planning ahead

Feels wasted

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Today is Sunday and I normally try to keep it as my day of rest, but today just feels… wasted.

I woke up to a bad pain day. Enough that I asked my daughters to take care of feeding the outside cats, then went back to sleep for a couple more hours. It’s not even the worst pain I’ve been in, but it’s like all my joints just don’t want to work properly.

(As I type, retype and retype again, these few sentences repeatedly, because my fingers don’t want to work right!)

Still, I wanted to make sure I got outside for a while, do the rest of my morning rounds and get some fresh air and sunshine. It’s a really gorgeous day out there, and I didn’t want to miss too much of it!

Judgement is judging the state of my boots. 😄

Judgement and Gooby both followed me around all over. With more snow melting away, and plenty of wind, I found and picked up a lot more of those plastic strips from the new shingles being blown around.

One of the areas I can now get into is parts of the spruce grove. Usually it’s either too wet from the snow melt, or too overgrown, to get into. The snowmelt is being absorbed by the ground this spring and nothing is growing yet, so I was able to get through most of the area. There are so many dead trees in there. Some on the ground and rotting, some stuck on other trees and may actually be useable, and others that will need to be cut down. I was also spotting the poplars I want to thin out to use for the trellis tunnels we will be building. Poplar has been taking over the spruce grove. We will be keeping them to a certain extent, as they have been a very useful material, but as we cut down and clean out the dead trees, I want to plant more spruces in the spruce grove!

Feeling the way I do today, though, looking at all the work that needs to be done had me feeling my aching bones even more.

I was also scoping out locations. If things work out to plan, we’re going to have a shed delivered to us at some point, and we need to decide where to put it. It will likely be used as a chicken coop, once it gets the repairs it needs, until we can build the mobile chicken coop I have in mind. We will need some sort of base to support it, so it’s not directly on the ground. Yesterday, I was able to get into the barn and see the state of things. In the lean to side, there are a whole lot of old tires (why are there so many old tires all over the place???), some with rims, some without. It occurred to me that we can use the tires with rims to support the shed. Or just the rims. We don’t have as many rims without tires around, but we can take the tires off.

I had considered putting the shed near the barn, where we would have access to electricity if we wanted, but we have other plans for the outer yard, including permanent raised garden beds and the outdoor kitchen, so I’m thinking it might get to be too much. My daughter is also looking to build a shelter for a forge in the outer yard, though in a different area. The space is going to be filled up quite a bit, and we still need to make sure that there are lanes to drive through with large vehicles. There are also pipes from the well and septic tank running through towards the barn, with the septic pipe running off to the outflow pipe and water pipes running to an old cattle fountain and the barn. The area over them needs to be kept clear, in case they ever need to be excavated. Some day, I would like to be able to turn that water on again, but not until we’ve been able to replace our well pump and upgrade to a larger pressure tank. The shut off valve for fountains and barn is in our basement. There are two cattle fountains are designed to refill automatically, and they keep the water from freezing in the winter. One fountain, we can see from the house. The other is behind the barn, set up to be accessible both inside and outside of a pen. I’d like to have both of them checked out and repaired as necessary. We’re not planning to have cattle, but if we end up having goats or something, or even have it available for the deer or the renter’s cows, that would be good. That is years in the future, though. As for the tap in the barn, it’s been bashed into at some point and needs repair, too.

In the end, I decided the best place to set up the shed would be near the garage. There’s an open space there that no longer has a branch pile in it. We would have to line it up with the front of the garage, which should keep it from shading out the asparagus and sunchoke beds along the chain link fence. With the chain link fence and the garage, we would have to fence off only two sides to create a run for any chickens. It would be a small run for just a few chickens, but enough to start with. The shed would need to be far enough from the garage to access the wall and roof. Now that the branch pile is gone, we can finally clean out the eaves on that side of the garage!

That branch pile was never meant to be there for several years!!

Having it by the garage gives easy access to electricity, plus better storage for feed and bedding, and still be fairly close to the house, where we’d be getting water from.

To prepare for the shed here, the ground will need a small amount of leveling, and the tires/rims can be brought over. I don’t know the dimensions of the shed yet, so I’d just want to have them nearby until I know where to put them. We even have a chain link gate in the storage house, sitting on the remaining section of stairs to the basement, that could be used to access the chicken run after we fence it off. The shed itself needs its floor replaced. It has a flat roof that leaks, which is why the floor got damaged, so I want to put an angle roof over the existing one, with an overhang on all sides.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The next area I wanted to scope out was the maple grove behind the house. The two branch piles there are now gone, so it’s nice and open again. The old garden shed is slowly rotting away. My late brother got it second hand from who knows where, and it was basically shoved in between some trees, on top of rocks. I don’t know if any attempt had been made to level it when it was first brought in, but it’s certainly not level now. The trees are holding it up, though!

Since the outdoor bathroom we were planning to build as a cordwood practise building will have to wait until we’ve cut down and removed about a dozen dead spruce trees, I want to make a garden shed as a cordwood practise building. My original thought was to place it next to where there is a path through the maple grove to the main garden area, with the door facing the path.

The bare ground the branch piles had been on will be planted with a lawn replacement mix of seeds, but as I walked around, I considered using one of those patches as a better location for the shed I have in mind. It’s not going to be very big; the interior is planned to be 6’x8′, plus the width of the cordwood walls, so we have some options. One thing to keep in mind, though, is the water. There is a tap near the old garden area. It used to be right at the path along one side of the garden, but the garden grew smaller over the years, as my parents planted more trees closer to the house, instead of along the north fence line. There are now trees on the other side of the old path, where garden used to be. A lot of trees have been cut down since it was installed, and there’s even a stump right at the tap that still keeps sending out shoots. Other trees have gotten much bigger since it was installed, too. The water source is a tap at the back of the house, and there is a hose buried in the ground. I’ve tried hooking up the hose end, only to have water spraying up from the ground, at the edge of one of the branch piles that was there. One of the goals of this year is to dig up the old hose and replace it. My thought is to get some heavy duty hose and run it through a PVC pipe from tap to tap. That way, if we ever need to replace it again, it would be relatively easy to pull it out and put a new one in, without having to dig a new trench.

Digging that old hose out is not going to be easy. There are going to be a lot of roots in the way!

The main goal being to have that tap at the main garden area working again. It would be a better place to hook up a hose for watering the garden, and I want to make a vegetable washing station. Having the new garden shed near the tap would also be convenient.

The more I walked around the area, the more I realized the best place to build the garden shed would actually be on the other side of where the hose is buried, closer to where the current shed is, and closer to the tap. There are fewer tree stumps to work around, among other things! There would also be more open space in what would be the front of the shed.

In planning the cordwood walls for this, we intend to place longer logs in parts of the wall to support a bench on the outside at one end, which would be closer to the tap. We could even include some longer logs higher up to support a small table or shelf, too. The other end will be facing south, and we plan to have a window and bottle bricks on that side for natural light. With the new location I’m considering, there won’t be as much light, since there are more large maples there. At least one of them is dead and needs to be cut down and untangled from the live tree that’s holding it up. Others are leaning so far over, I plan to cut them to where the trunks are still straight, which will encourage new growth at a lower height. That will be better for the trees, but will eventually block out more light from the planned shed. I don’t mind that too much, though. As long as we have a good, strong garden shed!

So…

Lots of plans. Lots of work to do this summer.

I guess today wasn’t that much of a wasted day, after all.

The Re-Farmer

The status of things

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today may be cooler, but we’re still staying above freezing, and the kitties are just loving it!

I only counted about 16, this morning. As things melt clear and my morning rounds are extending further out, I’m seeing the cats all over the place. The long haired tuxedo followed me all over the place, much like Pointy Baby did – just without actively trying to get me to pick him up and carry him!

I miss Pointy Baby.

The berry bushes we planted last year are almost completely uncovered. That old saw horse with the sticks is over the highbush cranberry the deer kept eating. I checked the other one and can almost, sorta, see leaf buds starting to form!

The main garden area is still mostly covered with snow. If all goes to plan, the area in front of where I’m standing will have at least a couple of trellis tunnels built.

The garlic bed isn’t quite clear, yet!

The standing water has receded more, so I was able to get to the storage warehouse (which I would really love to reclaim as a work shop again!!) and look around. With not being able to get to the dump as often in the winter, we’ve been storing our garbage bags in the old kitchen, where it could freeze. It’s getting too warm for that, now. We need to build a garbage bin outside that is cat and racoon proof to store the bags until we can make our dump runs. There are pieces of plywood and other random boards in the warehouse. With all my parents’ stuff jammed into there, none of it is accessible. Some of the stacks of boxes need to be moved around, anyhow, as they are starting to collapse and tip. That’s as good an excuse as any to move things around. Some of the plywood sheets, however, are behind a couch, and there are all sorts of boxes and bins that predate us on and in front of it. No matter. We’ll figure out how to get to them. I’d love to get rid of all the bags of clothes in there. They’re not even suitable for donating after all this time, but my mother still insists we don’t throw anything out! *sigh* She’s still all worried that someone might come in and steal her old underwear or something. 🤨

While in the shed, I noticed an old broiler pan that will work as a kibble tray. I don’t know why we’ve been finding broiler pans all over the place – no one ever used them for what they were made for – but they make great kibble trays, so I grabbed it. With a bit of readjusting of things, I was able to reclaim two of the baking sheets I got for carrying transplants around that were being used as kibble trays over the winter. There is still one more, just inside the cat house entry, but I will leave that for now. With the two trays I reclaimed, I’ll be able to pot up the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes now.

After I was done my rounds, I made a quick trip to the post office to see if a parcel had arrived. With so much snow gone, once I was back, I actually went to close the gate! I’m seeing our vandal walking by with his dog on the trail cam more often, so I wanted to have it at least closed. This makes it the first time that gate has been closed since the snow got too deep to keep clear, several months ago.

Well, now.

When my brother and I put the repaired gate back up, the two sides were even. That sliding bar holds the two sides closed, and I could put a pin through the pair of holes at the corner, which made sure the wind or whatever didn’t vibrate the bar off the end of the gate. Before winter, it was noticeably shifted, but we could still lift one side of the gate while pushing down on the bar and get the pin through. Now, it’s just too far off! We’ll have to come out with a level and see which gate post has shifted the most. I was thinking the north post was tipping away, but my daughters think the south post is tipping inwards. It could well be both. The gate posts were installed in such a way that they can be adjusted by adding washers to the bolts at the base. My brother had done that when he installed the new hinges that replaced the ones our vandal broke. I’d hoped it would be a few years longer before it had to be done again. It’s been about 3 1/2 years since these were repaired and replaced, so I guess that’s not too bad.

The main thing is, the gate is now closed! Without being able to put the pin in the sliding bar, the chain is extra necessary to make sure they don’t swing open on their own. We’ll also have to touch up the paint a bit. I think I still have a spray can of it around. I’ll have to think about what I can put around where the chain and bar is damaging the paint so quickly.

Things are going to stay colder over the next 10 days or so, with daytime highs just above freezing and overnight lows dipping several degrees below freezing. We’re also getting smatterings of rain. I’d say it’s a good thing we didn’t plant those carrots, even if we did have the plastic to cover them until they germinated. I don’t mind, though. It means things will continue to melt and be absorbed by the ground slowly. I rather like not having to wade through giant muddy puddles to get to the garage. It will give us time to work on other preparations.

I’m just thrilled to be able to get outside and get working again, even if it’s just a tiny bit at a time!

The Re-Farmer

We have access!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Not quite to everything, but pretty close.

But first, check out this adorableness.

Collin is a hungry boy!

Also, I caught a tongue blehp in the background!

As I write this, we are currently at our expected high of 8C/46F. Things will cool down more over the next while, and we might start getting rain today and tomorrow.

We have standing water in all the usual places, like this low spot by the trail cam stand. I really want to dig a trench along that fence line to collect the water more, so it doesn’t spread out like this. All in good time.

The areas around the garage do still have standing water, but it has receded even as the snow melts, which means the ground is actually absorbing it.

After doing my rounds, I headed into town to refill our water jugs for drinking water and pick up a few fresh groceries. I filled the gas tank on my mom’s car, too. When I was last in the city, gas prices were around 160.9 cents per liter. The Esso station in town I had been going to was at 159.9 0 but the Husky station next to the grocery store was at 148.9! Ever since they reopened after getting some work done, they’ve somehow managed to keep their prices a lot lower than everywhere else.

When I got home, I was actually able to drive into the yard and back the car up to the house to unload! First time this year. Much better than trying to drag a wagon filled with heavy water bottles through mud and water.

We can’t quite get to everything yet, though. The outer yard in front of the barn is all snow, still, except for a “river” opened up by water draining from the moat near the garage. The storage warehouse has a lake in front of it, but I could access the pump shack and the old chicken coop. I was even able go get through some less water filled areas and check on the Korean pine.

It’s still too early to tell if they actually survived their first winter. With two of them, their protective cages were smushed to one side, but the saplings themselves were still protected, and I was able to straighten out the wire. One sapling was still completely covered with snow, but I could see its green needles through the snow.

With things cooling down for the next while, we decided to hold off on planting the carrots we made seed tape with. The plastic covering the bed they will go into is still on place – since it’s just held with duct tape, and the yard cats have a habit of jumping onto our garden protection, there is always some doubt! We will leave it to keep acting as a little greenhouse over that bed as we continue to prepare others over the next while. In particular, I want to get the bed along the chain link fence ready to do our first sowing of peas. The high raised bed in the main garden area no longer has snow on it, but the ground around it is still covered in snow, including the bed the garlic is planted in, so there’s nothing we can do there quite yet. We do need to start gathering the materials to make the permanent trellis tunnels and portable trellises, though, so once the ground is ready, we can get those started right away.

With the ground in the spruce grove now mostly free of snow, this would be a good time to start cutting down some of the dead trees, too, along with the ones I’ve singled out for the permanent trellis tunnel. I should probably get our electric chain saw checked over for service and maintenance first, though.

The to-do list is long! The challenge is prioritizing what needs to be done first, rather than what’s easiest or fastest to start.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Oops! and getting ready to direct sow

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today, I went through my bin of seeds for direct sowing, pulling out the ones that can be sown “as soon as the ground can be worked” or before last frost.

I also made sure the back ordered bean seeds I picked up in the mail yesterday went in with the other beans.

Which is when I discovered something.

I already had some.

The Red Swan beans were not the back ordered beans I was waiting for! I checked my order confirmation emails and saw that I was supposed to get these.

These are the Improved Purple Queen that had been back ordered. From the website:

Spectacular colour! Purple Queen produces high yields and has amazing flavour. While also resistant to cool conditions, Purple Queen matures early and holds its colour in cool conditions making it the perfect bean for home gardeners. Be sure to watch the bean turn from royal purple to luscious dark green as it is being cooked. Resistant to Mosaic Virus. Maturity 52 days.

https://www.veseys.com/ca/purplequeenimprovedbean.html

The Royal Burgundy bush bean we’d grown two years ago was no longer available, so we got this one instead. I wanted a purple bean. So we now have yellow, green and red beans, with a purple on the way. Once I realized a mistake had been made, I emailed Veseys about it, and I already got an order confirmation for the right seeds! Veseys is great for responding to emails. We’ve had an error like this only once before, and they are very fast about fixing things. I’m quite happy with them, that’s for sure.

Interestingly, I just looked at their bush bean collection and found it says the Red Swan bean in the collection is a substitute for the Purple Queen, which is not available for 2023. Looks like they now have Improved Purple Queen, instead.

So that is taken area of.

Meanwhile, these are the seeds I have that can be planted before last frost.

Of these, the Mountain Morado corn can be planted 1-2 weeks before last frost. The peas can be planted in mid-April or May. Everything else can be planted as soon as the ground can be worked.

I won’t be doing the kohlrabi. Every year we’ve tried them, we’ve had nothing, and I don’t know why. I do want to grow them. Just not this year. The radishes probably won’t be planted, but if I do plant some, it will be just a few seeds for plants that will be grown for their pods. I’m still curious to try them. We are not big fans of radishes, but I want to see if we like the pods.

The rest, we shall see when and where we will be able to plant things. I still don’t know where to plant the two types of poppies or the strawberry spinach. They will be treated as perennials and allowed to self seed, so they need permanent locations, and the two types of poppies need to be well away from each other to avoid cross pollination. I’ll figure it out.

The main thing I want to plant as soon as possible are the Naval carrots. The Uzbek Golden carrots are described as a cool weather carrot, but there is nothing about planting before last frost, so I will wait on those. I still have the pelleted Napoli carrots, from two years ago. That summer, they were repeatedly eaten by groundhogs and I finally gave up on the bed, only to discover they still managed to produce. They were quite good. If I have the space, I do want to try them again. As for the Naval carrots, I decided to make seed tape with them. I’ll include that in a video I will be making tonight, along with how prepping the low raised beds went. Hopefully, I’ll have a relatively short video ready for tomorrow.

Things are supposed to cool down for the next little while, and we may actually get rain tomorrow or the day after! So I’m not in any rush to get seeds in the ground, but I do want to get as much space ready for them as I can.

It felt so good to be digging in the dirt again!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: backordered seeds in, and seedlings update

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Our last packet of seeds that were backordered from Veseys finally came on. Or, I should say, I finally picked them up. I’m pretty sure they arrived last week. We just weren’t able to get out while the post office was open.

Wow! I just looked them up at Veseys, and boy am I glad I ordered them so early! The price has really gone up since then! This is the description for them.

Stringless and unique. Red Swan is a great fresh or cooking bean that is stringless! Bred by crossing a pinto and bush bean, Red swan blew our trial staff away with its yields and ornamental presence. Pods emerge red and mature to rose-purple at 5-6″ long. Red swan kept producing late into the season for multiple harvests and pods hold onto their flavour well at every size. Matures in 60 days.

https://www.veseys.com/ca/redswanbean.html

We have had good results with purple things – beans, lettuces, carrots – so I hope these “red” beans will also do well. Plus, it’s a dual purpose bean. I should remember to plant half of them for a dry storage bean, and the other half for picking fresh.

Meanwhile, here is how some of our seedlings are doing.

The trays in the big aquarium greenhouse are doing well. The germination rate for the Roma VF tomatoes is really high! So if the germination rate for the Spoon tomatoes, and some of those seeds were 2 years old! Still no herbs, but at least there are more peppers starting to show up. I’ve read that peppers can take up to 21 days to germinate, so I hope we will have more showing up. Especially with the cayenne. There’s still only one of those.

Ugh. My phone focused on the wrong place! Ah, well.

I am just amazed by that one zucca melon on the right! Not only by how tall it’s getting, but that its stem it so strong and holding itself upright, with no support! Last year, they never got this big, even after transplanting. They have such a huge fruit, it’s interesting to see that this is a climbing vine. I’ve had to make sure the tendrils don’t wrap around anything.

There are still just the two of them, though, and just two African Drum gourds, even though I did plant more seeds. We did bring a heater into the living room, but can only use it when someone is around to supervise, so while we’re able to get the room warmer, it may still not be enough to warm up the growing medium. The Crespo squash are looking good, though, with one still in its original pot, and the three that were thinned by dividing.

As for the rest, still no Classic eggplant, and none of the reseeded Little Finger eggplant or luffa have terminated. There are more tiny strawberries emerging, and I think it’s about time to pot up the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes.

I might have to change up how the lights are over the seedlings. This area gets some good sunlight in the mornings, but the more trays are in the mini greenhouse frame, the less light there is for the lower trays. I have to find some way for the lights to reach the lower trays a bit better. They seem to be doing okay so far, though. I’ve been switching them around and rotating them every couple of days or so, but as we take more trays out of the aquarium greenhouses, I won’t have the room do to that for long. We’ll also have to find more surface area for trays; the potted up tomatoes are going to take up a fair bit of space!

Which is a good problem to have. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: starting herbs and tomatoes, potting up and will it work?

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

For a while outside, the wind picked up and I could see the snow coming down horizontally out the window! From what I’m hearing the roads are in terrible condition, and quite a few people posted online that they started to go somewhere, only to turn around immediately. Everyone is being told to stay home. A number of roads have been closed, particularly in the South. For our area, it looks like the worst of it has passed by, and things should be getting better from now on, though there is a second system on the radar that might make it as far as us later. Maybe.

A good day to be inside and doing garden stuff!

The first thing I needed to do was start some new seeds.

There were only three things that need to be started in the 6-8 week range; spearmint, oregano and the Roma tomatoes.

The oregano and spearmint seeds are so miniscule! We don’t need a lot of either, so there was more than enough for our needs. There weren’t a lot of seed in the tomato packet, so I actually counted them to work out how to use the tray. There turned out to be 67 seeds in the packet. Usually, for “pots” the size of these toilet paper rolls, I would plant two seeds per pot, but with so few seeds, only one got two seeds and the other 65 got a single seed each. Romas are a tomato I want to have a lot of, so we can do tomato paste and sauces again at the end of the year.

The herbs each gone one row in the tray. Here, the tray is on the heat mat, and it now has a dome over it, too.

This is the tray that had been on the heat mat. There are some cayenne, Dragonfly and Early Sensation peppers sprouting. And look at all those spoon tomatoes!

The strawberries and Classic eggplant got moved out entirely, and are now in the small aquarium greenhouse, still on the little bin to lift them closer to the light. The hardware cloth cover for the tank is no longer needed to keep the cats out, but it is still needed to hold the light fixture. We couple put the light back under the tank’s lid and use that, but this way, there is still plenty of air flow.

This done, I decided to do some potting up. First, I thinned by dividing the Crespo squash…

They are on the aluminum sheet in the photo. Of the two pots, one had all three seeds in it germinate, and they all have their own pot now. The second pot, I left for now. You can see a second seed did start to germinate, but it seems to have just stopped growing.

In the baking tray, you can see the Zucca melon, at the bottom right of the picture, are doing well! Those tendrils are reaching out to climb, and I’ve already had to unwrap the biggest one from the mini greenhouse frame. The drum gourds in the back are doing okay, but I think it’s just too cold for them to grow much right now.

I’d reseeded more Zuccz melon and drum gourd, but none have germinated yet. There was a drum gourd seedling that died after I’d put more seed in the empty pots, and I was considering adding more drum gourd seeds to it. Not anymore! That pot has now been “potted up” into the stronger, lighter coloured pot, and contains an experiment.

Last year, we had purchased seeds for Tulip trees and pawpaws. We had a single Tulip tree germinate, only to die soon after. Nothing else germinated. Their containers had been moved between the sun room and the shelf just outside the sun room. No surprise that cats would eventually knock them around, and that was it for any chance of germination. They were planted in a seed starting mix, which I ended up adding in to the big bowl I use to moisten the starting mix before putting it into pots to start new seeds. I ended up finding one of the pawpaw seeds that actually looked robust, so I stuck it into the available pot. Who knows? Maybe it’ll sprout!

Today, I had dumped our last bag of seed starting mix into the big bowl with what was left from before and was mixing water in with my hands when I found another pawpaw seed that looked like it was fresh out of the package we got them in. So I stuck that into the pot I’d put the first one in. The pot is damp, though, so it broke. I grabbed one of the new biodegradable pots I bought and the whole thing fit perfectly inside it. Cool! Now we have two pawpaw seeds to potentially sprout!

As I went back to mixing water into the seed starter mix, I found three more pawpaw seeds! None of them showed even the slighted bit of rot or damage!

They all went into the experiment pot.

I have no idea if they will germinate, but it would be awesome if they did!

Once the herbs and tomato seeds were planted and things were shifted around, I decided it was time to pot up the Black Beauty tomato seedlings. The germination rate for those was really high, and they were starting to get too big for the square potting cells they were in. I had a bag of potting soil ready for potting up, and went with Red Solo cups to transplant them up into.

I filled them about half way with soil, and buried the stems of the seedlings about half way when transplanting. As they get bigger, we can keep filling the cups with soil, allowing for more roots to develop along the stems. The baking tray holds 12 cups, while the bin can only hold 9, which left 5 more to go back into the tray they had been in before. The smaller Indigo Blue tomatoes don’t need potting up yet. Sadly, there are still only three Little Finger eggplants; the pots I reseeded show no signs of germination yet. Again, I think it might just be too cold by the window, even though the whole thing is over a heat vent.

Lower down, you can see the tray that has the first peppers we planted, in the red cups they were potted up into, next to the German thyme and lemon grass. The yellow plant pot below has one of the pots of German thyme transplanted into it, which we will be keeping indoors. In the blue mushroom tray is the luffa. We still have just one plant. The other 3 pots were reseeded, but still nothing.

And finally, here are the onions and shallots! It’s been a while since I showed how they were doing. I suppose we could give them hair cuts, but that may not be beneficial. Gardening in Canada did a video about it, and I trust what she says.

My daughter’s orchids got moved to the shelf beside the onions. I hope they do okay, there. They’re pretty far from the heat vent.

That is it for now! The next seeds we will need to start are the 4-6 week seeds, and I think I have only 1 or 2 things that needs to be started in that range. After that, it’s all stuff that needs 3-4 weeks before last frost date. There are a few seeds in that range that I plan to experiment with, starting some indoors and direct seeding others, to compare how they do.

Being able to work on gardening stuff while it’s snowing outside feels really good!

The Re-Farmer

Spring snow, TDG status, and comparing power

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, that predicted snow started falling last night, and will continue to fall for most of today!

We’re going to have a lot of clearing to do when it’s over.

I wouldn’t call our current conditions a storm, but other areas of the province are getting hit with more snow and higher winds than we are. No complaints, really! Even closer to home, others are getting things worse. I’m glad I was able to pick up those prescriptions and antihistamines yesterday. This morning, I got a call from the pharmacy, letting me know there would be no deliveries today. She was glad to hear I’d already picked them up. Being right on the lake, town would be getting a lot more snow and wind than we are, even though they are only about a 15 minute drive away.

Also yesterday, I spotted The Distinguished Guest in the sun room and managed to get a picture before he disappeared.

When I first looked through the window, he was fully inside the box we use as a kibble tray, picking over the last little bits of kibble he could find. I was able to see his left paw a bit. That was the paw he was limping on so badly, not that long ago. It definitely looks misshapen, but then, so do the rest of his paws that I could see. It could be from an injury, or it could just be full of matted winter fur. I made sure to put food out soon after I got this picture, even though it was earlier than usual, just to make sure he got something to eat.

As for this morning…

Most of the cats were inside the sun room when I came out, but a few still prefer to be outside. I wasn’t going to put kibble on the roof, but when I saw some jumping up and looking for food there, even though the trays we filled (one of the trays under the water bowl house had been pulled right out and ended up buried in the snow!), I shoveled the snow off, then got another container of food, putting some on the roof. I doubled their food this morning, putting most of the extra in the sun room, and more than usual in the entry of the cat house, where there is another tray, to encourage them to stay inside as much as possible.

Three of these trays are the baking sheets I bought to carry our transplants around. I’m going to have to reclaim them soon, which means I’ll need to find something to replace them with!

One of the things I had to do this morning was get a meter reading. After submitting the reading, I decided to check our data.

This is our electricity usage over the past year, compared to the year before.

You can really tell that February is when we had our cold snap! Spring of last year was when we had a heavy blizzard followed by flooding, so not only did we use more electricity for heat in March but, once it all started melting, our sump pump and septic pumps (the septic tank is where the new basement weeping tile drains into) were running very frequently.

Here is our usage for the last year, with weather overlay.

With an electric furnace, it’s pretty clear how much the temperatures affect our electricity usage!

It should be interesting to see how things change, if at all, over the next year, now that we have the new roof. We picked the lightest of shingles available and, hopefully, that will help keep the upstairs from overheating over the summer, at least a bit. The girls have fans running all summer, and my older daughter had to switch to working nights because it became too hot to use her computer during the day. The previous shingles were a dark brown, and would have warmed things up quite a bit.

As for now, the weather system that’s over us is quite large. but it doesn’t look like the worst of it will come anywhere near us. It’s expected to clear late tonight. We’ve got a high of -6C/21F forecast for today. Starting tomorrow, things are supposed to warm up and keep warming up. In a couple of days, our highs are supposed to go above freezing and stay there. By next week, we’re supposed to have temperatures in the double digits! (10C/50F and up) For the areas that are supposed to be getting up to 25cm/10 inches of snow in this storm, that will bring on the spring flooding in the river valley regions. I can’t say I’ll be complaining about any spring flooding we get. For all the massive flooding we got last year, our water table still hasn’t completely recovered from years of drought conditions. This spring snow will be a boon to for farmers and gardeners.

Speaking of which, I made a tray full of toilet paper tube pots yesterday evening. One of my goals for the day is to make space in the big aquarium greenhouse for new seed starts. I’m happy to say that some of our peppers have finally started to sprout, so we’ll be able to move that tray off the heat mat. I just need to set up the space next to it, so they will still be close to the warmth of the lights.

Snow days are a great time to be working on our future garden!

The Re-Farmer

Kitty parade, and a few last things before the storm

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

There was quite the crowd when I came out to do my rounds this morning!

I counted 23 altogether this morning. I did not see The Distinguished Guest this morning, but he was hanging around inside the sun room when I went to feed them last night. He was so hungry, I was actually able to pet him a bit. Then he ran outside, but when I put food in the kibble house trays, I was able to pet him briefly, again.

He has a very distinctive, low pitched meow, I’ve noticed!

This handsome boy followed me up the driveway and, as I was walking back, he kept flinging himself to the ground in front of me, every few steps. I’d pet him a bit, then he’d run ahead again and the process would be repeated!

He still has pieces of burr stuck on his back. I’d been able to get the worst of them out, but he won’t let me take out any more. His tail is still chock full of burrs, but as soon as I check his tail with my hands (his fur is so long, the burrs are mostly hidden from view), he runs off.

Then, as I was coming back from the sign cam, I found this!

There was actually five of them, but when I stopped to get out my phone and zoom in for a picture, Judgement, who was at the front, ran ahead and under my feet! I had to stop and pet each one of them before they would let me past on the path. 😄

Plans for today had changed again. I got a call from my mother last night, telling me I didn’t need to come over to help her with errands today. After I rescheduled from yesterday because of highway conditions, she decided to try doing her errands herself, using her walker. She got it all done, including a large grocery shopping trip that they delivered to her place later. That’s a lot of walking for someone in their 90’s with wrecked knees!! She sounded quite pleased with herself.

In the end, I still needed to go to town to get a few last things for our Easter baskets – we will be making an extra one this year, as a gift – before the predicted storm hits some time today. I also had some stuff I was going to give to my mother when I helped her with errands today. So I decided I would drop stuff off at her place first, then head to town for my errands.

I called and left a message telling her I was going to drop things off on my way to the other town, but when I got there, she was fully expecting me to stay for a long visit. She had a dessert ready for me – it had bananas in it, which I already told her is among the things I won’t eat because I gave up sugar and starchy foods for Lent – and water boiled for tea. Of course, she mocked me for not eating the banana dessert, telling me I should go to church, instead. As if there is any sort of equivalence. Not that it matters. When we lived in the city, we were going to church every Sunday, but that still wasn’t good enough for her. It wasn’t the “right” church. Whatever that means to her at any given moment! 😄

I did stay for a few minutes as she went through the things I brought for her. One of them was a photo I found (I honestly don’t know where it came from) of me, my mother and my sister. I gave it to her to replace the one she has on her wall of me and her, that has a big X scratched across my face that had to have been done by our vandal, though my mother never noticed it until I spotted it.

It should be interesting to see if she actually replaces the picture. When she saw the one I brought for her, she told me she thought she already had a copy.

Then she started listing things off that she wanted me to take, from the carboard box her groceries were delivered in, to the bucket of peelings for our compost she had in her fridge. I just told her, not today! For someone who complained for years about how their friends from the city kept bringing their unwanted junk (and sometimes pets!) to the farm, because “there’s so much room at the farm!”, it amazes me that she now does that to me. I’ve even pointed that out to her, but she just laughs, and keeps going it!

When I was finally on my way, I took a different route to town. The highway to my mother’s town was nice and clear, but this East/West road turned out to have quite a lot of ice and snow, which was melting, just to make it that much more slippery, along the way. Especially as I got closer to the next highway. That one, at least, was almost clear until I got to the turnoff to where I needed to go. That road had sheer ice on it, including the exit lane. Yikes!!

Once in town, everything was pretty clear. I ran my errands, including picking up the prescription refills that were scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. Since I was in town anyhow, I picked them up – along with some antihistamines. While walking around this morning, I was having a hard time breathing because my sinuses were completely blocked. It took me a while to clue in that, duh, it’s spring. I don’t know what I’m allergic to out there – it’s too early for pollen in our area – but something out there is causing me to react. It’s not as much of a problem when I’m indoors, but once I’m outside, it doesn’t take long for problems to start!

On my way home after finishing my errands, I was happy to see the provincial trunk road was mostly clear. After the other East/West roads I took, I was not sure what to expect.

Now that this trip is done, we should hopefully not need to go anywhere again until the weekend, and by then, any snow from the predicted storm we get should be cleared from the roads, even in the city. At least I hope so. The last few times we’ve been invited to their place, we ended up turning around and going home because of storms!

I need to start my next batch of seeds this week. I’m not quite sure how I’ll be managing that. We just have the one warming mat in the big aquarium greenhouse, and while the Spoon tomatoes are coming up, there isn’t a single pepper germinating yet. There’s the space beside the warming mat, but the eggplant there won’t germinate for a little while yet. The strawberries could handle being moved to the small aquarium, but we’ll also have to move out my daughter’s orchids. They are there not just to protect from cats, which is not needed anymore, but for the extra warmth. Being by the window in winter is too cold for them.

We’ll figure something out.

Until then, I’ll be getting the toilet paper tubes we’ve been saving and make them into little plant pots to start seeds in. We’ll be working on the seeds that need to be started 6-8 weeks before last frost this time.

I’m so glad we were able to block the living room off from that cats! It’s making all this a lot more stress free!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: new sproots!

/ Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

Our newest seedlings are starting to show!

I few days ago, I spotted our first Spoon tomatoes, but they are so fine and spindly, I waited until today to try and get a photo.

Still no sign of peppers, but there’s about 8 or so tomatoes sprouting, and signs of more seedling elbowing their way to the surface. They are so bitty!

Speaking of bitty, we also have our first strawberries sprouting!

Growing strawberries from seed is totally new to me, so I’m pretty happy to see these. Over time, I want to have lots of strawberries, so if growing them from seeds works, that would make it much more affordable compared to buying transplants or bare roots. We’ll probably still do both. I want to use them as a living ground cover around the silver buffalo berry bushes. Those are nitrogen fixers, so it would be a good combination, and when the bushes start getting too big and start shading out the strawberries, we can just transplant them somewhere else.

I am so looking forward to having our own berries. We all love them, but they are so expensive to buy! My younger daughter was asking about growing blueberries, but they need acidic soil. Ours is very alkaline. We will need to find a spot and focus on lowering the pH so we can plant some. Once we clear more of the dead trees out of the spruce grove, we might be able to get some good spaces in there. I’ve read the spruces increase soil acidity, so I will want to do some soil tests and see how it is now.

So many things we’d like to grow!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Final stock up trip, a generous gift, and planning ahead

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today, my daughter and I headed out for what should be our last big stock up trip of the month.

Well. “Big” is a relative term.

Of course, the morning rounds were done first, and I had company!

The ice these cats are so curious about was melted and muddy by the time we got home.

Also, I counted 24 this morning. When we got back and finished unloading, I topped up their food and water, and The Distinguished Guest was there! I’ve been seeing him more often of late, though yesterday, Shop Towel also showed up and there was quite the cat fight. No new injuries on TDG that we can see. He still looks very rough, but he’s no longer limping. Poor thing. He was so hungry, he almost let me touch him while he was in the kibble house!

My daughter and I left a bit later than we usually would have, as we thought we might have company this morning. The timing didn’t quite work out, so while we were gone, my husband got a quick visit from his sister from another mother, who dropped off some gifts. Including this.

His sister had bought it recently, but then got a really good deal on a Ninja, so she passed the Magic Bullet on to us! That was very thoughtful of her. 😊

My daughter and I had only two places to go to. Our second stop was at Walmart. My daughter had her own shopping to do. I picked up two more 9kg bags of kibble. At $34.97 each, it was a better price than the Canadian Tire. I also picked up some more cheese, since I wasn’t able to get what we usually do at Costco. Some Havarti ($4.44), marble ($4.44) and mozzarella ($7.87). We also got a small ham for the Easter basket ($10.97).

My daughter was shopping for clothes, which reminded me that I needed to get a new pair of jeans. Generally, I don’t like most of the clothes in the women’s department. Especially pants. I find the proportions are off, and they are often made with fabrics that feel really unfortunate. They do sometimes have one specific style of jeans in stock that I find comfortable. Today, there were just a few left in one colour, so there wasn’t a lot of choice, but I snagged them, for $22. That put our grand total at Walmart at $130.70 after taxes, most of which was cat food. We should be good for kibble for the rest of the month.

Our first stop was at Canadian Tire where, along with two bags of hardwood stove pellets (they were out of softwood, which is a bit cheaper) at $7.29 each, we got this.

You can see my new jeans in the corner. 😄

We were very happy to see they had the Iron Out tablets in stock, so we grabbed two, at $6.79 each. I also found nice large eco-pots that can be buried directly into the ground. I will test them out when I pot up some of our larger squash and gourds and see how they are. I got 8 of them for 79 cents each. They had even larger sizes, which might be useful, depending on how big the Zucca melon and gourds get, before we can transplant them outside. The other varieties will be started over the next few weeks, and should not get quite so large before it’s transplanting time.

We got an extra caulking gun because it was on sale for $8.97, and the one we have now has a lot of roofing tar stuck to it. It’s still useable. We would just prefer not to have to deal with that when we’re adhering and caulking the tub surround (the plumber never called back; I’ll have to contact him again and make sure he has my number!).

Then there are the bricks.

I got four fire bricks at $6.99 each. This put our grand total at $78.96 after taxes.

The fire bricks are something I plan to buy a few at a time, every month, which will be manageable on our budget. They are among the few things we will need to buy new for when we build our outdoor kitchen. The floor of the bread oven will be lined with these, and so will the fire area that will be under an open grill.

My daughter and I spent some time talking about our plans for the outdoor kitchen, including something we should be able to salvage. We still have that old wood cookstove in the old kitchen. It’s broken and we can’t use it. Even if it wasn’t broken, and we didn’t have the insurance issues, I wouldn’t dare use it. This thing is sitting directly on the floor, and there are no heat shields. No one had any of that stuff, back when this was installed. It would simply be too dangerous to use it.

However, we could incorporate the cook top into our building plans.

There are two main things broken on the stove. The hinges on the oven door are snapped. Which, I suppose, only matters if you want to use the oven. The thing that makes it unusable is the damage to the firebox.

You can read about how cleaning this old stove went, here, but this is the damage I discovered after emptying out the ashes. The oven hadn’t been used in many years, but no one bothered to clean out the fire box or ash bin.

That’s cast iron, and the space behind it was jammed solid with ashes, which you can see in the picture. It was really sad to see the results of how badly this old stove was treated.

Also, it’s a wonder we didn’t burn the house down, back when this thing was still being used!

So we’ve got this big cookstove in the old kitchen that can’t be used and is taking up space.

Which means that once we’ve got the shelter built, we can dismantle the cookstove and set it up again in the shelter. As long as it’s protected from the weather, and not sitting directly on the ground, it should be fine. Then we can look at incorporating pieces of it into the cooking area we will be building, and it would give my daughter the set up for a wok that she was thinking of, though the openings might be a bit small for what she has in mind. That’s okay. We will have plenty of time to modify our design ideas before we actually start building. The main thing is to get the shelter built, first.

Once we get that out of the old kitchen, we’ll have more space freed up. The chimney will still be there, though, so in the future, we can get a smaller cookstove and set it up with all the proper heat shields and floor protection in place.

After fixing that room up. The floor condition in particular is … fascinating.

All in good time.

Until then, we can do things like slowly accumulate the materials we will need, like the fire bricks I bought today.

On top of the expenditures listed there was, of course, the cost of gas. We were at half a tank on my mother’s car when we left. We stopped at the town my mother lives in to get gas, where we found the new carbon tax brought the price up another 4 cents per litre (we now pay 14 cents per litre in carbon taxes altogether), bringing it to 156.9 cents/L. Because of road dust getting into things, the gas pump nozzle keeps shutting itself off, as if the tank were full, so I never know how close to full I really am. I just put in a little over $20, which at least got me above 3/4 of a tank.

On the way home, we took a different route and stopped at the town we do most of our local shopping. My daughter had an errand to run, and I decided to try a particular gas station on the way home. This place had been closed for a while, but when the reopened, their prices were much lower. I figured, even with the price increase, they might still be the best price. Their sign read 151.9 cents/L, which was better than the old price in other stations – but when I put gas in, I noticed the pump was reading 145.9 cents/L! I put in $25 and actually filled the tank!

Okay, my mother’s car has a small tank and has terrible mileage, but I’ll take what good I can find!

I think I’ve found where I’m going to be buying gas regularly, as much as possible, now!

So that’s been our rather expensive day. Other than things like fresh produce we buy locally, we should be good for the rest of the month!

The Re-Farmer