planning ahead

Rain, wind and… babies???

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Once again, the overnight temperatures dropped lower than was forecast. Today was also supposed to have high winds in the morning, then rain in the afternoon.

We had rain in the morning, and it’s been windy all day.

I really had to drag my butt out of bed to feed the outside cats and do my morning rounds. Short rounds, and then I crawled back into bed. Even after several more hours of sleep, I woke up bleery and out of sorts, stiff and sore, though not as bad as it used to be, before I got on the anti-inflammatories. I’ve been feeling like that for a couple of days now. It took me a while to make the connection. I always get like this when it’s rainy and overcast!

I felt much better when the sun came out!

Aside from a quick run to the post office, it was a home day. My daughters have been having a hard time, today, too. It’s hit my younger daughter the worst, and she’s been caning it most of the day.

I did finally get outside to get a few things done, when I discovered something in the cat cage.

Two new, little kittens, in the cat bed.

These are very young kittens! Definitely not a mama bringing her older babies to the house for solid food.

There was only one cat I could think of that might be the mother. That would be Frank, and I was recently able to pet her enough that she showed me her belly. She had four active nips.

If she were the mama, then we were definitely going to be finding more.

I checked on the kittens and, other than a bit of dried gunk on the edges of their eyes, they looked chunky, well fed and healthy. Very fluffy!

I fed the outside cats and worked on a few other things before mixing up a jar of kitten soup. I put just a few spoonfuls into a shallow container and put it into the cat bed with them.

Sure enough, I came back into the sun room later and found Frank in the cat cage, eating the kitten soup. It wasn’t much longer before I saw the kittens nursing on her, too.

I was out for a while longer, and when I came back, she was gone again. Her kittens were sleeping peacefully. I took a peak at some other kittens in the cat cave when I spotted something white, moving around a plant stand we leave for the cats to use to get onto the platform.

It was a little, mostly white grubling!

Frank hopped into the cat cage just as I picked it up, and was very nervous, so I just quickly put the kitten with the other two and left. The next time I came through, she was nursing the three of them.

I went back out to finish things – for all that it rained, the garden needed watering, though there isn’t much left to water! By the time I was done and headed back in, Frank was all curled up and nursing her babies in domestic bliss.

If you look at the second image of the slide show above, you can see her and maybe, possibly, a fourth kitten, under her front leg. I thought, at first, it was her bottom leg, but I don’t recall any of her legs having spots like that on it.

I never did figure out where she had her kittens. All I knew was that it had to be really close.

I got a few things done that were manageable with the wind. I wasn’t able to get that fallen branch off the hawthorn, yet. I’ll have to get in there and cut it up in small pieces to get it off without damaging the hawthorn. The problem with that is, it’s really embedded in hawthorn branches, and hawthorns have massive thorns!

One of the jobs I finally got done was to add legs to the wind break box that I made to go over the opening of the isolation shelter. We had it up on bricks over the winter, so now it has legs that are just a bit taller than the thickness of the bricks. I was also going to add length of wood to each side to act as handles, so it would be easier to move around, but I ran out of the right length of wood screws. I had just enough to add the legs, and that’s it. For now, the box is sitting on the concrete well cover, over a kibble bowl. After the new door is installed, we’ll put the insulation back around the base of the house under the kitchen window, then set up the winterized isolation shelter there again. I need to find a better way to wrap clear plastic around the bottom of the shelter again. The tacks held fine, for the most part, but the plastic kept tearing free of them. It didn’t help that, when we had cats recovering from being spayed/neutered in there, the other cats were clawing through the plastic to try and get in! I might invest in some transparent tarps at some point. They’re expensive, but they’re also 20mm thick. Even greenhouse plastic is only 6mm thick, and the plastic dining table covers I’ve been using are, I think, only 3mm thick. I’ve been looking them up, and one Canadian company that makes them says they’re rated down to -23C/-10F. Which would be really useful for all sorts of things, really!

Speaking of which…

I had intended to uncover the winter squash bed to check on them. Through the plastic, I can see the bright yellow of new flowers, and I wanted to see if anything could be hand pollinated. It was just too windy, though. So windy, it was starting to tear the plastic free of the boards we rolled up in the excess on each side!

I rolled them back up and made it as snug as I could before adding bricks to weigh down the boards that were weighing down the edges!

With the sun out and things warming up, I finally uncovered the other beds. The cover over the summer squash was half blown off, already. The zucchini seems to be doing quite well, really! Some of the leaves around the very edges have cold damage, but mostly, they’re still growing and producing more zucchini. Even the white scallop squash is starting to bloom!

Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to 7C/45F, but last night we were supposed to drop to about 5 of 6C/41 or 43F, but we actually hit about 2C/36F, so we’ll be putting the covers back on later this evening. Meanwhile, what’s left got a deep watering. The rain barrel by the sun room was finally filled, though not to the top, so I used that to water the old kitchen garden. Checking on the peppers, it looks like the oldest pepper is finally starting to turn colour, and it’s looking like it will be a red one. The Turkish Orange eggplants are getting brighter in colour, so it looks like they are managing all right, as long as they get that overnight protection.

The frost hardy plants, like the carrots and remaining beets, kohlrabi, little onions, etc. are doing fine. Surprisingly, the pumpkins haven’t been killed off entirely, and the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers seem unbothered by the colder temperatures. Their developing seed heads are still so tiny, though. The yellow bush beans, much to my surprise, are looking undamaged.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a little cooler, with a high of 12C/54F expected (today, we hit 15C/59F), but the overnight low is supposed to be 2C/36F, which means we will probably drop down to, or even below, freezing. Then we’re supposed to warm right up again, with highs in the 20’sC/68F range, and overnight lows hovering on either side of 10C/50F. The long range forecast has us going even warmer, the week after, including as high as 28C/82F.

We’ll see what actually happens!

The Re-Farmer

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

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: MI Gardener seed haul (video)

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Yes! They finally came in! My last two orders from MI Gardener. USPS tracking simply told me they had arrived at a facility in Canada. That’s it. Not even that it arrived as destination. Just… Canada. Somewhere. 😂

I picked the packages up before I headed to my doctor’s appointment, so it was some time before I was home and able to open them up. I went ahead and did a seed haul video as I got them out.

I just realized I goofed in the video. The first order of seeds I did was on July 8, and there were no sales when I placed that order. Then I placed an order on August 1st, for a 25% off sale. Then a 40% off sale started the next day, so I placed a third order. If you visit the links, you can read more about each item. Links will open in new tabs.

With that caveat, here is my seed haul video.

While the video was uploading, I headed outside for my evening rounds and checked out a few things.

The first image is the Jebousek lettuce in the bed that self seeded in the garden bed by the chain link fence that was basically destroyed by cats getting under the mesh cover. There will be plenty of seed to collect, soon.

The next two images are of ripening Turkish Orange eggplant. Whether we enjoy these or not, these are not something I will be growing again until we have a polytunnel or a greenhouse or something. They are way too sensitive to cooler temperatures!

In the last image, we have our FIRST luffa flower buds. These clusters are the male flowers. The female flowers have a single flower on the end of a teeny developing luffa gourd. Who knows. Inside the portable greenhouse, it might still have time to fully develop. Unlikely, but one can hope, right? 😁

While out there, I even managed to pick a small handful of purple bush beans.

We’ve been having a fair bit of rain in the last while, so I haven’t been watering the garden. When checking it last night, things looked a bit dry, so I figured I’d do some watering. With our Dark Grey Zone soil, overwatering isn’t really possible.

I couldn’t belief how dry things were! It really showed when I was filling the upside down plastic jugs by the summer squash, and the collars around the winter squash. It took a shockingly long time to fill them with water, it was draining into the thirsty soil so quickly. Almost faster than the hose could fill them! I refilled them two or three times before it finally started to drain more slowly.

It got dark before I could water the old kitchen garden, so I did that, this morning. It, too, was really dry.

They should be good for a while, though. We weren’t supposed to get any rain today, but as I was driving back from my appointment in the late afternoon, I drove into a wall of rain. It was coming down so hard that I was seriously considering pulling over to wait it out. It let up a bit, though, but as I drove the last couple of miles to home, I was fully expecting to get completely soaked while opening the gate.

But then, it was gone. When I reached the gate, had all but stopped. By the time I closed the gate up again and was heading for the house, the clouds parted and the sun came out!

The deluge was welcome, though. We still have a lot of wildfires right now. Most are in the “monitored” category, so nothing is being done about them for the moment. Some are listed as either “being held” or “under control”, with a few that are still listed as “out of control”. We are no longer under any alerts for air quality from the smoke, so that’s a good sign.

Tomorrow, I’m off again to the city for our Costco shopping trip. A good time to be doing it, as we’re going to be getting some really hot days coming up. Depending on which app I look at, we’ve got a couple of days that might even exceed 30C/86F! I’ll see if the garden will need watering in the morning; if it doesn’t, I’m pretty sure it’ll need it by evening! We might be watering twice a day again, if the forecast is accurate. By next week, though, it’s supposed to drop right down, and we’re supposed to get overnight lows of 5-6C/41-43F We’ll be covering some of the garden beds again, in that range. They’re no longer predicting overnight lows at or below freezing in the second week of September anymore, which is when we would typically expect first frost.

At this point, my focus is getting more on being ready for next year. There isn’t much more we can do about this year’s garden if the temperatures drop. Things are just too far behind.

Ah, well. We’ll see what happens when it happens!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: cold damage, and a morning harvest

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Last night, a daughter and I covered three areas in the garden.

I rigged a cage of sorts around the summer squash large enough to fit around the large leaves. Our covers are old sheets, and one was large enough to cover the summer squash, though nowhere near large enough to reach the ground. Which was okay, as we weren’t expecting actual frost.

The peppers and eggplant in the wattle weave garden all have their own wire tomato cages, so we just needed to use some clothespins to keep the covers from blowing away. The way the peppers are laid out in the shorter end of the L shaped bed allowed them to be covered more than the eggplant, which are in a longer row. The cloth was just barely long enough to reach from end to end. As a result, the first and last eggplants had less coverage, with one of them being at a more exposed end of the bed.

You can see there is some cold damage to the leaves.

Depending on what app I checked, we dropped to either 6C/43F or 5C/41F last night. It’s hard to say so soon, but it looks like the winter squash, which we have no way to cover, managed okay. In fact, just this evening, I spotted two female flowers in the Mashed Potato squash that I hand pollinated. I’m not sure why I’m bothering, but at least they’ll have a chance!

Our overnight temperatures are supposed to warm up for the next while, so we shouldn’t need to cover them again for some time. In fact, some of our daytime highs are supposed to get downright hot. By the second week of September, however, the long range forecast has changed again, and we’re not looking at dipping below freezing, right around our old average frost date. The new 30 year averages have been released, which suggested our growing season has actually increased by quite a bit, but I’m not counting on that. Based on the previous average frost dates, we’ve got a 99 day growing season, and I think that’s still the more accurate one. That’s the thing with averages. All it takes is one or two unusual years to shift things quite a bit, even if they’re now showing a range of dates, rather than a single date.

This morning, I harvested some potatoes and a few other things for a supper I was planning on.

The potatoes are what I found under a couple of plants. For all that the plants struggled this year and there isn’t a lot, we do have some really nice potatoes! I grabbed a couple more kohl rabi (not too many of those left now!), some Swiss Chard, thyme, oregano, sage and lemon balm, as well as some walking onion bulbils.

All of this, plus some carrots I still had in the fridge, a Sub Arctic Plenty tomato the family hadn’t eaten yet, an entire bulb of fresh garlic (about 6 large cloves), some stewing beef and chunks of sausage, got used to make an Instant Pot one pot meal.

I do like being able to set up either the Instant Pot or the Crockpot and just leave it. Today, it meant I could get a nap in! We’re a real messed up household right now. My husband’s dealing with a broken tooth on top of his constant back pain. My younger daughter had a rough night and has been caning it today – yet she still just came back from picking the Spoon tomatoes for me! My older daughter has been walloped by her PCOS again. I’m still dealing with a wonky hip, plus my injured left arm is still causing issues, but it’s starting to look like I’m the most able bodied person in the household again!

I had thought I could use the riding mower and mow the lawn today. After all the rain we’ve had, it actually needs it again. When I went to bed last night, the forecast was for sun and a few clouds for the next week. This morning, that changed to a light rain, pretty much all day! They’re still saying we’ll be getting sun with some clouds for at least a week, but who knows what we’ll actually get. I’m certainly not going to complain about more rain, though. We still need it so badly!

It does make things hard to plan around, though. There are things I’d like to get some work done on before I start making my monthly stock up shopping trips to the city, plus my follow up medical appointment about my arm, and so on. Things that need to be done when it’s dry, or at least not raining. I have this constant sense of running out of time.

Ah, well. It is what it is, and there’s only so much we can do. Having all four of us struggling with physical limitations at the time time, though, was not something I had ever expected when we moved out here, though!

The Re-Farmer

Finally mulched the new food forest additions

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It was getting ridiculously hot and muggy, but I wanted to finally get a good mulch around the newest food forest additions. I had just gone around them with the weed trimmer and, with the rain we’ve been having, it would grow back fast if it didn’t get covered.

Of course, I forgot to take a “before” picture, before I started! 😄

In the first to photos above, I had just laid out the first wheelbarrow load of wood chips. Before that, I moved out the hose I had set up in the rain barrel, taken away pieces of wood from when we had our pea and bean trellises out there that were weighing down the cardboard, and removed the leaky rain barrel and my watering can. I left the cages and the metal spinner.

The plum tree already had the largest area mulched with grass clippings, so I added the wood chips only up to the wire mesh. With everything else, I mulched closer in, but still made sure to leave a “donut hole” around the plants themselves. There was also a pile of grass clippings set aside when the area was prepped for planting, so I went ahead and added that in, too. With that added in, it took 4 1/2 wheel barrow loads to mulch the area, nice and thick.

After I got the two “after” pictures, I set the rain barrel back between the gooseberry and apple, making sure the cracked side was facing the middle. One of the sticks I’d removed earlier had been under the opposite side of the barrel to tilt it slightly towards the cracks, and that was returned as well.

By the time I was done, I was dripping with sweat, and we hadn’t even reached out high of the day, so headed back inside once this was done. I still want to head out to take garden tour video, but not quite yet!

I did get some video, though. I had gone back to the paths I’d worked on earlier today, and wow, those ants work fast!

This was just one small section in the video. You can even see one ant going by, carrying an egg. Already I can see openings to tunnels, all over the place! Those buggers work fast!

Crud. I’m going to need to get ant traps to get rid of them, since they’ll cause lots of damage here, and these ants are biters. I hate having to kill them, though.

While we currently have sunshine, heat and humidity where we are, I’m happy to say that there is a large system of rain passing over the north of our province, where most of the wildfires as still burning. There’s a possibility of up to about 100mm (just under four inches) of rain by tomorrow!

I think, over the next few days, I’m going to have to start setting up supports around some of our beds. Looking at the long range forecast into September, we might actually drop to potential frost temperatures in the first week. Even in the next week ahead, we have at least one night where we are expected to drop below 10C/50F. The eggplant seem the most intolerant of cold, but we’ve finally got some female flowers on the winter squash showing up! If we can just stay above 10C/59F for another month, we might actually have something to harvest.

Ah, well. Whatever happens, we’ll just have to deal with it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: baby baked potatoes, and garden path progress

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

While doing my rounds today, I noticed some really huge squash and pumpkin flowers were open. There was even one among the zucchini that I made sure to hand pollinate, since no male flowers were open.

In checking the winter squash, though, I had my first find of potential Baked Potato squash. Two little female flowers were finally forming.

Once those blossoms open, I will be sure to hand pollinate them, just to be on the safe side.

Not that it’s likely we’ll get anything from them. We’re well into the second half of August right now. These are shorter season varieties, but even if these female flowers get properly pollinated and start to grow, it’s unlikely we have enough season left for full maturity.

Once I was done my rounds, I grabbed the wheelbarrow and started bringing wood chips over to cover some garden paths. I forgot to get a “before” picture of the first one I started on, so I instead have a “half way done” picture.

That first picture is after three wheelbarrow loads. Some of the wood chips were also spread around the north ends of the two beds.

The second picture shows that path finished, including the ends of the two beds, with a total of five wheelbarrow loads. I especially wanted to make sure there was a thick, stamped down layer right up against the walls of the raised beds.

The only down side is that, while loading the wheelbarrow from the wood chip pile, I broke up an ant hill. Which means that, along with the wood chips, I also brought over a whole bunch of red ants and their eggs.

I’ll need to pick up some ant traps soon.

Once this was done, I headed inside for breakfast. By the time I came out again, it was just starting to almost, kinda, sorta rain. More of a misting than a rain. I was already soaked with sweat from the humidity, so I figured I may as well keep at it.

For the second path, I remembered to get a proper “before” picture.

For this one, I tried to load the wheelbarrow as much as I could, without losing woodchips along the way. It still took five loads, but I had enough to add to the ends, as well as more to put along the sides of the flower bed. That bed will get walls eventually, and the wood chips are where the walls would go, but that’s okay. As it is now, if I’m not careful while watering, the soil mound the flowers are planted in starts to erode, and the wood chips will reduce that.

The high raised bed already had its own ant colony in one corner, so I just added more ants… 🫤

Definitely need to get ant traps.

Here is how it looked from the north end.

Those bricks at the end of the flower bed were added because the cats were digging there to use the soil as a littler box.

The Cosmos are getting nice and tall, and looking really healthy! Hopefully, they aren’t shading out the memorial asters too much.

I did finally remove the hoops that were still over that section. I’d left them after removing the netting simply because they weren’t in the way of anything, and it was as good a place to store them as any.

Eventually, this end will have a more developed 4′ wide path, but that will happen after we get rid of those killer trees and build more beds to reclaim the space they’ve taken over. For now, I just need a narrower mulched path to keep the weeds down.

Once this was done, it had gone from misting to raining, so it was time to stop. This area won’t get more wood chips for a while, as I’m adding that after the raised beds on either side of a path are permanently framed with logs.

I did use up a decent chunk of the wood chip pile!

Not only was there a big ant nest in it, but poplar roots were working their way through it, too. It’s been there a few years, now. Where I’m standing to take the picture is how far it extended when the tree company we hired to get rid of the big branch pile for us dumped it there. This area is meant to be kept open, wide enough to drive through, if needed, so it’ll be good to use up that pile. We’ll need to go over with with the landscape rake when we’ve cleared as much as we can, just so we can mow over it without the lawnmower blades doing much crunching and munching, and potentially getting damaged.

The next areas I’ll be adding wood chips to are around the raised beds in the east yard, and around the newest food forest additions.

Which I might actually get some progress on, as it seems to have stopped raining. We’re getting into the hottest part of the day, though, so I might work on another project, instead.

I’m so enjoying finally getting some stuff done out there!

The Re-Farmer

Little by little…

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

… it’s getting done.

I headed out this afternoon to continue working on cleaning up the main garden area. I started off by doing some weed trimming first, as I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to do it after mowing the overgrown area. I wanted to get around the log framed raised beds, as they will be getting wood chips added to their paths soon. I also trimmed around the newest food forest additions.

Our corded weed trimmer died on us earlier this year, so my brother dug his battery operated weed trimmer out of storage for me to use. Thankfully, he has many batteries! I drained two of them and was working on a third before I finished. Along with the main garden area, I made sure to trim around the east yard garden beds, as well as some stumps, rocks and roots, so that they where no longer hidden. Hitting those with a lawn mower is not fun!

The trimming done, my focus was the overgrown area, starting with opening up the higher traffic area towards the fruit trees, where I run a hose through to the old leaky rain barrel. This meant setting the mower as high as it could go for a first run.

Here is how it was yesterday afternoon, before any mowing started.

I took that one before starting to mow around where new trellis tunnel beds will be built, without trying for the overgrown area yet. I got an in progress photo last night, and then again today, when I had to stop.

In the first photo, you can see I cleared away the logs and solarization plastic. The cardboard was left for now. It will be laid over where the next trellis bed will be built and, if there is enough, over some of the paths before the wood chips are laid down.

The next photo is almost depressing. It really doesn’t look like much was done! That is partly because the remaining tall grass hides what was mowed around the sliver buffalo berry area. It really is a huge space, too.

The gas can is next to the stump that was under the pile of logs, where a diseased crab apple tree had died and was removed. There’s another off frame to the left, but it’s almost low enough to mow over.

I didn’t even need to refill the gas tank before I had to stop. It was simply too hot and humid, and I was starting to feel like I was about to pass out. Definitely time to get in out of the sun and hydrate!

Once that last section of tall grass, poplar saplings, alfalfa, clover, stink weed and various other things gets cleared with the push mower, it will need to be done again at a lower setting – but at that point, we could use the riding mower. Carefully. I don’t want to break my brother’s riding mower in there!

Over time, this area will get at least five more low raised beds that will be paired off with trellis tunnels, for a total of six, including the current one we’re already using. We might go with one more pair after that, but we may not need to. We won’t be going all the way in that direction with garden beds, though, as we will be planting more food forest items out there, and I want to have a wider lane between the two areas, in case we need to drive through with a vehicle.

In the other direction, the existing beds will be framed with logs, plus the area that used to be our squash patch, which is also overgrown and needs to be mowed, will be worked on. Instead of more 18′ beds, though, sections of it will be made into perennial gardens, like the asparagus bed we started this year. We might also make wider blocks for planting things like corn, potatoes or even wheat, instead of the long and narrow beds we’ve got going right now. The area we first grew what we thought was kulli corn but was actually Montana Morado has some really good soil, compared to everywhere else in that area, so I would really like to reclaim it again.

In the longer term, after we get rid of that killer row of elms and maples along the north side of our garden beds, we will probably make more raised beds, right on top of where the trees are now. Partly to make sure there is no chance that they will grow back, partly to reclaim more garden space. When I was a kid, where those trees are now was part of my mother’s garden, and they are taking up a LOT of square footage that used to grow food!

A lot of clean up will be required before we can build anything there. For now, we’ve been tossing a lot of the rocks we’ve been picking out of the garden beds into where the trees are. Some of them are large enough that we’ll likely use them to weigh down row covers or the like. With how many rocks we grow every spring, we could probably collect enough to make some gabion structures. Along with the rocks, there’s also lots of Virginian Creeper and Creeping Charlie, among other things, that will need to be dealt with, too.

All in good time.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, afternoon kitties, and not a good day

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I’m having a rather bad day today – and I don’t know why!

But first, the good stuff.

In the first photo above, you can see our growing pumpkin now has a sling to support it on the trellis. Or, more accurately, to take the weight off the plastic trellis netting so it won’t snap. The weight is now being held by the vertical supports for the permanent trellis, plus I wrapped garden twist ties around the strand of the netting holding the most weight, to strengthen it and put some of that weight onto the horizontal support bar above.

The next picture is of the Hedou Tiny Bok Choy seeds I gathered. I keep getting that name wrong, but I looked up the old post from when I got them as free seeds with an order from Baker Creek, back in 2022, for our 2023 garden.

The seeds in the container are actually from today’s pods I gathered, plus some I gathered earlier, as the pods dried out earlier. We will have plenty of seeds to plant this fall, for next year.

The funny thing is, we’ve never actually grown any of this variety of bok choy. The first year I tried them, they were in the bed by the chain link fence, before we know how destructive those Chinese elm seeds were. The entire bed was completely choked out. Yet, a couple of little bok choy survived and promptly bolted. All of two plants. I left them be and collected the seeds. They got planted last fall, in the “greens” mix of seeds planted in the old kitchen garden.

The problem was, the mix was scatter planted and things were pretty crowded out. I never saw the bok choy until the bolted – again, just a couple of plants – sending their flower stalks up through the mass of kohlrabi leaves. They were able to get much bigger, even being crowded out as they were, and I had a lot more pods to collect once they dried up. The pods were so dry, they started snapping open in my fingers as I tried to collect them. Most of the seeds ended up in my hand, but I’m sure a few ended up on the soil. I finally broke off the flower stalk lower down and brought the whole thing inside. For now, the seeds are in the cooler living room, with the container open to make sure they are completely dry.

When I do the winter sowing this fall, it will be a lot more organizes and planned, know that I know how the different things worked out. These tiny bok choi will be planted where they won’t be hidden or crowded out by other plants, and with protection from cats. Hopefully, next year, we’ll actually be able to harvest some and find out what they taste like!

There might still be some stalks of pods hidden under the kohlrabi leaves, but I definitely got most of them. While looking around, I did a bit of weeding and suddenly realized I was looking at a whole lot of new sprouts that were NOT weeds.

We left more spinach to go to seed than we need, and some of them got so leggy and spread out when they bolted, I pulled them like weeds, and just dropped them as mulch. Well, it looks like those seeds continued to develop, even after the plants were pulled!

We’ll be having an unintended fall spinach crop!

I was really struggling this morning, though. I couldn’t sleep for some reason, and after I did finally sleep, I woke up (was awakened) with this simmering undertone of anger, and it just hasn’t gone away. It didn’t get better after I had breakfast, so I tried for a nap.

It didn’t get better after a nap.

So I’ve asked the girls to take over on various things, but the outside jobs I could have done today, aren’t getting done. My head space is so messed up right now, I can’t even think of which project I would be working on. On top of it all, even though I just bought more kibble during the Walmart trip, it was just one 9kg bag for the inside cats, and another for the outside cats, and we’re already running low. I need to go to the feed store and pick up a couple more 40 pound bags, if I want to last until the first stock up trip at the end of August. I’m in no shape to do it today, but I will have to do it tomorrow.

Weather forecast is now saying we’re going to have more rain tomorrow morning. Maybe. The weather app on my phone was saying thunderstorms starting in the wee hours and ending by late morning. Now, it says no rain at all. The app on my desktop says we’ll get a bit of rain in the late morning, then again in the evening. We’re also supposed to get a lot hotter. It’s going to be topsy turvy temperatures for the next while. Last night, the forecasted low was 10C/50F. We ended up dropping to 8C/46F, instead. I actually got cold last night, and when I did my rounds, I wore a sweater for the first time in months. While not cold enough to need to cover things, anything below 10C/50F is not good for our garden, when everything is so far behind.

Anyhow.

I did head out to do the evening cat feeding earlier than usual as I wanted to make sure the littles hiding under the counter shelf could have a chance to eat without the bigger cats pushing them around. I’ve only seen one or two at a time, so I still don’t know how many are under there. For all I know, one of the moms has moved some of them.

After putting the food out, I did a head count of adult cats.

Five.

Yup. Just five! Not twenty five or thirty five. Just five

Of course, there were a lot more in the morning, but I haven’t been able to do a head count. They move around too much.

I did get a couple of pictures this afternoon, though.

Eyelet couldn’t hear the sound of the food being added to the trays and stayed in his comfy bed, making it easy to get his picture. Syndol REALLY wanted me to be paying attention to him instead of Eyelet, though!

As I write this, I have the critter cam live feed up. I can see one little kitten – the one I found in the garage, and later rescued from following other cats around the yard – running around. I saw a skunk earlier and my husband went to try and check it out, but it went under the counter shelf, instead.

Not as fast as usual, though! It would have come face first with however many kittens are under there.

They seem to have made peace, though, as the skunk’s tail is no longer visible, and he’s all the way under.

*sigh*

I’ve accomplished pretty much nothing today, and I feel like I got hit by a truck. Not pain wise. That’s been so much better since I started the anti-inflammatories. Some of it is just a general malaise. My chronic cough hasn’t been very frequent for some time, but today it’s hitting me again. I’m not coughing a lot, but when I do, it’s bad enough that my old daughter was calling down from upstairs, asking if I was okay – and she was wearing headphones while she worked! My cough is like my throat is being torn up. I spent more than 10 years in two provinces going to different specialists to find the cause of my cough, and none was found, and I finally gave up. Nothing drives a doctor more insane than being a short, fat woman that every test shows as being extremely healthy, other than physical damage, like the OA and bone spurs. Aside from not having the laundry list of fat-people ailments they think I should have, they can’t find the cause of my respiratory issues. After test after normal test, they start looking at me sideways, and thinking I’m making it up. With my new doctor, I haven’t even brought it up. She knows it’s an issue, and it’s all in my file, but I see no point in asking for more tests again. I just live with it.

Still, it’s not my cough that’s causing me issues today. I know part of it is the cats and their destructiveness, which is what woke me up this morning. We just have too many cats in the house, and chances of adoption these days has basically dropped from slim to none. I don’t blame the Cat Lady for getting out of rescue, that’s for sure.

I think that might have something to do with that underlying anger I’m feeling today. I think maybe it’s just caught up to me. We do the best we can, but there are limits, and we’ve passed ours, long ago. I can’t even reach out to the stray and feral rescue group I’ve been following; people are very quick to make assumptions and get nasty. You’d think rescues would be a whole lot of people actually interested in rescuing cats and finding homes for them, not virtue signaling, one upping each other or reporting people to the province to “help”.

Oh, I need to stop. That underlying feeling of anger is bubbling up.

I think I’m really starting to burn out.

The Re-Farmer.

Power is back

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

When the outage start approaching 3 hours, we had a decision do make – except it was already made for us, really. We could get the fire pit going and start cooking lunch, or go into town and get take out.

We’re still under a fire ban (plus, cooking outdoors in this heat would have been brutal), so off to town I went!

As I reached the end of the gravel road, I started seeing large vehicles on the side of the road near the highway. One of them had an empty trailer attached to it. When I got to the stop sign, I could see the equipment it was hauling. A lift on tracks was at one of the power poles, surrounded by several trucks and a crowd of people.

The electric company has been upgrading stuff all over the province for the past year or so, so seeing workers these days is not unusual. Seeing that many, with so many vehicles right in the ditch with the workers (the ditch on that side is wide and flat enough to drive in) suggested this was not part of the maintenance projects.

While driving through our little hamlet, I passed two places that have exterior signs that are lit up, and they were both on. So the power outage clearly didn’t affect things East of the highway.

This is what the WP AI image generator came up with, with only the word “electricity” as a prompt. 😄

When I got to town, I got some gas then stopped at a DQ. I ordered enough for the four of us for two meals, just in case.

On the way home, when I got to where I’d seen the workers, all the vehicles were now mustered on the gravel road side of the highway, and it looked like they were packing up. When I saw I would pass one of the guys, I stopped to ask him about it. He confirmed that they had just finished repairing the damage, and the power would soon be turned back on. I made sure to express my thanks for their work, then headed home. It was only two more miles, but the power was on again before I got there.

While I was in town, I took advantage of having a data signal and messaged with my brother while waiting for the food. When I told him I was in town and why, and he asked about using the BBQ they have us a couple of years back. I told him, the last time I checked, BBQs were also part of the fire ban.

Once home and the computer was back on, I checked the RM website. Our fire pit is not an “approved” fire pit, in that it doesn’t have a screen, but even if it did, we could only have used it between 8pm and 8am. As for the BBQ, it is a propane one, and BBQs and fire pits fueled with propane tanks were still allowed. Which is good to know, should we find ourselves in this situation again. They also just recently lifted a ban on ATVs and off road vehicles.

That explains why I was suddenly seeing so many of them on the trail cams lately!

That might also explain why we suddenly started seeing our vandal doing weird stuff in the driveway cam, too. We didn’t get a break because he was calming down. It was because his preferred method of transportation was temporarily banned.

Tomorrow, we have our planned outage from 9am to 2pm. They are upgrading the entire system so that it can handle more of a load and more people hooked into it. At the same time, they are replacing old poles, cutting away trees and branches from the power lines, and other general maintenance stuff.

I expect our power bills are going to be going up again next fiscal year. When we first got onto the equal payment plan, we were paying less than $300/month. Now, we’re creeping towards $400 a month. Without the equal payment plan, during our first winter here, the bill was over $600 for December and over $700 for January, so we really appreciated being able to get onto the equal payment plan after we lived here for a year! We’re still paying more for electricity every month than we are for our monthly truck payments. The bills have gone up even during years when our overall usage has gone down.

Anyhow.

This sort of thing is why I want to have an actual outdoor kitchen built. This is what we have planned for the structure.

The plan for the back of it is to have a brick or stone series of cooking areas, including an oven and a smoke house, that would be safe to use during dry years like this. It would also be built near the pump shack, so we would have access to the old well, and a simple extension cord from the pump shack can be set up to provide basic power, if we needed it. We originally thought to build it in a completely different area, until we realized it gets standing water during particularly wet springs.

Even if we just had the shelter built, we have old wood burning cook stoves we could set up temporarily. Between being under a roof and the fire being completely enclosed, it would not be included in any fire bans.

We’ll get there. Eventually.

For now, I’m just glad to have the power back on. It means my husband can sleep with his CPAP again.

The Re-Farmer

Future gardens: did I over do it? 😄

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Okay, so I took advantage of MI Gardener having a 40% sale on seeds. Which means I got a lot of things I wouldn’t normally have been able to get and still stayed in budget. Most of these will be for future gardens, as we continue to build more beds and extend further afield.

Here is what I ordered today. Click on the images to see them better. I’ll include links as I list them below, this time in alphabetical order.

Oh, the crazy thing about going back and looking up the links. When I placed the order, I selected “in stock” items only. Going back, I just went through all the seeds, not just categories and not just “in stock”. I found that quite a few things I ordered are now listed as out of stock – but there are things that I see listed as in stock, but weren’t there when I was placing the order from the in stock only list!

Must. Not. Place. Another order!!

Ah, well. Here is what I chose today. All links should open in new tabs.

Anise One for our developing herb garden. I had no idea anise could grow here, but it’s only 75 days to maturity, so we should have no problem.

Bachelor’s Button – blue
Bachelor’s Button – pink Years ago, I lived in a city where Bachelor’s Button practically grew wild and always loved them, but I had no idea they were also edible! These are deer resistant, so they will be planted strategically.

Butterneck Squash This one is a Canadian heirloom variety that is apparently almost extinct! So of course we’ll have to grow some to save seed. 90-100 days to maturity.

California Wonder Bell Pepper these are to restock our pepper seed inventory. It’s a thick walled pepper, which caught my attention. Some varieties we’ve tried had surprisingly thin walls. 75 days to maturity.

Canary Yellow Melon I’m as much a sucker for melons as I am for winter squash! 80 days to maturity

Caraway Another one for our future herb garden. 70 days to maturity.

Chocolate Stripes Tomato A pretty slicing tomato for the family to try. 75-80 days to maturity.

Coffee Seeds (coffea arabica) I always like to have at least one “for fun” thing and one “challenge” thing. This will be a “challenge” thing – and to be grown as a house plant, as this is a zone 11-13 item. 2-4 years to maturity, and yes, this is a real coffee plant that we could potentially harvest beans from to make our own coffee. This one is more for the girls, since they are the coffee drinkers in this household.

Dazzler Red Cosmo I got this because the red is a less common colour for them, and they are great for attracting pollinators. 75-90 days to maturity.

Gold Rush Wax Bean (Bush) I did already get a tri-colour mix of bush beans, but I’ve almost used up the yellow bush bean seeds I had in my current collection, so this is a replenisher. 55 days to maturity.

Golden Boy Celery I’ve never grown celery before. The one time I tried, it was a pink variety and I started them way too late. These ones, however, are 80-90 days to maturity, so I shouldn’t have that problem.

Golden Hubbard Squash Yeah, I’m a sucker for the winter squash! These are a smaller and more prolific variety of Hubbard that grows to “only” 5-15 pounds. 95-110 days to maturity

Hales Best Jumbo Cantaloupe Melon Yup. Another melon! These are described as being more drought tolerant and thrives in hot weather – kinda like we’ve got right now. 85 days to maturity.

Long Grain Rice I looked these up out of curiosity and was shocked. We can actually grow this variety of rice here! Gotta try it! 90-100 days to maturity.

Manitoba Tomato This is an all purpose tomato, and the variety my mother used to grow here, so I know these should work. With only 65 days to maturity, we could direct sow these, instead of starting them indoors.

Meadow wildflower mix One of these days we’ll get a wildflower mix that will take! 90 days to maturity.

Oaxacan green dent corn (x2) There aren’t a lot of seeds per packet, so I got two of these. As a dent corn, we would be growing these to make corn flour. Only 80 days to maturity, too!

Orange flesh honeydew melon Oh, look! Another melon! We have the green flesh honeydew (none of the melons we have this year are going to produce, and I still don’t know what happened), and now orange flesh. 75-110 days to maturity.

Red Long of Tropea onion We’ve grown this variety before, and they did really well. We have our own onion seeds, but none of this variety. 90-110 days to maturity.

Red Wethersfield onion While I think we these are the red onions we have in the mix of our own seeds collected, they were from onions that had died off after transplanting – we thought! – but came up the next year. We’ve never actually successfully grown edible bulbs of these, so I figure it might be worth trying again. 100 days to maturity.

Rouge vif D’Etampes / Cinderella Pumpkin This variety caught my attention partly because it’s listed as being able to last in storage longer. 110 days to maturity.

Russian Tarragon Another one for the future herb garden, and it apparently overwinters well with little protection. Not sure if that applies to our zone 3 winters, but no zone is listed at all for it. 60 days to maturity.

Stowell Evergreen Corn (x2) Another corn, and another addition to our collection of white things! This variety is listed as drought tolerant, which is important for where we are. There aren’t a lot of seeds in the packet for something that needs to be wind pollinated, so I got two. 80-100 days to maturity.

Tom Thumb Dwarf Pea (x2) This variety grows to only 13-18 inches high. No trellis needed. Which would make it much, much easier to protect from deer! Not a lot of seeds per packet, so I got two. 45 days to maturity.

Triticale (x2) Okay, this one is for well into the future! At some point, we do want to grow our own grain to make flour. I’ve already got some heirloom wheat that is particularly noted for making good bread flour though, even with two packets, the amount of seeds I have for those would be grown only to collect more seeds for the first couple of years! The triticale comes in 500 seed count packets, but I still got two. Even so, the first crop would be mostly to get more seed for larger, future plantings. Thinking well ahead on this one! 85 days to maturity.

There we have it! My second order with MI Gardener, in as many days, and third order this summer. 😄

While there are still some things we will get from other sources, these orders will set us up for several years, as we build and expand on our garden beds and growing areas, plus more flower seeds for the pollinators. The additions for the herb garden has brought that goal closer to reality by quite a bit. There are many other herbs I’d love to get, but most of them need a much longer growing season than we’ve got. At least until we get a permanent greenhouse.

I seem to have become addicted to getting seeds like I used to be with getting yarn. Seeds are cheaper, though! Especially with sales like this one. This order totaled US$36, with a savings of US$24. No shipping costs, either. Plus, they have a points program and I now have enough points to get $5 off my next order.

Which is not going to happen for a while. I’ve got lots of seeds now!

Honest!!

At least until their new inventory comes in, after this blow out sale clears space for them.

😂🤣😄

The Re-Farmer