growing food

Our 2026 Garden, and how things are going.

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First, the garden stuff, then the updates…

I was out before things got too hot, giving the garden a solid watering. I was able to work on some weeding as well, particularly in one of the beds in the East yard.

I need to work on the purple cabbage bed next, but I got some solid weeding in the mixed bed.

I ended up taking some short videos.

The plants look wimpy in the video because I used the watering to help make it easier to pull the weeds. Several times, I went to pull up crab grass and the rhizome ended up lifting a section of the tiny bok choy with it! The rhizome had run directly under the bok choy, so their roots were grown around it. I was able to set them back and hopefully, they will recover.

The bok choi all bolted and I’m leaving them to collect seed from. I still have seed from last year and am going to try planting them again as a fall crop, as they clearly do not like this heat!

The spinach doesn’t like it, either, and it has bolted, too, but it looks like we’re going to get a decent amount of Swiss Chard.

I’ll need to do the cabbage bed, next.

On the one hand, I’m impressed with how much the purple savoy cabbage has grown. They were so tiny when I found them while weeding the bed. Unfortunately, they are rather leggy and not forming heads, like the green cabbage transplants I bought have started to do. This bed does get sunlight, but not enough for cabbage, it turns out. Something to keep in mind for next year!

I’m really, really happy with the Arikara squash! This is the biggest squash plant we have right now, and it’s grown so much, I had to lift the netting off one corner for the vine to run through. The netting will need to be removed soon, but I first have to figure out how to still protect the bed. Deer love to eat bush beans and, of course, I don’t want cats going in and rolling around or digging in there.

I’m also quite happy with our little flower bed. The nasturtiums we direct sowed are blooming enthusiastically. The transplanted not-red cosmos are winding down, but still have flower buds developing. The transplanted Crackerjack marigolds look like they’ll be going for awhile. All of these, I plan to let go to seed. My only disappointment is there were no self-seeded asters from last year, since the seeds I collected in the fall have completely disappeared; one of several packages of collected seeds that have disappeared.

The trellis bed is another area I spent some time using the hose to make weeding easier. Unfortunately, with the bed as low as it is, I can’t reach very far, so the first carrot planting isn’t getting the weeding it needs. The peas on the trellis are winding down. I did pick a handful, then ate them all before moving on to the next area to water. 😁 The super sugar snap peas aren’t at the blooming stage yet, and the dwarf peas are not very productive, so I’m thinking a sowing of more peas near the end of July for a fall crop might be good, if I can find the space.

After taking a break for breakfast, I headed back out to use the push mower around the edges of the yard. Some spaces are too tight to use the riding mower, but too big to use a weed trimmer. As long as I was in the shade, it wasn’t bad, but by then we were at full heat (and we still are). Every time I stepped out of the shade, it was like walking into a wall of heat! I managed to get the south and east yards done, but still need to do the west and north yards, plus the paths in the main garden area.

When switching to the second half of the south yard, I did a walkabout to pick loose branches and whatnot, then stopped to take care of this poor spruce tree.

Yes, there’s a tree in there! If you click through to the next image, you’ll see what I uncovered. The tree is not looking very healthy right now, but it should get better now that it isn’t being smothered by vines!

This is a tree that I’ve been wanting to transplant, but it’s starting to get too big for that. My mother planted two of them, right next to the chain link fence. One died since we moved out here. When I told my mother we needed to transplant them, she demanded they stay. When I explained that, if we left them there, they would eventually destroy the chain link fence. She told me she didn’t care, and insisted they stay. When one of them died, she thought I had killed it on purpose because she told me not to transplant them.

We’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile…

My brother was out by about 5am, doing more mowing, then getting getting the truck and trailer out to load more junk into the bin. They went through a number of areas and cleared a lot of the junk pile near the chain link fence, and filled it. They’ve called it in and it should be picked up tomorrow, but it won’t be coming back again right away. They got enough area cleared that they can start organizing things more, and have the bin brought back in the fall. Until then, my brother is going to focus on getting the metal stuff to the scrap yard, where he’ll at least get some money for it. I did remember to tell them that the old bath tub in the junk pile is a keeper – though they never found it! I’ve found I need something larger to wash things that too big or too dirty for the washing machine, like the outdoor cat beds and blankets. I’ll need to pick a spot for it that is out of the way, but still easily accessible.

In other things…

My husband is doing a lot better today. During the night, his blood glucose did drop very low again, though not as dangerously as before. He was able to eat something, then went back to bed. Between us, we’ve been making sure he actually eats regularly.

I found out something that was a surprise, though. My husband has been on a ludicrously high dose of Ozempic, which is supposed to help control his blood glucose. Something I have a real problem with, because it didn’t seem to help that, but the side effects were causing problems. He has decreased his slow-release insulin and I remembered to suggest he might want to decrease his Ozempic dose, too.

He isn’t taking it, and hasn’t been for a while.

The pharmacy has been sending him refills for he regular meds, even if he hasn’t called them in, because it pops up on their files. Some things are “take as needed” so he has to call those refills in. When he ran out of Ozempic, he never got a refill – and he never called to ask for one. I don’t know how long he’s been off it, but considering how low his blood glucose had dropped, it’s scary to think how much worse it would have been if he had still been taking it!

As for the rest of us, we’re managing all right, though the heat is brutal upstairs, even with their AC and fans. My older daughter has had to send notes with apologies for some of her commissions, saying they may be late. It’s hard to use a drawing tablet when it’s covered in sweat! I am so thankful for the new roof and the AC. It was bad enough in the summer on the second floor before. With the temperatures and humidity we are having now, it would be unlivable up there.

So that’s where we are at now. It’s coming up on 6pm as I write this, and we are still at 30C/86F I need to get out and do the evening cat feeding, though I might wait until later to finish my evening rounds!

Tomorrow, thankfully, it will be quite a bit cooler – though that is a relative statement! I’m planning to head into town to do some errands and visit my mother. I’ll have to remember to leave the gate open for the guy picking up the bin. The family will have to keep an eye out, as much to make sure the renter’s cows don’t get through the electric fence as for the bin pick up!

Okay. Time to stop procrastinating and go feed some kitties! (and skunks… and racoons… *sigh*)

The Re-Farmer

A good night, a rough day

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Last night, we were expected to drop to about 17-18C/63-64F

We dropped to 14C/57F

It was glorious. Best sleep I’ve had in a while!

I still headed out early to do the watering, after after the rest of my morning routine. While watering in the old kitchen garden, I decided it was time to remove the insect netting from the rectangular garden bed.

The self seeded poppies had pods pushing up against the nettings from below, as well as some onion seed heads. They are now free to bloom and be pollinated. The parsnip and beet greens are looking nice and lush.

The cats are going to miss their hammock!

While laying the netting out on the grass so I could fold it up to put it away, I spotted a couple of spots where eggs had been laid. When I folded the netting over, I discovered that one of them still had the spider mama on it! She would not move, and stayed clutching the cocoon of eggs.

I ended up folding the netting in such a way that the spider was on top and uncovered, then found a place in the sun room to tuck the netting away that should be safe from having cats climb on it.

Yeah, I’m a suck.

Even for spider mamas and their eggs.

By the time the watering was done, it was almost time for the general store to open, so I headed out right away. The kibble bin in the sun room was pretty much empty after this morning’s feeding, so I needed another 40 pound bag of kibble.

It is so much handier now that the local general store carries that size. Otherwise, I’d be driving to towns with feed stores, to the north or south of us.

Once back home, I had my breakfast and was on the computer when I started having issues. I was starting to fall sleep at my keyboard. Plus, the pain in my lower abdomen was back. So I decided to lie down for a couple of hours.

That seemed to help, but as I was up and about, the pain got worse again. It got so that I could neither stand nor sit properly because of it. So I tried lying down again. I fell asleep again, covered in cats, and after a couple of hours I woke feeling much better.

Until I moved.

All I did was shift a leg to a more comfortable position, and the pain was back. It went away after a while, until I had to move again. Then, just to top it off, I found I had a headache behind my eyes.

*sigh*

In the end, I had to ask a daughter to do the outside cat feeding. I’ve taken pain killers and am hoping to be able to at least do the evening watering, in a couple of hours or so.

On the plus side, we didn’t break 30C/86F again, as was being forecast last night. We “only” hit 28C/82F. The overnight low is supposed to be 18C/64F. The forecast for later in the week has also changed to less extreme highs. For me, I’m mostly looking at Friday, when I take my daughter to the city for her pro-op appointment, and Saturday, when I will be doing the market again. By myself, this time. My daughters have both been invited to a digital wedding on Saturday that they will be “attending”. For our time zone, it will be in the afternoon. It seems the couple live in different countries and are unable to travel, so they are getting “married” in a game, using their game characters as proxies. Obviously, not a legally recognized marriage, but it’s what they are able to do for now.

What a strange world we live in.

Anyhow.

My telephone appointment with my own doctor is next week. I find myself wondering what the next steps will be, if nothing showed up in those ultrasounds. An MRI, perhaps? I don’t know, but something is very wrong, and it’s causing problems. This started out as a side effect from anti-inflammatories I am no longer taking. While the initial side effect is almost non-existent now, it hasn’t gone away completely, and the pain has gotten worse. It’s gotten to the point that my husband, broken and in constant pain as he is, looks at me and comments on what bad shape I’m in, and that I’m moving around worse than he is!

Speaking of which, my husband finally broke down and placed an order for a new chair. An ergonomic, bariatric chair that he could potentially use as a sleep chair, if it ever came to that. Putting one more thing on his credit card is not something we wanted to do, but we were supposed to get it when our tax return came in, and that mess still hasn’t been sorted out. The new disability tax credit paperwork got sent in a while ago, and he did check off the box giving permission for them to go over his previously filed taxes, and that takes time. He should at least get the tax credit that didn’t come in this last time. Who knows, though. He was officially on long term disability back in 2014, and we didn’t know the tax credit even existed back then. We only found out about it after going to a different tax preparer a few years back, and she had asked me why he wasn’t getting it. She was able to set him up on it, right then and there, and set me up for the caregiver tax credit – something else we didn’t know existed.

Meanwhile, the chair he’s got now is breaking and unsafe, and this is a medical necessity. Perhaps not the specific type of chair. I suppose he could have gotten a prescription for a chair from his doctor, but that would just had more time, and he can’t really put it off for much longer. The chair he ordered should arrive before the end of the month. That’s the most important thing.

All four of us dealing with painful health issues, all at the same time, was not something any of us thought would happen, that’s for sure!

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden, and the heat continues

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Today was another hot one, with the temperatures reaching at least 34C/93F. I don’t know what the humidex was, but the humidity levels reached 80% at one point. For all the fans and the AC going, much of the house felt like being in a sauna.

… and now tomorrow is also expected to reach a high above 30C/86F, too. We continue to be under a Severe Heat Warning.

Which meant I was outside early again this morning, to water the garden before it got too hot – though the overnight temperatures never dipped below 20C/68F and was climbing again fast as I headed out.

I had a couple of surprises this morning.

The first was while I was putting out food for the outside cats, and found this very hungry little one, by the sun room door.

It was a surprise partly because it was so tiny!

It was also extremely hungry. I let it be. I was putting frozen water bottles into the cats’ water bowls at this point, and spotted a larger skunk at the shrine food bowls. It ignored me while I was at the insolation shelter. Then I went to the catio, and that’s when I spotted the little one. It was running through the grass like I wasn’t even there, going straight for Mama.

It ran over my foot, pausing a moment, then continuing on to the mama.

I literally could have reached down to pet it!

No, I didn’t try.

If you click through the slide show above, you’ll see it with the mama, and then a short video of them going up and down the sideway to the house.

They are just too cute for words!

Once the cats were taken care of, and the skunks moved on, I watered the south garden beds. Before heading to do the main garden area, I went past the seed starting tray on the step and checked it. There are more seedlings popping up, but one of the cells had a big green leaf blown onto it, covering any potential germinating seedling. So I went to brush it away.

It moved.

Then jumped down to the concrete.

!!!

This is what it turned out to be…

So. Flipping. Cute!!!!

Meanwhile, the garden actually seems to be enjoying this heat! I was happy to see that most recent sowing of bush beans are growing.

On the down side, some seedlings I saw pushing their way through the soil yesterday are gone. Something got to them. Something small enough to get through that netting.

Still, it looks like we’ve got a decent number of survivors.

I’m particularly happy by how that Arikara squash is doing! It’s already much larger and healthier than when we tried to grow them last year. There’s just the one plant. I do hope it gets enough time to produce squash to maturity, as this is a rare variety, so I want to be able to save seeds from it.

In the last image of the slide show above, there is a new little tomato I spotted yesterday. There’s a whole two of them in the entire tomato bed right now, though there are lots of flowers now. This one is a Blueberry tomato. The other is a Manitoba tomato. Still no sign of any Orange Current tomatoes in this bed, nor the Chocolate Stripes tomato in the main garden area.

Most of the rest of the garden is doing well. The green cabbages under their insect netting look visibly bigger between the morning and evening watering. Even the red noodle beans look like they might be getting bigger. I’m still concerned that they will just stagnate, like they did last year. The bush beans in the high raised bed are blooming like crazy, and the more recent sowing of carrots is actually surviving, while the earlier sowing of Rainbow Mix carrots are looking like we can start thinning by harvesting, too.

With the temperatures rising above 30C/86F, we are going to avoid going anywhere. Tomorrow, however, I do need to at least go to the general store to get another 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats. I’ll be doing that right after the morning watering, before things get too hot for the truck.

July is a birthday month. My daughter has said she will pay for the take out treat (it’s my turn to choose, and I chose Chinese food) but, after looking at the weather forecast, we decided it will wait until Wednesday! Absolutely no one wants to do any cooking in this heat. The oven is being used to dehydrate scapes, on the “keep warm” setting”, anyhow.

I’m seriously considering sleeping on the couch tonight, near the AC. I should have done that last night.

I may not be able to handle the heat like I used to, but I am glad the garden is handling it as well as it is. There’s at least that one positive we can make out of it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: deer damage? and infrastructure progress

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This morning, I made sure to give the garden beds a through watering before things got too hot.

I found this.

On the one hand, I was happy to see another poppy blooming.

On the other, I was sad to see one of the flower buds got chomped!

I have a suspicion that it didn’t taste very good, or the rest would have been eaten, too.

So… we’re down to just 3 Giganthemum poppies instead of 4!

The nasturtiums are kicking into high gear with blooms right now.

The transplanted Crackerjack marigold and white dwarf cosmos that were supposed to be red cosmos are still blooming, too. The bush beans in the high raised bed have flower buds, and I spotted a flower on one of the Caspar eggplant. There are also more flowers showing up on various types of tomatoes. The musk melon and watermelon transplants I bought have also been flowering, but I’m picking those off. The plants are still way too tiny, but they finally seem to be growing.

Once the morning watering was done, we all just stayed indoors and out of the heat. I even crashed for a couple of hours of much needed sleep.

In the afternoon, after the cats were fed, it was back into the garden. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to get done.

First, I wanted to work on the corn patch.

In the first image of the slide show above, you can see the corn leaves are starting to press up against the netting. This is not a tall variety, but it does get taller than this. I considered finding a way to make the hoops higher, but decided to just remove the netting completely.

Once the netting was off, the corn got a thorough weeding, and then mulched with grass clippings. Parts of where I mowed yesterday do not have Creeping Charlie, so the clippings were safe to use. You can see it all done in the second image. I have left the hoops. Corn gets knocked over by wind very easily, and the hoops will provide at least some support. I’m considering other ways of adding more support as well.

I’ve got the motion sensor deer scarer set to go off at night, though I’ve set one off when it was still dusk, so “night” is a very brought frame. Hopefully, it will be enough to keep them away – and the raccoons! I might have to switch it to be active both day and night, though that would mean I would be setting it off while tending the garden. Which I might be willing to put up with!

Once the corn was weeded, it got a thorough watering, then the mulch was added, then it got watered again. From there, I kept watering the beds until I got to the next one I wanted to work on.

It was hard to see through the turnip leaves, but it did seem the red noodle beans were getting bitter. So, I harvested most of the turnips, partly to let the beans have more light, then added the trellis supports for them to climb. They look like they’re just starting to throw out tendrils.

This bed also got grass clippings added to mulch between the remaining turnips, and between the turnip row and the beans. The daikon radish is looking good – the one survivor from the winter sowing is not only still blooming but starting to develop seed pods. We will have seeds to collect for next year. The onions along the radish side of the bed are looking good, but not to much the ones on the turnip side. Those might start doing better, now that most of the turnips were pulled and they’re no longer shaded out by large leaves.

There was one more bed to water in this area before I moved to the next beds I wanted to work on.

The first section was around the dwarf peas. I wanted to remove the netting, partly because it was a pain to get under it to collect ripe pea pods.

I left the hoops, but added the wire decorative fencing to keep the cats from lying on the peas. After weeding and watering, grass clippings were added. This bed already had some leaf mulch on it, but that was breaking down quite a bit.

I found a surprising number of self seeded tomato plants while weeding! I removed the protective plastic collar that had been around the mystery flowers I’d found and transplanted here. They’re large enough now that I don’t think they need it. Very few of the onions I’d found and transplanted here in the fall made it, but the garlic I’d ground and planted are doing rather well.

Next, I worked on the rest of the wattle weave bed.

The Florence Fennel was pushing up against the netting already, so I took it off completely. I’ll probably remove these hoops later, but left them for now. The fennel, chicory and strawberries, with the two surviving summer squash I’d transplanted from thinning the other bed, are now well mulched with grass clippings and well watered again.

There was one last bed I wanted to work on.

The summer squash.

After removing the netting, each surviving summer squash got its own stake for vertical growing. It looks like four spots, from three different types of squash, didn’t make it. Once the stakes were in place, I went to use garden wire to start securing the larger vines to the stakes, but I think I may have accidentally killed one of them. I moved the stem to put it up against the stake and heard a noise that sounded like it was pulled right out of the ground! It wasn’t, but it may have been pulled up and the roots damaged. I’ll probably know by tomorrow morning if I killed it.

With four plants not making it, I found myself with four extra bamboo stakes, so I wove them across the vertical stakes on the inside, just a bit higher than the hoops. If I can find more bamboo stakes long enough, I’ll do the same on the outside row, too, just to help keep them stable and better able to hold weight.

Hopefully, the garden will survive the heat we’re going to have over the next few days. We’re expected to go above 30C/86F for the next three days, then the highs are supposed to be in the mid 20’sC (around 77F) for the rest of the month.

Definitely “water twice a day” weather.

It’s going to be brutal at the market tomorrow. Thankfully, we do have the canopy tent for shade, at least!!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden, and a general update

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We were expecting a very hot day today, so I was up early to water the garden thoroughly before things got too hot – even though we have rain in the forecast. Depending on which app I check, we’ll either get rain or thunderstorms. Just before I started writing this, our phones started going off with tornado warnings, but it looks like the system will be passing to the north of us. We might get some rain from the edges of it. We did hit 31C/88F today. As I write this, past 7pm, we are at 28C/82F right now, with the humidex making it feel like 30C/86F.

After I did the morning cat feeding (with some cats very confused by the early hour!) and garden watering, I went back to bed. I must have been really beat because I slept for about 3 hours, checked the time, then passed our for another 2 hours.

Unfortunately, today has turned out to be a bad pain day, and not just for me. My daughter somehow ended up getting a sun burn yesterday, even though she was in the shade most of the day. I’ve been getting so much sun since it got warm enough to work outside longer, I don’t get burned, though apparently I’m quite the redneck right now. 😄 Meanwhile, my other daughter has had increased health issues again. Her pre-op appointment in the city is a couple of Fridays from now – the day the bin my brother is renting is supposed to be delivered! My younger daughter will have to stay home so she can meet them and tell them where to drop the bin off.

Aside from the pain related to why I got those ultrasounds done, my left hip has decided to start working wrong again. Not a lot of pain there. The joint just isn’t moving right and wants to give out.

I am so thankful for all the arm bars and hand rails that were installed for my father, all those years ago!

Eventually, though, I did head outside. I had to use the walker for it, but I set up the new deer scarer my brother picked up for me.

I’ve set this one up by the corn, which is going to need the netting removed from it pretty soon. I set the other one up by the peas to keep the deer away with the sound of a dog barking. With this one, I expect raccoons to be more of an issue, and I set it to the ringing of a bell, since I think raccoons would get used to the sound of a dog barking very quickly.

Once that was set up, I wandered around and checked on various things. In the next image in the slide show above, you can see some chard leaves. These are planted between the garlic and are finally starting to grow! Still pretty much nothing on the spinach in the other row; what little germinated and survived promptly bolted. It does look like we will at least have some Swiss Chard for greens this year.

In the next image, we have a red nasturtium flower. The seeds I collected were from a package with a variety of colours in it, and so far we’ve had yellow and red. They are still quite small, but adding that straw mulch once they got big enough has really helped.

Next is the row of summer squash. Those are picking up quite nicely. The plan is to grow them vertically, but I’ll need to remove the netting to do that, and they still need that protection for now.

The last picture is of the fennel and chicory. They’ve had a bit of a growth spurt! Unfortunately, some of the fennel at the end of the bed got flattened. Stinky found his way under the netting and I found him lying there. I opened the netting up at the other end, so as not to spook him, then moved to scoot him in that direction. Instead, he panicked and started running into the netting over and over before I finally got him to go out the open end. *sigh* He didn’t do too much damage, at least. We added more rods to the hoops over the fennel and it’s getting so tall, it’s almost touching the top of the netting again!

We just got another tornado alert on our phones while I was writing the above paragraph. While that is passing to the north of us, our region and the entire south end of the province are currently under a severe thunderstorm watch this evening and overnight. The warning includes 4-6cm (about 1.5-2.5in) hail, 50-70mm (about 2-3in) of rain and wind gusts up to 100km/h (about 62m/h). For us, we’re to expect rain starting around 4am tonight and lasting until about 10am.

We are definitely not going to be hit with the worst of it, for which I am thankful, but my heart hurts for the people that have been slammed by these storms, over and over again.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: a harvest, some transplanting and direct sowing

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But first, the cuteness!

Colby is one of several cats that just love that garden bed cover. So adorable!

And yes, those are garlic scapes on the netting beside him. Those are from the few garlic that are growing in the wattle weave bed. More on that later.

Today was our first market day at the large animal rescue. My younger daughter and I loaded up the cab of the truck, then headed out to arrive at around 9:30. They are only a mile away from us, so it was a quick drive.

A couple of vendors were already setting up, with vehicles all backed up to the spots they were setting up in. After pulling the truck in, along the row of vehicles, I went into the large shelter where there is a gift shop, admission is paid, and a petting zoo.

They have three kittens; two orange and a grey tabby that were free ranging. They really, really enjoyed the attention they got from the vendors! The kittens will be available for adoption at the end of the season. I expect they will have a waiting list of people interested by then!

I found someone and got instructions on where we could set up and where to park the truck after we unloaded. It didn’t take long to get everything out, then I moved the truck. Thankfully, the splayed leg style of the canopy tent we have was not an issue. We set that up, then the table with a cloth over it, then my daughter and I set out price tags on my inventory and made the display look pretty.

Thankfully, there was a pleasant breeze, and we had our shade. A couple next to us just had an umbrella, and it kept getting blown over. We took turns checking out the other vendors – there was 7 of us altogether on this first market day. I was told more are expected next weekend.

It was extremely quiet, and most of us made zero sales. I bought things from two different vendors, and those were very close to being the only sales for all of us today! We had plenty of time to talk and get to learn about each other, which was nice. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized one of the vendors is the mother of the woman that runs the rescue. Which means she’s the mother of our mechanic and his younger brother that drove the tow truck (though not anymore; he’s moved on to somewhere else). Too funny that I keep meeting more and more members of this family We had a great chat.

We were super appreciative of the shade and the breeze, as we hit 26C/79F. Things shut down at three, but we didn’t start packing up right away. The truck would have blocked others from being able to get around to load up then leave.

I got quite a laugh when I finally did bring the truck over. The vendor next to use had finished loading and was in her car with her family, waiting patiently as I turned and backed up to our tent. Then I reached out the window to open the door, and one of the guys in the car with her started to laugh and opened his window to say, “you’ve got a broken handle, too?” Sure enough, one of their doors was missing the handle on the inside, and they have to open the window to reach out and pull the handle from the outside, too.

While we were there, we kept the family updated, and I started to hear from my brother. They have their grandsons with them and today they visited my mother. They even managed to get her outside to enjoy the sunshine in a park that is right alongside the nursing home property.

Just as we were finishing loading the truck, I got a message that they’d be swinging by the farm to drop off some stuff, including the second solar powered, motion sensor noise maker they ordered for me. They got here shortly after we did. We’re leaving the truck loaded, except for the box of the truck, as we wanted to be able to put the cover back. I was still outside when the arrived and I was able to chat with my SIL and the grandkids while my brother rushed to get things out of the back of their car and into their caravan. The mosquitoes and horseflies were insane, and he didn’t want them getting into the vehicle. I got the box with the noise maker – I told my SIL that I plant to set it up by the corn, in hopes it will keep the raccoons away. Raccoons are very good at decimating corn, just when they get ripe!

We also talked about where to set the bin they are having delivered to haul away junk. My SIL was telling me they’re feeling quite frustrated. They hadn’t knows they’ve had their grandsons with them for so long before they’d ordered the bin. They’re having a blast with the grandkids, but it means they can’t come here to do any of the stuff they had planned to in preparation for the bin. We talked about where it should be dropped off, as I’ll likely be the person meeting with the delivery people.

They were in a bit of a hurry, so when they were ready to leave, I went ahead to the gate to close it, so they wouldn’t have to stop. Then I went straight to working in the garden.

With the heat of the day, I wanted to do some watering, but first I wanted to do some transplanting.

There were two that I decided to try and transplant. The largest, in the first image of the slide show above, is a Golden Hubbard squash, while the smaller one is a Gille’s Golden Pippin. They both got planted in empty spots in the bed along the chain link fence. Then I started watering everything out of the rain barrel.

As I started on the East yard beds, I remember I’d bought some fresh bush bean seeds (actually, my daughter bought it, along with the other groceries we picked up the other day). The square garden bed is down to four surviving plants!

The Arikara Squash on the middle is looking good! Big enough that I removed the protective collar.

I picked the Gold Rush variety to plant this time. I just wanted a yellow variety, as they are easier to see. Hopefully, these will back it. I have remarkably few bean plants this year!

That done, I continued watering in the main garden area with the hose. I’d picked the few garlic scapes that were on the wattle weave garlic They were much smaller than the ones in the main garden area with a hose.

While watering, I noticed the pods on the Spring Blush pea were looking very good. After i finished watering, I checked them out, then very carefully removed several.

Along with the scapes, I was concerned about the next bed. The red noodle beds are looking like they are doing what they did last year; growing just a few inches, then nothing. I harvested some of the largest turnips, as the greens are getting big enough to shade out the sun.

The turnips were pretty small, but the leaves where useful – and they are edible so we at least have that!

Not too bad for a first harvest. There are the turnips, scapes, Spring Blush peas, and a handful of herbs. Oregano, lemon balm and sage.

They made a nice addition to supper this evening.

Tomorrow morning, I plan to be back to watering the garden earlier in the day, before the heat hit. We are expecting the heat to potentially get up to 32C/90F tomorrow. Nowhere near as bad as other areas, but still not something anyone should be working in, if they can avoid it!

So… in the end, I would call today successful, even though nothing was sold. All the vendors were talking about coming back next weekend. It should be fun, and there should be more people.

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Storm damage and an escape

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Last night, the storm hit.

Not as bad as in other areas. Especially to the north and south of us. It was also quite brief but, for the time in where here, it hit hard.

The first sign of things was losing our internet. Thankfully, we did not lose power, though I later learned my brother did, briefly. Then I started hearing a lot of footsteps rushing around upstairs. A leak started at the window. This leak has been a problem in the winter, where an ice dam would form. It has never leaked during a rain storm. The roof is still under warranty, though, so we’ll be able to contact the company and see what they can find. That portion of the roof cannot be seen from the ground, and none of us are able bodied enough to climb up there to look.

Even I started having a leak in my bedroom window. The one that did not get replaced by a new window before we moved out there because my mother suddenly decided she was not going to pay for that one last window. This is an original window from my childhood, but I don’t know if it’s original from when this portion of the house was built in the 30’s. I know the molding around it is more modern, but when it installed.

When it started to develop problems, as did pretty much all the other windows, instead of fixing or replacing them, my parents installed panels of what is probably Lexan, not Plexiglass. This window is two parts, side by side. One side has a screen and a handle that could be turned to open the window, while the other side is just a plain double paned window, and each side has its own panel. Once the panels were installed inside, the screen side of the window could no longer be opened. In the last couple of years, I discovered that when the rain was driven from the north, a drip would start from the frame between the panel and the glass window, on the side without the screen. Last fall, I used spray seal around the entire window frame. It hadn’t leaked again until last night – and the leak was on the inside of the room, not between the window and the panel! It wasn’t much, but it was also a first.

Checking the sun room critter cam at one point during the night, I saw both a skunk and a raccoon at the kibble trays. They were both so completely soaked, I didn’t have the heart to chase them off! There were quite a few cats in their shelf at the window, sheltering from the storm, and none of them were the least bit bothered by each other.

When the storm passed by, we still had high winds all through the night, and through all of today.

When I came out to do the cat feeding this morning, I was very saddened to find this.

That is one of the sliding panels that forms both a window and a door on one side of the isolation shelter.

Sweetie is gone.

My guess is that, during the storm, the thunder and lightening scared her enough that she blaster herself into the window. The panel is flexible, and it would have bents and popped off the tracks completely.

Poor Sweetie!

There was no sign of her, anywhere, but there are many places she could hide, too. I put the panel back on, then opened the ramp door and the other sliding window a few inches while adding some kibble to the bowl. Then I made sure to mix up some cat soup and leave some in there. I’m hoping Sweetie will find things familiar, and remember that the house is where there is safety, comfort and delicious food she doesn’t have to hunt for.

Once the cats were fed, I did extended rounds, looking for storm damage – the first of which was really, really obvoius.

The first two images are of the West yard. The dead portion of a huge maple finally broke.

I was not surprised. If anything, I was surprised there wasn’t more. This tree is part of a row of three. The one in the middle is already dead and, when it broke in the winter, the piece fell on my market tent we had set up by the fire pit. Part of it embedded itself into the ground, and I wasn’t able to clear it until spring, when the ground thawed enough. The third three in this group is at least half dead, and I am fully expecting the dead parts to fall in high winds, too.

I had actually checked everything else, including around my brother’s stuff, when I came back into the inner yard through the gate by the fire pit. That’s when I noticed Colby sitting in a maple and paused to take a picture.

Which is when I realized, the tree he was on was freshly broken.

When I cam closer, I found it had come down in two large pieces. One of them landed mostly on the branch pile we have as fuel for the fire pit, and both where mostly hidden by the tall grass and weeds in that area. I simply couldn’t see them, earlier!

I checked the garden beds, of course. A branch and partially fallen on the tomato bed in the east yard. That bed has the box frame on it, which protected the bed and the branch fell mostly into the path, instead.

Everything else held.

While checking on the beds, I spotted these.

The Spring Blush peas have quite a few pods on them. They are underdeveloped, still, but they already have the pink blush on them.

Everything else in the garden held out fine.

I made sure to update my brother about the damage. He has all the paperwork for the roof.

By late morning, I started to head out to the city, making sure to stop at the post office, first. My husband’s forms to renew his Disability Tax Credit was ready to mail. I also picked up our mail and found my replacement debit card was in – the one they mailed a month before my old one was supposed to expire still hasn’t arrived. The card could be activated by a purchase, so I bought a 40 pound bag of kibble that I wanted to pick up, anyhow.

From there, I went into the city and did our shopping, which will be covered in another post. While I was gone, I was kept updated by the family on the continued severe wind conditions.

After I got back, the truck unloaded and parked, I stayed out a bit longer. The girls had already fed the outside cats, but I used some of the freeze dried cat food mix to make a cat soup. I put most of it in the isolation shelter, in hopes of luring Sweetie, and poured the rest into the sun room trays. The cats were very excited for the treat!

I did see a skittish tabby in the white lilacs when I came back from parking the truck, but I wasn’t sure if it was Sweetie or another tabby. Possibly Flopsy.

I so hope she is doing okay, and learned to come back to the house for food and water!

In the time since I did the damage check this morning, quite a few smaller branches came down – especially the willow – but there was no other large drops like that section of the giant maple that came down last night.

One thing I can see I am very happy about it the chicken coop. One of our concerns was that it would blow over. It did not. It was well sheltered from the wind by botht he house and the surrounding trees.

The last thing I checked was the old kitchen garden, where I found sprig.

This morning she was among the cats eating on the cat house roof. I was able to put my hand on her back and even rub her shoulders a bit! Then she ran off. Not far, though. Just to the next pile of kibbled on the roof.

Progress!

This evening, she was in what seems to be her favourite place, now that the netting here has been redone.

She really, really loves to be on or near the garden netting!

While I was gone, my older daughter got some good news. A call from a doctor. She now has a pre-op consultation with a referred doctor.

In a clinic in the city, of course. Not a close one, either. No matter! Surgeries can take years to happen here in Canada, so if this is being expedited, we are thankful!

The consultation is in the second half of July, so we have time.

After this consultation, it’s a guessing game to know when she will actually get her surgery. I don’t know what kind of waiting list this procedure has. It could be weeks, it could be months, it could be years. Canada is a place where people die on waiting lists. Thankfully, her condition is not life threatening anymore, now that she knows what is happening and can take medication for it. The surgery is the alternative to being on medication for the rest of her life!

Now, we just need for the truck to hold out.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: more maintenance, and we have scapes!

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The rain started last night. The forecast has completely changed.

According to the app on my phone, we’re expecting to have rain and thunderstorms for the rest of the week. The app on my desktop shows a more moderate forecast, with today’s threat of thunderstorms already over (it’s not yet 11am as I write this) and rain off and on through to tomorrow, then no rain for the rest of the 10 day forecast. If I had to choose, I’d say my desktop weather app is more accurate than the one in my phone. I think the app in my phone is using weather stations further to the south of us.

While doing my morning rounds, I did get rained on a little bit, but just barely. That gave me time to get a few things done in the garden.

In the first image of the slide show above, you can see I finally mulched the high raised bed, around the bush beans and onions.

We don’t have a lot of bush beans. The ones I sowed in the square raised bed are coming up, so there will be more, but it’ll be a while longer before we can see how many made it. We do have pole beans, but I am still concerned we’ll have the same thing we had last year, where they only got a few inches tall and then stagnated. You can actually see them in the background of the above photo, beside the much larger turnip leaves. They are looking way too yellow.

In the trellis bed, I checked on the carrots and they are starting to germinate, so I moved the boards aside. I’m leaving them leaning against the inside of the walls to act as both a weed suppressant and a place for the frogs to shelter under. More than a few times, I’d lift the boards to check on the carrots, and as many as three frogs would come jumping out at once!

The is no sign of the Uzbek Golden carrots germinating in the other bed. I would not be surprised if none make it. They were old seeds. Carrots are one of the things I can still sow again, though, even in July, which I might do.

The last image is of one of the Spring Blush pea flowers. The peas are very sparse; they should be bushier and have more foliage, but they are pretty much just long stems. Still, they are blooming (well; the ones that didn’t get chomped by deer, at least), and they have the pretties flowers!

I also got a couple of first harvests this morning! I’ve been eyeballing the garlic for a few days now, and today I had my first harvest of scapes.

I also harvested our first Golden Boy celery. Yes, it’s on the small side for harvesting, but they are fairly crowded, and thinning by harvesting will be helpful.

As you can see through the netting under the scapes and celery, the purchased cabbage transplants are doing well. I can’t say the same for the nearby melons, though. They are definitely struggling. *sigh* While my daughter was at her blacksmithing workshop yesterday, I checked out one of the nearby garden centres. They don’t have much left at this stage. For edibles, I saw they still had lots of cabbage, pepper and tomato transplants, plus some herbs, but zero melons or winter squash left, which are the only things I’m after at this point.

Today, I had been thinking of visiting my mother. She called a couple of days ago and, right from hello, she was on me about how none of us have been visiting her. She just got out of quarantine. She was really laying it on thick, to the point I was ready to hang up on her. She just can’t seem to understand how much her behaviour drives people away from her. I told her I might be able to visit her on Sunday (today), but now I don’t know that I will be up to it. I’ll phone her, instead. Rainy and overcast weather like this always makes me feel ridiculously sleepy, and I don’t want to drive in it if I can avoid it.

I think today is a day to catch up on sleep.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: maintenance and one last transplant, plus updates

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Today has turned out to be a fairly hot and muggy day. Depending on which weather app I look at, we’re either supposed to be raining right now (it isn’t) through to tomorrow, and then thunderstorm warnings for the next two days. Or, we will get scattered rain today, with more rain for a few hours, now and then, for the next two days. Once again, it looks like the more severe weather systems will go around us.

Our day started early, as my younger daughter and I needed to get to her blacksmithing workshop for 8am. We left an hour early, and just made it on time, partly due to skirting road construction and areas still damaged from the flash flooding. The road to the blacksmith’s acreage had visible damage, some of which has been repair, some still waiting to be patched. There were a couple of areas I could tell had been completely under water, with standing water and flood damage in the fields on either side.

When we got there, I started getting messages from the rescue about Sweetie. She is not doing well and bit someone again. They wanted to know when she can come back to us. After going over what we’ve got going on over the next while, it was worked out that someone will bring her here on Monday (today is Saturday). They did manage to get her spayed a week ago, so we will keep her in the isolation shelter for only a few days, so she can get used to the idea that she is back in familiar territory again.

My daughter’s workshop didn’t take as long as originally expected. There weren’t as many people signed up for this date, which is their only “build your own forge and take it home” workshop of the season, and only one person added the extra of including an electric blower to take home as well. My daughter wants a manual blower. In the end, the workshop was only about 2 hours instead of 4. When it was done, we loaded the table portion into the back of the truck and strapped it down, removing the firepot portion and putting that in the cab with the air duct for the blower. Then we headed to the smaller city nearby for a quick lunch and to pick up a few small things we would run out of before we do our next stock up shop on Tuesday.

Once we got home, we made some space for the forge in the side of the garage with my brother’s big riding mower and other equipment. Now, we need to build a structure for her smithy so set it up in permanently. In between, she wants to find a blower, and then get fuel.

With rain apparently on the way, I asked her to give me a hand with some maintenance in the garden. Plus, I had one Butterneck squash seedling to transplant.

The first bed we worked on was the summer squash. It was time to remove the protective collars. The finnicky part is lifting the netting high enough, without getting tangled up, to work in the bed. The “funnels” in between the groups of summer squash remain, as they get watered through those.

In the next image in the slide show above, you can see the fennel and chicory bed we worked on. The fennel was getting too tall for the netting, so we took it off, then added one more rod and connector to each hoop. The netting had been folded in half, but with the new height, we unfolded it before setting it back. There is still slack with the new height, but not very much.

In the next image, you can see the turnip, pole bean, daikon radish and onion bed we worked on next. The turnips and onions were getting crowded, so all the hoops here got on more rod and connector, too. We also took the opportunity to do some weeding, and add some straw for a mulch.

Once thing I’m concerned about with this bed is the red noodle beans. When I tried to grow them last year, they got to about the stage this year’s beans have reached now, and then… stopped. They never really got any bigger, and I never figured out why. I’m hoping that a different bed and consistent watering and fertilizing will help them grow. Once they get to when they can start climbing, we’ll take off the net set up a trellis. For now, though, there’s just no need.

This netting had also been folded in half and needed to be unfolded to fit over the new height, then secured. A job made much easier with my daughter to help!

The next image is something I’d actually done last night – I finally added a mulch in between the cosmos, marigolds and nasturtiums. The nasturtiums are quite small. They didn’t get very big last year, either, and I know they should be larger and fuller. No sign of any self-seeded memorial asters (I’m still unhappy that the seeds I saved indoors have disappeared), so the spaces are now all mulched.

In the last image, we have progress on the chain link fence bed. My daughter helped me raise the bottom half of the netting from end to end, securing it up so that I could work under it. After that, I could manage it on my own.

In one of the empty protective collars, I transplanted the single Butterneck squash seedling. Then I mulched with straw tightly around the collars, and carefully around the sunflowers. I also made sure not to cover the furrow I’d planted the super sugar snap peas, from our own saved seed. There are seedlings appearing now!

After the straw was in place, I carefully removed the protective collars. The mulch will protect them from the elements now. Last of all, the netting was set back down and reset nice and snug.

Once that was done, and everything was cleaned up and put away, I checked on some of the other beds. The high raised bed needs a straw mulch, too, but I’ll do that later. Hopefully, tomorrow. The short season corn is getting tall enough to mulch, too, I think. I checked on the more recent sowing of carrots. No seedlings yet, but the frogs do love hanging out under the boards protecting the carrot seeds! I didn’t notice any cucumbers coming up, yet. I checked the garden beds in the east yard, too, and was happy to see my last sowing of bush beans, in the small square raised bed, have started to germinate.

I really hope things start catching up soon. Staples like carrots, peas and beans all seem to be under the weather. The winter squash and melons aren’t doing well, either, but they’re not quite staples in the same way. The garlic is doing great, and scapes have started to form. I expect to be harvesting some in the next day or two. I’m really looking forward to those! The potatoes are starting to develop flowers, with one variety developing faster than the other. We should be able to start harvesting baby potatoes soon, if we wanted to.

So that is garden progress today. Mostly just maintenance. I’m really liking the flexibility of the hoop kits. I still plan to build more covers for the raised beds, but for now, these are doing just fine. Being able to make the hoops higher as needed really helps.

The surreal thing of the day has been the time. When my daughter and I were starting for home, it felt like 2 or 3 in the afternoon, but it was just coming up on noon. When I finished in the garden and did the outside cat feeding, I was sure it was well past 5. Maybe even 6. Instead, it was just barely 3 when I got in! Meanwhile, I can see outside my window, the sky getting darker and the wind blowing the maple branches, and I feel like it’s almost bed time… and it’s not even 4:30 as I write this!

Very disorienting, that’s for sure!

😄😉

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 garden: planting carrots and cucumbers, trellis added, and food forest progress

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Well, my day of rest yesterday, such as it was, is done and today, I got some work done in the garden.

The first thing I wanted to do was plant thew carrot seed tape I’d picked up. These went into the trellis bed, next to the Rainbow Mix carrots.

The boards that had been used to protect the Rainbow Mix carrots until they germinated were simply set aside in the bed when they were no longer needed. The first task was to move those off and remove the leaf mulch that was under it. The whole bed got a weeding, and I used a garden stake to make a planting furrow, then used the jet setting on the hose to break up any lumpy bits of soil and saturate the furrow.

The carrots I chose were Scarlet Nantes; a basic orange carrot. I didn’t clue in that the seed tape was perforated and designed to be split into two lengths to total 15 feet, until I’d already set down two or three feet into the prepared furrow. I broke it off, split the roll and finished off laying it down. The result was a few feet short of the furrow I’d made, but that’s okay. It meant the three boards I had were more than long enough to cover the entire planted area – after it got one more watering.

There was a small section available along where the peas were planted, as I ran out of this variety of peas before I could fill the entire row.

I was going to try planting the short season luffa there, but I simply could not find the package. I know I had some left after direct sowing them in the bed against the chain link fence. I know I even saw them the last time I was going through my seed bins. Today, however, I could not find them anywhere.

I’ve had several packets of seeds, including seeds I’d saved myself, disappear, and I’m at a total loss as to where they might be!

So I picked the Eureka cucumber, which is a dual purpose cucumber. I’ve got some in the seed tray, replanting after the tray was decimated. Pretty much nothing is germinated out of the second sowing. I’m hoping this location, which gets quite a lot of sun, will do better. They are older seeds, though, so I don’t expect a high germination rate.

That done, I needed to set up trellis netting for the peas, and this time I wanted to attach permanent horizontal supports. Before I started on that, I moved off almost all the pieces of wood and boards weighing down the cardboard to the far end of the cardboard covered area. That is covering what will be a path and the matching garden bed. I didn’t want to trip over any of the weights. Later on, I think I’ll see of the large tarp I had is the right size to cover the entire space. The cardboard has formed gaps in the high winds we get, so it’s not quite killing off everything underneath it anymore.

I salvaged lengths that were used in the old squash tunnel we built long ago. It’s still standing, though bits and pieces of it have been repurposed over the years.

I dug out eight lengths, roughly 5 feet long, though a couple were shorter, to use as horizontal supports. The spaces between the vertical supports for what will be a trellis tunnel after the matching bed gets built are a little less than 4 1/2 feet apart. It’s variable, due to the different thicknesses of the verticals. That meant there was an overlap with most of the horizontal lengths. Only one of them ended up being just barely long enough.

Each length was tied in place first, just to hold it until I could screw the ends in to the vertical supports, alternating setting each horizontal length above or below the previous one. The northernmost vertical post has a tendency to lean inwards, so I made sure it was pushed into position before screwing in the horizontal support, to hold it in place.

One the horizontals were secured, I got out a couple of nets with 4″ squares for the peas to climb. One of them reaches roughly 3/4 the length of the bed. After the first one was set in place, with the bottom pegged into place near the bottoms of the row of peas and the new planting of cucumbers, I started the second net from the opposite end of the bed to fill in the space, and overlapped the rest.

It was a pain in the butt to get the netting to stay at the top horizontal support, while I set the bottom half at an angle to secure it to the bottom horizontal supports, trying to make it as snug and straight as it would go, using ground staples on the base. I had some length of a sort of plastic cordage salvaged from last year, that I used to secure the bottom half of the netting at an angle from the base of the wire “fence” the peas are currently attached to – literally – to the bottom horizontal supports, making sure to match the squares of the overlapping sections of netting as close as I could. Then the top half got secured to the higher horizontal support. I wasn’t as concerned about that part, since the peas are unlikely to get that tall.

Last of all, to “train” the peas to attach themselves to the trills, it was just a matter of tipping the wire fencing towards the trellis slightly. Some of the peas are tall enough, they mostly just sort of fell towards the trellis netting and will soon start climbing that.

The next thing I wanted to get done was work around the plum, gooseberry, apple and haskap. The chicken wire around the plum tree needed to be removed, and the entire area weed trimmed and cleaned up.

Before I started on that, though, I salvaged the last section of wire on the old squash tunnel to use, as it’s quite a bit longer than what was around the plum.

You can see the chicken wire in the first two images above, before I started pulling supports out and using the weed trimmer.

You can see how the row looked after the weed trimming in the third image. After that, I went ahead and removed the tomato cage fencing around the gooseberry and apple. I left the wire tomato cages over the haskap.

I was considering a few things to do for the area and decided to use the chicken wire to fence off as much as I could. I brought a bundle of bamboo stakes to support the wire. The ground is too hard to drive the bamboo stakes in, so I used on of the metal supports that I’d removed from around the apple tree to make a hole in the soil first – they have handy points on their ends – before I could push the bamboo into the holes and in solid.

I ended up using both lengths of salvaged chicken wire. The two together was just long enough to go around the plum, apple and gooseberry, with openings on either side of the cracked rain barrel. There’s enough space that I could get inside without too much trouble, and I hope no deer will notice the gap and squeeze it’s way in! Later on, I plan to set a couple of brightly coloured rope between the bamboo stakes to further discourage the deer. So far, the wire tomato cages will continue to be enough to protect the haskap.

I had two very thin bamboo stakes left from the bundle, so I wove them through the wire at the top. These will help keep the verticals in place, as well as provide support for the chicken wire in a space the hose goes over, when it’s time to water the trees.

Hopefully, this will keep the deer from getting to, and chomping, the greenery!

Once everything was cleaned up around this area, I took advantage of having the weed trimmer out and finally got to clearing around the old crab apple stumps, and the live trees as well. My brother had come over while I was working on the trellis bed, pruning away the low hanging branches. One of them had hit my SIL in the face while she was mowing. He cleared so many branches, he ended up attaching their little trailer to their zero turn mower and using that to remove the branches and set them on one of the branch piles near the fire pit. He even trimmed a low hanging maple in another area that was starting to hang lower and lower, getting in the way even when just walking.

The old stumps had been buried in tall grass when my SIL decided to mow along there, and she ended up hitting one of them because she hadn’t seen it. Once the branches were cut away, my brother used his zero turn mower to mow closer to the trunks, now that it could be done. He got a lot closer to the trees than he was able to get to the stumps! I got the weed trimmer to clear to bare earth around the trees and stumps, pausing to cut away some suckers that were trying to grow back along one of the stumps. I was on my second battery by then, and was able to do most of the spaces between the silver buffalo berry as well before it died. My brother had used the weed trimmer earlier in the day and the battery he’d used wasn’t recharge yet, so I was done with weed trimming for the day!

That done, I popped inside for supper, then headed back out to water the garden. I got some water soluble fertilizer in the hose attachment to fertilize and water at the same time. I’m hoping that will help the weaker plants that are struggling a bit from the cold nights we’ve been having. I’d set the hose up to the leaking rain barrel where I’d just fenced things off, so I was able to water the food forest trees, too. I didn’t have the energy left to do the nut trees in the outer yard, though.

While I was watering, my brother messaged me with a link from Amazon to a solar powered critter scarer. We’ve been messaging as I was working on this post – I’d need at least four of them! My brother has ordered one, and I’ve ordered one. Within the next couple of weeks, we should have at least one in to test out. They are triggered with motion sensors to flash lights and make 14 different pre-recorded noises to scare animals, or you can record your own sounds. I’m not sure I like the idea of having super loud sounds of things like dogs barking or gunshots coming out of our garden in the night, though! Still, it’s worth a try if it’ll keep my garden and fruit trees from being eaten by critters!

All in all, I am happy with how much I got done today, and the trellis bed now finally has permanent horizontal supports attached to the vertical posts. Eventually, I’ll be adding one long piece across the top, but that’s going to require trimming the tops of the vertical supports to match heights, and for that I’ll need to set up our little scaffolding to reach. I’ll need to snag a daughter to give me a hand, too.

All in good time.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer