manual labour feels good

So tired, but I got it done!

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I love having so much space around the house. I really do! But taking care of it is a … well… you know…

After all this rain, I got mowing done, but never had the chance to do the week trimming around the edges. The lawn needs mowing again already, even without more rain, which is a good sign. This time, I decided to do the trimming, first.

I started yesterday.

I got all the areas on the south side of the house, particularly around the kibble house, cat shelter, well cap and other things in front of the sun room that is hard to get to even with a push mower.

Then I went around the edges in the front yard, including the sidewalk to the small gate, which has sections tree roots have pushed upwards high enough the mower can’t go over anymore, without hitting it.

Doing the south yard includes trimming around the bed the haskaps are in, the bed where the white lilacs are, in between or around various trees, around the asparagus bed, around the potatoes in their bags, around the storage house on two sides, and the outside of the chain link fence. With pauses to McGyver a fix on the chain link vehicle gate that got backed into by our vandal a couple of years ago that really needs its hinges replaced, and to finally drag out some bricks and rocks from under one of the lilacs growing against the storage house.

Then the east yard got trimmed, including as much as I could into the edge of the spruce grove that has been cleared. There’s only so far I can go into there with the trimmer, as I need to get in there with the lopper to get the trees that are trying to grow back. There is a space between the house and where more lilacs and the cherry trees we are keeping, with the now-gone bird houses at either end, that is easier to use the trimmer on instead of trying to maneuver the push mower. Driving through with the riding mower is a bit tight, with the concrete stairs in the middle of the house. I also used the trimmer in an area we’ve been slowly clearing to access into the spruce grove, where we will eventually be building the cordwood shed that will be an outdoor bathroom, but for now will be access to the largest group of dead trees we need to cut down.

For the west yard, I just did the edge of the old kitchen garden retaining wall. The grass in the west yard is so sparse, I probably won’t mow it at all.

By the time all that was done, so was I, so I stopped for the night.

Today, I finished the trimming.

Sort of.

I finished the edges in the north yard, then worked around all the low raised beds in the main garden area. The ones that the onions were in have been left alone, and I’ve given up trying to weed the decimated carrot bed (which, amazingly, has recovering carrots in it!), and the paths in between have gotten so overgrown, it was getting hard to see the beds at all. That took a while to get done! While I was at it, I trimmed in between the raspberries as much as I could. Then I dragged the trimmer over to the Crespo squash and the Montana Morado corn. With the squash, I could only trim around the barriers we’ve put around it. It is recovering amazingly well, which is kind of sad, since there isn’t enough growing season left for them to develop any squash. As for the corn, I used the trimmer in between each row, being careful not to take out any of the peas that are growing with the corn, but falling into the paths. For the longer ones, I tried to get them to grow up the corn stalk they are closest to. I found quite a few pea plants that are blooming!

This area is the “sort of” part. It is so rough, the trimmer is the best way to cut the grass and weeds. Not today, though.

Then it was time to drag the trimmer over to the far garden beds.

Did I mention this is an electric trimmer?

Just as we need 300 feet of hose to reach the furthest areas of these beds, I needed 300 feet of extension cords. That allowed me to trim around the squash tunnel, most of the Dorinny corn and the transplanted Hopi Black Dye sunflowers beside them. The peas planted among the Dorinny corn are doing pretty good, too. I trimmed around the green pea trellises, too, even though there are no longer any peas growing there. Of course the purple peas and the three bean beds got done. It looks like I will be picking beans tomorrow. :-)

Then the corn and sunflower blocks got done, which meant going in between every row with the trimmer (there is just no way to weed this area anymore), again being careful not to take out any of the pea plants. Then the summer squash got done, and finally all the crap apple trees.

You know those cartoons, where a character is going through a spooky forest, and the tree branches turn into hands that clutch and grab? That’s what crab apples trees do. It’s almost impossible to walk under them without getting snagged! Thank goodness I was wearing my cap. The last time I worked under them and forgot to wear one, I found myself having to untangle branches from my hair. There is just something weird about how these apple branches catch onto everything!!

What I didn’t even try to do, besides skipping the old garden area by the purple corn and Crespo squash, is anything in the maple grove. Once again, it is so sparse, I will likely skip it.

I look forward to when the areas between the trees are filled with moss, flowers and other lawn replacements we are working towards.

Anyhow. That was it for the day!

The mowing will wait until tomorrow.

Until then, the girls are watering the garden beds for me right now. This is the first time they’ve needed to be watering since we finally got rain. That’s the longest time we’ve been able to go without watering, all summer.

The Re-Farmer

A much better day today, and what will I do with these?

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After yesterday being such a crappy day, I’m happy to say that today was much improved!

This morning, I found several bright bits of sunshine in the garden.

Several of our summer squash blossoms are now fully open! There are just male flowers right now, so it’s still too early to expect baby squash, but it’s still very exciting to see!

The summer squash was not the only thing in bloom.

Some irises in the flower garden outside the living room window started blooming today. These have been here for as long as I can remember, coming back year after year, decade after decade. They may well have originally been planted here before I was even born.

We got the trip to the smaller city that I meant to do yesterday. One of our stops was to Canadian Tire, where I was finally able to find the air filter I needed for the push mower. After double checking exactly what I was looking for, I realized that the last couple of times we’d looked for a filter, this type wasn’t in stock at all, so I was happy to find one.

We also made a stop at the nearby Walmart. We ran out of kibble this morning, and had a few other things we needed to pick up. Thankfully, we were able to get everything on the list, and still stayed under budget – something we couldn’t have done if we’d had to buy in town.

One of the other things we needed to get was more gas for the lawnmowers, so pretty much as soon as we got home, I changed the air filter on the push mower, and was finally able to finish most of the mowing.

I had started to move along the driveway with the riding mower, a couple of days ago, but there was no way I could use the riding mower to do the area in front of the barn. This is the first time this area has been mowed this year, and it was tall enough to make hay! I’ll go back with a rake and the wagon to pick up clippings for mulch. There was no way I was going to use the bag. I’d have needed to stop to empty it so often, I would never have been able to finish it all in one evening. As it is, there is still another area that needs to be done, but it’s not used at much. At least now, we don’t have to wade through knee high grass to get to the barn and shed!

I also finally got to cut the main garden area, that is too rough to use the riding mower on. Frankly, found myself thinking I maybe should have used the weed trimmer over all of it, but at the highest setting, the push mower was able to do the job.

I had done most of this area with the riding mower; the strip along the right was done with the push mower; you can tell by the darker green, because I had the mower set so much higher. This strip had been plowed, so there are still furrows. If I wanted to get the rest, among those trees, I’d have to use the weed trimmer.

It’s just a guess, but I’m pretty sure where I was standing to take the photo is where the telephone lines are buried. A thing to keep in mind when we plant the trees we are planning on.

This photo was taken from the same spot, facing the other way.

Not much left of that pile of garden soil!

Part of this section was also plowed. You can see the gate in the back, where the tractor and plow would have entered. The plow was dropped starting along the trees on the right. Why there, I have no idea. There hasn’t been garden there since I was a babe. My parents did try gardening here, when they first moved the garden closer to the house (it used to be way out by the car graveyard, when my parents first moved out here). As I child, I remember when the area that has the trees right, now, was a cabbage patch. The area the dirt pile is on now was no longer being used by then. I remember asking my mother why they stopped using this section, and she told me it was too rocky.

Considering how many rocks are everywhere else, that’s saying a lot! :-D

Anyhow, I still wonder why the plowing was starting that far back, but then, my sister thinks the person who did it was drunk at the time, so who knows? The furrows mean it’s another area for the push mower, though the section to the right is flat enough for the riding mower.

I was even able to do some mowing among the trees, to open up some of the paths. The plants at the bottom of the dead spruce tree in the left foreground bloom beautifully, so I’m making sure to leave them be. I’ll have to do the rest of the area around the trees with the weed trimmer.

Mid term goal is to plant low growing ground covers that we can walk on in the paths, while in between the trees will be a combination of ground cover and flowers, with one exception. The morel mushroom spawn my husband got for me for Christmas will be “planted” under one of the elms in the maple grove. He also got giant puffball spawn for me, too, but they like to grow among grass, not under any particular type of tree. I still haven’t quite decided what area I want to inoculate with those, yet. Just somewhere we won’t be going over with the mower.

That is not the only thing I have to figure out where to put. We also have these.

These are the Jiffy pellets we planted the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers in, some 2 months ago. The one that had sprouted got transplanted into the old kitchen garden. When a second one suddenly sprouted, almost a week later, I transplanted it a short distance away.

That made me curious enough to look at the rest of the pellets. I haven’t been watering the tray they were in, but when I lifted some of them up, I saw roots! No sprouts, just roots.

So I moved them all onto one of the baking sheets we got to hold the Solo cups we were using to start seeds, and added water.

Almost overnight, more started to sprout.

Currently, there are 7 new sprouts!

Why did it take these so long to sprout? Especially when the ones that were direct sown, in far less ideal conditions, sprouted so quickly??

And what will we do with them? At this point, I don’t think there’s enough growing season for them to fully mature, but now that they’re finally germinating, I don’t want to just toss them. Also, there’s no more room for sunflowers in the old kitchen garden, and the space they would have gone into in the garden got the Mongolian Giants transplanted into it, since these hadn’t sprouted at all at the time, and we thought they were a lost cause.

I think we will transplant them near the Dorinny corn. That wicked frost we had in late May didn’t seem to affect the corn sprouts at the time, but then they disappeared. They are supposed to be a Canadian frost-hardy hybrid, but that was an unusually cold night. While they looked unharmed the next morning, I guess it took a couple of days for the damage to become visible. However, the other corn seeds that hadn’t geminated yet came up soon after, so we will still have Dorinny corn, but it also means we have entire rows in the block with only one or two corn plants in them. I figure, we can make use of the empty space and transplant these sunflowers into them. Sure, they may not reach full maturity, but at least they’ll have a chance. Who knows. We might have a long and mild fall.

Then there are these.

These are the pink celery that should have been started indoors much earlier. They’ll eventually go into a container (or two?), so we can keep them outdoors for most of the growing season, then try using the sun room as a green house to extend their growing season though late fall.

Assuming they survive being transplanted. We’ll see.

All in all, it’s been a really good day. I finally got things done that kept getting delayed, I got to see the kittens, we had a fabulous supper of butter chicken one daughter made while I was mowing, and there’s panna cotta setting in the fridge, made by my other daughter. And tomorrow, we will be celebrating Father’s Day and my younger daughter’s birthday, early, with a pizza night. :-)

I’m looking forward to a great weekend!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: corn, gourds, squash and melon transplants DONE!!

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Yes!!!!! We managed to finish transplanting tonight!

I thought we might have to move beyond the squash tunnel, but since these will be trained to climb, we were able to plant them closer together than we normally would, and they all fit. Also, I was sure we had the little pumpkins to transplant. I was wrong. None of them germinated. We didn’t plant many to begin with, but I’d hoped to have at least one!

At the far end of the squash tunnel, we have 4 luffa vines on one side, and 3 dancing gourd on the other. Next to them are the two varieties of winter squash, and the two varieties of melon.

There are a lot more melons than anything else (I REALLY love melon!), and that’s even with several cups that never germinated. There are some cups with summer squash in them that never germinated, either, which is why we have only 15 transplants. We all really love summer squash, so we would have enjoyed more, but it’s still a bit more than we had last year.

Now that the squash tunnel’s transplants are in, they, and the summer squash, will be getting a mulch of straw as soon as we are able to get back to it. Then I’ve got to get those bottom cross pieces in, so we can attach the mesh for them to climb.

That done, it was time to finish the new corn block. I’d put a fairly deep layer of grass clippings down, first, so I wanted to put a fairly deep layer of soil. Plus, the garden soil tested high in nitrogen, which corn uses a lot of, so I wanted to make sure it had at least that for the transplants to start in.

After the soil was in place, I made a trench in each row to plant into, then thoroughly watered the trench with water from the rain barrel.

Doing the actual transplanting was rather cringe worthy. I keep hearing from others that corn doesn’t handle being transplanted well, their roots don’t like to be disturbed, and so on. At the same time, I have heard from zone 3 gardeners that only start corn from transplants and never had an issue. Still, I really would have loved for the toilet paper tube plan to have worked. I don’t know of anyone who has tried to grow Montana Morado in Canada, never mind in our province, nor can I find anything online about it, so this is all completely experimental.

The biggest, healthiest looking corn plants tended to be the ones were all 4 seeds in the cups germinated. Except for when they were taken outside to be hardened off, the cups with their drainage holes were all in a bin that had water on the bottom, so they could take up water from below. Which means that there were strong roots at the bottom of the cups, and with anything more than 2 plants in a cup, that meant having to tear the roots apart to separate them.

I am really, really hoping they survived this.

They are, however, all in! I even managed to get some in the little half row I wasn’t sure if I’d be using. I went ahead and planted the little ones, too. Considering they tended to be a single plant per cup, they might actually end up doing better!

Also, the flash makes it look darker than it actually was. I did still have enough light to see what I was doing.

After they were transplanted, I gave them a gentle watering with the hose. It was amusing to see a flashlight coming through the increasing darkness. My daughters hadn’t realized I’d stayed out to finish transplanting the corn, and one of them came out to check on me. :-D Which was handy, because that meant I had help putting things away. The washing of the cups and trays, however, will wait until tomorrow!

The only thing left to do with the corn is put a mulch in the paths between the rows. More to keep the new soil in place while watering than anything else.

Now that this is done, the girls and I can head into the city tomorrow, and I won’t be angsting over getting the transplants in the whole time we’re out! :-D

I’m tired and in a world of hurt – and really, really appreciating having my husband’s bath chair to use in the shower! – but I am very happy. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: bean beds ready

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Temperatures were supposed to cool down today. I suppose they did, since we didn’t reach 30C/86F , however as I write things – at almost 7:30pm – the temperatures have dropped to 25C/77F, from 27C/81F, earlier. :-/ At least we did get a bit of rain early this afternoon; between that and the wind, it was enough that our seedlings that are being hardened off had to be brought back indoors. Still not the thundershowers we were promised. Those have been pushed back to the end of the week.

Then the sky cleared, and the heat returned. *sigh*

The crazy thing is, the weather system that’s coming our way has already brought snow and overnight temperatures of -5C/23F in other areas. Other zone 3 gardeners in the groups I’m in have been scrambling to save their gardens. Meanwhile, our long range forecast now goes as far as June 2 – our last frost date – which has an overnight low of 12C. The lowest overnight low before then is 5C/41F, an increase since the last time I looked.

Well, no matter. Today, we had to work on the beds for the beans, regardless of the heat. They can be planted any time now, since they won’t sprout until after our last frost date, so they should be safe.

We have three areas marked off at 3′ x 20′ (just under 1m x just over 6m). We’ve managed to scrounge enough cardboard to line one of the areas, plus a little bit more. The rest was covered with a layer of grass clippings, all of which was watered down before we started adding soil.

We will be planting double rows of bush beans in each strip. The trench in the middle is to help hold water. It turns out we can just manage to water even the furthest strip with the hose, so we won’t be needing to use watering cans from the rain barrel for these. Though we marked off 3′ wide strips, the soil is only about 2′ wide (about half a meter).

I’m tempted to go out and sow the beans now! I will wait until the morning, though.

The next area we need to work on is where the sweet corn and sunflowers will be going, which is to the left of the bean beds in the above photo. This is going to be the farthest we’ve had to haul soil, so far, and I’m still not even sure how we need to space things. We started half the sunflowers indoors, and none of the purple sunflowers have germinated yet. Only the Mongolian giants. Of the packets we will be direct sowing, neither have a lot of seeds in them (which is why I’d ordered two of each). So the areas needed for the sunflowers will be smaller. The packets of corn seeds, however, have plenty in them, so we’ll be looking at blocks at least the same size as the one the Dorinny corn is planted in, which is 20′ long by about 14′ wide (about 6m x 4 1/2m).

We have some calculating to do.

Either way, that’s a lot of soil that will need to be moved, and we don’t want to waste any of it. We don’t even have anything to put under the soil as a barrier and amendment anymore; not in any useful quantities.

Ah, well. We’ll work it out!

Meanwhile, on a completely different topic, while we were working in the garden, I got an email notification from a family member. It had a link to a news article. Someone in our little hamlet won a Lotto jackpot! I read the article and realized I know them! (The article only mentioned the husband’s name, and it’s his wife that I know from years ago.) I am so incredibly happy for them! It couldn’t have gone to a more deserving family! It’s also wonderful to hear that someone local has had such a great blessing.

Maybe I should start buying lottery tickets again? :-D

But I digress.

Time to go back to figuring out our corn and sunflower area!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: old kitchen garden, part two

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Part One here.

After the girls finished planting the Strawberry Spinach, they went ahead and spaced out the concrete blocks to they would run from end to end across the garden. The gaps in between were fairly large, so they had the idea of filling them with bricks and brought a bunch over.

I liked the idea, so I ran with it. With a bit of adjustment on some blocks, I could fit three bricks in between each block. Then, because we have them, I used only red and white bricks, alternating with 2 red and 1 white, them 1 red and 2 white. Soil needed to be added under them, so they would be the same height (more or less) as the blocks.

That done, I finished filling the space against the wall with larger rocks. I ran out, so I took the wagon to various spots around the old garden, where rocks had been pulled out and left against trees or posts, etc. Once those were in, small rocks were added. When I ran out of those, I just walked around the garden with the wagon, picking them as I went along, and had more than I needed in no time at all. The hard part was not picking too many bigger rocks, because I had nowhere to put them.

Once that was done, I filled gaps between the bricks with soil, and pushed more soil up against the blocks and bricks, then used a hose to clean them off. This is how it looked when it was done.

The path is uneven and lumpy, but it serves its purpose!

Of course, the cats were already using the dirt as litter. *sigh*

We haven’t even finished clearing that soil of roots, and it’s sitting on soil that wasn’t loosened. The next step will be to spread the piles of soil out, taking out as many roots as we can. At least we got what I think are the last of the big roots out. They were all under where the blocks and rocks are, and spreading away from the house, so they were getting smaller as they got further out. The ground slopes slightly downward from the house, which is why we added the retaining wall. We’ll be building up more soil at the wall, to level things off a bit, so shifting this soil downwards will just help with that.

This is what we cleared out so far. They will go into the burn barrel, since much of this is from invasive plants. We’re under a fire ban, but burn barrels should still be okay. I’ll have to check, first.

There will be another path running through roughly the center of the garden, towards the retaining wall. We have more of those concrete blocks. There were two stacks, but I found more, half buried under grass and weeds. I think we have at least 5 more of them out there. Maybe more. Hard to say what we’ll find once we start moving things!

Then we can start adding new garden soil, and finally start planting in some sections. There are flowers on the north side of the garden that I want to dig up and split, but I’m not sure where I want to put them yet. Then there are those flowers my mother now wants me to keep (I checked before I started laying cardboard down that first summer, and she’d told me there was nothing she wanted to keep. The next summer, she changed her mind!). In the photos, you can easily see them, as they’re the only green in there right now. They are invasive, but pretty, so I want to transplant some into a contained space, then get rid of the rest to free up garden space. Or maybe I’ll find someplace to plant them as a ground cover. We’ll see.

Long term, this will be our kitchen garden, and will have a combination of herbs and quick growing vegetables and greens, nice and handy for quick picking as needed. It will be a challenge, with the two big ornamental apple trees, the double lilac, the honeysuckle, and the roses. There’s a rose that was struggling, but actually bloomed last year, after we pruned the tree above it. It’s a lovely pink rose – and it got broken! I think by a deer. I’d like to transplant it somewhere where it can get full sun. The white roses are lovely, but remarkably invasive. Then there are those vines that keep making their way through the mulch and spreading!

We’ll work it out slowly, over the next few years. For now, the poppies will go in the corner near the new path, and the lettuces will go along the west end, where they will be lightly shaded by the trees for much of the day. We’ll see what else we can fit in, if needed.

For now, I’m really wishing we had a hot tub. Or one of those tubs for old people, with a door and a seat. I could really use a hot soak, but if I try to take a bath, I am not sure I’d be able to get up again without help. Being broken sucks! :-D I’ll just have to borrow my husband’s bath chair and take a not shower, instead.

Getting a hot tub really would be a good idea. It would be very therapeutic for my husband’s back, too! Not that we have anywhere to put one right now. I’m sure we could figure it out, though!

All in good time. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: got them done, thanks to a new “toy”

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I was going to have to head into town this afternoon, so I made sure to get out and continue working on the garden beds as early as I could.

I didn’t think to take a picture until after I’d hauled loads of soil onto one of the beds. Before I started on the soil, I made sure to soak down all the straw again.

Note the pile of soil in the background for later. ;-)

After leveling the soil and wetting it down, I decided to go through the piles of wood from when we had the power lines and roof cleared and lay the thinner pieces I could find around the bed. We weren’t going to do that originally, but we paid for that soil; I didn’t want to end up walking on it, and it was starting to run down the sides with the watering.

Filling this bed took at least a dozen wheelbarrow loads of soil, and it took me all morning. Which is when I threw in the towel. There was no way we could keep this up. We would just have to bite the bullet, go through the budget, and see what we could afford for a new wheelbarrow. I checked online and a local hardware store had two options in our budget in stock. So one of my daughters and I headed into town and made our first stop at the hardware store.

When I came in, I went straight to a clerk. When I told them I’d looked online and found something it said they had in stock, the clerks just started shaking their heads, saying that didn’t mean they actually did! LOL I had the link on my phone and read off about the one I hoped to get. Again, I just got head shaking! They had no wheelbarrows at all. Then they suggested I go to the place were I got my baby chainsaw. The two businesses are linked. The hardware store’s building is just too small to have much inventory, so for a lot of the bigger things, it’s all at this other place.

So we went there, and they had only 3 wheelbarrows in stock, in 2 sizes! I got the bigger one, at 5 cubic feet. It was smaller than the one I hoped to get, but it was still bigger than what we had, and 2/3rds the price of what I had in mind, so I wasn’t going to complain!

Here’s our new toy, next to the little wheelbarrow we’ve been using the most.

When we moved here, we found two wheelbarrows kicking around. This is the problem with the little red one we’ve been using the most.

It looks like someone jerry rigged a wheel that’s the wrong size. The axle is bent. It continually loosens, but if it’s tightened too much, it doesn’t turn as well because of the bent axle. Basically, it makes hauling the soil much, much more strenuous than it should be!

It’s been used so much, the bottoms of the legs are worn away!

It’s still sound, overall, so I’m thinking we could probably replace the wheel assembly and get more use out of it.

The other, larger wheelbarrow is not worth fixing.

The barrow has holes in the bottom, and the end is bent up. The metal is very thin, too. Though larger, it can’t handle as much soil as the little one.

You can see one of the holes in this picture, too! :-D I haven’t been able to tighten this wheel, as it’s too rusted. I have a spray I can use to loosen it up, but it’s really not worthy the time and effort. Structurally, the frame on this one is a lot weaker, too. It’s fine if we want to use it to haul straw or something, but using it to haul soil was really pushing it’s capabilities!

In starting the next bed, I put logs around the sides before I started hauling soil. It made it more awkward to dump the soil, but it worked out better. Here is how it looked when done, but before being wet down.

I was having a hard time finding shorter logs for the ends, and ended up using the comically large piece of maple. :-D

Finishing this bed went SO much faster than the one next to it! What a difference it made to have a wheelbarrow with a good wheel on it! :-D Though I didn’t fill it completely with each load, it still took fewer trips to fill the bed.

That done, we put logs around the last two beds that needed soil. By then, we were rifling through 3 different piles of logs, trying to find suitable pieces. Most were cut to about the same length, but we were running out of the thinner ones. Finding short ones for the ends took a bit of creativity. We do actually have a whole stack of shorter ones, but they are all way too big around.

Once we managed to find enough logs to frame the beds, we started adding the soil.

And they’re done!!! Six beds, ready for planting!

We’ll probably add logs around the first two, at some point.

Notice the pile of soil in the background?

We haven’t used half the pile yet, but we’re pretty close! I’m rather please with how much is left!

Now that these beds are done, there are no others that need to have such a deep layer of soil added over such a wide area. I did measure the beds, and they are roughly 3 – 3 1/2 ft wide by about 15 ft long. (About 1m x 4.5m) Plus the width of the logs, which is variable. When we build our high raised beds, Hugelkultur style, those logs will be on the bottom of the beds. :-) With the dimensions we have now, the permanent beds will be pretty much exactly where the current beds are.

The weather forecasts have been changing pretty much every day, with the predicted warm days being pushed further and further back. We should still be able to plant something in these beds right away, though.

Our onion starts are still in the process of hardening off.

I found a way to keep them away from the cats. We still have the broken frame of my daughter’s market tent (if we could replace the piece that broke, I would be very happy, as it was a very excellent tent), so I used that to hold the puck board cut to cover the old basement window over the winter. The outside cats have shown no interest in the set up.

Those are the last of the onions we grew from seed; I’m hoping we’ll still have some salvageable red bunching onions. While in town today, I noticed onion sets and checked them out, and was very happy to find sets for shallots! It’s only a dozen per pack (I got 2 packs), but that’s okay.

Along with the transplants, we now have sets for the shallots and yellow onions, with sets for red onions to arrive in the mail this week. Once they’re in, the transplants should be hardened off enough, and we can plant all our onions.

Now that these beds are done, the only area we need to work on for things that need to be planted right away is the old kitchen garden. We’ll be using the soil from the other pile. While the one in the old garden area is closer, it would require going over the roughest part of the crappy plow job, and through the maple grove. The distance to the other pile is all nice and flat, with only a gate to go through. I’ll take a longer, smooth trip over a shorter, bumpy one, any day!

But that is a job for tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: new, layered bed

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The forecast for today has changed, and we are expected to be even warmer than originally predicted. Before trying to get my husband to the lab in town for his blood work (he never even got to the counter to get his requisition; the line up was out the door, and was moving so slowly, he ended up leaving, due to his pain levels), I saw we’d already reached 13C/55F, which was originally our predicted high. The new high for the day was listed as 18C/64F. As soon as I could after we got back, I headed out to get the new bed done, before things got too hot.

Yeah. I know. It’s not really “hot”, but we’re not acclimatized yet!

This is what it looked like before I started.

I would like to point out how deep into the soil the spade is. This is actually really, really impressive. Pretty much anywhere else in the yard, I would not be able to get the spade that deep, even while standing on it – and I’m no lightweight! Typically, I’d shove the spade into the ground, turn around to do something else, only to have it fall over, moments later. What a difference with soil that has been buried for decades under where the wood pile for the furnace used to be.

The first thing to do was remove that lovely soft soil.

And more roots.

We’ve de-rooted this area three times, and I was still finding old cherry roots!!

Also, worms. Lots of worms!

I dug down until I hit gravel. Which was not as deep as the other two beds that our garlic is planted in.

You can see a root sticking out that I couldn’t remove. I decided it wasn’t worth going back to the sun room to get something to cut it with. Some of the other roots I pulled out went under the boardwalk on the side! I’d dug those areas down to the gravel, too.

Being near the compost ring, this bed is narrower than the others, as well as shallower.

Being right next to the compost ring came in handy, though.

I pretty much emptied the compost ring, then walked back and forth on it to stomp it down.

Using the contents of our compost pile like this, we aren’t getting a chance to get any finished compost! Which is fine. It’s still organic material for our garden beds.

Speaking of which…

Next came a layer of straw.

Unfortunately, the wind was really picking up, and things were blowing away, so I made sure to tromp all over the straw, too.

When it came time to return the soil, I did much of it by hand. This allowed me to break up lumps, remove rocks, old tree roots, weed roots, and gently cover the worms.

This is where a soil sifter would make things a lot easier.

Well. Except for the “gently cover the worms” part. That would be more of a “bash the worms to bits” thing. So I don’t mind doing it by hand!

With the previous beds, I returned the soil that was dug up, plus added the soil from where the paths are. I’m not making a path on the other side, so it’s just the soil I removed. I’d used that side area to pile grass clippings last year. Most was used elsewhere, but there still was some left, and that got added to the bed as well.

We will be adding some of the lovely new garden soil to this, but not yet. By this point, it was just too windy to keep working on it. Hopefully, it will calm down a bit, later. After today’s high of 18C/64F (it’s already 17C/62F), we’re supposed to drop to -3C/26F, with “isolated flurries”. Tomorrow’s high is only 2C/35F, so if I can get this finished today, that would be great.

I do want to break out the soil testing kit first, though. I want to compare soil samples from this area, with the big garden area, and with the new garden soil. That should be quite interesting!

So there is the new, layered, garden bed, almost complete. This will be a good bed for root vegetables. I think we’re planning to put a variety of beets in here, though maybe it would be better for carrots. We have several varieties of both beets and carrots, so we might even do one of each. We shall see!

A lot of our seeds packets say to direct sow “as soon as the ground can be worked.” Which, obviously, can be done now. With the predicted overnight temperatures, though, I don’t think I’d be willing to chance it for another week even if we cover them with plastic. Even cool weather crops have their limits! That will just give us more time to prepare the beds. We’ll have to go over the seed packets and figure out just how big some of them will need to be and start marking them out. That will help us make some decisions on exactly where different things will be planted. Especially those that will need trellises and other supports.

We have lots of work to do, and I’m so thankful to finally be able to get at it!!

The Re-Farmer

Fall clean up: preparing the second garlic bed

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Since I went and build up a bed and walkway yesterday, I kinda had to continue today! :-D

Here is where I left off, yesterday.

The goal was to create another bed with compostable material buried in it, and make a second walkway.

The first thing that had to be done was to break up all the soil inside the frame and pull out any weeds and roots I found. Then I loosened the areas the walkway was going to go. This area had been mulched with grass clippings, so there weren’t a lot of weeks that needed to be pulled out of there.

Then it was time to dig out the new bed, just keep enough to start hitting gravel. Of course, there were more roots – and rocks! – to take out.

There wasn’t much in the new compost pile I could use for this, so I also loaded up a wheel barrow full from the old compost pile. That got topped off with another wheel barrow full of old, damp straw.

The compostable material got buried, with extra soil added from digging out the walkway. I wanted this one to be slightly narrower than the other, to give me more room for a third bed, if I decide to do another one.

I had to make many trips to the junk pile to find enough wood to do the walkway 3 layers deep, like the first one.

Once this was done, I went to clean up the mess I’d made digging for pieces of wood in the junk pile. A lot of the pieces were either too rotten, or too full of nails, staples and screws!

Cleaning that up led to finding all sorts of things, so that will get it’s own post!

So we now have to beds ready and waiting for the garlic to come in. Tomorrow, I will get one of the girls to help me move the frame and see if we can fit a third one in. I don’t even know if we’ll have enough garlic to need three beds, but if it’s feasible, I’d rather have it and not need it, then need it and not have it!

The Re-Farmer

Washer woes, and some progress

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So our washing machine is being weird. It agitates, but when it gets to when the drum should spin and water drained, it just… doesn’t.

It’s possible the drive belt is off. We can’t check it yet. The laundry that was in the machine had to be hand wrung out and went into the drier. The girls were then sweethearts and manually removed as much water as they could, before checking it over to see what going on. Which is when they found the drum is very loose.

The only way to check, though, it to take the panel off the back. We can’t do that until the drier is done. We can’t pull the washing machine forward very far, because there is a step blocking it. We have to wait until the drier is done, then put that out, so that we can pull the washer out around the step.

Meanwhile, I’m looking up the costs of a new washing machine. Depending on what we find, we may have to choose: do we spend the money to fix an old machine that has a high probability of breaking again in the near future, or do we dip into the contingency fund again, to get a new, energy efficient machine with a warranty on it. Who knows. It might be an easy fix. Or we might not even see the problem, even after opening it up.

We should know better, tonight.

Meanwhile, I was able to head outside this afternoon for a bit of work in the old garden area. I’m tired of damaging the blade of our lawnmowers when mowing in the old garden area, by hitting lumps of dirt I don’t see in the grass. Right now, while it’s still short, is the best time to do something about it. Since we’re limited in tools, that means manual labour. :-D

Basically, I went looking for the lumps with the tops flattened from betting hit with the mower blade, then dug at them with the potato fork, to break them up and loosen the soil.

In the above picture, I have actually broken up one of those lumps.

You can see why I keep hitting them with the mower!

The root systems are holding the sod together quite a bit, but they will be broken up further. After going over them with the fork, we’ll go back with hoes and break them up further, spreading the soil into the low areas and leveling things off as much as we can.

I took advantage of being out there with the fork and removed some of the larger weeds and tree saplings.

Well… almost the tree saplings.

I’d gone through the area last summer, pulling many of them out, or cutting them with pruning shears. While breaking up hills of soil, I spotted one that was larger and a definite tripping hazard.

Guess how I know that? :-D

I discovered that I was not going to get this one out, without other tools.

It was actually growing out of a long root.

There are NO trees near this. The closest ones are the strip of self-sown trees along where the squash beds are now, and the tree at the end of that strip is a maple. Maples don’t send shoots out like this. Poplars do, but the nearest poplars are along the fence, among the lilacs. There are more along the other fence line. From the direction this root is running, those further away poplars are the more likely source.

We’re talking about 100 feet away.

I left it until I can come back with cutting tools, later.

Then there’s stuff like this.

This is a burdock root. I keep mowing over them, and they keep coming back, because of roots like this.

And this is Rolando Moon, helping me…

More specifically, this is Greater Burdock, or Arctium lappa. We have it growing all over, and it can make quite a barrier to some of the sheds and equipment! While it can be used for food or medicine, it’s not something we actually want to cultivate, and we certainly don’t want it in taking over.

I wasn’t able to get all of this root out. It broke off, instead. Those roots go very deep!

I worked only on the West side of the old garden area.

It looks a bit like a bunch of giant skunks were digging for grubs! :-D

There is a smaller area to the East of the squash bed, but that area is much worse for hills that need to be broken down, and there’s at least one large rock that I hope to be able to take out. It all depends on how much of it is still buried. It was the heat and wind that drove me indoors early! But not before I checked a few other things.

The stack of wood from the maples we had cut away from the roof has given us a handy seat to stop and rest at. I was going to take a bit of a break there, before continuing on.

That seat is now occupied…

This stack is at the maple grove, but the red ants that built this brought spruce needles from across the North yard, all the way to this log! It’s about 40 or 50 feet, just to the edge of the spruce grove. They’d have to go past the mulch we put down last year, to get to where the needles are! I was seeing ants going in and out of cracks at the other end of the log, so this nest goes all the way through.

Well, this is a log I won’t be using for any projects. !!

I also checked on the grapes again.

I just love these baby grape clusters! Right now, these grapes are as big as they were, fully ripe, our first summer here, when we discovered the grapes in among the spirea. Last year was their first year cleared of the spirea and trained up the trellis, and there were no grapes at all. I’m sure that summer was one they needed to recover from the changes! I’m very happy to see how well they’re doing now – even after I accidentally killed one of the vines! Which you can see on the left of the photo. Other vines are climbing up the dead one, so I’m leaving it there.

Another area I checked on was indoors. At the beginning of the month, I’d rigged up the dehumidifier that was down there when we first moved in. Here is how it looked , after running for a while.

That damp spot had been an actual puddle. The well pump was covered in condensation, water was collecting under the pump, the pressure tank and the hot water tank. The new well pump, still in its box, was sitting on pieces of wood to elevate it, but the wood itself was getting so damp, I added some pieces of foam – they look like pool noodles with a cut from end to end, and I don’t know why they’re there – to elevate it even more.

This is how it looks now.

Where the puddle had been is now just a dry stain. There is no condensation on any of the pipes, and everything under the tanks and pump are now dry. There is only one spot, where the concrete has broken away, that is damp.

On the other side of the divider wall is where the new screened window is, and even that area has just a damp spot in the lowest area. Even the areas under the furnaces are just damp not wet. I unplugged the blower fan to let the motor cool down, but right now, even with the continued rains, I don’t think it is an issue anymore. When it was just the blower fan going, it did help, but the concrete was still wet enough that a white mold was starting to grow. There is no sign of that, now. I was a bit concerned about the screen window, since it’s “roof” had fallen off. There is nothing to prevent the rains from going in through there, other than the fact that it is so low.

There is a possibility of more storms or rain tonight. There is an odd weather system coming our way right now. Instead of a large mass of rain with patches of more severe conditions in it, the radar shows mostly clear, with dozens of tiny storms, moving across the prairies. There’s just no way of knowing if something will hit us until… well… it hits us!

And now it’s time to check – again – if the drier is done, and we can check out what’s wrong with the washing machine.

The Re-Farmer

Productive

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First, I must apologize.

I didn’t get a single kitten picture today, to share with you! I never had the chance.

I did visit the kittens, of course. One of the first things I do in the morning is head down there with fresh water for them. When I opened the basement door, Beep Beep was sitting in the window ledge above the stairs, waiting for her moment. As soon as the door opened, she launcher herself into the air and through the door!

In my hapless effort to block her, the door got left open a split second too long.

As Beep Beep raced into the dining room, five cats exploded into the basement.

The kittens, meanwhile, had come running to the stairs, as they usually do.

Fenrir has been the most dedicated at trying to get into the basement, but she does not like the kittens. As soon as she saw them, she bolted back up the stairs, then crouched in the entry, staring at the door, like a hairy gargoyle.

Keith was quite taken aback by the horde of kittens.

Keith is also a bundle of nerves and anxiety.

Next thing I know, Keith is hissing and spitting at a kitten, in total fear. The kitten – Nicco – was busily making himself look big, hissing, spitting and advancing on Keith.

Who ran away and hid under a table.

Two Face was running around, trying to snag a kitten to groom. Every now and then, one would come too close, and she would grab it, do a barrel roll as she wrestled it to the ground, before aggressively mothering it. It would take a few moments before a disheveled kitten would squirm it’s way out, and she would do it again to another one.

Cheddar doesn’t seem to know what to think of them. He kept going from kitten to kitten, sniffing and staring. Once again, it was Nicco who made himself look big, staring him down. Until Cheddar casually reached out with a paw and smacked Nicco vaguely around his head.

David, meanwhile, is totally chill with the kittens. He kept going around, sniffing and grooming and snuzzling, kitten after kitten.

Beep Beep, meanwhile, came down, then went back up, then came down and beep beep beeped at me with her distinctive meow that gave her her name.

Then her daughter, Two Face, started beeping, too.

She has a much higher voice than her mother.

I tried to cuddle Beep Beep, and she was reveling in the attention, but would soon run off upstairs again.

Eventually, I had to grab a broom to try and persuade Keith to come out from under the table. Then I tried to sweep the cats towards the stairs. I was finally able to grab them, one at a time, and toss them into the entry way, closing the door each time, so none would come back down.

Beep Beep ended up upstairs again, and I found myself alone with 5 kittens attacking my feet and trying to climb my legs.

I finally got their water changed, then took advantage of the situation and gave them a little packet of wet cat food. That distracted them enough that I could escape and find Beep Beep. As I suspected, she was looking around the food bowls upstairs. She was looking for wet cat food.

So I snagged her and managed to get her downstairs, where the treat was waiting for her.

By the time it was done, the whole thing left me feeling like I’d been spun in circles! :-D

So…

No pictures of kittens this time.

*sadness*

Today did turn out to be a nicely productive day. I made a trip into town to check out a place I’d seen ads for, saying they did lawnmower maintenance. If I could find a place I could take the mowers to, instead of having to go three quarters of the way to the city, to the place my brother bought our riding mower, that would be great. I never expected having trouble finding a small engine shop locally! There are probably quite a few, but no one that advertises. This place is connected to one of the hardware stores, and carries a lot of the big stuff, and even has a chipper that can be rented. For the amount of wood we need to get chipped, we’re going to go ahead and hire the company that did our trees for us, instead. This place also carries the garden soil, manure and peat that the hardware store itself just doesn’t have the room for.

Walking into the place is like heaven. Everywhere I turned, there were riding mowers, push mowers, weed wackers, all sorts of tools and…

Was that a chain saw display in the back?

Why yes! Yes it was!

I had had zero luck in finding a new chain for the electric chainsaw that we had checked out, last year. We never got to use it, nor the gas powered one, at all last year.

The first thing I asked about, was the lawn mower maintenance. When I told him I wanted to get some work done on our riding mower, his first question was, is it still working? I explained that yes, it’s running fine, but I just want to get some basic maintenance done and the blades sharpened. He told me that I could just drop it off – no appointment needed – but they are really busy with lawnmower maintenance right now. He said that, since it’s still running (not in need of any repairs), to just keep on using it and give them about 2 weeks before I drop it off.

I’ll just leave it for next month.

I then asked him about chain saw chains. He said he would need to see the chain saw to know if they carried the right chain, but they do have sharpening services, too. So I will bring it over one of these days for him to take a look at, and he’ll be able to determine if I just need to get it sharpened, or if I need a new chain.

I then bought a bale of peat and some bag of soil mix. He came out with me to help load it into the van, which was kind of funny, since the lift gate is still broken, and I keep a pole in the back to prop it open. I joked about it being something else I need to get fixed, as he deftly maneuvered around the pole to load the bags into the van.

That done, I decided a stop at the garage would be a good idea.

I asked about my mom’s car. He told me he was going into the city tomorrow, and going to a wreckers. Among the things he’s looking for is the part for my mother’s car. He’d hoped to head out this afternoon, but had too many cars to work on, already. I then asked him if he serviced AC systems. Our air conditioning was working last year, if not particularly well, but this year, nothing. The cost was very reasonable, so we went to book that on his calendar. Then I remembered to ask about the lift gate. Since we’re going to be hauling a lawn mower in the back of the van, using the nice new ramps my brother bought for us, it would be good to not have a pole in the way. ;-) These aren’t very expensive and don’t take long to install, so that’s going to get done, too.

I also remembered to ask him about the driver’s side door hinge. When we bought the van, the original door would drop when opened, and we would have to lift it to close it. Eventually, the latch on the door snapped. It was actually cheaper to replace the door, and the garage we went to at the time tried to find a second hand one for us, but never did. We spent most of the first year we owned the van with a Bungee cord keeping the door shut. Including the drive across provinces, during the move.

My brother had been able to find a door, but because the driver’s side door has the only key lock, he had to take both of them apart and cobble the two together. The original hinge pins broke in the process, but he’d snagged the ones from the vehicle he had salvaged the door from, so that worked out. The door does, however, still drop ever so slightly, and we don’t want to go through all that again. If we can get it fixed now, before it becomes a problem, that would be good.

The problem is, he would have to take it apart and see, in order to give me an estimate. But there are only two possibilities. One, we need new bushings. Two, they would need to take it apart, precision drill a new opening, and weld things back together.

If it’s one, that’s not a problem.

If it’s two, he basically says it would take so long, it might not be worth it, because it would be really expensive, just in shop equipment fees, never mind the time.

So the bushing kit, which is not very expensive, has been ordered, and he will check it and see. I’ll be dropping the van off on Monday morning, and just hanging out in town until it’s done.

It was a rather short trip into town, but it felt like I’d accomplished quite a bit in the process!

Once at home, we were getting into the hottest part of the day, so we stuck to inside stuff until things started to cool down in the evening. I didn’t even bother unloading the van until then. That wagon we got last month is awesome. I was able to haul the bale of peat and bags of soil, all at once, over to the old garden area. Then I started mowing the old garden area with the push mower.

I am so glad my brother was able to get that thing running for us. There is no way we could do this area with the riding mower. It would break in no time!

Also, that drill attachment sharpener I got for the mower blade has made a huge difference! When I sharpened it yesterday, I found it so bashed up, it was hard to tell which side of the blade was beveled, and which was flat!

I’m also so happy we found that bag attachment for this mower. It isn’t very big, and I had to stop to empty it often, which makes for much slower going. However, I am getting so many grass clippings, I decided to keep mowing into areas I would normally use the riding mower for, just so I could get more!

And since I had all these wonderful grass clippings, I decided to use them to mulch around where we planted the sunflowers.

The areas mulched are two wagon loads of clippings. I stopped after finishing this end of the old garden area, and then had to stop. After two hours, I was pretty knackered!

Also, I really need to remember to keep a water bottle with me when I’m doing this!

Meanwhile, after the girls finished what they were working on inside, they came out to remove the logs that were used to frame the area we chose to mulch last year, and where I am planting the squash this year. They have served their purpose, and now they are starting to be in the way as we go around with wheelbarrows or wagon, hoses and soil mixes.

We will not be able to continue this tomorrow, though. Tomorrow is our day to do the monthly shop in the city.

I am really hoping it goes better than last month. Last time was pretty brutal. :-( Even on a good trip, though, we’re pretty wiped out by the time we get home, unload and put everything away.

As for me, I am done like dinner! Time for a shower and, hopefully, early to bed!

Oh, wait. I should have supper first…

The Re-Farmer