garden plans

Garden progress

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This morning, when checking the soaking carrot seeds, I FINALLY spotted some roots!

For those who are new to following this blog (welcome!), this video shows the technique I am trying.

The first thing I needed to do was make the conrstarch gel. I noticed in the comments that people found the ratio in the video made too thick a gel, so I used 2tsp cornstarch to 1 cup of water. I made more than I needed, since I figured if it worked well for the carrots, I would use it for other things with very small seeds.

It took a while to cook the mixture down to gel state, and I think if I do it again, I would increase the cornstarch a little bit more.

Once the gel was cooked and cooling down, we started getting the new garden bed ready.

I had already raked the soil to even it out, and we gave it a thorough soaking. Then I added a bit of peat to each section and raked it out evenly. After the above photo was taken, it was given another thorough watering.

The gel took a while to cool down so, in between getting things ready outside, I put some of the gel into slide lock bags to cool down after. Then put them in the fridge, and finally putting them in the freezer. They didn’t have to get cold, but they at least had to be cool enough not to harm the seeds.

I prepped 4 bags. One for each variety of carrots, plus one for the parsley.

The instructions for the parsley said to let the seeds soak for a half hour, so that was done while I worked on the carrots. I used a measuring cup to hold the bag of gel up.

Also, the cats somehow managed to knock one of the dishes of carrot seeds upside down. :-( It was the deep purple variety. I was able to salvage most of the seeds, but there was a fair bit of seed loss, too. :-(

Once the seeds were added, I squeezed out as much air as I could, then smooshed the package around to evenly distribute the seeds in the gel.

When it came time to plant the seeds, a corner was snipped off, to make like an icing bag, and the seeds were squeezed into the prepared soil in short rows. By the time that was all ready, the parsley had soaked long enough and those were planted, too.

I’m using a combination of techniques, and one of them is based on square foot gardening. Rather than long rows, they’re being planted in squares. I’ve got the carrots planted in alternating sections, and the parsley is in the middle of the group of three.

I found a roll of plastic in the basement (I think it’s for roofing), so we used some of that to cover and protect the seeds. Those will be removed as soon as sprouts can be seen.

The squares seem very close together, but there really is a fair bit of space in between the plantings.

Also, my daughter is a sweetheart.

She trimmed some branches and made labels for me. :-)

The way things are looking, and using the square foot gardening method, we might be able to plant more here than originally planned. The three varieties of beets will go here, plus I ended up buying some kohl rabi. I don’t know if we’ll have much success with the fennel transplants; there really isn’t much improvement there. What few have sprouted can fit here. The parsley and fennel was originally going to be planted in the old kitchen garden, but I think we’ll continue to build up the soil in there and save that for next year.

Today turned out to be surprisingly hot, so we didn’t stay out for too long. We were forecast to hit 22C (71F) this afternoon, but we ended up reading 26C (78F). We will continue planting tomorrow. I think it is safe for us to start planting things that are supposed to wait until after the frost date. Looking at the long range forecast, we seem to have passed that point early.

Which reminds me. I was hoping to use the fire pit and burn barrel in the next while, so I checked the municipal website to see what the burn bad status was at. We are now on a total burn ban, which means no fire pits or burn barrels, either. That sure didn’t take long! And we still have standing water in the ditches and ponds. Ah, well.

The next few days are going to be very busy ones, as we get more things out into the gardens! I’m looking forward to using that soil auger to prep where we will be planting our giant sunflowers. :-) My mother also gave us some pumpkin seeds that were being given away for free at her local grocery store. They had tiny little envelopes, each with 3 seeds in them, and I had grabbed one, not realizing my mother had already included 2 packets in with a bag of stuff she’d prepared for me to take home. I don’t know what variety they are, but my mom tells me her town has annual pumpkin growing contests, so these might be a giant variety.

I think we’ll just plant them and see what we get! :-D

It should be interesting to see how our first year of gardening since we moved here will turn out. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Change of plans, and a new crib

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So it looks like my plans to plant the potatoes today is not going to happen. We were expecting rain, but it has turned out to be colder than forecast. While the rain has been light, it has been pretty constant. Which is fine. It just means we have to spend less time soaking the area we’ll be planting the potatoes in, tomorrow.

It might be cold and dreary outside, but Sarlac, the aloe, is enjoying things just fine. That flower spike is just inches from the ceiling!

Of course, one of the first things in my morning routine is to check on the kitties. We’ve been talking about how we wanted to change things up for them, as they get bigger and more active.

In the top right corner of the photo, you can see the crate we’ve been using to put their little nesting box in.

You can also see the dampness, under it.

With the rain today, and more forecast here and there over the next week, this will only get worse. While the crate keeps the kitten’s box from being directly on it, the increased humidity is making the basement feel noticeably colder. We do have a heater down there, but it’s not something that should be left on, unattended, for long.

We had already considered using one of the large boxes my husband’s new computer came in, to make a sort of “play pen” for the kittens. On seeing how much larger and wetter the damp spot is, I started thinking of alternatives. We had intended to place the box itself over a sheet of rigid insulation, which would have prevented any sort of damp puddle from forming at all, in the first place. However, the larger space would be harder to stay warm. The current little nest is well wrapped and small enough that Beep Beep’s, and their body heat alone could keep it nice and snug. Not so, in a larger space.

So…

They are now upstairs. Just a couple of feet from me, as I type this!

We’ve got two boxes set up, one inside the other, so half the space has a “roof” over it. There’s lots of padding on the bottom to keep them soft and warm. Beep Beep wasn’t sure what to make of things when we walked off with all her babies, but once we showed her the new set up, she settled right in.

The babies were very quick to explore their new space, which is about triple the size of what they had before. Then they went right back into a pile on their familiar little bedding. :-D

So far, the other cats have been curious about the new set up, but easily discouraged away, so they won’t jump in. With the box set up between my desk and my crafting table, I can keep a close eye on them.

This means we can start leaving the new part basement door open all the time, and slowly start moving all the litter boxes, food and water bowls, downstairs. There’s plenty of space to store the cat food and litter, too.

I’m looking forward to not having cat litter and kibble tracking all over the house… :-D

Since working in the garden was out, I went into town to run some errands. Since I was in the area, I stopped at the garage to see if they’d been able to look at my mother’s car.

Yes, they had.

Yes, it does need a new differential.

*sigh*

The owner was in the process of trying to track down a second hand one for me. Until then, though, I booked an oil change for Saturday, then asked about tires for our van. Being May, we should be able to safely rotate out of our winter tires by now. ;-) I have our summer tires bagged and waiting, but I would kinda like to get new ones, so I asked for a price on that.

It turned out to be quite out of budget, so when I bring the van in for the oil change, I’ll also bring our summer tires, and get those switched over as well.

One of my other stops was at the hardware store. I was hoping to find replacement hinge kits for the gates in the chain link fence. I was showing a photo to one of the staff when the guy who’d helped me get what I needed to fix our sump pump hose walked by with another customer, and paused to ask how the fix went, and I was happy to tell him what a success it was. He then took a quick look at the photo I was showing the other staff member, who was new enough to not know they don’t carry anything for fences and gate, and was able to recommend other places in town I should be able to find them, then continued on with the customer he had been helping.

With that question answered, I went into the paint section. We have decided to go ahead and paint or stain the old picnic table. It’s not in the best shape, but we could probably get quite a few more years out of it, if we treat the wood. After talking to the lady in the paint department, I decided to go with paint, rather than a stain. My daughter and I had been talking colours, so with that conversation in mind, I chose a bright teal blue. While a quart would probably have been enough, I figure we’ll be painting other things, too, so I got a gallon. It was funny to see how excited the lady who was helping me got when she saw which colour I chose. Apparently, bright colours are not typical choices people make, but it’s something she prefers herself. She asked to see pictures of the table when it’s done! :-D

I got a business card for one of the managers, and have already emailed her to tell her how great the staff has been. I know stores get complaints all the time so, if I can, I try to make sure to give credit and commendations, whenever I can!

While there, I was also able to pick up some peat and composted manure. I want to put some of that down first, then put the potatoes on it, add a thick layer of straw, then add some peat on top, more to keep the straw weighted down, but also help retain moisture. None of the videos I’ve seen about this way of growing potatoes has suggest this, but we have definitely noticed that wind can be an issue and figured, it at least couldn’t hurt!

Hopefully, I will be able to get this done tomorrow. We now have rain forecast for tomorrow afternoon, but it’s also expected to be much warmer – and staying warm – than today, so the potatoes should be fine.

Over the next day or two, I hope to get those carrots and parsley seeds in, too.

Weather willing! :-)

The Re-Farmer

I know what I’m doing tomorrow!

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Today I took my husband into the city for a medical appointment, but of course I had to check the kitties, first!

They are getting more and more active! We’re going to have to put them in something deeper, soon, so they don’t start crawling around the basement. At their size, there are too many things they can get into, that we couldn’t be able to get them out again! :-D

My husband and I left early enough to hit the post office, first, and ended up swinging by home again to drop things off. My husband had finally got his retroactive disability tax credit, and he used some of it to get a much needed new computer. Not something we wanted sitting in the van while we were in the city!

His appointment went well, though the drive was quite painful. It was for some tests in Nuclear Medicine, in the same hospital as the cardiac clinic. I was not allowed to come in with him, though. We arrived early, as is our habit, and I expected to have lots of time to walk around on a beautiful day, playing Pokemon Go. They must have taken him in early, because he was done much faster than I expected. Which is a nice change, even if the reasons for it are not to nice. :-/

His computer was not the only thing to arrive in the mail. I got a parcel I was expecting to come in tomorrow.

My Yukon Gem potatoes have arrived!

Which means I need to get them planted right away. Looking at the forecasts, tonight we’re supposed to reach 0C (32F), and that’s the coldest it’ll get overnight from now on.

I had been thinking about where and how we would plant the potatoes. With our rock hard soil in most places, I decided to go with a completely new and different method from what I’m used to. Here are some videos about what I am going to try.

The only thing is, I don’t have hay, nor was any available. I just have straw. I hope it will do as a substitute. I’ve seen other articles and videos that used straw, so I think it should.

With this in mind, I made use of the frames from the goat catching pen we’d made. The long sides are roughly 8 ft x 4 ft. A perfect garden bed size. So I am using them to mark out where I want to put the potatoes.

I will remove them, after I’ve finished covering the seed potatoes. For the 6 pounds of potatoes I have, this should be enough. I soaked the areas thoroughly, and will soak them again tomorrow before we start again. We are expecting some rain tomorrow (I hope!), but it won’t be much. By Sunday, we are supposed to hit 21C!! (70F) so I want to make sure it’s all thoroughly covered and watered before the heat hits.

We are also going to have to watch out for the Potato Beetle!

He kept us company while we started on the future potato beds.

I had considered setting them up where we’d covered with straw last year, as I am sure we won’t be having as many squash to transplant as I had hoped. There’s still a possibility that more seedlings will come up before the end of the month, so I figured I may as well just go off to one side, instead.

How well this works will help us decide what to do as we increase the amounts and varieties of potatoes we grow in the future. If we can get a good crop, without having to plow or till this hard, rocky ground, that would be really awesome!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, and I think I’ll hold off on that…

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When I opened the door to the basement to check on Beep Beep and the kitties, I found Beep Beep sitting in the basement window at the stairs.

She immediately bolted through the door.

She had to go through the several cats that were trying to bolt down the stairs at the same time! :-D

It’s a good think I was intending to leave the door open for a while, anyhow.

The babies are definitely getting more curious and mobile! Beep Beep is getting more comfortable with leaving them for longer periods, too.

The girls are calling Butterscotch’s baby “Nickypants” because his fur pattern makes him look like he has white pants, just like Nicky the Nose. :-D

After a while, I had to go hunting for Beep Beep to bring her back down, so I could close up the basement again. I found her on the kitchen counter! Bad Beep Beep! ;-)

We’ve been having some very chilly nights lately, so I’ve been keeping a close eye on the seed trays. I was happy to see some new growth.

More pattypans/sunbrust squash are emerging, a few more of the zucchini surprise mix are showing, too.

It’s funny how there is this one large sunburst squash that showed up next to the zucchini mix. If I hadn’t put those straws in to mark the different groups, I would have thought it was part of the mix!

Still no sign of gourds, though. There were no new seedlings emerging in the other tray.

I was supposed to presoak the carrot seeds a while ago, but things got busy and it just didn’t happen. Now I’m glad it got delayed, and I think I will delay a few more days. We’re supposed to get a couple of centimeters of snow tomorrow evening! It looks like things will warm up and stay above freezing, even overnight, by Tuesday, so I will aim to start the seeds soaking on Saturday. The video I’m using said it should take 3 or 4 days for roots to show, so we’ll see how that goes.

The Re-Farmer

Broken gates, sad seedlings and critter company

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The chain link fence in front of the house has two gates in it. One smaller, people-sized gate, and a larger vehicle-sized gate.

Both are broken at the hinges.

I had been leaving both gates open; we only ever needed to close them when the renter’s cows got into the outer yard, when his electric fence failed. With the people gate, when we closed it to keep the goat in the inner yard, the top hinge came completely loose from the pin. It still was doing the job, though – until today!

While I was working on the new garden plot, I heard a commotion. I don’t know how she did it, but the goat knocked the gate off its hinges, and got a hoof caught in the chain link!

She was able to get herself out without any help, but I had to just set the gate aside until later.

In the early evening, while I was in the pen, trying to get the goat comfortable with the idea of being in there with me, the girls were kind enough to fix the gate. Well. As much as it can be fixed, for now.

The ring around the post ended up needing to be lowered. The clasp on the gate side was twisted open, and has been closed up again around the pin, as much as we can. The bottom one, at least, just needed the pin straightened out, then it could be slipped right into the clasp.

Unfortunately, the other post has shifted, so while the latch parts now line up again (with a bit of adjusting), the post is leaning too far away for the latch to catch. So we’ll just use the rubber cord that was already on the fence when we moved here. :-D

The vehicle gate has been left as is. I don’t know if we’ll even bother trying to fix the hinges on that one. They are pretty twisted up, but at least they can’t be knocked to the ground, as they currently are.

We partially succeeded in getting the goat to go into the pen, then let her be, so as not to create bad associations with the pen. We still wanted to be out and around her, though, so it was a good time to start soaking the new garden plot.

She and Potato Beetle kept us company!

The cats are still intimidated by her, but their curiosity seems to be slowly overcoming their nervousness!

Also, we need to pick up a new 100 ft hose. The old ones, in spite of my repairs last year, are not holding out well! The only good hose we have right now is the new 50 ft hose we picked up last fall. With two hoses together to make 100 ft, it doesn’t reach the plot, so we can’t set up a sprinkler. We just have to spray it from a short distance away.

We will be giving the garden plot thorough waterings over the next few days, while I start the carrot seeds germinating indoors. According to the video, it should take up to 4 days. We’re not expecting any rain in that time, so it’s up to us to get the soil watered deeply.

As for the seeds I started in trays…

This is the tray with all squash seeds. No gourds have come up at all, yet. The middle is the “summer surprise” mix and, so far, I’m thinking only one variety as started growing. On the right are the patty pans, and only a couple have showed up, there.

These are the cucamelons, and I’m actually rather pleased with how many have sprouted, so far.

Once I see how many have successfully sprouted for transplants, I’ll have a better idea of how I need to prep the garden area, and what I need for trellises. I was going to build those in advance, but I decided to see how many sprout, first, so I know how many I’ll need. From the looks of it, that was a good decision.

Then there is the fennel.

I’m rather disappointed with these. The only ones that have sprouted where the ones that showed up while it was still set up in the living room. They got really leggy, immediately, and no other seeds have sprouted! We might not have any fennel at all this year, if this doesn’t improve.

Meanwhile, I got notified by Veseys, with a tracker number, that our Yukon Gem potatoes have been shipped. They are expected to arrive in 8 days, so we have time to prepare where we want to plant them.

Thankfully, the weather is pleasant during the day, though temperatures are still dipping below freezing overnight.

There is lots to get done outside in the next little while!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, and keeping warm

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Beep Beep was doing a good job of keeping her babies warm on this chilly morning.

She didn’t come out at all while I topped up her food and water

The basement actually maintains a pretty constant temperature, but while we didn’t get the predicted thunderstorms in our area, we did get quite a bit of rain, so the humidity has gone up a fair bit. The sump pump is doing its job, though, so that’s good.

Yesterday evening I spent some time working in the basement, leaving the door open. At first, only two of the upstairs cats came to check things out, which was a bit of a surprise, considering how interested most of them are over that door. Eventually, the others discovered the open door and came to visit. Beep Beep, however, preferred to check out what I was doing! :-D

Then she demanded cuddles. :-D

We did get the rest of the cats out for the night; they might be ignoring the babies for now, but why take chances?

Temperatures have gone down quite a bit, today, and it looks like we had rain on and off all night. As I write this, the temperatures outside are 4C (39F), with a “realfeel” of -2C (28F), and it’s expected to warm up only a couple of degrees. I am happy for the rain, but even though the sun room is still pretty warm, I decided to put the seed trays into the mini-greenhouse along with the light I used as a heat source for the cats’ water bowl last winter. Just for a little while. I don’t have grow lights, but I can at least give them a bit more warmth.

Even when doing my rounds, I didn’t see any of the outside cats at all, until I was coming back to the house and found Rosencrantz had come out for food. They’re all holed up somewhere, keeping warm and dry.

My daughter has her one shift of the week today, but other than heading to and from town, this will be an inside day, for sure. Definitely not going to be getting any work done on the new garden plot. Tomorrow is supposed to be just as chilly, but no rain, so by Tuesday, I hope to be able to get back at it. Things are not supposed to get actually warm again until the middle of the month. If all goes well, it will stay warm, I’ll have the new garden plot finished, get the carrots planted, and we’ll be ready to do transplants by the end of May.

Assuming the seed starts do well. I’m not too encouraged by what I’m seeing of the fennel. :-(

The Re-Farmer

More garden bed progress – and an experiment

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Today, while the girls worked on the replacement sun room door, I was able to get some progress what will be a new garden bed.

I normally like to take lots of before and after pictures, but today, I decided to experiment. I have a little Gorilla Pod with a phone holder, so I set it up to take time lapse images every 60 seconds. I ended up taking 3 sets of them, then put them together in a little video. This is the result. I hope you like it!

I started with the camera set up in a tree facing the house, but the girls don’t like having their images posted online, so when they started working outside on the door, I moved it to another location.

With images every minute, it actually missed some of the surprisingly large roots I dug out. At one point, I was fighting over a mass of roots that just didn’t want to budge. They were the remains of a group of cherry trees, some live, some not, growing through a couple of pallets that I cleared out last year. After she finished painting the door, my daughter came and helped me get it out. That thing was a beast to get rid of!

There were a few times when I tried to pull up some roots – especially the large spruce roots – but could only get so far. After removing enough soil, I would find that they were being held down by cherry roots growing across them. I would have to dig those out first, then I could pull out the ones I’d started with.

I ended up having to stop long before I was done (I would say it’s a bit more than half done right now), simply because it was getting too hot! Which is an amazing thing to say considering that, depending on whether I am looking at the weather app on my phone, or on my desktop, we’ve reached our high of either 14C (57F) or 11C (52F) out there right now. Which, in the summer, would be considered cooler! :-D

We’re not going to get all the roots out. There are just too many, and lots are quite small. As long as we can get the soil clear enough that the carrots will be able to grow straight, that’s good enough for our first year.

When we had the chance, my daughter and I talked about building raised beds at some point. I do want to do this, but when we do, these will be tall raised beds, for accessibility. So once built, they will be pretty much permanent, and we’ll have to keep that in mind when deciding where to put them. We’ll see how things go this year, as the first year we’re able to plant any gardens at all.

Interestingly, while talking to my mother as I drove her back from the hospital, she started telling me that, if she were still at the farm and my dad were still around and able to help, she would fill the area where the old garden was with trees. Which is a complete change from when we first moved here, and she kept saying we needed to plow it and plant it and garden right away, and was very upset when didn’t do that, no matter how much I explained other things were higher priority. Anyhow, I told her that planting trees there is exactly what we would like to do, and told her (again) about our wanting to plant a nut orchard and fruit trees. So she started telling me that we have to prepare the area before we start buying trees, and how I should be doing that, because once the trees come in, they need to be planted right away! :-D I assured her that yes, that is exactly what we plan to do, and will be starting to do this year. I reminded her that one of the things we were planning to do this year was plant the giant sunflowers that are tall enough to act as a wind break, so we’ll have seed heads for the birds over the winter. She told me that they had tried planting sunflowers too (I even remember them), but that the birds would eat all the seeds before they even ripened. That is, indeed, something we will have to plan for, though I do remember eating sunflower seeds that we’d grown, so at least some of the seed heads made it to harvest!

Speaking of seeds, I’m happy to say that some summer squash seeds have started to sprout, so I’ve taken the cover off the second planting tray in the sun room. They seem to like the warmth in there! Even overnight, the temperatures have been holding out well enough that I have not put them into the mini-greenhouse in the evenings.

As for the garden plot I’m working on now, it’s going to be at least a couple of days before we can get back to it. Tomorrow, we will be heading into the city for our big shop, and on Friday, we’re expected to have thunderstorms. If I can, I’ll try and get a bit more work in there, but it’s unlikely we’ll have a chance to do that before Saturday.

It’s slower going than I’d hoped, but good progress has been made.

The Re-Farmer

Update, up and broken things

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First, an update on the kitties!

Beep Beep came half out of her baby nest to have a bit of food while I was there, with the babies peacefully snoozing in a pile. I was even able to get a picture, despite her best efforts to use her butt to block my attempts. :-D

She was more co-operative later.

That is one happy, contented bunch of wormies!

Beep Beep looks ticked off at the flash. :-D

While I was outside, doing my rounds, Butterscotch and her boys followed me around.

Creamsicle really, really wanted up – and not just with me!

He does love climbing things!

Including my leg. :-D

Potato Beetle was more polite about it.

Just look at that face!

He has a terrible habit of running in front of us as we are walking, then flopping down on the ground, right in front of our feet. It can be very hard not to step on or trip over him! :-D

He likes to go up on the roof and watch the girls through the upstairs window. I’m told he even falls asleep with his forehead against the glass! :-D He is such an affectionate boy. :-)

Butterscotch not only let me pet her this morning, but even let me pick her up, if only briefly. This let me get a quick feel of her belly. The one teat that was very swollen yesterday is still swollen, but already getting softer. This is good, since her not suckling could potentially lead to mastitis.

Before heading outside this morning, I checked on the seeds I’d started earlier, and found there are some seedlings sprouted among the fennel, so I took the dome off the tray. They are already really leggy. I need to get them set up in the sun room soon. The main concern I have for there is how much the temperatures drop during the night. We can’t get a good sense of that with the doors propped open all the time, so I was going to close the outer door, leaving the inner door with its much smaller window, open. We could then keep an eye on the temperature through the bathroom window, throughout the day.

Unfortunately, the door can’t close.

Even when we first moved here, this door was difficult to close. I had to lift it and basically force it shut. Now, not even that works.

Not that it matters anymore. We need to replace the door.

A part of the door’s edge appears to have changed shape and just hits the frame. That’s the part that prevents the door from closing. If this had been the only issue, I could just use one of the planes we found in the basement and shave it down. However, as you can see in the photo, the door itself is coming apart at the bottom, and the window is no longer attached along one side. The caulking is old, brittle and has been breaking off all long that side.

Theoretically, I could take the door off its hinges and repair all of this, but it’s really not worth the effort. I’m pretty sure this is a standard sized door, and we should be able to switch it out with one of the doors we’ve found in a shed.

It’ll be worth a try, at least.

If that doesn’t work… we’ll have to figure something out, or I won’t be able to use the sun room as a greenhouse. I need to be able to protect the trays from the cats.

So that’s something I hope to get done this afternoon.

Wish me luck! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, cold damage and more thinking ahead

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Let’s play “can you spot all the kittens?”

I had to dig one of them out from behind Beep Beep’s head. :-D

Butterscotch’s kittens are much harder to get pictures of.

I finally just stuck my phone in and used voice activation to take some photos, hoping it was angled right.

I got one shot that managed to include all the babies. :-D

We want to move the kittens and mamas out of their nests so we can put down fresh, clean cat beds, but don’t want to disturb them so soon after birth.

In other areas…

I took a closer look at one of our surviving blue spruces, of a group of three that had been planted way two close together, some years ago.

Most of the remaining branches have cold damage like this at the tips. It should be okay, but might take a while to recover from having its newest growth killed off.

Yesterday, I posted a photo of one area we will need to address, when the time comes for us to plant the fruit and nut trees we are planning to do in the future. Here is another area we’ll have to figure out.

Among the trees I hope we will be able to plant are Korean pine. This is a tree that needs to have a “shade shelter” for the first couple of years, and this location naturally provides that for most of the day. However, as you can see, this is also where water pools in the spring. That shade also means the snow takes a lot longer to melt away, and the ground stays frozen longer.

What we eventually want to do is get this package of hardy nut trees. It will be some time before we can afford that. In the shorter term, I hope to slowly acquire a good variety of fruit trees and bushes from this site, that can survive in our growing zone. They even have a variety of apricot that can grow in a zone 3!

This is one of the reasons I want to expand the inner yard to include the outer yard. I see no point in replacing the old and broken fences around the inner yard. If we just get rid of those (the chain link fence is still sturdy, and can at least be used as a trellis), we’ll have easier access to areas we can plant food trees and bushes.

We just have to make sure the fence around the outer yard doesn’t have any gaps or weak spots the renter’s cows can break through, if his electric fence gives out again. :-)

We still need to finish clearing and cleaning the inner yard, but if all goes well, I hope to get started on the outer yard this summer, too. Especially if we want to start salvaging some things we’re finding to use for gardening and so one. I can foresee a time when we’ll even have greenhouses in the outer yard area. But first, we need to do a lot of clean up out there – including cleaning up a collapsing log building, and figuring out how to salvage the log building that we used to use as a chicken coop, when I was a kid. That one still looks solid.

Little by little, we’re making progress! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties

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So many kitties!

Of course, I visited the mamas first thing this morning.

They are much more comfortable in their new surroundings, and quite eager for human attention.

Just look at those round, round baby bellies!!

I’d kept the cardboard box from the hot water tank, and it’s now serving as a rug on top of the concrete. :-D I’m also finding Beep Beep on top of the chairs, and she’ll even go up on the table. Butterscotch, likely because she if farther along that Beep Beep, makes no attempt to jump up onto anything! :-D

Going into the sun room, there was little sign of the skunks. They’d been in there, but I don’t think they stayed long. All the kibble was gone, but it was already low in the evening and we didn’t top it up, so there was not much left for them to get into.

It did mean, however, that the outside cats were quite hungry.

I was happy to see Big Jim hanging out in the sun room. The blood I’d seen on his face previously is dried up and disappearing – he is such a filthy boy! – and I was unable to spot where it came from. It may have come from a scratch on an ear, near the head. Wherever the wound is, it’s too small to be seen through his fur.

Also, Rosencrantz! We’ve started to see her a bit more often of late.

The kitties were hungry enough that Junk Pile cat almost came inside while I was there.

Usually, when I add food to the outside bowls, Junk Pile and Pump Shack cats are pretty skittish about eating until I leave.

They were still skittish, but hungry enough to tolerate my nearness more than usual.

The only outside cat I didn’t see this morning was Potato Beetle. Even Nicky the Nose was hanging around.

Waiting for me to leave, before he comes to the house to eat.

In the sun room, I started to take the rigid insulation off the south facing windows. We’re at a point were the passive solar heat would be more beneficial than the insulation We’ll take the rest down when we can finally start emptying the room out to clean it.

I also removed some of the insulation around the base of the house to uncover a couple of windows to the basement. This way, Butterscotch and Beep Beep can have natural light. When we can start hauling stuff we removed from the basement to the barn, we’ll take all the insulation around the base of the house to the barn for storage until next fall.

One of my goals for today is to start some cucamelons indoors. :-) They apparently take a very long time to germinate, compared to other things. I’ve worked out the timing of when to start different seeds, and even those I plan to start 2 weeks from now might actually start germinating sooner than the cucamelons. It should be interesting to see how these all turn out.

Time to get back at it! :-)

The Re-Farmer