harvest

Home for now, plus a harvest

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So… today actually started out pretty good.

We were getting predictions of rain and thunderstorms. At one point, my weather app told me it was raining right that moment.

It wasn’t.

So I went out to water the garden in the morning. In the process, I gathered what I would call our first real harvest of the year, with everything weeks behind.

I picked a few of the Rainbow Mix carrots. They’re still small, and it was more of a thinning by harvesting action. The baby carrots will taste just fine!

I was very happy when I started checking the bush beans. The yellow ones seem to be ripening the fastest, and I picked a decent amount of those, plus a few green and purple ones. Then I grabbed a few of the turnips that were left and a bunch of Golden Boy celery. I’ve been picking a bunch of celery every now and then, along with harvesting some turnips, but nothing that I would really consider what would be a typical harvest I would normally get from the garden, until today.

After watering the main garden area, I left the harvest on the chest freezer in the old kitchen and went back to watering the garden beds around the east and south yards, and the old kitchen garden. The Arikara squash is looking amazing, and I can see more Blueberry tomatoes starting to form.

About half way through, I was starting to feel pain starting to kick in, but it wasn’t too bad yet. I messaged my daughters asking them to put away the harvest, and if they could make me a breakfast. By the time I was inside and finished eating, it was definitely time to take some pain killers and try lying down.

It didn’t work.

It just kept getting worse. Quickly. Bad enough that I finally started talking to the family about driving myself to the ER.

They agreed.

My brother and SIL were still here and I was updating them, but it turned out they had their Messenger off. Which is fine. I was just keeping them informed.

The girls got the truck to the house and unloaded of market inventory, loaded my walker for me, put my prescriptions and a charger cable for my phone into a bag for me to bring along, and took care of the gate so I didn’t have to go in and out of the truck as I left. The only time I started having issues with the drive in was when I found myself stuck behind someone doing 65kph in a 100kph zone and couldn’t pass.

When I parked at the hospital, I was so incredibly glad for that walker. Sitting while driving wasn’t too bad, but once I was walking, I found I couldn’t straighten up.

Once by the admissions window, I started getting my health care card and the woman at the desk waved me over right away. When I handed her the card through the slot under the window, my hands were shaking violently. I couldn’t stay standing, and my face must have been a sight, based on how quickly she got me processed.

From there, it was a brief time in the waiting room and then I was in the triage room. A nurse got my vitals and asked me all sorts of questions. My BP was, understandably, a bit high, but not too bad. Considering the pain I was quite obviously in, it was not a concern.

Then it was back to the waiting from for a bit longer before they took some blood, and then it was a wait until the results were in. That’s when I got to talk to the ER doctor.

We went over the details again, including the whole background about how this started with those anti-inflammatories I had started taking, a while back. They had worked so well for what I was taking them for, too!

The doctor then found herself with a bit of a conundrum. The things she normally would have done – the tests, the referrals, etc. – were things that were already done, or in progress. There was that one ultrasound that showed abnormal, and it’s why I was being referred to a specialist in the city for a biopsy.

So what, she asked me, did I want her to do, in context of being in the ER?

We talked about the pain levels some more. I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t even lie down, to get any relief. She did prescribe tramadol and she wanted me to fill the prescription right away, to use in stead of the T3s. She even made sure that it was not anti-inflammatory, and that it wasn’t contraindicated with anything else I was taking. The pharmacy was still open for a couple more hours, and she was ready to send me home with the prescription.

As we talked more about how bad the pain was, and she looked at the ultrasound results some more, she realized that my doctor’s referral was something that could take months to be fulfilled. I needed to be seen right away.

She knew of a specialist at the hospital in the smaller, nearer city. She told me to stay until she had a chance to get through to the specialist and see if I could see her right away.

The pharmacy closed while I was waiting.

When she came back later, she told me the specialist wanted me to have a CT scan, and that I should get a curretage.

*sigh*

She wanted me in either tonight or tomorrow. Which I was actually quite happy to hear.

The next while in the waiting room was for the appointment for the CT scan. I was there long enough that I was starting to become hungry to the point of getting light headed. Of course, I kept the family up to date on all this (my brother and SIL had seen my messages by this time). My husband and daughters were suggesting that, if I was going home, to make sure I grabbed food somewhere first, even before I mentioned getting so hungry. Frankly, I would have just gone to the truck for the beef jerky in our road food stash, but I didn’t want to miss someone coming back with information for me.

One of the nurses came by as soon as they had the appointment made. It’s for tomorrow morning, and my daughter and I will have to be on the road by 9am. I’ll need to fast, plus make sure to have a liter of water to drink before the CT scan.

My daughter, meanwhile, has called the clinic for her own appointment in the city tomorrow and left a message about rescheduling. I can’t say I feel too badly about that, since this is the clinic I found so creepy and actually felt was unsafe, while in the waiting room during her last appointment, which was essentially a meet and greet. This is something we disagree on.

So that’s where we’re at now. I’ve just finished having something to eat with my evening meds and supplements and will now start my fast. I’ll be going to bed pretty much as soon as I’m done this post.

Tomorrow should be… interesting.

Hopefully, this will finally bring an end so the issues I’ve been having! Or at least tell us what’s going on, so long after I stopped taking the anti-inflammatories.

Meanwhile, all my brain can do is list off the things I want to, or should be, doing that I physically can’t right now. The pain did eventually recede, but just getting up and walking around it enough for me to feel it threatening to come back.

I need to lie down before I start doing tasks I really should not be doing.

The Re-Farmer

Scapes, peas and a huge step

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Today was another day of off and on rain, though more off than on, thankfully. The last storm did a lot of damage in areas, including at least one tornado touching down at the edge of the city. We have much to be thankful for.

While doing my rounds this morning, I was able to harvest some more scapes. The largest one yet, which you can see in the first to images in the slide show below. There will be only one more small harvest after this, unless I find some I missed. The girls and I have already talked about dehydrating whatever we won’t use fresh, and my plan to grind the dehydrated pieced into powder, and that should get started soon.

While checking the old kitchen garden, I can’t help but be amused by the dwarf peas. They are incredibly tiny – I don’t know how big they are supposed to get, but I’m sure it’s supposed to be a lot bigger than these! – and yet they are producing pods! You can see some of them in the last image of the slide show above. The plants themselves are less than 6 inches high.

I’m glad I planted other peas, and am thinking of where I can succession sow more in the next little while. The Spring Blush peas are producing pods, too, and the super sugar snap peas I sowed not long ago are growing nicely. One more succession sowing would not go amiss.

Today is Canada Day, and it was a big deal for us for a change. It has been so long since all four of us went out together! It meant clearing out the back of the cab so we could put down the rear seats in the truck. I was able to put our emergency supplies in the box, along with the cane collection and other items, and secure it all on one side, so there would be room for my husband’s walker on the other.

We went to the cottage of my husband’s brother, in a little town on the lake. Talking to my SIL about how I don’t think we’d ever been there before, and she was pretty sure we did – though it would have been about 25 years ago! As an added bonus, their adult children were able to join us, as did my husband’s sister and her significant other. It has been so long!

We had a fantastic visit. Their cottage is very close to the lake, and the girls and I had a chance to walk to the pier, finding it had a set of steps to the shoreline.

The views from above the water level were gorgeous.

The area has a lot of large rocks set in place to reduce erosion, but there are a few tiny beaches in this area of the lake.

My BIL BBQd, though he had to check on the meat with an umbrella a few times when it started to pour rain. We had a great meal and great company, with lots of catching up to do. Thankfully, my husband thought to bring his “as needed” painkillers, though, as that’s the only reason we were able to stay for about 5 hours, plus driving time of about an hour in total. My husband usually can only manage about 2 hours, including driving time.

We had made sure to feed the cats before we left. When we got home and the girls helped get my husband inside, I stayed out to do my evening rounds. The outside cats were acting really hungry, even though some of the outside kibble dishes still had food in them. I topped up the empty ones, and they were still running around, like they were expecting more.

They were waiting for the cat soup I’ve been making with the freeze dried cat food and cat milk included with the hot water.

So I made some up for them. I’ve been making more than I had been, before, and pouring it around more food dishes besides the one in the isolation shelter.

No sign of Sweetie anywhere. I feel so sad for her! I hope she finds her way back, even if she does remain feral. She must be so scared.

The inside cats were also swarming around and I figured they wanted their wet cat food, too, even though they still had plenty of kibble. I decided to make them some cat soup with the freeze dried mix, too. They keep trying to dig into the boxes to get at the bags inside, so you’d think they’d be happy with that.

Nope.

They sniff at it. I sometimes see a cat taking a few licks, and that’s it.

If the cat soup is still there in the morning, I’ll just take the trays outside. The outside cats can’t get enough of the stuff. They’ll finish it off right away!

The inside cats are so spoiled that they can be fussy like that! 😄

Anyhow.

Tomorrow, it looks like we’ve got a rain free day. We should be able to get the corded electric chain saw out to clean up that big piece of maple tree that broke in the storm, It’s going to be cut to lengths for the fire pit. Maple is an excellent wood for cooking over. We’ll also need to go around the yard with the wagon or the wheelbarrow to pick up all the smaller branches that came down with the storms and high winds, before we can mow the lawns.

I’ve also got the first market day coming up soon, so I want to prepare for that, too. I wasn’t able to find the straight legged canopy/market tent, but we do have a splay legged one, so that’s what I’ll be using. I’ve also been crocheting small things to add to my inventory from when we used to do the markets every summer, back in the day. It should be interesting to see how the market goes. If it goes well, the large animal rescue will extend the market dates into August, too.

All in all, I’d say this is the best Canada Day we’ve had in a long time, simply because the entire family was able to get out, and my husband was able to see both is brother and sister again.

Being broken sucks, but when there are good days, we sure to appreciate them more for it!

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: first harvest

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Yes, there is actually something that can be harvested right now.

The rhubarb is doing fantastic, and there’s even a flower coming up in southwest corner patch.

I didn’t get anything else done in the garden. I didn’t even do the watering, counting on the rain we are supposed to get today.

My first task of the day was to call up our tax preparer to see if they could figure out why our return was shortchanged by about $2500. The person I talked to before was still on holidays, but the person I spoke to was able to look at my husband’s account at the CRA – something my husband still can’t do – and saw the numbers. She couldn’t see why we didn’t get the full amount. Basically, we were shorted my entire Disability Tax Credit, and then some. The person who did our taxes will be back next week, so she will make sure what happened gets passed on to her and hopefully she can figure it out.

So at least a week before we find out what happened.

Meanwhile…

I decided not to go to Costco for our stock up shop (I’ll cover that in my next post). Instead, I headed into town to visit my mother, then continued on to the nearer city to stock up at Walmart.

The truck behaved normally on the way to town. As I started to do my shopping, the battery gauge had dropped again, still within the normal range and returning to where it usually is after driving for a while.

It’s hell on my nerves.

Knowing I would have refrigerator and frozen stuff after shopping, I made a slight detour first to pick up gas, did my shopping at Walmart, then headed home.

Once everything was unloaded and the truck parked, I quickly changed into my grubbies and fired up my brother’s little riding lawn more. I’d intended to use the push mower to do the edges first, but that would have taken too long. I was already heading thunder in the distance and just needed to get the jungle under control.

I definitely put that mower through its paces! It’s been so humid that the tall grass and dandelions don’t really dry out from the morning dew. It was all quite wet on top of being thick and overgrown.

While I was mowing, I got our first alert blaring on my cell phone. A tornado warning for our region. “Our region” clearly didn’t include where we are, though, as the system hadn’t reached us yet, and I kept mowing.

Still, I managed to get the east, south and west lawns done before I started getting slightly rained on. I did a few checks around the yard before going in, during which we got a second alert blaring on my phone, and just had to grab some rhubarb. I have no idea what it’ll be used for. If my daughter’s don’t use it, I’ll just make a quick compote.

As I write this, we are finally getting an actual rainfall. According to the weather map, there is a thunderstorm right on top of us. As I look out my window, I see no wind waving the branches of the big maple. In fact, from this part of the house, I couldn’t even tell it was raining. My daughters have their window open and told me they could hear it, but it’s definitely not a major storm. Checking the alert map, the “severe weather alert” area is to the south of us, and well into the middle of that is a single patch of “extreme weather alert”.

The rain is supposed to continue all night until about 8am tomorrow. Which is good timing, since we need to be on the road by 8:30am to get my older daughter to her follow up appointment at the Women’s hospital. She did get a call already and given the biopsy results – she does NOT have cancer – but she will probably need surgery.

The rain is supposed to start up again by 7pm tomorrow and continue through the night, with a bit of rain the Thursday after. I might be able to get more transplants in then, or on Friday. I have my medical appointment on Friday afternoon, but it’s a telephone appointment and not until 3:30. Thursday and Friday as going to be downright cool in comparison, then it’s supposed to heat up again, so I’m really hoping to get the rest done by the end of Friday. Well, the stuff that’s ready, anyhow. It really sucks that my melon and winter squash seeds and seedlings got eaten! Right now, I’ve got some surviving melons, and a couple of winter squash very quickly germinated, but I’m not seeing anything else coming up yet.

Ah, well. We’ll work with whatever survives. I’m rather happy with the non-stormy rainfall we’re getting so far. It means the transplants have a better chance of surviving!

Hopefully, it won’t be much longer before we have something besides rhubarb to harvest.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: winter sowing spinach and Swiss Chard, and a small harvest

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I had a wonderfully productive day in the garden today, so I am splitting things up into a couple of posts.

I decided to shift gears today. After looking at what I was wanting to winter sow and where, I decided to leave cleaning up the last two beds in the main garden area for later. Possibly until spring, depending on how things go over the next while. I needed to move on to other areas. Areas I knew would be faster to work on, since I wouldn’t be dealing with the roots and rocks situation!

The priority was going to be the old kitchen garden, but first I decided to do the winter sowing in the garlic bed. I didn’t want to have the plastic cover over the garlic for too long, as I was concerned the mini greenhouse it created might mess with the garlic.

Here is how it looked, after the plastic was removed.

I’d already raked up as many leaves as I could stuff into the wagon and the wheelbarrow for mulching.

As for the plastic, I was going to roll it up for storage, but remembered the low raised bed I had recently cleaned up. The cats have been digging in it, so I tided that up, then just shifted the sheet over.

The boards and bricks that had weighted down the sides against the hoops before are now being used to keep the plastic snug against the soil, and from blowing away. I found a short log that I could roll the excess up into. Later on, I did take all those rocks you can see at the end, and set them on the plastic, under the roll. It is slightly elevated, and the wind was moving it around quite a bit, considering how litter wind we had today. The rocks weighing down the other end weren’t enough, so I found a short board I could wrap the plastic around and weighted that down with the rocks. If it were spring, this would be a good solarization set up. For now, it’ll just keep the soil a bit warmer, and keep the cats from leaving me more “presents”. 😄

Then it was time to get back to the garlic bed, and clear away the hoops. With the twine marking the three rows of garlic, I used those as a guide while using stick to create furrows in between. I went back over them with my hands to lightly compact the bottoms for better soil contact – and remove as many little rocks as I was able to!

For the varieties, I chose American Spinach and Yellow Swiss Chard.

I didn’t mark the rows, so this picture is to help me remember what I planted and where!

I chose this variety of spinach because, after reading the back, it seemed the most appropriate for the location, as well as winter sowing. The Yellow Swiss Chard is a new variety, with an unusual colour for Chard, so I wanted to give it a go. Both packets still have seeds left, so we could potentially do another sowing in the spring, after these have germinated.

The seeds got lightly covered, and gently tamped down, again for better soil contact. I had made the furrows deep enough to form shallow trenches. The soil was damp and didn’t need watering – I don’t want them to germinate too early! – but next year, the trenches will help hold water, in case we end up with another drought year. Plus, it makes it easier to see where the seeds were sown.

You can see that in the next picture, along with the “first” mulching of grass clippings taken from other beds. Because the garlic is so close to the outside of the bed, and the bed has no log frame, I wanted to give the sides extra insulation. When the leaf mulch is removed in the spring, the grass clippings will be left as erosion and weed control.

I was originally going to remove the twine and stakes marking the garlic rows, but decided to leave them, and put the leaf mulch right on top, which you can see in the last photo. I finished off both the wheel barrow and the wagon of leaves before it was done. I got another wagon load to finish mulching the garlic bed, and had just enough left over to mulch the Albion Everbearing strawberries I’d transplanted from their original choked out bed to beside the new asparagus bed. The strawberry plants were still very green! Hopefully, they will survive the winter and we’ll have nice, big strawberries next year.

So the garlic bed is now DONE!!!

With the stakes left behind, the bed will be visible after the snow falls. This area gets very flat with snow in the winter. If we can get at the beds this winter, I would want to dig snow out from the paths and onto the winter sown beds for even more insulation – and moisture – in spring.

That done, I started moving my tools and supplies over to the old kitchen garden, where I wanted to work next, but first, I decided to gather a small harvest.

I dug up just a few Jerusalem Artichoke plants around the edges of the bed, and this is what I was able to gather from under them. I will leave the rest of the bed to overwinter. Later on, I’ll use loppers or something to cut the plants, which are still very green, and drop them on the bed as a sort of mulch.

The Jerusalem Artichokes (aka: sunchokes) did not grow very tall this year, compared to others. I did water it at times but, I’ll admit, it was largely ignored this year. As with everything else, I think the heat, the drought and the wildfire smoke set them back. I think they also got less light this year. The Chinese Elm trees beside them had been pruned, but the branches have grown back. I want to get rid of them entirely, because of the billions of seeds they drop in the spring, but for now we’ll just try to prune them again, when we can.

As for the sunchokes, I noticed a difference this year. For starters, I didn’t find any of those grubs I found so many of, when I harvested this bed completely, last time. Sometimes, I’d find them half burrowed into a tuber – both living and dead! Other times, I’d see the holes, then find a dead grub inside when cutting open the tuber. I was not impressed! This time, I saw zero grub damage. Sweet!

The tubers themselves are actually less nubby, too. A lot of the ones we harvested at the end of the season last year had so many nubs on them, they were hard to clean. This time, there are a couple of nubby ones, but most are smoother. Which I much prefer!

With leaving the rest of the bed to overwinter, I hope that we will have a much better growing season overall, and a lot more plants to harvest from. That seemed to work out when we did it before, as last year’s harvest was quite decent.

This done, I could finally move on to the old kitchen garden and start on the beds there.

Which did take longer than expected, but for a very different reason this time!

I’ll share about that in my next post.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: winter squash and garden clean up

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When I was doing my morning rounds, everything was still covered in frost, as we dropped below freezing last night.

I noticed the cover on the winter squash, which I haven’t lifted for awhile now, looked rather different.

Yes, there was frost on the cover but, if you look at the next photo in the slide show above, much of that frost was coating the inside of the cover!

I waited until things warmed up after I’d run my errands today before taking the cover off to see. In the third photo, you can see that all the plants were killed by frost. The next few photos are of the winter squash that seemed to have survived the cold. Two Baked Potato and three Mashed Potato squash made up the littler harvest you can see in the last photo of the slideshow above. The little ones should still be okay to eat. I am curious if the largest one has mature seeds inside. These are not varieties that produce large squash, so that one might actually be the full mature size.

That done, I then started working on gathering up all the hoops and stakes and netting and protective collars. The plastic cover that was over the winter squash got folded up length wise – it has a hole in it but, folded in half lengthwise, it should still be useable – a couple of times before getting rolled up.

Folding a very long, damp sheet of plastic took quite a while! Thankfully, there wasn’t much wind, but what little breeze there was sure didn’t help!

The trellis netting and the stakes holding them got taken down. Finding a way to store the netting, which has 4″ squares, without getting it all tangled took some doing.

For the past while, I’ve been putting the material together by the tree stump bench near the old garden shed. Aside from what is still covering the garlic, I think I’ve been able to gather everything from all the garden beds. I’d already partially sorted and bundled some of it. Today, I worked on finishing off the organizing, bundling and collecting it all.

The first photo above is how the garden looked, after I took all the stuff down. The garlic bed will be done after I’ve winter sown something with it, then give it a thick mulch of leaves. Until then, the cover is needed to protect the bed from cats wanting to use is as a litter box!

The next photo is all my bundles of stakes, hoops, the hoop nets I can still use, and even the twisted up wire hoops. I’ve got my soaker hoses all rolled up. The garden hoses will be done soon, too, but they are still being used. Ties, clips, short stakes to hold the Pexx hoops in place, and even the pieces of pool noodle used to go over the support posts that had twine threated through them, when used to hold netting over a bed to keep the cats out. I’m even hanging onto the water bottles that were set on the tops of stakes to rattle in the wind and hopefully startle deer away. I’ve got a bundle of 8 metal posts I found at the dollar store in there, too. Four of them had been used to support a trellis for the melons that they never grew big enough to grow up on. The other four were ones I found more recently and have not been used yet.

In the future, I intend to get more of the tallest, plain metal stakes, but I also really liked the taller tomato cage sets. The sets are three posts with connectors. The shorter ones came with two connectors per post, the taller ones with three connectors per post. The same connectors can fit both lengths of posts. I have two sets of the larger ones currently around the plum tree, supporting chicken wire, to keep the deer from eating it. I have shorter sets around the gooseberry bush and apple tree. I used several sets of the taller ones to make a deer barrier in front of the pea trellis. I can see being able to use them in a lot of other ways, too. They are surprisingly sturdy for a dollar store purchase, and I plan on getting more in the future.

The last picture has the collection of protective collars on t-posts, to keep them from blowing away. The round wire tomato cages that were used for the pepper and eggplant are all stacked up, with a large plastic bottle covering the sharp points. The water bottles used to help keep the frost at bay under covers are hanging off a smaller stake set into the wire cages to hold it up. The water bottles with their bottoms cut off that were used to deep water the summer squash are stored on there, too. There’s a couple or rolls of the black netting, plus a couple of roles of wire mesh, as well, plus the rest of the T-posts.

Now that I have all these sorted out, I need to figure out how to store them. Some can fit in the old garden shed, but the rolling garden seat needs to fit in there, too. I’ve got more stuff to store than last winter, plus there are the hoses and the garlic bed’s hoops and cover to add to the pile, and it won’t all fit in there. That shed is in serious need of replacing, too. Lots of rotten spots in the walls and roof that are slowly getting worse. In the last photo, you can see part of it. The door is a simple piece of plywood, and it’s comping apart in layers from weathering!

I’ll figure it out.

The next couple of days are supposed to be warmer. Friday is supposed to be the warmest day, but it’s also supposed to be raining off and on all day. If the long range forecast is at all accurate, aside from the one rainy day, we should have about a week and a half of decent, if chilly, weather to finish preparing garden beds and getting the winter sowing done. That’s the priority. After that, I can work on finishing the wall on that garden bed in the old kitchen garden that I’ve decided to do slightly differently. It would be nice to finally get that bed finished!! I can’t believe how long it’s been taking to get it done. That’s what happens when a job gets worked on piecemeal. 🫤

So while I didn’t get any progress on preparing beds for winter, I did actually get a lot done. By the time I was done with all the sorting and bundling for storage, it was getting pretty darn cold out there (we’d already passed our high of 8C/46F by the time I started). I’m hoping to get an earlier start tomorrow, partly because I have an afternoon telephone appointment with the sports injury clinic about my hip. Not only is it expected to be warmer tomorrow, but we’re supposed to stay at our high of 11C/51F for about 6 hours, rather than the eye blink of time we were at our high today! We’ll be dropping down to 8C/46F again by Saturday, then warming up a bit again. I will be delivering cats on Saturday, anyhow, so that works out!

All in all, I’d call it a productive day.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: in before the cold

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It was still raining, off and on, while I was doing my evening rounds. Today, that included getting a meter reading.

I had help.

Gouda in particular was following me the whole time, mostly trying to rub against my feed while I walked and trying to trip me up!

Even from a distance, I could see those mushrooms in the wood chip pile are getting much bigger.

Well… two of them are.

The third one in the group looks like something stepped on it, and the fourth I found off to the side doesn’t seem to be getting any bigger. I wonder what kind they are?

We are expected to drop to 3C/37F tonight. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to hit 0C/32F, then 2C/36F the night after, before things are supposed to warm up a little bit overnight. The winter squash are covered and should be okay, but I decided not to bother trying to cover the rest. Instead, I did a harvest.

There is our single White Scallop squash that I’ve been allowing to get bigger. No chance it would get big enough and mature enough for viable seeds, but it is at an edible stage right now.

The peppers and Turkish Orange eggplant, on the other hand, are now set up in the living room to ripen. We’ve had a red pepper and an orange one so far. There are also supposed to be yellow ones in there. The one that’s darkening if from a plant we got a red pepper from. I’m curious to see if the lighter green ones will turn yellow, or if they’re just really immature.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a mix of sun and cloud, with a high of 11C/51F. The day after is supposed to reach a high of 8C/46F. After that, we’re supposed to have highs above 15C/59F. The lows are supposed to be all over the place, but still below 10C/50F. It’s also supposed to be sunny until Sunday, when we’re currently expecting to get rain. Of course, the forecast will be changing from day to day, but it does look like we’ll be able to get more progress in the garden, getting the garlic in, and preparing beds for winter sowing. Normally, I’d say we have a good window of pleasant weather to get that done but, considering how many huge roots I’m finding in the main garden beds I’m prepping, it’s likely to take quite a bit longer than it should!

Ah, well.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

One more little harvest, and how the morning went

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Well, I did get some more stuff done in the garden, even remembered to upload a couple of photos – then completely forgot about the post I meant to write! 😄

Anyhow…

I decided to harvest most of the eggplant, just pruning the entire plants at their base so I could reach the fruit better.

They look so much like tomatoes, don’t they?

In the end, I left three plants. In the next photo, you can see the green eggplants on one plant. On another plant, I did find a few tiny green eggplants, and on the third, I couldn’t find anything at all – that’s the one that was the most damaged by cold – but I left it anyhow. After removing the extra cages and doing a bit more clean up, I moved the jugs of water in between the remaining three plants to act as heat sinks on nights they’ll need to be covered. I did a bit of clean up in the rectangular bed as well, then gave everything a watering from the rain barrel.

Today was supposed to reach a high of 24C/75F, but we ended up hitting 26C/79F. The over night low is supposed to be around 12C/54F, so I didn’t cover the winter squash, but I did give them and the summer squash a thorough watering, too. It was starting to get pretty dark by then, which is when both my daughters came out, looking for me. They’d messaged me, but I never heard the notification, so they were coming out to make sure I was okay! That was sweet of them. :-)

The end of the day was a lot calmer than the start.

This morning was my telephone appointment with my mother’s doctor, so I did short rounds so that I could be close to the phone during the 1 1/2 hour time frame I was given for her to call. Thankfully, she called closer to 8am than 9:30!

We talked about my mother’s inhaler being out, and about her refusal to spend to much money on the refills (the one inhaler cost almost as much as her bubble packs). We also talked about how it really wasn’t helping her breathing, anyhow, and I suggested it get dropped from her med list. The doctor asked about my mother’s breathing issues, and I told her she does still have problems, particularly at night, and described her situation.

In the end, she agreed to drop the inhaler from my mother’s meds, which would require a letter to home care. I could hear her typing it as we spoke, so she was right on that.

After that call was done, I called the home care coordinator. It’s actually a different one, in another region, as the one for our area is on holidays. When I told her about the call with the doctor, and that she could expect the letter, she told me she’d sent a note to the doctor, yesterday, asking for her letter to be sent to her office in another town, since there’s no one to check emails at our local office. I don’t think the doctor had seen it before she called me.

It will take some time for the change to my mother’s med assist instructions to go through. Once the home care coordinator gets the letter from the doctor, it gets sent to a nurse. Only a nurse is allowed to make the actual med assist instructions. Once that is updated, the revised instructions will go into my mother’s file that the home care aids have with them, when they do her assists.

Until then, the coordinator can let the home care aids know the change is in the works. Since my mother is out of that inhaler, anyhow, it will be as if it’s gone through, already.

That done, I updated my siblings in our group chat, then phoned my mother. By this time, it was past 9am and I knew her med assist should have come and gone for the morning.

When I mentioned to my other that I spoke to the doctor, she told me that doctor had already called her! She must have called right after talking to me. She had asked my mother, what can I do for you? My mother wasn’t expecting the call, so she told her that she was having her breakfast just then – and then the home care worker arrived to give her her meds, so they finished off the call. Then my mother asked me, what should she tell the doctor?

???

I told her that we’d been talking about her inhaler not helping, getting it off her med list, and that I had told the doctor she was still having breathing issues. My mother knew I was doing this for her, but I guess she forgot all about it.

As for having the inhaler removed from her med list, you’d think she would have been happy, as she’s always complaining that she is taking soooooo many medications and keeps wanting to drop them. Nope. She just told me that the home care aid that had come in this morning – her favourite one – had actually used one of the other brand inhalers in my mother’s lock box. Which, technically, she should not have done, but it’s what the hospital has been using with her and given her a prescription for. She had prescriptions for two different types of inhalers at the same time, for a while.

After I explained to her that it might take a while before the home care aids officially have a change in her med assist instructions, they will be told the inhaler is being dropped, so they don’t have to fuss about her not having the one on their list anymore.

We were just finishing what had been a pleasant conversation when she remembered the Pepto.

The eight bottles of Pepto my brother had bought for her so she wouldn’t have to worry about running out. It’s one of the few things she takes where she can actually notice she feels better.

She started off saying, she never asked him to get it for him. As if this was somehow his “fault”. I was eventually able to say that I was the one that mentioned to him and my sister that I hadn’t been able to get any for her, so she didn’t need to ask him.

Then she started ranting and railing. It’s too many, it’s up high in her cupboard, and it’s such a terrible thing that he got her so many bottles. I told her, this is a good thing. This is a helpful thing. She should have enough to last her a year! It’s something she takes regularly.

Oh, no, she told me. She only takes it when she needs it.

…

I told her, I didn’t mean that she was taking it every day, several times a day. Just… regularly.

What I was eventually able to figure out is that my mother thinks that they will go back. Because they’re medicine. They’re liquid. She’s not stupid.

…

I told her, they are fine. This is not like a prescription medication. They’re not like food. They last for years.

It does explain why she insists on keeping her open bottle in the fridge, though.

After I told her, several times, that they will be fine and won’t go bad, telling her that we keep ours in the bathroom cupboard with no issues, she said that she would see; she would ask a “professional” about it. A doctor even. They will tell her.

I told her, she’ll just be told the same thing I was telling her. Then I told her to call the pharmacy. Talk to the pharmacist. He’ll tell her.

Which got her to asking where my brother got them from, the pharmacy? (meaning the one in her town). I told her no, he got them at Costco (which turned out to be wrong; I later found out they were out at Costco, and he found them at Superstore).

Her response?

Oh, from China, then.

?????

I told her, it’s the exact same brand that I get for her a her pharmacy. It’s the same.

Oh, you know there are so many scams out there, she tells me.

…

I told her to stop making problems up where there are none.

She kept on ranting that my brother should not have gotten her so many. I told her, he was being kind to her. “It was “too much” kindness”, she retorted. Like she was being sarcastic, except meaner.

During this, it occurred to me that I might just take the bottles and bring them here to the farm to store until she starts running out again. I wasn’t going to bring that up at the time, though.

I did remind her to use the little cup to take a full dose. She usually just throws them away and uses a teaspoon. As in, a spoon for tea, not a measuring spoon, so the actual amount she’s taking is probably less than a third of what the dose is supposed to be. Apparently, that’s all it takes to help.

By the time I got off the phone with her, my brain was pretty fried. It can get so very hard to follow what she’s saying, to get to what she actually means. I completely forgot to ask her how things went with the mental health assessor, yesterday!

I did make sure to update my siblings again before I started forgetting details. Which happens very quickly, with how convoluted conversations with my mother can get.

My poor brother. Every time he tries to do something nice for her, she gets weird about it in some way. I think it bothers me more because if it were our vandal getting something for her, she would be singing his praised for years. Which she actually does. No matter how horribly he treats her, she makes him out to be a saint because he did something nice for her, 20 years ago. But my brother has been taking care of her and her affairs, diligently and with great care for her, often seeing what she needs long before she sees it herself, and he just can’t do anything right by her. Something as simple as getting her a supply of something she has made a big deal over how much better it makes her feel has been blown out of proportion into this huge drama as if he’d done something nasty to her.

My heart aches so much for my brother. He deserves so much better. And she still doesn’t understand just how badly she stabbed him in the back, some time ago. She’s fortunate he’s a good man and a good son, and hasn’t simply cut her out of his life entirely.

*sigh*

Once I was done with the calls, I needed to take some time to wind down and decompress. I had to go into my mother’s town – something I did NOT mention to her at all – to hit the feed store for more kibble, which my daughter generously paid for. The bag of donated kibble was a 7kg bag, so it didn’t last long, and we were down to dregs by this morning..

A forty pound bag of the brand we get, which is more expensive (not even the outside cats will eat the cheaper brand if they can avoid it), comes out to $62 and change, after taxes. Forty pounds is just over 18kg. That works out to about $3.44/kg after taxes.

Locally, a 9kg bag costs $45 and change (or more), before taxes, which is about $5/kg. At Walmart, a 9kg bag costs about $35, before taxes, or about $3.88/kg. The Costco Kirkland brand of kibble is a better price, but not by much. There is the other feed store, to the north of us, that has a brand that cats like that has a slightly better price, but the drive is longer. Worth it, if I’m getting more than one bag.

All of that, including a trip into my mother’s town, and it was barely noon when I got home.

It felt like it should have been several hours later!

Speaking of later, I just realized what time it is! It’s past 1am! When did that happen?

😄😂

Time to get to bed! There’s lots of work to do outside, while the weather is good!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: last of the potatoes, prepping beds and a bumper crop

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I’m happy to say I was able to get some progress in the garden yesterday evening, and again today.

I did not continue cleaning the sun room today. My daughter will finish that, but she will restart tomorrow. It turned out that, after trying to keep up with me yesterday, she hurt her back! I keep forgetting, I’m the most able bodied person in the household right now. The kittens, meanwhile, have been piling into the cat cage. It got a bit chilly last night – cold enough that I covered the winter squash, but not cold enough to cover the summer squash, peppers or eggplant – and they was a whole crowd of littles in the cat cage’s cat bed. Most of the other cat beds they could access are outside right now. Only one of the smaller kittens has figured out there are cat beds on the platform, and is able to climb up the shelf to get to them. With the floor now dry, I did put one of the cat beds and the self heating mat on the floor for them to use.

This is what I was able to get done yesterday, before it got too dark.

This is the bed that had three types of tomatoes, bush beans and self seeded carrots in it. I pulled the remaining stems and roots of the tomatoes an the bush beans and set them aside. They will get buried in the bed later on. In the second picture, you can see the finished bed. Most of what I pulled out of there can’t go into the compost, as their roots will spread. In the last picture, you can see the bonus Uzbek Golden carrots that were large enough to keep. The greens will also be buried in the bed. I’ll be doing some amending later one. I’ll be using this bed for winter sowing, but have not yet decided what I will put in it.

This afternoon was pretty hot, so I chose to harvest the last of the potatoes, then work on that bed. At this time of the year, and at that time of the day, most of the bed was shaded by trees, so it was a lot more comfortable to work on.

This is how many potatoes I found in the remaining two or three feet of the bed.

I was really surprised by how many tree roots I was finding while I dug them up. That’s quite the distance! I thought that maybe they were from the other direction, but the nearest tree on the south side is the chokecherry tree. They spread through their roots, but the suckers all come up close to the main trunk. As I worked on the bed, though, it was clear what direction the roots were coming from.

I ended up making a short video when I was done.

I cleaned up only one long side of the bed before I had to stop for hydration and sustenance. I’ll probably work on the rest tomorrow. At the end, you can see all the rocks I “harvested”. !!! Keep in mind that this bed had been amended several times, the soil sifted several times, most recently when all the beds were sifted over into their permanent positions. Not only that but this bed was winter sown with summer squash, which did not take, so it was trenched and cleaned up before we planted the potatoes.

All those rocks were what we “grew” since the potatoes were planted in the spring. Just the bigger ones that were easier to pick up, and I know there were plenty that got missed because they kept getting buried in the soil while I loosened it and pulled as many weeds and roots as I could.

Before I headed in for a break, I just had to check out the blooming asters.

Sir Robin was already checking them out.

Still no Cosmos, but there do seem to be a few more flower buds trying to develop.

Tonight is supposed to be a bit warmer, so I don’t plan to cover the winter squash again, unless that changes. The next couple of nights are looking chilly enough that I might cover the other beds, too. Unless I decide to harvest the Turkish Orange eggplants, first. The peppers can stay for a while longer, as long as the weather holds.

I have decided the bed I’m working on now will be where I plant the garlic in a few weeks. This time, I’m thinking of making sure to mark exactly where they are planted, and then interplanting with something else before the ground freezes. Maybe spinach and/or some other greens. In theory, the garlic should protect any greens growing with them from the deer, same as onions can. The greens would be finished before the garlic is ready to harvest, and could be succession sowed with something else that’s quick growing. Bush beans, perhaps. We shall see.

It’s not a lot of progress. As usual, it was a bigger job than expected. Particularly as I got closer to the north end of the bed, where both the tree roots and rocks were so much denser. Still, a little progress is better than none at all!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: some final harvests, and we do still have a “hot house”!

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Today was definitely on the chilly side. Even overnight; apparently, we dropped to 3C/37F last night, which is colder than was forecast. I’m glad we got that plastic over the winter squash!

We’re supposed to drop to 4C/39F tonight, which means we can expect it to get colder. I never removed the plastic cover on the winter squash, though. We got rain last night, which means the squash didn’t get any natural watering, but I do have the soaker hose still set up with them. I rarely used it, as filling their collars with water several times was more efficient. Today, however, I lifted one corner of the cover, hooked up the hose, then covered it again, letting the soaker hose run for an hour.

We did reach our expected high of 12C/54F this afternoon, so the girls and I took advantage of it to get some final harvests done on some things.

I started off in the East garden beds, pulling most of the corn (I left some stalks just to have a bit of protection for the bush beans). There were very few cobs to harvest and, as you can see, they were very small. I did find some yellow bush beans to harvest, though, then later found a few of the Royal Burgundy in the main garden area.

The chocolate cherry had the most to pick green. There were a few Black Beauties and Sub Arctic Plenty to pick. These are now sitting near the window in the cat free zone (aka, the living room) to ripen.

I also picked as many dried super sugar snap pea pods as I could find, as well as the dried radish seed pods. The girls, meanwhile, pulled all the spoon tomatoes, then sat with the plants to pick up the ripest ones. That took long enough that I finished first, then joined them. We made sure to not have any little stems on them before adding them to the bowl. It’s a lot more difficult to get those off if they’re left for later! With the Spoon tomatoes, we did NOT harvest the green ones. They’re so tiny, it really wasn’t worth doing it. So those went into the compost with the vines.

I suspect we’re going to have another year of compost tomatoes next year, and that most of them will be Spoon tomatoes!

Later on, before covering the eggplant and peppers for the night, I harvested a couple of kohl rabi and Turkish Orange eggplant. I have no idea if the eggplant is right, but at this point, it’s unlikely the greener ones will finish ripening, even with protective covers. The plants were already drooping from last night’s cold, in spite of the cover and bottles of hot water to help keep them a bit warmer. I chose the two that looked the most orange, but the rest still have green on them. I don’t think eggplant is something you can pick and will ripen indoors, like tomatoes and peppers can.

The kohl rabi I picked are pretty small, and there are just a few left, but I wanted to snack on them. That bed is almost done.

While the day was chilly, it was quite warm in the portable greenhouse! We have kept the “door” rolled up for quite some time but, yesterday, my daughter unrolled it half way and pulled the zippers down.

The thermometer in there was reading over 30C/86F, late this afternoon!

I’d moved our succulents and coffee plant into there yesterday evening. I’m glad I remembered to, as they likely would not have survived the night, but they would be very happy with the heat they got today! I’m hoping to keep those outdoors as long as possible, as they seem to be doing much better than in our living room.

In the next photo, you can see our first male luffa flower starting to bloom. They fell off when I moved a leaf to get the picture, but there were ants climbing around the stem and base of the flower. Which means, pollinators are still getting into the greenhouse. I still plan to hand pollinate, should the opportunity arise.

My daughter and I were checking on it when we spotted our first female flower buds starting to form. No visible baby luffa yet, they were were too small, but we knew they were female flowers, and those form in singles, while the male flowers form in clusters.

As of now, we no longer have any tomatoes in the garden. There are still bush beans, which will probably be killed off by the cold tonight. I’m debating when to just pick the green peppers and bring them in. I’m really surprised by how well the summer squash is holding out. I don’t expect things like the pumpkins, melons, bush beans, the stalled pole beans or sunflowers to survive tonight’s cold, but you never know. Things like the remaining radish plants that still have greener pods on them, the root vegetables, kohl rabi, chard, and even the tiny onions we’ve got growing in the old kitchen garden, can handle frost. We harvested some herbs at the last minute but I haven’t covered that bed with anything. The basil probably won’t make it, but I think the other herds might. We shall see in the morning.

Meanwhile, I’m now going to find some suitable containers, set up something to watch, then start opening up those dried pods and collect their seeds!

The Re-Farmer