planning ahead

We have cows again!

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I’ve had some sleepless nights, so the girls were kind enough to do my morning stuff for me and let me sleep in. I headed out in the afternoon to go to the mail, then into town to refill a couple of our big water jugs, and ended up picking up a lasagna for supper.

When I got home and went to open the gate, I was pleasantly surprised to see we have cows again!

The renter has rotated his cows to our quarter section one last time before they bring them in for the winter.

Seeing his cows makes me smile, every time!

I drove into the yard to unload the water jugs, then took the time to try and figure out how to open up the cover over the truck’s box. I’d looked up online, but found instructions for a specific brand, and it turns out ours unlocks differently! It took using the flash on my phone to finally see the loop under one corner that released the cover. I rolled it up then climbed in with a broom.

That was NOT fun. I could get onto the tailgate easy enough, but my knees are so shot, it was a real struggle to get up again. I would get one knee up, which would cause massive pain on the other knee. I’m going to take a page from my brother’s book and get some high density foam pieces that can be slid onto the tail gate and make it less painful. We’ve already been talking about keeping a folding step stool to make getting into the back easier, too. We wanted a taller vehicle for important reasons, but … well, I’m short!

Tomorrow we will be making our first stock up shopping trip to the city, and I’m planning to hit Costco on this trip. I will be able to load an entire month’s worth of cat kibble in the back! I might actually run out of room on the flat cart in the store, and should still have space in the truck! With temperatures the way they are right now, we can even skip the ice packs and load the insulated bags in the back with the kibble bags, while things that don’t need to stay cold can be loaded into the cab.

If all goes to plan, I’ll only have to do the one Costco trip, then do a second trip a few days to a different areas of the city, where there are several stores all along one street that we go to. I might even go check out the liquidation place we found but rarely go to.

That should be all the necessary trips to the city after that – two trips instead of 3 or 4. I’m quite looking forward to seeing how it goes!

Oh, I was just reminded as I wrote about the kibble; with how much we get every month, I did some searches to see if I could buy the kibble from a wholesale supplier, instead of at retail. I did find some Canadian “wholesale” outlets, but the prices were often more expensive than what we’re paying at Costco! Which makes these the retail store for wholesale outlets.

I should try that livestock supply store again. Their huge bags of cat food were cheaper, but the cats didn’t like it, but they did have other brands and higher quality cat food. If they have better prices than Costco, for kibble that cats will actually eat, that would be awesome. They don’t have any products listed online, though.

We shall see.

Anyhow.

Aside from the trip to town, we got a bit more progress done outside. The last of the garden hoses are put away, the septic tank covered, and a few more garden supports and stakes bundled and stored. Over the next few days, it will be getting cold enough to do the winter mulching before the ground freezes. We’re still expected to get temperatures hovering around the freezing mark for most of November, so it’ll be a while before more than the surface freezes.

It is amusing to start the truck and get a warning on the display saying “ice possible, drive with care”. 😃 We’ve only been getting a light dusting of snow that’s mostly gone by the afternoon, but the south end of our province has been getting a mix of snow and rain, so there are plenty of warnings about road conditions going out.

It’s going to be a long day tomorrow, so I hope to finally get a good night’s sleep, tonight!

The Re-Farmer

Good morning!

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Breakfast is served.

I counted 37 or 38 this morning. Plus Shop Towel. He came over to the kibble house and seemed okay at first -I was even just starting to be able to touch him – but then one of our friendly males came by and he attacked. I chased him off and he actually stopped to attack another cat that had been startled by the commotion and happened to be running in the same direction.

*sigh*

Also, yes. That tuxedo has a messed up eye. That’s the one that had a badly infected eye, but we could never catch him to clean it up. Not the tuxedo that lost its eye entirely. I haven’t seen that one in a long time.

Today looks like a day where not much is going to get done outside. It looks like it’s been raining for most of the night, judging by how much water is pooling in our driveway, and is still raining now. It’s expected to continue raining until the evening.

Which I’m okay with. It’ll be good for the ground to get a lot of moisture before the snow hits and the ground starts to freeze. That will benefit any young trees, like the apple we planted in the spring, and the Korean Pine in the outer yard, as well as the garlic and saffron crocuses that were planted not long ago. A good, deep watering before winter is a good thing.

Oh, I need to remember to contact Veseys about those purple raspberries. I double checked and yes, I was remembering correctly. They are regular cane raspberries, not primal cane. Primal cane raspberries produce berries on new canes every year, so you can literally mow the whole patch down in the fall, and they will produce new shoots in the spring. With regular cane, berries are produced on second year canes, which then die off, leaving the fresh first year canes to survive the winter and produce the following year. What we should have gotten in our order was first year canes, and we should not have had any berries this year at all. Instead, the canes planted this year would have produced berries next year, while also having new canes come up that would produce berries the year after. There were no new canes that came up. Just the ones we planted, that produced berries, instead. It seems highly unlikely, but we either got second year canes in stead of first year canes, or conditions somehow “tricked” the raspberries into acting as though they’d gone through a winter. This can sometimes happen with biannuals like onions or carrots. For example, the year we had groundhogs eating our carrot greens, quite a few went to seed after their greens started growing back. I can’t think of anything that happened with the raspberries that could have simulated that sort of annual pattern, though.

Anyhow…

Days like today – rainy and overcast – always make me feel really, really sleepy. I’m resisting the urge to crawl back into bed!

The Re-Farmer

Golden morning, and our 2023 garden

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Yes, I still have garden stuff to post about! On October 20!

I have no errands to run today, so doing my morning rounds was more relaxed. And gorgeous!

We had another night with thick fog that was still hanging around, while a bright, golden sunrise shone through. Truly stunning!

Not quite enough to make me a morning person, but I can still appreciate it. 😄

With how mild the temperatures have been, the frost hardy carrots, onions and radishes are still being left to be harvested as needed. Well. Not the radishes. We’ve got the two that are happily blooming, and I want to see how far along they get before winter hits. I don’t expect to have harvestable pods in time, but you never know!

The old kitchen garden has only the chamomile and thyme (the thyme is doing very well!) growing, plus the strawberries we grew from seed.

Amazingly, there are not only strawberries ripening, but they are still blooming! They’re just tiny little things. I have no idea if that’s the variety, or if it’s because it’s their first year after being started from seed. The kit they came in did not have a variety name that I can recall.

Then there’s the luffa…

The smaller one that was hanging up near the top of the lilacs was getting pretty sad looking, so I went ahead and picked it. Definitely not developed enough, but I’ve set it aside in the sun room to dry. I’ll crack it open later to see how it looks inside. The larger one is still resting on the branch I set it on, so it wouldn’t get bashed around in high winds. The vine might be long dead, but that one is still looking very green, so I’m leaving it for now.

I’m hoping to get more work done in the garden today. Things are really damp right now, and we’re looking at the possibility of rain. I’d like to finish cutting that tree to size and dragged it out of the spruce grove for the second trellis bed. If it’s too wet to use the electric chain saw, there’s plenty of other work that needs to be done to prepare the garden beds for winter.

With all the crazy distractions we’ve had for the past month or so, I’m really appreciating how mild our fall has been, and that being able to get work done in the garden is an option at all, never mind trying to catch up on all the stuff that’s been delayed, time and again. That there is still stuff growing and blooming is absolutely amazing! I really like strong El Niño years! It may mean more snow, but the temperatures tend to be milder. Both are a huge bonus for our area.

In other things, we set our battery charger up on the truck overnight, since I had no idea when we’d be doing any longer drives that would do it for us. When we moved here we found a battery charger in the garage, but our own will stop charging when it’s full, making it safer to leave overnight. So that is taken care of. As much as I’d like to be driving the truck as much as possible, now that we have it, I don’t have the time or gas budget to waste on unnecessary trips. We’ll be doing plenty of driving at the end of the month, when it’s time to do our stock up shopping.

I’m so looking forward to being able to do full trips again! Especially with the Costco shopping, and all those bags of cat food we can now fit in there. While looking over the truck when I first brought it home, my daughters suggested we keep some sort of hook to help reach things at the far end of the box, without having to crawl all the way in. My brother keeps a garden hoe for that. Something similar, but with a narrow hook that can fit into the small handles on the ends of our hard sided bags, for example, would be better. A long handled version of the metal hooks we used to drag hay bales around, back in the day, would be perfect. I should look in the barn and the sheds and see if there’s anything we could repurpose. In the van and my mother’s car, we could get away with using the spare canes with pistol grip handles we keep in there, but those are too short to use in the truck box.

What a nice problem to have. 😊

The Re-Farmer

First one, nine more to go

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I am so tired.

I’m going to pay for today, tomorrow! It’s a good thing it’s Thanksgiving, so I’ll have a break to recover.

My goal was to get the felled tree that was stuck for so long, cleared and cut to size and, hopefully, start clearing access to the other tree my brother cut down for me that is almost completely hidden by the underbrush.

The first task was to clear away a small spruce tree I had to cut to allow the felled tree to drop. It was such a perfectly straight little tree, I ended up debranching in and setting it aside for future use. There were a couple of other dead trees plus underbrush to clear before I could reach the broken tree top that was laying across the trunk. The tree it was from had lost its top at some point, so a pair of branches grew upwards to create a double top. The whole thing was too big and heavy to bother taking out completely. Instead, I cleared away some of the branches, then cut it away from either side of the trunk I was after, giving myself enough space to work. I was able to use the mini-chainsaw for this, so once it was clear, I kept cutting away branches from the trunk I now had access to, until the battery died. I was already on my second battery, and the first one hadn’t had time to recharge yet, so I switched to the loppers. This part of the tree extended outside the north “wall” of the spruce grove, and I was able to use the loppers to clear all the way to the end.

The next step was clearing access to the bottom of the trunk. Between a machete and the loppers – our weed trimmer isn’t heavy duty enough for what was grown back since we were last able to work in this area – I was able to make a path. There was still the top of a dead tree I’d harvested before, laying on the undergrowth, that I dragged out. It’s straight enough, we might be able to use parts of it. Then I had to clear the trunk itself, which not only meant clearing underbrush around and branches on the trunk I was after, but even some low hanging dead branches from the spruces the trunk was wedged in between.

Once everything was finally clear, I measured off and marked 10′ from the base of the trunk, then the next 18′. The 18′ length will be for the next trellis bed. There’s still at least another 18′ of trunk left, but the closer we get to the top, the less straight the trunk is, and the more full of branch stubs it is. It will likely still be used; just not for the side walls of the next trellis bed.

Once everything was accessible and de-branched, I was finally able to cut the 10′ length.

Then I had to drag it out.

Good grief, that log was heavy!

As I’ve done with most of the logs, I dragged it out by a rope tied to one end. Getting it out of the spruce grove was quite a challenge. I even tried wrapping a plastic bag around the far end to help it slide better across the ground, but this time, it made no difference. I ended up taking it off again, as it seemed to actually make things worse.

Once it was out of the spruce grove, I left it and went into the barn. I found some scrap pieces of wood that were used as spacers between some old salvaged lumber we’ve been scavenging for various projects. The pile used to be a log bigger, before we got here, so there were quite a few of these scrap bits.

I decided to store the 10′ lengths beside the garage and lay the pieces on the ground to keep the log from direct contact with the soil. Then it was back to the log!

It wasn’t long before I gave up trying to drag it. It was not at all co-operative! I ended up simply rolling it the rest of the way.

Here it is!

The very first 10′ length of what will be the vertical supports for the roof of our future outdoor kitchen.

Only 9 more to go.

I wonder how much that thing weighs? I just tried looking at some log weight calculators, but they either require information I don’t have (oven dried weight and bark??), or they don’t have black spruce in their species list. I’ve tried a couple of species of spruce, but they don’t grow here. I also tried tamarack, which does grow here, but I think tamarack is a denser wood. The results ranged from just over 140 pounds to over 200 pounds. That’s a huge range! Plus, this tree has been dead for a very long time, so it’s very dry. If I had to guess, after looking at the calculators, I’d put it at maybe 150-170 pounds. Which isn’t really a lot. I’m definitely not as strong as I used to be! 😥

The other felled tree that I need to access looks like another big one. I have no idea how tall that one is, but I’m hoping I’ll get another 10′ length, and 18′ length again.

Anyhow.

Once the 10′ length was cleared, I went back and measured out the 18′ again, then started cutting it. With the top of the tree still hovering above ground, I was expecting its weight to drop at the top, which would have made for an easy cut.

Of course, it didn’t go easy.

Instead of the top dropping, the entire trunk slid down a couple of inches, pinching the chain saw’s bar. The chain was still free and could spin, but the bar couldn’t move any further to finish the cut. It could only just rotate in place. In the end, I had to take the bar off the chainsaw. I was then able to get the bar out, but the chain was still stuck. I had to find something large enough and strong enough to lift the log – a steel pipe my brother had found and used when the tree first got stuck on him! – high enough to open the cut enough that my daughter to pull the chain free.

At which point, I was done for the day! It was starting to get dark, anyhow.

So I almost got the tree cut to size!

I’m not actually sure how I’m going to get the rest of it out, though. The top of the tree, once free, will be easy to drag clear. This 18′ section, though, is right in between three other trees. They’re dead, too, and slated to be cut down, but they don’t have clear paths to fall. There are other dead trees that need to be cleared out, first.

I never imagined that one dead tree would be so difficult to harvest! It’ll get easier as we clear away more of the dead trees, but these first few just don’t have a lot of space around them. There’s still more than a dozen more dead spruces to cut down, and some of them are quite a bit bigger. These ones that my brother cut down for me were specifically chosen because they were smaller and more suitable for the trellis beds!

So… yeah. I’m pretty tired now! 😄 I also forgot to take painkillers before I started this. I’ve taken some since then, but by the end of it, it was getting hard to move! My daughter had to take over removing the sheets we’re using to cover the peppers from the clothes line, because I was having such a hard time of it – then did to covering of peppers for me, too!

And now it’s almost midnight, already! Where did the time go? Time to try and get some sleep. Tomorrow, we feast!

The Re-Farmer

Trellis bed progress: first end cap done

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Finally! I was able to bring over my tools and equipment, which I just keep in the utility wagon now, over to the garden and get a bit more done on the first trellis bed.

The first step was to cut the two logs set aside into 4′ long pieces. I know for sure I’ll need two per end, but these logs are thinner than the ones in the side walls, so I cut extra just in case.

Before putting one of the end pieces down, I loosened up the soil where it would be lying and tried to level it off a bit, since there was a dip near the middle of the space. Because I want these beds to be 4′ wide on the outside, after laying down the first end piece and matching it to the outer edge on one side, I shifted the other side a bit to line up with the other end.

Steel toes boots are create for kicking logs and not breaking my toes!

I started with the thickest 4′ log for the base log on this end. Using the side wall logs to mark where I needed to cut, I removed wood from the ends to fit over the side wall logs.

What a pain.

For this job, I used the mini-chain saw, a hatchet and hammer to remove the bulk of the excess wood, and even the electric chain saw to remove the excess wood.

A pain, to be sure, but much faster and easier than when I started building the high raised bed and had only hand tools!

Once I was satisfied with how the end piece fit, it was time to secure it. A couple of years ago, I’d bought some plastic coated metal rods to use as supports in the garden. The rods were hollow, and they quickly bent and broke in our rocky soil. I’ve been using the broken pieces to secure things like hoops for garden beds, but I also used some to secure the corners of the tiny raised bed in the old kitchen garden.

I decided to use them to secure the end pieces on the trellis bed, much like I already used rebar to secure the side walls. I drilled matching holes through the end pieces into the side walls, then hammered the metal rods in place.

Then I went through the other 4′ lengths to find one that fit the best on top of the first log and repeated the process. This time, though, I was having to fit them over two very different sizes of log, so that required some extra angled cuts, as well as flattening the length of both logs a bit, so they’d fit against each other better. There’s still quite a gap in between them in one place, but that can be chinked later. Last of all, they were secured with more metal rods, though the top log was thin enough that I could break one of the rods in half and use the shorter pieces.

And here it is! The first finished end cap, viewed from inside the bed.

This all took quite a while to do, so once it was done, I stopped for the day. I’ve got too many other things that need to be worked on.

I’m quite happy with how it’s working out so far.

Since the vertical posts will be added to the outsides of the bed, not down the middle as I’d planned to do originally, I will fill the bed once the other end cap is done. That way the layers of material will have at least a bit more time to break down under the top layer of soil it will get. I may even decide to get more logs to build the next bed, first. We need beds to plant in next year, more than we need the trellis part of it. The trellis posts can even be added after planting, if necessary. The priority is to have more planting space. This year’s garden is so much smaller than I had planned on, simply because I ran out of prepared spaces to plant in. I don’t want to have that situation again, next year!

So, once this bed is built and filled, it’ll be time to cut logs to size from the two downs trees we have ready right now and drag them over. These trunks are so thick, the bottom 10′ will be set aside to be used as supports for the outdoor kitchen we will be building. Using such thick logs in the trellis beds would be a real waste of material.

The first day of fall is tomorrow, and time to get work done before things get too cold is running short!

The Re-Farmer

Trellis bed progress: stripping

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The plan for today had been to get the ends onto the trellis bed. Just before I headed outside, however, the power went out.

All I’ve got is an electric chainsaw, so cutting logs to size was out.

Which was fine. I needed to strip the logs of bark, first. I can see into the house from where I’m working, so I could keep an eye out for any lights back on again, letting me know the power was back.

Three hours later…

I started with the 2 dead spruces intended for the end pieces, one of which you can see on the saw horse. Then I started stripping the poplar that will be the vertical supports.

The poplar was much easier to work with, for the most part. The spruces have been dead for quite a while, so much of the barks is dried stuck to the wood. The poplar is still quite green. The draw knife could slide between the bark and the wood quite nicely, and just glide through.

Except for the branch nubs and damaged bits!

I ended up stripping them completely, as I could see critters were already getting under the bark and causing damage. The shorter lengths made them easier to handle, too, though I ended up putting the larger of the spruce logs back on the saw horse, just to stabilize it. With the lighter logs, there wasn’t enough weight to counter using the draw knife, and the darn thing kept rocking back and forth, and threatening to tip over.

Once stripped of bark, I lay them across the log walls to stay dry. Some of the logs I picked up were so damp from the grass, the undersides were covered with slugs!

After I got 9 of them done, my back was telling me it was time to do something else. So I grabbed a rope and dragged over the last 3 posts, then went back for the odd pieces. Those were light enough that I could drag 2 or 3 at a time, so that was done faster. These odd ones may or may not be usable as part of the trellis. If not, they will go into the bases of the trellis beds and buried, to break down over time.

I had just finished dragging over the last pair of odd sized logs when I saw a light on in the house. By then, I was done with this job for the day. I’ll continue tomorrow.

As for the power outage, it was likely due to high winds. Not long after ours was back on, my house sitting daughter let us know the power went out at my brother’s place, too. He’s got multiple back up generators, though, so she is just fine!

The power loss was just for 3 hours this time, but it’s a reminder on how we need to get our back ups done. Like the outdoor kitchen. With the high winds we had today, we could not have done any outdoor cooking, if it came to that. The outdoor kitchen we have planned will allow us to cook outdoors in pretty much any weather conditions.

The other thing is to get that old well checked. If all we need is new leathers for the hand pump, we’re set for water, too. Plus the outhouse will do until we build the more comfortable outdoor bathroom with a composting toilet we have planned.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

It’s a trap!

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Well. Sort of.

This is set up across from our driveway now.

It took forever to go through the trail cam video files this morning! There was a constant stream of activity triggering the motion sensor – and that’s just the stuff that it catches. There was clearly more activity, beyond the range of the motion sensor, that I could see happening in the background when something closer triggered the camera.

I was chatting with the Cat Lady this morning, and mentioned how all this activity would be driving away our missing cats. It probably isn’t helping bring that dog home, either. I was able to identify two pick up trucks, two minivans and a car, all involved in the search. She told me that it’s being shared all over Facebook right now. I haven’t seen anything, but I’m not in the groups it was being shared in. She sent me a screen cap. The group was a missing pet group for the city! That’s an hour’s drive away. Her thought was that the dog was probably stolen and taken up north. Apparently, that’s a common thing. I was able to let her know that the dog has been sighted here, so not stolen, at least.

I also shared with her my experiences with the owner, who was nice to my face, but not so nice behind my back. It probably never occurred to him that anyone would hear what he said about me, but all sounds from that direction really carry to the house, and the windows facing that way! My daughters hear way more than they would like.

I ended up sending an email to my brother that lives across from us through his wife (he doesn’t do tech very well. LOL), just in case they didn’t know what was going on. Their main driveway is a quarter mile up the road. The driveway across from us is just to the field, and they wouldn’t necessarily see or hear. I also mentioned our own lost cats, in the off chance they show up at their place. They are the closest home that’s occupied, and have plenty of their own yard cats. Butterscotch would remember their place. Maybe even Nosencrantz. It’s Marlee that would be completely out of her element, and we haven’t see any sign of her at all.

While talking about cats…

TTT has been at the small window in my room, squeaking away (what a strange, quiet meow she has!), wanting out. I’ve been trying to let her out of the room, but the kittens try for the door, instead. She’s so high strung, she backs off rather than goes through.

This morning, she was on my bed and accepting pets. Sort of. She spins and moves around so much, it’s really hard to pet her! However, I was able to pick her up and, while the kittens were distracted, take her out of the room. She’s been out before, but not for very long. It went rather well, so I just put her down and watched for a bit.

She’s still out.

We’ll see if she wants to stay out for good! I may be down to just the kittens in my room.

While doing my rounds this morning, I took some footage for a garden tour video, so that will be my project for today.

What I really want to do, though, is go for a nap. The kittens are actually sleeping right now. I might be able to get some sleep for a change!

Nah. Too much work to do!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: the end of the Roma VF

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I noticed the leaves on the Roma VF were looking like they got a fungus. I don’t know if it’s tomato blight or something else, but they needed to be pulled.

I started by picking the ripe and almost ripe tomatoes first, then my daughter and I picked the green and mostly green tomatoes and pulled up the bamboo stakes. Then she pulled the diseased plants, while I picked ripe Black Beauty and Indigo Blue tomatoes.

The green and almost green Roma are currently on the screens under the old market tent, while the ripe and almost ripe went into a box for indoors. These corrugated plastic boxes are very handy, but they have air circulation holes on the bottom and sides that are a bit big for some of the tomatoes, so I lined the bottom with carboard egg trays to keep them from falling out.

The Roma tomato plants will be allowed to dry out and will get burned with our paper garbage. That might be a while, since we are actually getting rain today! I’m even hearing a bit of thunder.

We now have a whole lot of very ripe tomatoes ready for processing. I’ll be doing more tomato sauce, first. I’m thinking of dehydrating some in the oven, late, and preserving some of the dried tomato in olive oil.

I’m still looking at recipes for making tomato sauce using roasted tomatoes and figuring out how I want to do them. I want to use as few cooking vessels as I can get away with, so there’s less to wash up! 😄

The Re-Farmer

Tiny harvest, kitten update, and a mystery

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I will start with the kitten update!

The kitten seems to be completely normal right now! No favouring the leg that was dislocated. No limp that I can see. The kitten stays away on its own, for the most part, but doesn’t run away when the other kittens come over to say hi. I’ve even seen TTT grooming in on the way by.

I’m also not finding any messes. Not even on the puppy pads under my desk. It looks like TTT has finally starting using a litter box. Not while I’m in the room, though, so I’m hoping she’s using the covered box in my closet – the only one I can’t see into – and not in some secret corner somewhere. I’m not seeing any tiny messes, either, so it looks like the kitten figured out litter boxes right away.

The main thing is, the kitten appears completely uninjured! I was able to sneak a pet this morning, but otherwise it stays away. Now that it’s indoors, socializing it will be much easier, so I am not concerned.

Today is supposed to be “cooler”, with a high of 27C/81F. We currently have weather advisories for smoke. I can see it on the security camera live fee, hanging in the old hay yard like a fog. It is worse now, than when I was doing my morning rounds.

Our squash flowers are very popular.

They are pretty much the only things blooming right now, other than some wild yarrow, so the bees are happy!

I wasn’t expecting to harvest anything this morning, but I found these!

I was surprised to find such large patty pans. They got missed yesterday, hidden under leaves, but this morning I could actually see them. I normally like to pick them a bit smaller, but these will still be tender, without a seed cavity yet.

I was not intending to pick the pepper, though. I had moved it to look at the back and see how much green there still was, and the stem broke off!

Some of the beans growing in the compost ring are completely dried on the vines, so I picked one of the pods. Once inside, I opened it up and found…

A mystery.

When I first opened the pod, I thought they were black, but once I uploaded the photos to the computer, I could see they are actually a deep, dark blue.

I have no idea where they came from.

I have never bought seed beans like this, nor do I remember buying dry beans like this. If we did buy some that I can’t remember, they would have been cooked; no viable, uncooked seeds would have ended up in the compost heap.

I’ve tried looking them up, but have had no luck. These had pale purple flowers, green pods, and now deep blue, almost black, seeds. I’ve found seeds similar to this, but they all come from yellow or purple pods, none green.

Well, whatever they are, we’ve got more of them with pods drying out on the vines. I’ll keep the seeds and maybe try growing them in the garden next year, and seeing if they are actually a tasty bean.

I’m considering a couple of things in the garden beds right now.

One is going to have to be done; it’s just a matter of doing it when it’s cooler in the day. The Roma VF look like they’ve picked up a fungus. I don’t know if it’s tomato blight or something else. Either way, all the remaining tomatoes need to be picked and the plants pulled. They will be burned, not composted.

I’m debating the bed along the chain link fence. The peas are pulled, but there are still some of those Czech lettuces in there that I’m allowing to go to seed. Plus the volunteer tomatoes.

The tomato plants are really small, but if the long range weather forecast is at all accurate, they still have more than a month of growing season. So I am thinking of transplanting them into the empty bed in the old kitchen garden, where the Irish Cobbler potatoes had been. I would need to protect them from the kittens that like to play or nap in there.

Once that bed by the chain link fence is clear and ready to be prepped for the winter, I’m going to make it a bit narrower. It’s too painful to reach near the chain link fence to weed. Plus, some of those pieces of concrete patio blocks I found run under one corner of the bed, and I want to dig those out.

I have those tillage radish seeds still. I am thinking, once some beds are emptied and cleaned up, I can plant some of those as a cover crop. They won’t reach full size before winter, but they should drill far enough to make a difference. These are meant to be left in the ground, where they will freeze in the winter, decompose, and add organic matter to the soil in the spring.

Amending this soil into something healthy again is definitely a years-long process.

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, and good cat news!

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What an incredibly moody atmosphere this morning!

This photo was taken shortly after 8am.

It was this wild combination of fog and bright sunshine. Just beautiful!

We were supposed to reach a low of around 11C/52F last night, but when I checked my phone at about 7am, one app was telling me it was 7C/45F. Another was saying we were at 10C/50F, but I think the 7C was the more accurate one.

With that sort of chill, I was not expecting to harvest anything this morning. Certainly, no tomatoes ripened overnight! Yet, I did find this!

There were quite a few larger Gold Ball turnips (they are being thinned by harvesting), and a single radish was ready to pick. In that bed, there are almost no beets coming up, and I’m not really seeing any spinach, either. I think the slugs got to them. But the radishes are coming up, at least. The others are still looking small, long and skinny. There was just this one that was ready to pick.

I also spotted this sleepy guy.

It was barely moving in the colder temperatures. It’ll be warmed by the sun, soon enough. According to my computer’s weather app (I really should get a thermometer for outside my window!), it’s 13C/55F, and we’re expecting a high of 21C/70F.

While checking the purple corn (which we are leaving to dry on the stalks, to collect seed), I could see the Red Swan beans we’d planted among the corn are getting bigger, with lots of flowers. I also finally spotted these!

These were planted late, specifically for their nitrogen fixing properties. I was not expecting to actually get a harvest from them, yet here they are! We should be able to start harvesting beans in a few days! I hope they taste good, because we ended up with a lot of these.

While checking on the old kitchen garden, one of the things I regularly do is look up into the lilac bush that the luffa is climbing, and try to see the little bitty luffa that are developing. There’s one that’s resting on a lilac twig, and it looks like it’s been damaged by the wind rubbing them together.

As I was trying to see among the leaves, I realized there was a much larger gourd developing, high up. I went around the other side of the wattle weave bed to try and see it better, only to discover this one.

It’s huge! Easily a foot long. It is completely hidden by greenery on the other side.

With a gourd this big, we might actually have a fully mature and tried out luffa to harvest by the end of the growing season! As long as the frost holds off.

As I was finishing up around the sun room before going inside, I saw a few of Octomom’s babies emerging from under the cat house. I also saw the black and white garage kitty, way off at the bowl under the grape vines. Nice to see that one coming to the house, finally!

I was in the sun room, just about to go inside, when another cat came up, wanting attention.

It was The Phantom! She’s back!!!

It took a bit of convincing, but when I opened the doors, she came into the house. I let her explore for a bit – and get sniffed at by other cats – when my daughter was able to pick her up and we put her in my bedroom.

The “isolation ward” is getting very crowded.

She’s settling in, though, and loving attention. As I write this, she is behind me on my office chair, keeping my butt warm!

The new kitten we brought in has no problem with her. They would remember each other. I think Decimus still recognized her, too. I’m not sure about Ghosty; they would have met before we brought Ghosty in, but she was so sick, and it was long ago enough that I’m sure she doesn’t remember Phantom anymore, even if her scent might still be familiar.

A couple of Decimus’ kittens were making themselves big, and Tin Whistle even hissed at her, but they now seem used to her and are ignoring her.

Snarly Marlee has been practically living on the window shelf. She is not happy with so many cats in the room.

I’ve no idea how TTT is; they would know each other, too, but TTT is in her favourite sleeping spot in my closet.

Speaking of TTT.

I am not happy with her.

I slept on the couch again last night. I had my mattress uncovered, with “Pet Fresh” carpet powder on the damp spots. I hoped it would be left alone, but when I came in this morning, there was a huge new pee spot, right in the middle of the mattress. There was also a “gift” next to the litter box under my desk, with a puppy pad all bunched up around it.

I ended up taking the box fan out of the window and found a way to set it up directly on my mattress. If nothing else, the breeze it’s creating is making most of my mattress an unpleasant place to be! There is one corner that’s got their bed blanket on it, and they’re not even using that, all that much. The kittens are playing around the fan, though, but they’re more interested in the cave it creates in my wall shelf behind it. A spot they are allowed to play in.

I chatted with the Cat Lady this morning, very happy to pass on the news about Phantom. I also told her about what TTT is doing. She told me that this is apparently common with cats that lose a front leg. They can’t dig in the litter, so they go just anywhere. We didn’t have that problem at all with Ginger. After he had his removed and came indoors, he used a litter box right away, even though he’d never seen one before. As for TTT, considering how much she digs at the puppy pads to bury her poop, clearly, that is not the issue with her.

Butterscotch, meanwhile, is happy the box fan it out of my window. She’s contentedly laying on the window ledge, looking outside. I expected it to be Nosencrantz, considering how much she’s been trying to get behind the fan, but Butterscotch is more Alpha that Nosencrantz. 😄 Nosencrantz is in her favourite spot in the shelf beside the window.

Well, I hope things work out over the next while. Just a little while longer. Then Decimus, the no-name outside kitten and Phantom will all get spayed, then taken to their new home.

It’s a start.

The Re-Farmer