garden

The good, the bad, the “someone just shoot me now”

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

What a day.

What a long day that started really well…

I had a very enthusiastic crowd waiting for me this morning. Including the new edition. I was even able to pet her a few times, though she kept moving away when I did.

But yes, I was able to confirm. Our new addition is a she.

I just hope that, wherever she came from, she’s already fixed.

In the end, I counted 19 cats this morning. Only Rosencrantz was missing. :-)

My morning rounds now include going to the very corner of the property to check on the sign. No vandalism! (yet?)

What I found interesting is that the squash tunnel was shaded. It is only this time of year that the shadows from the spruce grove reach this far. In the summer, the squash tunnel gets full sun, all day. The main garden area’s beds, meanwhile, are now in pretty much full shade all day. What a difference, time of year makes!

The transplanted mint is looking just fine; not at all droopy from being moved.

One of the empty blocks, however, seems to attracted a critter. Possibly a skunk digging for grubs. Whatever it was, it lost us some of the soil in those openings around the edges! I want to fill those with sand or gravel.

After I finish my rounds, I spend some time going over the trail cam files. We had a long list of things to work on outside, while it is still relatively warm in the afternoon. I was going to head out right after having lunch, then calling my mom to arrange to bring her to see the sign tomorrow.

She called me first.

She wanted to come today.

I told her I was thinking of tomorrow, because it’s such a warm day, and we have lots to do outside. She said the warm day was why she wanted to come today, because it would be harder for her when it was cooler. And I could spare an hour for her, couldn’t I?

Which would mean just driving her over to see the sign, taking some photos of her next to it, then driving her home. Was that what she was wanting to do?

Yes.

Okay.

So off I head to the town she lives in, and when I get there, she is cleaning out her purse and preparing a list of things she needs.

Since I’m there with her car, anyhow…

Okay, so we’ve added grocery shopping to the list. No worries.

We head back to the farm and as we come to our driveway, my Mom suggests we go straight to where the sign is from the road, not in the driveway. As we get closer, however, she suggested we keep going to look at the other quarter section, first. Just a drive by. This was something she had talked about wanting to go before, so I was expecting it. We did the drive, saw that it looks like the renter has moved his cows to that quarter, since there is a hay bale, salt blocks and a feeder set up near the gate. At the far end of the property is an intersection I can turn around at, then back we went to the sigh. I pulled over on the road, and there was thankfully a nice level spot she could go over with her walker. We got several pictures, and then back to the car.

Did she want to see what I did with the outhouse? I ask.

Oh, yes! was her enthusiastic reply.

I am such an idiot.

First, we drove over to the old workshop that is now completely filled with all my parents’ stuff we cleared out of the house. There was an old framed print she wanted. This was something else that had come up in past conversation, so we too the opportunity to grab that. Then we drove into the yard, and I backed up towards the outhouse.

My mother being ticked off that I did that, instead of parking further ahead, as usual, should have been my first warning.

To make it short, because I really don’t want to relive the experience, my mother decided to tour the inner yards, starting with the newly finished brick lined bed where the tomatoes were (she liked that, at least), but not until after making snide comments about the newly framed low beds where we have two types of garlic planted (so this is where you’re putting the garden now, is it? Uhm… no, Mom. It’s just the garlic).

I tried several times to redirect her to the outhouse, and she ignored me every time. As she worked her way around the yard, she made sure to give me a hard time about the garbage pile, which we need to hire someone to haul away for us (she didn’t have much to say when I pointed out this was garbage we found all around the yard that’s now in one place), acted surprised about the tire planters being moved, even though she’s been here since they were moved, and had just walked past the one that isn’t wrecked and could be used again), made sure to tell me to leave the spruce tree she planted at the chain link fence (I’s talked about transplanting it, before it gets so big it tears the fence apart, shortly after we moved out here, and she went ballistic on me, so I didn’t say anything this time). I commented on the second one that had been there dying, and she lectured me on how I should have watered it (it was killed by the cold, two winters ago), made numerous comments about the things I should have done around the yard (things I would have been doing, if she hadn’t asked me to bring her over), asked why I’d cut down the crab apple tree by the old compost, and when I told her it had died of diseased, lectured me about watering things again. Because, in her mind, if you water the trees, they won’t get disease. Then she mocked and laughed at me for building the high raised bed, the squash tunnel, the trellises and the low raised beds. No one does things like that, you see. They just plowed the whole thing.

Then she nagged me about various other things as she worked her way around the yard. When I thought she was finally going to the outhouse, she ended up going to the back door of the garage. She wanted to see the wood chipper.

That door leads to where her car is parked.

I tried to get her to go around, but she wrestled her walker through to door, so she could snoop in the garage. Which was have not even come close to cleaning up. I got the chipper out for her to see, and she really liked that, but then complained because there were still branch piles. Then she complained about how ugly they looked, and how ugly the post pounder my late brother built looked. I’d covered it with a tarp I’d found in the barn that was big enough, but after several years, the wind has torn it to shreds. We don’t have anything else big enough to protect it. But it looks ugly, and people can see it from the road, so it needs to be covered.

Eventually, we made our way back into the yard and…

She went to the car to leave.

By then, I’d opened the door to the outhouse, but hadn’t put the mat back because I wanted her to see how nice the floor looked, too.

She wouldn’t go near it. She just glanced over and said she could see it through the door. Then got into the car.

So, I put the mat back, closed up the outhouse, put her walker into the car, then we headed out.

Along the drive home, I tried to chat and mentioned the electric chainsaw we got. She mocked me about it, but in such a way that I didn’t understand her “joke” at all. Which then led to a whole slough of mockery.

I shouldn’t be using a chainsaw. I shouldn’t be doing men’s work. I need a man. Also, I’ve done nothing at the farm at all. Apparently, I’m a weak, useless, stupid woman who shouldn’t do actual work, except for the stuff that she used to do on the farm (while everything else magically did itself, apparently), which I am not doing right, because I haven’t done it yet, but she thinks I should have done it by now, or I’m not doing it the way she did, therefore I’m doing it wrong.

Oh, I forgot. At one point, when I told her that I’d lost a day of work by having to drive her around, she told me, what work? I don’t have cows to milk! What work am I doing? I don’t have any work.

Well, I called her on her behaviour, and pointed out that she shows no appreciation, gratitude or kindness. To which I got a sanctimonious, “yes, yes, get that off your chest” response. Because, clearly, I’m the one with the problem, and her cruelty and insults are neither cruel nor insulting.

*sigh*

Still, when we got back to her town, we were civil. I helped her with her grocery shopping, though she brought up getting an apple pie to have with tea when we got back to her place. I told her I didn’t have time to stop for tea, but she could get one if she wanted.

She didn’t.

Once at her place, I put her groceries away and she was going to give me some money for gas, which I do appreciate. She then brought out a bill (almost enough to cover the amount of gas spent in driving, but I do still appreciate it!) and told me, if I’d invited her inside for tea, I would have gotten more.

I told her, I didn’t realize that was an expectation.

By the time I left and put some gas in the tank, it was so late, I couldn’t even stop at the post office to pick up a package. My day was wasted. There was no time to even start anything when I got back, because I wouldn’t have enough time to finish before the light was gone.

I’m just so ticked off right now. After talking with my husband and telling him some of how it went, his response is, not to have her back here again. And at this point, I can’t disagree.

My mother is why we are living here. We came here to take care of the place for her. Now that the ownership has been transferred to my brother, I still try to respect her wishes as much as possible, and keep her informed of how things are going. In the end, though, she doesn’t own this place. My brother does. And he is very happy with what we are doing, and with our various plans for improving the place. He is our “landlord”. Not my mother. She has no actual say in how this place is run, and she certainly has no right to verbally abuse me.

I am lost past the stage where she can actually hurt me anymore, but my goodness, she can drain every bit of energy out of me. I feel more exhausted from a few hours with her – and it wasn’t even an unusually bad visit! – than I would have felt if I’d spend those same hours doing manual labour. Mental exhaustion is far more difficult to recover from than physical exhaustion. Still, to look at the bright side, at least there wasn’t a single racist rant or shouting about political issues she doesn’t understand, either.

Thank God my brother now owns this place. He and his wife more than make up for all the trouble my mother causes. They are such awesome people, and make it all worthwhile.

The Re-Farmer

The luffa is still trying! Plus, a bit of an update.

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Our temperatures have been lurching around quite a bit, lately! Last night, we dipped to 3C/37F, but our high of the day is supposed to reach 23C/73F!

I’m watching our garden beds closely and had a surprise. Not only is our Ozark Nest Egg gourd trying to produce more gourds, so are the luffa!

This is our first – and until now, only – luffa that was developing. It’s withering away, likely due to lack of pollination.

Right near it I found these.

Three new luffa starting to develop!

There are even some male flowers blooming, too. With so few pollinators around right now, I am thinking of pollinating them by hand, to give them a chance to actually mature, but it’s almost October. Normally, I wouldn’t bother, but then, this year it looking like we will have a long, warm fall. I’d like to see how far along they get.

Though last night was chilly, we had no frost warnings, and when I headed out early this morning, to make sure the gate was open for the septic guy, I don’t think I saw any frost damage. I even was able to harvest a couple more zucchini this morning.

The overnight dip did make going to the outhouse during the night rather unpleasant! As I write this, we are still waiting on the septic guy to come by. All he could tell me when I called last night was that he thought he could make it in the morning.

Until the tank is emptied, there is no point in trying to unclog the pipe from the basement to the tank. So for now, we’re not only stuck using the outhouse, but doing things like using a bowl to wash up in, so the water can be dumped outside later, rather than going down the drain.

I’m really hoping we can get this is just a straightforward clearing of that pipe. Otherwise, we’ll be having to call a plumber, and that means dipping into funds set aside for other things. The good thing is, we have those funds if we need them, at least. :-/ As much of a pain as it can sometimes be, we’ve actually been able to set aside a bit of cash into a contingency fund. While we were living in the city, that was impossible to do. So I am thankful for that, at least!

The Re-Farmer

Caught in the act!

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Oh, the adorable little beast.

I moved the garden cam again, this time onto the summer squash. I’d had to tie some of their stems back onto their supports, and wasn’t sure if they’d come loose under their own weight, or if something caused them to fall.

Our sunburst squash is looking prolific, but we’ve had very little to pick. Lots of them have been withering on the vine, but there have also been bite marks on them.

It is confirmed who is the cause of this!

I had the camera low on its pole, and at some point during the night it slid down and spun a bit to the left. Which is why it caught a raccoon going by. There was a possibility that the raccoons were doing damage, but it completely ignored the squash, other than to go around them.

I was about 99.9% sure it was the woodchuck doing the damage. Now it is 100% confirmed.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

What I found this morning

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I tried to head out earlier to do my rounds this morning, as I wanted to make sure all the garden beds got a deep watering, and that the fall plantings got their shade covers. Last night, we never got cooler than 19C/66F, and it was already above 20C/68F by the time I got outside. We’re supposed to hit 31C/88F, with a humidex of 37C/99F by this afternoon.

They’re also saying we’re supposed to get thunderstorms this afternoon. I’ll believe THAT when I see it!

I had a few amusing surprises this morning. One of them was the filthy, filthy water bowls.

We often see where the skunks have been digging for grubs, but this was an unusually enthusiastic dig, for the dirt to be scattered into the water bowls like that!

There must be a lot of grubs right now, because I was finding little divots all over the place this morning.

Well, now.

It looks like the raccoons are not only still able to get to the bird feeder from below, but have figured out how to open the top!

Note the condition of the formerly white post.

The new hanging bird feeder was empty again. No real surprise there, as it is smaller than the old one. I didn’t find the canister on the ground this morning, but it was slid around to the “unlock” position.

It’s the support post that really caught my attention. You can’t really see it in the photo, but all up the post are little scratches in the wood. Then there’s the greasy layer of dirt stuck to it, like on the metal post supporting the big feeder. That would be from the raccoons greasy fur!

Ew.

I notice there’s a fair bit of exposed wood now, too. We’re going to have to pick up more of this paint. I don’t think we have enough left to do many touch ups.

This made me smile! The Little Gem squash is developing quite a few fruit, and this one is looking noticeably bigger, even from yesterday. When ripe, these will turn a deep, reddish orange – their other name is Red Kuri – with a round body and a little neck, and should reach 4-5 pounds.

Hopefully, enough of these will survive and ripen to make up for what looks like a complete loss on the Teddy squash. The plants are looking vigorous, and they are blooming, but it seems their developing fruit are irresistible to some short critter that isn’t triggering the motion sensor on the garden cam. From what I could see this morning, there are no female flowers, and any developing fruit there had been before are gone.

More information to file away for our garden next year!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: garlic is harvested!

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Things have been a bit odd with our garlic this year. I am sure part of it is because of the drought, but others, I’m not so sure!

We did a partial harvest and curing of our Purple Stripe garlic a while ago. The remaining garlic looked like it was ready to harvest for the last week or so, but I wanted to be sure of them before I dug them up. Here is how the beds looked, before I started.

In the foreground are what’s left of the Purple Stripe garlic, and the other half of the bed is Rocambole.

This bed has the Porcelain Music in the foreground, and the other half of the Rocambole in the other side.

I started with the Purple Stripe, since I was curious to see how they compared to the ones that were harvested early.

I was very surprised and impressed! They are really nice and big!

The Porcelain Music has bulbs a fair bit smaller, and a lot more compact feeling. These probably should have been harvested maybe even a week ago.

Then it was time to start on the Rocambole, where I had a surprise waiting for me.

I found a pair of garlic scapes!

The Rocambole were the oddest of the garlic, and their scapes were part of that. We didn’t get a lot of scapes from them, since so many seemed to get stuck in the stems.

There was certainly a lot of them. They were the smallest of the garlic bulbs, though several of them were double bulbs. Quite a few of them had “bulbs” forming in their stems, of varying sizes.

Here is the entire harvest. I’m rather pleased with it! :-)

Each garlic type got tied off and hung to cure inside the gazebo tent.

The Purple Stripe looks so meager compared to the others. :-D

You can see some of the mutant Rocambole here. One of them had really large bulbils forming in the stem – easily as big as a head of garlic! – and almost no bulb underground.

There’s so much garlic handing in the gazebo tent, I’m a bit concerned about the weight on the supports! I wonder if we can find a way to hang them in the basement with the dehumidifier or something. It’s been so dry, we haven’t had to use the dehumidifier in the old basement at all this year.

While those are hanging to cure, I brought these ones inside.

There were a few odd little bulbs that lost their stems, or the stems were really weak. There’s even a couple of bulbils that fell of the stems of Rocambole. That’s what most of these are, though there are a few Porcelain Music in there, too. These will be for using right away. :-)

That is now it for our garlic in the garden! Now I just need to clean up the beds. I am thinking of going through the barn to see if there is any scrap wood suitable to build box frames for these beds. I don’t think we’ll be doing high raised beds here, but I do want to keep the soil from falling down the sides and into the paths. :-) Then we can think about what to plant in them, next year! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Little friends, and garlic mystery solved?

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Well, we’ve passed our forecasted high of the day and have reached 30C/86F, with the humidex putting us at 35C/95F, this afternoon. We did, however, get RAIN this morning! I was awakened by the sound of thunder, so I quickly went outside to make sure the cats and birds had food before the rain hit. The storm blew past us, but it did start to rain while I was still outside. I’ll take the nice, gentle rain, thank you very much!

Unfortunately, it looks like this will be the last rain we’ll have in a while, and tomorrow the smoke is supposed to be back. What rain we did have never reached the fires up north. :-(

While doing my evening rounds yesterday, and checking the old kitchen garden (the floating row covers are doing their job; no signs of critters trying to get under them, and our carrots are recovering!), I stumbled on a pretty green friend!

It was just hanging out on the leaf of one of the flowers that made its way through the layers of mulch we put on this garden, two summers ago. We’ve seen a lot of frogs this year (likely because all the ponds and ditches have dried up), but we don’t often see the green tree frogs.

It didn’t seem to like us giants hanging around, so we let it be, though I must admit, it is very tempting to want to hold it.

I also was able to get a picture of some furry friends.

Rosencrantz and Nosencrantz were calm enough to just watch me as I went by. Toesencrantz, unfortunately, is more skittish and was hiding.

I so want to boop Nosencrantz’s nose. :-D

While the girls and I were checking the garlic beds, I showed them this odd garlic.

It looks like garlic is forming inside the stem, and this one is getting pretty big. I’d noticed another had started to show signs of this happening a few days ago. This is only in the Racombole garlic, which is split between the two garlic beds, so the girls started looking around in the other bed, and we found several more.

This one was the strangest looking one, and it may explain what’s happening.

This looks like a garlic scape! This might explain why the Racombole seemed to have fewer scapes than the other two varieties. Instead of growing out the tops, as they should have, the scapes look like they got stuck in the bottoms of the stems in quite a few of the plants. Since they didn’t get harvested, bulbils are now forming inside the stems, eventually bursting through. Only this one had the rest of the scape emerge from the stem for us to see.

It also looks like something tried to give this one a taste!

In theory, we can keep the bulbils and plant them in the fall. Hardneck garlic are bi-annual, growing seeds in their second year. Planting the cloves, rather than the bulbils, and harvesting the scapes by passes that, allowing for large bulbs with lots of cloves to form. If we planted bulbils, we sould get small bulbs that are basically one big clove. Kind of like the garlic we had to harvest early, because the plants died back so soon.

It should be interesting to see the bulbs that form under the plants that have these trapped bulbils growing in their stems. I would expect they would be smaller bulbs, though with conditions this year, I expect all of them to be smaller. I don’t expect to have any suitable for planting next year. This year, for our fall planting, we are looking to double the amount of garlic we plant. I should order them soon; they will be shipped when ready for planting in our zone, so ordering early will not be an issue. We will just have to decide where we want to plant them this fall, as we rotate things.

I am finding that half the fun of gardening is planning out next year’s garden! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Not my garden, and sighting

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

This afternoon, I got to visit my sister and her husband on their farm.

We may be in the boonies, but they are even more in the boonies than we are! :-D

Before I left their place, we did a tour of their yard and garden, and I really appreciated being able to see how theirs is doing, in this heat.

Her row of rhubarb was a study in extremes. In the middle, she had these MASSIVE leaves and stalks – which is normal for her rhubarb – but in other areas, they were smaller and wimpy, like ours, and at one end of the row, they were basically dead. So strange!

Where I’m standing to take this photo used to be part of their garden, but they reduced its size. That area is now full of self-seeded dill. This end of the garden is where they have their annuals, with some rows already cleared and tilled. At the far end are their perennials, including onions (different from the ones they have in the rows visible at the annual end), horseradish, asparagus, sorrel, mint, and a few other things. They’ve got determinate tomatoes, and I could see some very large ones developing. No peas or corn, but they do have beans, beats and potatoes, among other things.

They usually water their garden from the nearby creek. In this photo, you can see a platform on the shore, and the end of the hose is between the two sticks in the water, with a float. This is where they pump the water from.

The creek is about 3 feet lower than usual this year, and it’s got to the point that they are watering using their well water. They only water every couple of days, though, unlike the nightly watering we are having to do. It has actually been lower than this, in the past.

After all those years… LOL

When my brother in law retired from farming (like where we are, most of the land is rented out), he took over much of the gardening. The first time a deer got into their garden, he put up the fence.

Deer are not the only issue they have. They also have to deal with black bears, raccoons and…

Yup. They have woodchucks, too. This den is under the deck of a now-empty house they share a yard with. There are dens in other areas, too. Apparently, their woodchucks have plenty of other food to eat besides their garden, because their deer fence is just touching the ground at the bottom, not buried, and they’re not trying to get it.

Which is as good a segue as any as to why I visited them today. My brother in law finally had time to help sight the scope on my crossbow.

Now, this is something we could have done ourselves, except we don’t have anything to accurately measure longer distances. My BIL is an avid hunter and has a range finder, so we figured we’d go to him and get it done right.

He never even used it. He just paced off the distance, just as he would have in sighting the scopes on his rifles! :-D

Now, he had plenty of experience with rifle scopes, but he’d never worked with a crossbow before, so the first thing he did was spend time reading the instruction manual (I brought everything! LOL). We had only finger tightened the scope, so after he checked it a few times and confirmed that it was the right distance for me, he tightened that down, and then we went to his target bale.

The instructions said to start at 10 yards, which is about where the corner of that fence is, then moving to 20 yards to fine tune the scope. He is sitting at 20 yards in the photo, which is what we need the scope to be sighted to.

Also, do you see that white blob on the creek in the background?

That is a flock of pelicans. :-D

He was expecting it to take only about half an hour to sight the scope, but we ended up out there, in the heat, for probably more than an hour before we stopped.

He did the final shots at about 30 yards, before we called it for the day.

The bolt here is the first shot done at 30 years. He was aiming for the target on the left.

If you look at the top right, there is a single hole. That was the first shot at 10 years, before he started adjusting the scope.

Above and to the right of the centre target are a series of holes. He hit the exact same spot a couple of times. The instruction manual described how many clicks equaled 1 inch at 20 yards and, according to that, with the number of adjustments he made, it should have been hitting to the left of the centre target! After hitting the same spot a couple of times, the bolt ended up so far into the target, the fletchings were squeezed into the hole, too. One of them ended up coming loose. It just needs a bit of fletching glue to fix and it’ll be fine, but that’s when he started to aim at the other target.

By the time he was done, he could get a good grouping at 30 yards, but it was still hitting to the right of the target. He’d adjusted it so far, he wasn’t sure it could go any further. The scope we have is different from any of his. In fact, it had a whole extra knob to adjust, but not even the scope’s instruction sheet (which was for rifles, not crossbows) had it labelled on their diagram.

So the crossbow is not sighted, but it is closer, and we are in a position that we can figure the rest out ourselves. Of course my husband, with his military background and marksman qualifications, knows how to do it. The main issue was measuring distance. Which my BIL just paced off, anyhow.

I think we can manage more accuracy than that, with what we have! :-D

Adjusting the scope was not the only thing that was a problem. The other was cocking it in the first place. The kit came with a rope cocker. There is a rock cocking groove at the end of the stock, just before it can be adjusted to size. The middle of the rope goes in the groove, two hooks with pulleys hook onto the string, from under the stock, and there are a pair of handles to pull on. At just shy of 6′ tall, he actually had trouble cocking it, once he straightened up past a certain point. He already had doubts that I could cock a bow with 220lb draw weight, but in the end, I’m basically too short. If he, at about 8 inches taller than me, was having a hard time, it’s pretty much assured that I don’t have the height and arm length to be able to raise the string high enough to latch in place!

He recommended we pick up a crank cocker.

Since we were never able to complete sighting the scope, I never fired the crossbow myself. That will just have to wait a bit longer.

In shooting the crossbow, he had a couple of issues with it. Obviously, the scope itself was one. I know that a lot of people who buy kits will replace the kit scope with a higher quality one right away. This wasn’t a matter of quality of materials, but adjustment. He also didn’t like the trigger, which was something else I saw some reviewers complaining about. It does, however, shoot well and shoot true. Once the scope is properly sighted, we should have no issues with it. I’ve seen reviewers complain about the adjustable stock, but he had no issues with that.

He also really didn’t like the rope cocker. He had mentioned to me that he had a friend who bought a crossbow and, the first time he tried to cock it, it slipped and he almost groined himself severely. He then immediately got rid of it. As my BIL was repeatedly cocking the bow, he said he could see just how easily that could happen. Eventually, I learned that when this person had tried to cock his bow, the stirrup slipped off his foot.

…

The instructions are EXTREMELY clear about how important foot placement in the cocking stirrup is. Which rather makes me wonder just how closely instructions were being followed. Mind you, this happened quite some time ago. The instructions may well include that now because people were hurting themselves by having just their toes in the stirrup, instead of having it under the middle of their foot.

There’s a reason the instruction manual has more safety warnings than pretty much anything else! This is not a toy.

So now we need to figure out where to set up a target practice area, mark out distances, and figure the rest out ourselves.

I did have some unexpected disappointments about the whole thing. While they are not being mean or malicious about it, it’s clear neither my BIL nor my sister are confident in me. Not just in being able to use and shoot the bow (yes, I have the physical strength pull 220lbs draw weight with the rope cocker), but they seemed to assume that this was some sort of spur of the moment thing I decided to do, without any sort of research or analysis, first. Like I was thinking of it as… well… some kinds of toy. The fact that I hope to actually use it to hunt is another area they clearly didn’t have confidence in me about, with both or them, at one point or another, making sure to mention that a deer will run off after being shot, and then it needs to be tracked. I knew that, of course. It happens even when hunting with a rifle. Why did they assume I would not know that? There were a few other… assumptions… made that had me wondering. I think part of it, for my BIL, was simply because he assumed that since he was having such a hard time with some things, I would have an even harder time, and not things where my height would make a difference. Was it because I am female, and they assume I’m weak? Or because I’m fat? Or because I’m the baby sister? I don’t know. It was off putting, even though I could tell they did not have any ill will behind their comments. More like their filter was off. :-D

Well, we shall see how things work out over time. First things first. We need to get that scope sighted properly, and then I have to practice. My husband will be able to cock the bow, no problem, and honestly, I think I might still be able to as well. Even if I can, we will be getting a silent crank. The rope cocker, it turns out, squeaks! :-D

My daughters, meanwhile, are pining for a compound bow.

I foresee a future Christmas gift…

The Re-Farmer

Second row cover, a determined little bugger, and happy times!

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Today, I was able to find a piece of wood of the right size to put end caps on the second chicken wire row cover. When I headed out to start working on it this evening, I discovered…

… that little woodchuck is a determined little bugger!

Over the next while, I made sure to make lots of noise as I went past the stairs to make sure that, if the woodchuck were in there, it would run off.

My daughters told me earlier that they’d seen the littlest woodchuck in the birth bath, drinking water. At least it was just the little one. The big one would have knocked the bird bath right off its pedestal!

One of the things I was thinking of while adding the end pieces to the row cover, was how to support the chicken wire. I no longer had any hula hoop pieces, like I used in the last one. I thought I might be able to use some old hose pieces, so I went to the pile of junk and odd bits and pieces by the old garden shed. I had left a damaged hose there, and used pieces of it to hold the mosquito netting onto the hula hoops when we had that rigged up as a cover over one of the spinach beds. When I looked at the hose, though, it was so floppy from the heat, that I could see it would never be able to hold up the wire mesh.

However…

… among the miscellaneous bits and pieces, I noticed some wire that looked pliable enough to bend into a curve, yet stiff enough to hold up the chicken wire. I was able to cut three lengths that I could weave through the chicken wire, and was able to push the ends in between the boards the chicken wire was held by. It did the job really well!

With the heatwave returning, I am thinking to sacrifice some old sheets to use as shade cloths, draped over these frames. The problem is, there is still one more newly planted bed, and I am out of the materials needed to made another row cover like these. We are going to have to figure something out! We finally have the radishes, kohlrabi and kale sprouting, along with the chard. I’d like for them to actually survive!

After this was done, I banged around the concrete steps for a while and, once sure that there was no critter under there, brought over some bigger rocks and broken pieces of bricks to fill the hole in again. Hopefully, these are big enough and heavy enough that it won’t be able to dig through again.

I was just about to head back inside while the girls were getting ready to do the evening watering, when I had a very happy surprise.

My husband actually felt well enough to walk around outside! He got a tour of most of the garden beds, and even felt well enough to walk to squash tunnel. He didn’t use his walker – it may be a heavy duty walker, but even it can’t handled the rough ground out there – and he didn’t even use a cane! Granted, it was slow going, and walking over those old plow furrows took extra care, but he did it! Gosh, I can’t remember the last time he felt well enough to go outside, without needing to go to a medical appointment or something. I’m so happy! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden; new seedlings – plus critters

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today, with repeated warnings for thunderstorms, and even the sound of thunder in the distance, we got only a smattering of rain this afternoon. Barely enough to get the ground a bit wet. :-( At least we’re a couple of degrees cooler than forecast. With the conditions we’ve had this year, our Rural Municipality officially declared an agricultural emergency. We had one last year, and I seem to remember there was an attempt by the province to declare one the year before, but it was rejected by the federal government. When I was growing up here, there were no such declarations. Whatever federal funding programs that are now available were brought in while we were living elsewhere, in cities.

It was during one of those times our skies were spitting a bit of moisture that I headed outside for a bit and made a point of checking the newly planted beds. Happily, we now have more seedlings appearing!

  • Swiss Chard
    “Bright lights”
  • Kohlrabi
    “Early Purple”
  • Kale
    “Russian Red”

Yes, these pictures were all taken after there was some rain. :-/

Both types of chard are showing seedlings, though I only took a photo of the one type.

It would be awesome if we FINALLY got some kohlrabi! We will be taken extra steps to try to protect these beds, since what’s growing in them are favoured by all kinds of critters. The red flakes you see on the ground around the seedlings are hot pepper flakes, which we hope will deter critters better than the sprays and granules we’ve bought.

Which leads me to why I headed outside.

I saw the woodchuck out by the old compost pile again.

Yes, I sprinkled the new mystery squash seedlings growing in there with hot pepper flakes, too.

As I came out, the woodchuck watched me for a while before finally running off and into…

*sigh*

…the old burrow we thought had finally been abandoned. We’re still running water into it, and collapsing the entrance little by little. The entrance is not being cleared, but they’re still squeezing in.

After seeing the woodchuck go in, I went and raided my kitchen cupboards again and dragged out a package of whole, dehydrated hot peppers. After giving them a rough chop, I scattered them in and around the opening.

At some point, we will be sure enough of it being empty, that we can finally fill it in. :-/

While heading back inside, I did get a chance to play with some more pleasant critters. Butterscotch’s junk pile babies!

Three of them like to come out to play with the stick, though they still won’t come close enough to touch. There’s that one tabby, hidden in the background, that just will not come closer.

I saw Rozencrantz’s babies – the other junk pile babies! – today, too, though I couldn’t get any pictures. The one that looks like Nicky the Nose is a bit braver and doesn’t run off until it’s sure if I’m coming closer. They like to play in the soil the cucamelons and gourds are planted. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except that I’ve caught them actively digging into the edge of the bed! At least they’re not digging near the plants, themselves. :-/

While we are still getting thunderstorm warnings, when I look at the hourly forecast, the warnings disappear. Instead, we will have sun and clouds for a few hours, and then it switches to “smoke”, all night. There are quite a few wildfires in the province right now, including about 5 that are listed as out of control, but none are near our area. Fire risk, of course, remains high so we are still under a total burn ban. It looks like we won’t get to test out the firepit grill my brother and his wife got for us this year at all, nor the big BBQ that they passed on to us after getting a smaller one for themselves.

Maybe we’ll get a chance to use them in the winter!

The Re-Farmer

Distractions

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Last night, before doing the evening watering, I did a couple of things to – hopefully! – distract the deer away.

One of them went around the Montana Morado corn.

The aluminum tins spin freely on the twine, so I hope they will do as distractions. We can add more distractions after a while, to change things up before they get used to them.

This next one is more of a diversion than a distraction. On a wildlife group I’m on, someone had posted a picture of a deer with her fawn, in their yard. With the heat and lack of rain we’ve been having, they had put out a bucket of water for the wildlife. The mama and her baby promptly showed up and started drinking, even as the guy who posted the picture was sitting on his deck with a coffee!

We have water bowls all over the place for the cats, plus we found a way to keep using the cracked bird bath. Which is great for the cats and birds (and skunks, and probably the woodchucks and racoon), but they’re rather small for deer. I imagine they might still be drinking from them, but for the amount of water in the shallow containers, it wouldn’t slack their thirst.

It occurred to me that if we could set up water for the deer in the right place, we might be able to divert them away from the garden. The deer damage we have been seeing has been comparatively small; they seem to be just nibbling a few things on the way by. My thought it, if they can get water somewhere away from the garden beds, they won’t have a reason to go by and nibble.

The deer go through the maple grove and jump the fence at the gates along West fence line. Our kiddie pool isn’t being used right now (who knew a kiddie pool could be so useful?), so I set it up near the old willow that overhangs the fence. The rocks and bricks are there to keep it from blowing away if it gets emptied, but for little critters, like frogs or kittens, to use to climb out if they fall into the pool.

I checked it this morning, but I honestly couldn’t tell if the water level had changed much.

We’ll see if it works!

Meanwhile, here are a couple of other distractions. Some pretty, developing tomatoes!

This is one of the Mosaic Medley plants. It’s such a dark green! There are others I couldn’t get good pictures of that are a much lighter green.

More like these.

These are the itty bitty Spoon tomatoes. They’re so adorable! :-D

Last night, after setting up the deer distractions, I stayed out to do a very thorough watering of the garden beds. Last night, I ended up awake and 4am and unable to get back to sleep, so I finally gave up and headed outside to do my morning rounds early. With the expected heat, I stayed out to give all the garden beds another thorough watering.

Then I napped. LOL

This afternoon, after coming back from a dump run, I stayed out to check the south garden beds and noticed that the gourds were actually drooping from the heat. When a hot weather crop like gourds are feeling the heat, I am glad I gave everything that extra watering!

Meanwhile, as I was writing this, my daughter went out to put frozen water bottles in all the cats’ water bowls.

Any little bit to help the furry critters deal with the heat!

The Re-Farmer