t be too bad!

Boy, was I wrong.

This is when I finally got in line. This is near the back of the store and, pretty much immediately after I got in line, so many more people got in line behind me, it had to do a switchback into the other aisle. When I got to the end of this aisle, The end of the line was already past the same end of the other aisle!

As the line moved forward, I found myself next to a second line. I knew there would be a third one – two for the cashiers, one for the self check. Self checkout being limited to 12 items or less. I hoped I was in the correct line and figured I was, since just about everyone else in the line with me had larger cart loads.

I was wrong.

The line I was next to eventually split off around the other side of the centre displays. So that one line was actually for the two lines to the cashiers.

The line I was in turned out to be the self checkout line.

Thankfully, someone in the other line let me in in front of him. Once we got to the cash desks, he ended up getting to a cashier before I did, so that worked out well for him, at least!

The weird thing is, it seemed as if more people were standing in line to pay than were shopping! The shopping itself wasn’t all that busy. The only real problem I had there was trying to get to places while pushing a flat cart. I kept having to navigate around people in line!

This time around, I didn’t put the cat supplies on a separate bill, as most of the dry kibble is going to be purchased at feed stores.

Everything all together, including pet supplies, came out to $680.88 after taxes.

Yeah. That far from full flat cart load is almost $700.

This is what we got today.

What you can’t see in the photo above, among the larger items, is two cases of canned cat food and a box of puppy pads.

For bread products, I only got four packs of tortilla warps.

Hhmmm… I could have sworn those were supposed to be on sale for $7.99, not regular price at $9.99 I don’t trust my memory for that right now, though.

There’s a case of Coke Zero in there, along with laundry detergent, a giant box of ramen noodles, and a big bag of paper towels. Not the ones we usually get, but these were on sale. We got facial tissues and toilet paper, too. There’s a bag of Basmati rice, frozen perogies, and a variety pack of sliced meats.

Among the smaller items in the cardboard box, we got 5 pounds of butter. I picked up a couple of 2pk salad mixes, whipping cream, cream cheese, goat cheese and a block of Old Cheddar cheese.

There’s a bag of hazelnuts, a jar of olives and a jar of Kirkland brand mayonnaise, which is a bigger jar for a lower price than the Hellman’s we usually get.

I got some pickerel filets for the girls, which were on sale, plus some lean ground beef. That ground beef… I can’t believe it cost more than the pork loin, which has a lot more meat! The package of pork chops was about the same weight as the ground beef.

Remember when ground beef was the affordable meat?

I picked up a 3 pack of Spam, a big bag of tortilla chips for my husband, a double flat of eggs and a giant pumpkin pie. While standing in line, close to the cashier, I threw in a box of Sweet and Salty granola bars, too.

That’s it.

There was stuff that was on my list that I didn’t get, because I was already going above budget for today. I decided to go for it since some of the items – the paper towels and facial tissue in particular – will last us a couple of months.

This time around, when I was offered assistance in loading, I accepted. When I got water refills yesterday, I used the wagon to the house. After unloading and starting to take the wagon back to the garage, I stopped to reach for something my daughter had, but my hand got caught in the handle of the wagon. I twisted several fingers, with one being twisted the most. That finger it still hurting.

Which puts me in a bit of a pickle. The nerve damage in my left elbow means I have to be careful lifting or carrying anything heavy with my left arm. The finger I injured is in my right hand, and I now have almost no grip strength in that hand because of it. On top of all that, our current temperature whiplash has resulted in every joint in my body being stiff and sore, including all my finger joints.

I nearly dropped that jar of olives, three times, because I couldn’t hold it!

So… yeah. I got help loading the truck.

Mostly, I was bagging things in our hard sided grocery bags. I brought ice packs to use in the insulated bags. While I was doing that, the guy helping me loaded up all the stuff too big to put into a bag. He started having trouble working around the litter pellets, so I brought out our garden claw tool that we keep in the truck and used that to push the bags further in. He was really happy and commented that they need to have something like that handy at the store for times like this!

That done, I could finally start heading home.

Before I left, I got a message from my SIL, letting me know my brother was coming out today, along with the guy with the triple axle trailer. They decided to move some decorative limestone blocks they have out here, and all of it together was way too heavy for their trailer. My brother had one more antique looking piece of equipment he wanted to bring out, too.

I have no idea what it is.

I thought I was miss my brother entirely, but he was still here when I got home, though the guy with the big trailer had already left.

Before I even started to unload, I went to say hello – and goodbye! He was gone before we finished unloading the truck. At least I got a hug in, first!

I unloaded most things to my daughter at the door, then she took care of putting things away while I finished unloading the larger items going straight into the old kitchen. Then I had to feed the outside cats, to get them away from the truck, so I could park it.

By the time I got back, everything was put away.

Except the pumpkin pie.

There was no room in the fridge for it!

So… we just had to sacrifice ourselves and eat it. Along with some whipped cream my daughter made. 😄😄

But not before I finally had some real food. I’d got the Crockpot going last night, with half of one of our winter squash on the bottom, and a whole chicken on top. The squash was so big that, even using just half, there was hardly any room for the chicken, even after spatchcocking it. Once everything was seasoned, I covered the top with parchment paper then pushed the lid on. It still couldn’t close all the way but, as the squash cooked, the chicken sank down. During the night, when my older daughter checked on it for me, she was eventually able to remove the parchment paper.

It was really nice having that to come home to!

I can’t say I like this particular squash all that much, though. Of the two we’ve tried so far, they were both… okay. Not as tasty as the Banana or Candy Roaster squash we grew last year, nor as good as the Red Kuri/Little Gem we’ve grown before.

But that’s why we tried this Wild Bunch mix this year – so we can taste, without having too many of one type we might not like!

Anyhow…

The last of the stock up shopping is now done, and I am so glad that’s over with! We’ll just need to get more dry kibble at the feed store, and fresh stuff locally, throughout the month.

Meanwhile, the winds have been wreaking enough havoc that we’ve lost power, momentarily, a few times, so I’d better publish this before we have another one and my computer gets shut down again!

That rain we were supposed to be getting right now has been pushed back a couple more hours. Time enough for me to do my evening rounds!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: tiny harvest and WE HAVE SEEDS!

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After the last couple of days, I plan to take it relatively easy today.

Part of “taking it easy” for me includes finally doing my morning rounds as usual!

Since I’d gathered a larger harvest yesterday, I didn’t expect to gather anything today. I did find a couple of things to pick though. A handful of Carminat purple beans, a single green Seychelle bean, a hot pepper and…

… our first onion seeds!

The clusters still look quite green, but I noticed some of them had already started to drop seeds among the melons in the trellis bed. So I grabbed a clean bucket and tried just shaking the seeds into it. Things were still too damp with dew, though, so I broke off the seed heads that were starting to drop seeds and dumped them into the bucket whole.

Quite a few seeds were dropped into the bed, so I think we can expect a fair number of self sown onions in there in the spring!

There are still some seed clusters that are very green that got left on the plants to be gathered later. For now, the bucket of seed heads is in the house, sitting in a sunny spot in the cat free zone. We’ll collect more seeds after the seed heads have dried off.

I made no effort to separate types of onions in here. There was really no practical way to do so. There would be only two types of onions – a red and a yellow – that we had tried growing last year. At this point, if we are going to start growing onions from our own seeds, there isn’t as much need to keep track of varieties, or even keep the seeds separate. It’s not like we’re going to be packaging them up for sale or anything like that.

Which means that when we start seeds for next year’s garden, we’ll be having Onion Surprise. 😁

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a morning harvest, plus another long day!

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I had a long day taking my mother to her specialist appointment in the city yesterday, and now another long day with her today. I did have time to do some of my morning rounds, though, and was able to gather a good sized harvest!

In the giant colander, there are a good number of Chocolate Cherry tomatoes from by the chain link fence. I also picked a few green Seychelle beans from the bed shared with the Crespo squash, and I even found a few on the one plant next to the purple Carminat pole beans. There are even some Royal Burgundy bush beans in there.

I found a melon lying on the ground in the raised bed – it harvested itself! 😄 There are a couple of yellow peppers, plus a Sweet Chocolate. Some of the peppers that are supposed to be more orange are finally starting to turn colour. There’s a single G Star pattypan squash, plus a few San Marzano tomatoes.

When it came time to go into the old kitchen garden, I knew there would be quite a bit, so I grabbed the bin. Those are all Forme de Couer and Black Cherry tomatoes in there.

Including a rude looking tomato! Click over to the next photo to see what I mean. 😄

After that, I left things to my daughters and headed out to my mother’s.

Long story short: her apartment finally got sprayed for bed bugs. There were no sign of any, so they will have to come back only one more time. Her neighbour got sprayed, too. I get the impression that apartment has been the main source of the problem in the building.

My mother then had to stay out of her apartment for 6 hours. Technically, she should stay out for 12 hours, as she has respiratory issues, but she refuses.

The neighbor says they only need to stay out for 4 hours, but I have no idea where she got that from. The notification letter they all get says the same thing. At least 6 hours.

We made sure to take along my mother’s supper time medications, as well as the information sheets the eye clinic gave her, yesterday, to go over. While we were waiting for the exterminator to arrive, I did go through some with her. I took the grid eye test, which is a flat magnetic sheet, and put it on her fridge. The grid has a black dot in the middle that is supposed to be focused on. I spent some time explaining the test to her, how to do it, and that she should be checking her left eye with it, every day. I even held it for her while she did the test, as instructed.

While explaining the grid test to her, how to take the test, what she’s looking for, I was saying, your left eye this, your left eye that, with your left eye…

Yet she still stopped at one point and said, “with my right eye, then…”

…

No. Your right eye can’t even see the dot in the grid. It’s for your left eye.

It’s going to take a while for it to stick, I think!

We had a nice chat with the manager while her apartment was being sprayed – she parker her walker across from her door and would not move until the exterminator left.

Then we had to find something to do or somewhere to go for six hours.

I was going to move the truck into the loading zone in front of the doors, to make it safer for my mother to get in, but the exterminator’s truck was in there, and he was chatting with the manager. When I got there, I did apologize for my mother’s behaviour over all this.

She is still utterly convinced the exterminator rifled through her closet to find and steal 70+ year old passports. In fact, at one point when it came up in conversation, she started saying, “maybe I should call the police?” When I said no, she said I was accusing her of lying. I told her, I didn’t think she was lying, but that she probably just put them somewhere and forgot where. When she moves, she’ll probably find them again. Her response was that I was “against” her.

*sigh*

Anyhow…

It was a good thing I caught up with them, because the manager remembered to ask if my mother’s bed had mattress covers. She doesn’t, and the exterminator said she needs two – one for the mattress, one for the box spring. Then he remembered he might have one and checked in his truck. He did have one and gave it to me for my mother’s mattress. We’ll still need one for the box spring.

Then I mentioned I needed to move my truck so my mother could get in, and we said our goodbyes.

By this time, though, my mother had come out and was sitting in her walker, watching us suspiciously. She called me over before I moved the truck and started asking me questions… why was the exterminator still there? Why was the manager sitting in his truck? etc.

Oh, gosh. I just realized what she was getting at.

She thought they were waiting for her to leave, so the manager could use his master key to get into her apartment, so they could steal things.

*sigh*

Anyhow.

We got her into the truck and then headed out for lunch. There was one place she wanted to go to, because someone new bought it and she wanted to see how it was, now that it wasn’t “browny” people that owned it (it had been owned by a Korean family). *sigh* The place was still being worked on, on the inside, but when she saw the worker’s vehicles in the parking lot, she thought it was open and wanted me to go inside and check. I had to tell her, no, you can’t just walk into a construction zone!

So we went to a chicken and pizza restaurant.

She ended up ordering a vegetable pizza this time, which I normally would not have thought much of, except that my mother is once again deciding that the reason she’s having trouble with her eyes is because of food, and so she needs to eat more vegetables and green things.

There is no known cause for macular degeneration, and there is no food she can eat or not eat that will make any difference. But she heard something somewhere – maybe last week, maybe last month, maybe 30 years ago – and just latches on to things.

We’re going to have to watch her on that, because she’s going to start causing malnutrition in herself if we don’t.

I had something else, so she had a small pizza to herself, with some left over that was packed up for later. We took our time eating, though – we did have 6 hours to kill! – then went across the street to a little department store she wanted to check out, while she was out and about. I helped her get across the street, then moved the truck to park by the store, so she wouldn’t have to cross the street again. The nice thing about that was that I was able to pull up really close to the curb – and that extra height made it downright easy for her to get into the truck when she was done!

We then both went in and did a bit of shopping.

There’s only so long we could drag that out, though.

There was nowhere else she wanted to go, and there is nowhere in this town where one can just hang out. We even tried driving around parts of town we’ve never gone into before, but there wasn’t a whole lot of that, either. 😄

We managed to use up about 2-3 hours before finally just going back to her building and sitting in the common room. No one else was around, so we brought out the information the eye clinic gave her and I went over it with her. Most of it, the doctor had already explained to her really well.

It didn’t take long to go through it all.

I was completely prepared to stay with my mother until 7pm, but she told me that I could go home. She was really tired and was going to just sit and close her eyes for a while. She had her leftovers for supper, and I’d added a bottle of orange juice I’d gotten with her meal on the way home from the city yesterday, that got forgotten in the truck, so she was prepared for taking her medication with her supper while in the common room.

So I headed home.

When I got home, my younger daughter was adding more supports to the tomatoes at the chain link fence that yesterday’s winds had managed to blow partly over. I ended up helping her with that, then she moved on to start breaking down the tree that the winds blow over and onto a crabapple tree.

I had gone to talk to her when our phones both dinged. My husband had sent a message.

My mother had called and left a message on the answering machine. Something about her keys?

I had completely forgotten.

While digging in her purse at one point, my mother gave me her keys to put in my pocket, so they wouldn’t get lost.

They were still in my pocket!!!

I had dashed into the house to get my purse when the phone range again. It was my mother, trying again – from the number on call display, a neighbour had let her use their phone. I told her, I was leaving right then and there!

When I got there, so was so apologetic about having me drive all the way back again. Meanwhile, I was apologizing for forgetting I had her keys! It was pretty funny!

Enough time had passed that she had eaten her supper and taken her medications. It was still early to get into her apartment, but by less than an hour, so we went in anyway.

I had offered to come back to help her put things back and she had said no, so this actually worked out.

I was able to put the mattress cover on her bed – and found out that they’d given her, and others, mattress covers long ago. She didn’t want me to put it on her bed, and basically scoffed at the fact that they had been given them in the first place.

*sigh*

So, somewhere in her closet, she had 2 more of these. Maybe when my sister next visits my mother, she’ll be ablet to find one and get it onto the box spring.

I made up her bed and put a few things away.

If she didn’t have to wait until the health care aid came to help with her nightly medications, she would have gone to bed right then and there!

I did make sure to set out the little miniature tagine bowl and lid I’d brought for her. She thought it was adorable! This will be a handy container for the health care aide to put her pills into, after removing them from the bubble pack, so they can both easily see that the right number are in there. Plus, my mother can more easily pick up the little bowl to take them, rather than trying to use her hands. Some of her fingers are deformed with arthritis.

The extra trip was good for another reason. I had forgotten to hit a bank machine earlier, to take cash out for the septic guy. We’re almost into October. Time to get the tank emptied for the winter.

We’ll need to contact the septic repair company again, too, and hopefully get a date on when they can come and repair the leaking pipes at the expeller!

I really hope we’re not getting ghosted by this company. We’ve had this happen before with other companies, in the first couple of years after we moved here. I have reason to believe it has something to do with our vandal defaming us, though I have no actual proof. Our vandal has a past history of trying to prevent companies from doing things here at the farm, and even on property in the heart of our little hamlet that my parents used to own. Then, when they tried to sell it, he drove off two potential buyers!

Yes, he felt he was entitled to that property, just like he feels he’s entitled to this property, too.

Of course, it could be this company is just really busy, trying to get jobs done before winter. Unfortunately, with past experience, I can’t help but wonder.

Well, if we don’t hear from them after trying to call them back several times, there is another company we can contact again. They are in a completely different town that our vandal doesn’t really go to, that I know of, so the chances of them having any contact with our vandal is very low.

The main thing is that this gets repaired before the ground freezes.

Thankfully, our system has still been working so far, even if the greywater is all just soaking into the ground, as if we had a septic field instead of an expeller. The leak must be pretty close to the surface for the ground to become saturated like that, so if it doesn’t get repaired, the whole thing will freeze, the greywater will have nowhere to go, and the ice will break the pipes even more.

*sigh*

Tomorrow, I will hopefully not have to go anywhere, except maybe the dump. I don’t know if I dare to to the nearest landfill again, with how bad it has gotten lately (I don’t want another flat tire!), but the next nearest one is also open on Saturdays. I just need to find it.

If all goes well, though, I’ll finally be able to catch up with stuff here at home!

Like prep and freeze a whole lot of bell peppers and melons, and either freeze whole tomatoes, or start another sauce in the Crockpot.

I really look forward to just staying home. 😁

I’m so tired!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: harvest time, and our first yellow peppers!

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I had another sleepless night last night (courtesy of the cats!), so my daughters took care of most of the morning stuff. That let me get at least a couple of hours of sleep before I headed out to the garden, just before noon.

We got a smattering of rain yesterday evening, so I used one of the side walls from the broken market tent to cover the onions that were curing outside. Once things were warmer, I uncovered them again, so they could get some sun and air flow.

Speaking of air flow…

We’ve got some warm, sunny days coming up, and mild overnight temperatures, so I lifted the bottom half of the vinyl sheets wrapped around the box frame over the eggplant and hot pepper bed.

As you can see in the foreground of the photo above, Syndol is checking out the eggplant and hot peppers I harvested out of there this morning!

This is the rest of today’s harvest. We have a first today!

Finally! Some yellow peppers!

Yes, a couple still have some green on them, but I wanted to get some of the weight off the plants. It was much the same with the few tomatoes I collected today.

Also, yes, that is a mutant Little Finger eggplant on the left! I actually remembered to bring pruning shears to cut the stems – they are surprisingly spiky! – and it was rather a surprised to cut one stem and get two eggplants! There are two Classic eggplant in there, too. I’m harvesting a bit smaller, as the large ones we’ve harvested before were getting pretty seedy inside. Mind you, we could leave some longer just to collect the seeds, but it’s probably too late in the season for any of the ones still on the plants to have viable seeds to collect.

The long, straight hot peppers were easy to harvest, but the curled one was so twisted around the stalk and another pepper, I ended up breaking off the top of the pepper itself, rather than the stem.

We also have one melon today, and one purple Dragonfly pepper. The colour is very much the same as the eggplants!

Pretty darn good for near the end of September in our area!

The German Butterball potato plants have all died off, so we should be harvesting those, soon. A few of the winter squash are starting to look ready to harvest and get set aside to cure, too. The one Jebousek lettuce that seeded itself should have seeds ready to collect, too. The kohlrabi look like a total loss, though. The flea beetles just decimated them. 😢 We finally got some to actually grow, and this happens. *sigh*

As we build up our raised beds, making it so they can be covered with insect netting is going to be important! I would really like to grow kohlrabi and cabbage and brassicas in general, but it looks like that’s just not going to happen until we have a way to protect them from those flippin’ flea beetles!!

All in good time.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

For now, I’m just happy with what we have!

The Re-Farmer

An unexpected shop: this is NOT what $60+ looks like

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Well, my upcoming stock up shopping schedule has changed again.

Normally, I would be heading into the city for our first stock up shop in a couple of days (Thursday), but I’ll be taking my mother to the eye specialist, instead. With that in mind, I’d already picked up a few things I knew we’d be running out of, yesterday, when I got more cat kibble in the town north of us. Grocery prices there are much higher, so I didn’t much at all.

Today, I wanted to refill our two empty 18.9L/5 gallon water jugs in the town nearest us. The only other thing we needed was more bread. Before I left, I asked my daughter to message me if she spotted anything else we were out of that couldn’t wait until Friday.

When I parked at the store and checked my message. Nothing from home to add to the shopping list.

There was, however, a message from my brother, asking if he could call me this afternoon about my mother.

Nothing he was in the office today, I figured it was urgent! So I let him know I’d just parked in town and that he could call me on my cell phone right away, if he was still able to.

He was.

Long story short, he got a call from the public housing department that owns the building my mother lives in. They don’t want to evict a 90+ year old woman, but if she doesn’t let them in to check/spray her apartment for bed bugs again, they have no choice.

They are going to be there on Friday. They even have an exact time (usually it’s between 9am an 5pm, and would have been done tomorrow, not Friday), and a manager will be there, due to her accusations of theft.

Right away, I assured my brother that I would be there. I had already been planning to go there tomorrow, as they usually come on the last Wednesday of the month.

The city shopping can wait.

As her Power of Attorney, my brother gave them permission to do in. I’ll shoot to be there earlier to move things away from the walls – they just need room for the wand to reach – and run interference with my mother. She has to stay out of her apartment for at least 6 hours. Given that she has respiratory issues, it should really be 12 hours, but that would mean spending the night somewhere. None of us have homes accessible for her, and she is no longer willing to rent a motel room. It was during a time she spent the night in a motel that she believes the exterminator stole stuff from her. Stuff that makes no sense for anyone to steal.

The guy my brother spoke to told him, they have to deal with this sort of thing all the time, unfortunately.

He also said they don’t think my mother has bedbugs, but they’ve been spraying her neighbour’s place for the past several months. If her neighbour has them, it would not take much for them to spread to her apartment. Plus, the eggs can stay dormant for up to a year. However, if the egg casings get sprayed, when the hatch, the hatchling will die as soon as it emerges. So even if she doesn’t have bed bugs, they still need to spray a certain number of times to ensure it stays that way, as far as the eggs go, at least.

So that pushes the city stock up shopping off to Saturday.

Ah, well. We’ll deal!

I still only intended to get just bread and water refills, but I still looked around.

It turns out they had some really good sales on. So good that some things were completely out of stock. The sale ends tomorrow, so that’s not surprising.

The store itself in in the process of being completely rearranged, too. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s going to be a lot more logical in organization – and it looks like they’re expanding their international section, too!

So I ended up getting more than intended, and not all things I would normally get.

This is what $61.89 before taxes would have looked like – not counting the 60¢ for the bottle caps that got paid for when I picked them up at customer service. I cashed in a winning lottery ticket that paid for them. 😄

My loyalty card, however, had $20 I could take off the purchase, so this actually cost $41.89 before taxes.

This is what I got:

Each item shows how much the sale prices took off. You can see on the bottom that the total discounts and savings was $39.11, or 39% of the sub-total. That would be the sub-total before the $20 was taken off, so that means I had $59.11 in taken off altogether, leaving me with having to pay only $43.33 after taxes.

The things I normally would not have picked up were the boxed cereals, the instant puddings and the granola bars.

With the whole chicken, I try to get those on sale whenever I can – especially with it being over $8 off, like today.

The fruit juices were something I was looking for specifically for my daughters. I find fruit juices way too sweet. They’re basically like mainlining sugar, but it gives my daughters something different to drink.

With the bread, I usually get rye bread, but at $2 a loaf, I got two regular loaves of whole wheat bread, one whole wheat Texas Toast and one white sandwich bread.

With the cereals and granola bars, I got four different types for our 4 very different tastes.

The instant puddings were only $1 each and, at first, I picked 4 different flavours. Then I noticed they were all “low fat”. Fat is flavour, so that means they had to replace the fat with something else to make them taste good; usually sugar. So I went for the regular kind, but there were only two flavours that weren’t sold out.

Funny. There were plenty of low fat versions in stock. 😄

So, not the shopping trip I planned, but a pretty good one, I think. We got some things that are very occasional treats that I only pick up when the prices are good. Sometimes I’ll get them at Costco, but there usually isn’t a lot of space on the flat cart for what are essentially frivolous purchases.

Not too shabby, I think. Especially with today’s food prices!

The Re-Farmer