planning ahead

Back Tracking a Bit, and Looking Ahead

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A while ago, my daughters cleaned up the beds in the main garden area while I worked elsewhere. I’d asked for photos, but thought they’d forgotten to take any. One of them, however, did remember to get before and after pictures, and recently passed them on to me.

So here is some of the cleanup done by my daughters, almost a week ago.

This first bed had two types of onions in it; the yellow onions we stared from seed that actually survived the cats, and red onion sets. Before those were planted, a row of… Hmm. I’ll have to check back. I believe it was the purple kale that we got as free seeds from Baker Creek that got planted down the middle. If anything germinated, something got to them before we ever saw them.

As the onions got harvested later, the bed was left empty when they were done. It had been weeded as much as I could, between the onions, while the onions were growing. This turned out to be one of the easiest beds to clean up and took them very little time.

This is one of the three beds that started out with spinach. After the spinach was harvested, they sat empty until the heat waves finally passed. On the left of this bed, I planted radishes and … gosh, I can’t remember, but it was another cool weather crop. Neither survived the grasshoppers. Eventually, we planted some lettuce seeds that had spilled out of their envelopes and got mixed up. They turned out to be mostly one type; Merlot, I believe they were called, with a couple of buttercrunch that we got as free seeds from Baker Creek. We were able to add a mesh layer over the chicken wire cover on this bed, so they survived. Unfortunately, after a while, the lettuce leaves got very bitter and nasty tasting. I don’t know why. It’s not like they were bolting, and we weren’t getting anymore heat waves, but it got so bad, we just couldn’t eat them anymore. It’s a shame, because they handled the frosts we got extremely well. They didn’t go to waste, though, and are now adding nutrients to the high raised bed. :-)

This was another bed that started out with spinach. Believe it or not, this bed got weeded quite thoroughly before I planted different radishes and one of the chard varieties. You can see the one chard that survived, surrounded by wire, in the background. Closer to the front you can see some bricks and stones that are surrounding the last couple of radishes that survived. This bed turned out to be very difficult to clean up and was thoroughly filled with rhizomes. It took so long to clean up, this was where they had to stop for the day.

Before they left, though, my daughter had gotten a before picture of this last bed. It was the third bed with spinach in it, then it got planted with the Bright Lights chard and French Breakfast radishes. The chard did well until it got hit repeatedly with frost. It handled a couple of frosts very well before finally freezing beyond recovery. There were only a couple of the radishes that never quite recovered from the grasshoppers. Like the lettuce, they got pulled and composted into the high raised bed. My older daughters were able to come back to finish cleaning this bed a couple of days ago, and it was much faster and easier than the last one they did!

Over time, each of these beds will be replaced as high raised beds. They are about 14-15 feet long, but will be reduced to 9 ft, so it will be easier to build frames for protective covers that can be easily moved by one person. We will keep using the dead trees we clean up from the spruce grove to build the beds for as long as we have enough of them. That should be enough to do the remaining five beds. That will leave us room to do a second row of high raised beds, if we choose, but by then, I think we will no longer have enough wood from dead spruce trees to use. We shall see. It’s a big job that is going to take a while to do. In the spring, we will plant into these beds as they are, but now that we have a chain saw, I expect to be able to cut down the dead trees and cut the lengths we need in advance, so that in the fall, we will just need to assemble them.

To get the height of our first high raised bed, we used eight 9ft logs and eight 4 ft logs. With five more beds to build, that means 45 nine ft logs and 20 four ft logs. It took us most of four trees (including one that was smaller than the three we cut from the spruce grove) to make this one bed. The remaining trees that need to be cut are all quite large, but if we assume four trees per bed, that means we’ll need 20 more trees to do the remaining beds.

We have more than that many dead trees to cut. It will only be a question of how solid they are, or if they have rot or ant damage to the trunks. A few of them are so big that I would want to split the logs cut from the bases of the trunks, lengthwise, and use them at the very bottom of the beds, so they’re not too thick. If the wood on all the remaining trees is sound enough, given their size, I am thinking we will probably need closer to 15 trees to finish the beds rather than 20. Considering we have probably another 24 dead trees to cut, that just means more beds we can build!

Just thinking of having a whole row of high raised beds here makes me very happy. I can hardly wait!

The Re-Farmer

Look who’s back again!

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Well, we’ve been having all sorts of yard cats that have been away for a while, coming back again!

When the girls popped outside for a bit, they discovered Creamsicle Baby was back.

He even brought his brother, Nutmeg, with him. :-) Creamsicle is looking thin and hungry, but last night he seemed to be more hungry for human attention than anything else! He just couldn’t not get enough pets and cuddles. The kittens weren’t too sure what to make of him. I know they’ve seen him before, but it’s been a while. Tuxedo Mask in particular was following him around with great curiosity.

Best of all, Creamsicle Baby was still here in the morning!

My goodness, the cats were just all over the place, while we were feeding them!

I don’t think I’ve seen so many of them trying to fit around the one tray under the shrine, either. :-D

After we were done with the outside stuff, my younger daughter and I made what I hope will be the last city trip this month. After this, I have only a court date at the end of the week at the smaller city, and after that, I should be done with anything but local trips. This trip was mostly for stuff the girls needed, but it gave me a chance to get a few last items for the pantry or freezer. Then, on the way home, we were able to stop at the mail and pick up the big box of tea my older daughter ordered!

Among the things I picked up today was juice to use once our ginger bug is ready. Between the home made, fermented pop and the tea, we’ll be well set for non-water beverages to enjoy over the winter. I also picked up some extra milk so I can try making the soda cheese my mother used to make that I finally got her instructions for. Her instructions were for 5 gallons of milk, though, and I only got 1 extra gallon, so I’ll have to adjust the ratios! After I double check with her that she actually meant to say “gallons” and not “liters”.

We are still having mild temperatures, even though we did actually get a bit of snow.

There was just enough that it was still around to see on things like the roof of the cat’s house, but not on the ground. We’ll have a couple of days just above freezing, then we’re supposed to warm up again. We’ve still got stuff to do outside before the ground freezes, but on the colder days, I am hoping we can start doing a whole lot of baking, in quantities sufficient to add to the freezer.

As long as the weather holds, we’re going to be very busy!

The Re-Farmer

Thinking of 2022; first seed order placed

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While we have already been picking up some seeds here and there for next year’s garden, still have some from this past year, and even have some seeds we have saved, last night I placed our first online seed order. We will have a “seed” budget over the next few months that will also include, hopefully, fruit trees and berry bushes as well.

A lot of stuff is still listed as out of stock. This is most likely because the sites are at the end of the 2021 catalogue year, and their 2022 products are not ready yet. Still, it meant a few things on my wish list did not get ordered, and I found alternatives, instead.

This order was with Veseys. I have been very happy with what I’ve had from them – even the stuff that ended up failing, like the mulberry tree, since they had no control over it getting hit with that one bitterly cold night that killed it off! :-D There are several other places we will be ordering from, month by month, but this is what I ordered last night, with why they were chosen.

All photos belong to Veseys, and I will link to their individual listings. (For future readers, if the links are dead, it’s likely because they no longer carry the item anymore.) All links will open in a new tab, so you don’t lose your place.

This past summer was a hard one for the winter squash. We did not get enough winter squash for storage, and that’s the main reason we were growing them at all. While we still have Red Kuri and Teddy squash seeds we can grow next year, I like variety. Hopefully, between them all, we’ll have at least something for the root cellar!

Georgia Candy Roaster Winter Squash

This is the long squash in the photo. I have heard from quite a few different places about how delicious these squash are, so I want to give them a try.

Winter Sweet Organic Squash

Another good storage squash that I chose specifically because the listing says they are best for eating several months after being picked. So this one is for the long haul!

Bresko Beet

We’ve tried different varieties of beets, and grew lots of them this year, but with the growing conditions, we got remarkably few beet roots out of it. I don’t know that we will order other varieties as well, but I don’t expect we will plant as many as we did, this past summer. The listing specifies that this variety is a good storage beet, so that’s a big selling feature for me. Pickled beets are fine and dandy, but having some for fresh eating will also be good.

Aunt Molly’s Organic Ground Cherries

I’ve been wanting to grow these for a while! Before our move, we did grow these in our balcony garden with success, and I just love them. Which is odd, as they are in the tomato family, and I can’t eat tomatoes unless they’re processed. One of the cold climate gardening sites I follow listed these as something they regret planting, as they became invasive, and they didn’t like how they tasted. It seems these can self sow and are hard to get rid of, once established. With I see as a bonus! These will be planted in a location that can be permanent, so they can self-sow as much as they want.

Conservor Organic Shallot

We will be trying these again! I really enjoyed the shallots we bought as sets, to replace what we tried to grow from seed, but they were used up very quickly. We need more for our household, and the sets only had 25 per bag! I want to try and grow from seed again. This time, we have what we need to ensure the cats’ won’t be able to get at them and destroy them again!

Red Baron Onion

Another one we will be trying again. When we started these seeds for our 2021 garden, I had used an cardboard egg tray for the “pot”. The cardboard just sucked the moisture right out of the growing medium.

We did plant the last of our seeds in Solo cups, though it was incredibly late in the season. What we did get got transplanted near our tomatoes. It didn’t really work, but while I was working on that bed yesterday, I found a single Red Baron onion in the ground, with just a hint of green on it. So I planted it back into the ground! Onions go to seed in their second year, so it should overwinter just fine under the mulch. We shall see! Even if it doesn’t, though, I look forward to trying to grow these bunching onions from see again.

Oneida Onion

Of course, we must have regular cooking onions, too! This is a variety I chose for its storage potential. I was happy with the yellow onions we grew from seed compared to the ones we grew from sets. We go through a lot of onions in this household, so I will probably be ordering other varieties as well – as long as we can find the room for all the growing trays when we start them indoors! At the very least, I want to get a variety of red onions I have my eye on, in another site.

We got a bush bean collection last year that did surprisingly well under difficult growing conditions. This year, I wanted to try a pole bean collection, but it was out of stock, so I found individual ones to try. We may still get bush beans as well. I am also interested in getting beans for drying. We shall see.

Carminat Bean

Since everything purple seemed to do much better than other stuff in our garden this year, I figured a purple pole bean would be worth a try! They are supposed to be a high yield bean that stays tender even as they get larger.

Seychelles Bean

This pole been variety was new for Veseys for 2021. They are supposed to produce for a very long time. As they are also expected to grow up to nine feet tall, these, and the Carminat bean, should be great to grow on the squash tunnel.

Latte Corn

This past summer, we had a sweet corn collection with three different varieties. This year, I decided to get just the one – and we will be planting them closer to the house in next year’s garden! These are an early variety that can handle colder soil, which will be important for spring sowing. Also, they were on sale. ;-)

I plan to get a couple other varieties of corn from elsewhere as well, so we should still have three or four different kinds of corn next year. We shall see.

I decided to try turnips this upcoming year. A couple of varieties caught my eye.

Tokyo Silky Sweet Turnip

I chose this variety because they get harvested at such a small size, and are supposed to be mild and sweet. The leaves can be used like spinach, too.

Purple Prince Turnip

These are a fast maturing summer turnip that are also supposed to be harvested at a smaller size. The greens are also good for eating, so they are another dual purpose crop.

Eureka Cucumber

And finally, we have these cucumbers! I chose this variety for its dual purpose as well. Harvested at smaller sizes, they are a good pickling cucumber. Leave them to grow larger, and they are good for fresh eating, too.

So this is our start! Along with the garden beds we used this past summer, we will need to expand our garden even more for next year. We will likely need to build more trellises as well.

One thing we learned from this past year’s garden is, if we want to meet our goal of growing enough food to preserve through the winter for the four of us, we need a much bigger garden! Partly, we need to plant more of some things, because who knows how much will actually survive? Plus, a few packets I’d ordered turned out to have fewer seeds in them than I expected. As I place our orders, I’ll need to keep an eye on the quantities and decide; do I order more packets, or order more varieties?

Hopefully, we will not get another year of severe heat and drought conditions. Nor another year with a plague of grasshoppers. And be able to keep the critters out… There are so many things that can affect yield. Someone on one of the gardening groups I’m on, posted this little rhyme.

One for the rook
One for the crow
One to rot and
One to grow

Planting four times more than we think we will need seems a bit much, but after how things went this past year, there are some things it really does seem appropriate for! And that’s just food for us. When we get chickens and possibly goats, we will want to grow as much feed as we can. Plus, I want to eventually grow flour corn and things like wheat, chickpeas and flax. I’m even looking at getting sugar beets, and my daughters are interesting in growing hops for beer making. By the time we’re doing that, however, we’ll be growing in the outer yard!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Cute cats, stocking up, and I have a new toy!

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With our goal of stocking up as much as we can for the winter, on the assumption that we will have a month or two where we cannot get out to buy necessities, our monthly shop is being split up into multiple trips, so as not to overload the van.

Also, I hate shopping, so… babying the van is a handy excuse to keep it shorter. ;-)

I was heading out on my own for this trip, so I made the smaller Walmart trip, which let me make a shorter trip to the nearer, smaller city. The main thing I wanted to stock up on there was the cat kibble. They have more variety than Costco does.

Well. Most of the time.

Almost all the dry cat food was out of stock!

At least they still had the big bags of the cheap stuff – which even got restocked while I was there.

Yikes!

With six bags of dry cat food in the cart, there wasn’t much room for people food, but I got enough to tide us over until we can make the Costco trip. I even remembered to pick up a couple of shelf brackets for the second shelf in the outhouse, but I had no luck finding the battery operated LED switch plate I want to put on the wall across from the mirror.

Once I got what I needed there, I then went across the street to a Canadian Tire. Normally, we’d pick up more of the wood pellets we use for litter there, but I didn’t have room for more big bags in the van, so that will wait for the big trip. I got a quart sized can of paint to do the lettering on the sign I’m making, to replace the one that was stolen. We still have some of the bright blue we used to paint the picnic table left, but I decided to go with something darker for the sign.

The person in the paint department that knew how to use the machine to tint the paint was on break, so I used that time to find the heavy duty rope, and some hooks, so we can finally pull that stuck tree down. I also looked for the LED switch plate light I wanted for the outhouse, but there was nothing. It’s a novelty light, so I’m not too surprised they haven’t been restocked. Ah, well.

Canadian Tire is a dangerous place for me to be, with money!

Of course, I found a few other little things we needed, but then I found my new toy.

Yes, I bought a chain saw!

It was on clearance. I decided it was worth going into my seed budget to buy it – and I still have half my seed budget left!

Yes, it’s just a house brand, and yes, it’s electric. I figure I can realistically at least get a couple of years out of it before I wear it out completely. ;-)

It will, however, save me massive amounts of time and labour! Now that we have what we need to pull that stuck tree out, it’ll be much faster to break it down into the lengths I need to finish the high raised bed. Heck, I’m even thinking of taking it apart so I can tidy up the notches and make it fit together, better! No more using the baby chainsaw until the batteries are dead, then using a hammer and chisel for the rest! No more bucksaw to cut the lengths I need! Heck, with a 14″ blade, I might even be able to get more of the dead trees down this fall! If the weather holds – dare I consider it? – I might even be able to make at least one more high raised bed. Gotta clean up the existing beds, first, however, there is one bed left the girls didn’t get to clean up in the main garden area, yesterday. We might be able to “clean up” that bed, by making a second high raised bed there, instead! We’d have to cut down at least one, maybe two, more dead trees to do it, though.

Oooo… Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here!

We shall see. Today, we got rain. Lots of rain, so it’s a write off for working on the garden beds. We should have two or three days to get work done before we get a day with rain and snow. After that, it’ll get chilly, with possible snow, but the long range forecast tells me we will remain above freezing during the day, well into November.

With the chain saw and the wood chipper, we should be able to get a lot more done, in a much shorter time. Meanwhile, while I was working on this post, my husband securely attached the new hooks to the new rope I got, which means I can pull that tree out tomorrow, and get to work!

Gosh, I’m all excited, just thinking about it.

So the trip was very productive, though I was more than glad to be done. Half way down an aisle at Canadian Tire, one of my knees decided to try and dislocate, making me VERY glad to have a shopping cart to lean on!

Being old and broken kinda sucks. ;-)

Once at home, after the girls unloaded the van and I changed a burnt out bulb in one of my headlights, I took the time to top of the kibble for the outside cats. It was still raining, so the cats were… well, check it out!

Hilariously adorable, is what they were!

They love that space under the kibble house! I’m sure they love having that sheet of insulation to keep their toes warm, too. :-)

One of the things I hoped to do was build smaller version of the kibble house for the water bowls. I don’t think we’ll be able to build it this year; from what I’ve seen in the barn and sheds, we don’t have the materials to complete it. They really like having a nice shelter from the rain, for their food, though!

What a bunch of cuties they are! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden cleanup: progress and plans for the day

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I worked on some of the garden beds yesterday, until it got too dark to keep it up. Here is what I managed to get done.

The first bed I worked on was the beet bed by the garlic, as this one will be getting a box frame soon. I started by removing the bricks and rocks around the edges, some of which you can see in the background.

I had to come back this morning to get a picture of this area. The beet bed had a row of red bricks along one side, which I moved over by the tomato bed. Then I went around the house and yard to pick up all the red bricks I could find and brought them over. When this bed gets cleaned up, we’ll re-do the boards along the fence, so that they fit better between the fence posts and line the entire length of the fence, to keep soil from washing through the chain link. The rest of the bed will be framed with these bricks, to keep the soil from washing into the path.

Amazingly, even though the vines are quite dead, there are still tomatoes ripening. I did not expect that, with the temperatures we’ve been having!

The beet bed then got weeded, and lengthened to match the garlic beds. I also moved the soil more towards the middle. I will not be digging out the soil to do the layering like I did with the others on this one. We only have wood enough to make a box frame one board high, so even though the boards I found are wider than the ones used in the other beds, it still won’t make a bed as deep as the others. This bed also got layers of material buried in it as it was made this spring, and quite a lot of the new garden soil was added, so it won’t need as much material to fill it. Once the box is built, it’ll pretty much just be laid over the existing bed. About the most I’ll do is make a “foundation” of old boards, like I did with the other two beds. Once that’s in place, I will make a trench in the middle of the soil and bury more organic material from the compost pile, but that’s about it.

The next area I worked on was a quick job. I just had to spread out and level the soil from the potato bags (and even found a few missed potatoes!). Nothing fancy is happening here. There are some lilies that need to be broken up, and they will be transplanted here.

The last spot I worked on before it started getting too dark was where the poppies had been. One of the things my daughters and I observed over the summer is that we needed to make areas to walk through, without stepping on plants. So at one end, by the rhubarb, I used the flat stones I found under the old wine barrel planter along the spruce grove as stepping stones. The rhubarb covered the poppies that had been planted near it, so I’m considering transplanting those somewhere else completely, but that won’t be done until the spring. We have only three interlocking bricks, so I used them as stepping stones at the end nearer the laundry platform.

The poppies that were here would have self seeded, which my loosening of the soil would have disturbed, but that’s okay. I did harvest a few little pods. I will broadcast more seeds some time over the next few days, then do it again in the spring. Once they have established themselves, this should end up being a permanent bed for Giant Rattle Breadseed Poppy. I do plan to get another variety of edible poppies I found from a Canadian source, but those will be planted in a completely different area.

So that’s as far as I got, yesterday evening. Today, I won’t be working on the garden clean up at all. My daughters will be working on that, later today. It’s supposed to warm up a bit more, but I’m really hoping the winds will die down. They made things quite bitter while I did my rounds this morning!

I’ve asked them to take before and after pictures for me. :-D

As for me, I have decided that I will can some of our beets. After going over my recipes, we do have enough to pickle. My daughter has been doing refrigerator pickles with the summer squash, which is great, but they take up a lot of room in the fridge, so I want to do water bath canning, so they will be shelf stable. I should at least get a half dozen 500ml jars.

I’d better get started!

The Re-Farmer

On growing garlic

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This year, I joined a number of gardening groups on social media. Either local groups or cold climate/zone 3 gardening groups. It’s pretty cool to see how many first time gardeners have been joining the groups and asking all sorts of questions.

This is the time of year for planting hard neck garlic, as we did yesterday, and there is a LOT of discussion on these groups right now, and people are sharing some really good links.

One really good video I saw shared was uploaded just yesterday, and it give a lot of good information. I think you’ll enjoy it, too.

He talks about hard neck garlic, soft neck garlic, seed garlic and even using store bought garlic, too.

I didn’t realize Elephant garlic isn’t actually garlic!

He talks about lots more, including harvesting “wet garlic”, which was something I wondered about when checking our own garlic last year.

Among the most discussed things I’ve been seeing in the gardening groups has been how deep to plant the cloves. There is a LOT of differing, even conflicting, advice. The thing is, the conflicting advice isn’t necessarily wrong. There can be quite a bit of variance, based on climate zones. For those in zone three, like myself, this was an excellent link that was shared. I also found this video, specific to planting garlic in zone 3.

I found it interesting that he says to leave the curing garlic out in the rain!

For those who aren’t necessarily in colder climates, here’s a video from MI Gardener (published September, 2018)

A lot of gardeners on my groups get seeds from MI Gardener, too, and are very happy with what they get.

There is a lot of information and advice out there, but if you can’t follow all of it, you know what? You can still get good garlic! We didn’t plant our cloves as deep as recommended for out zone, yet they survived the Polar Vortex just fine. We don’t have compost or manure to add, and we still got decent sized bulbs. That’s one of the beauties of gardening. You can do all sorts of things “wrong”, and chances are, you’ll still get decent results. What works in your own specific garden may also be quite different from what works in other places, too, so it will always be a learning experience.

Which is half the fun of the whole thing!

For those reading, do you have other things you plant in the fall? I’ve read about a number of vegetables that can be seeded in the fall, and plan to try it in the future, as we get our garden more established. If you plant garlic, do you plant hard or soft neck varieties? What works for you?

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: cleanup up and high raised bed progress

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While I was working on the garlic, my daughter did a whole bunch of clean up!

She pulled the Dorinny corn stalks that were next to the squash tunnel, then pulled all the squash, gourds and melon. Aside from the sunflowers, which we will be leaving for the deer to nibble on in the winter, we just need to weed and prep the beds that will be used next year, and put away things like the bin we keep tools and supplies in, empty the rain barrel and put it away for the winter, and take down the last of the critter barriers.

Then she pulled all the purple corn stalks, removed the three layers of barriers we had around the Crespo squash, and pulled those, too. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with the corn block. There’s some very good soil there. It would be good to plant some sort of legume there, next year, to replace the nitrogen the corn used up. As for the squash hill, that’s something else I’m not sure what do do with. When we plant squash again next year, I want it to all be on the other side of the main beds, where they get more hours of sunlight.

What a sad sight. The Crespo squash had recovered so well from the critter damage! I definitely will be trying these again – with critter barriers, right from the start!

Once I finished with the last garlic bed, I pulled the frozen chard and the remaining radishes we’d hope to grow for pods.

All those radishes we planted, and these are the only ones that survived the grasshoppers!

It’s a shame we don’t have chickens. They would have loved all the greens we pulled today! Not that they will go to waste. They will get buried in the beds as we prepare them for next year. There are still four more beds in the main garden area, including the one with lettuce still in it, to clean up. The lettuce is handling the overnight cold very well, but they have become very bitter tasting, so they will be pulled. Of course, there is still the high raised bed to work on.

I had company while I worked on the garlic. The cats do like the high raised bed. I’m sure the wood is much warmer on their toes than the ground. :-)

My daughter was able to help with the high raised bed this time. She finished making the notches on the next end piece, in the background, while I cut another 9′ side piece from the last tree we cut down. She does not like using the baby chainsaw, and much prefers a hammer and chisel, so I started on the notches on the end piece in the foreground, until the second battery on the baby chainsaw ran out. By then, it was starting to get dark, so my daughter finished up the end piece she was working on and we called it a day. You can’t see the cuts I made on the end piece in the foreground, as I rolled the log onto them. They make it less likely to roll around, should the cats decide to climb all over it again.

The side pieces that are waiting are from higher up in the tree trunk, and quite a bit thinner than the other logs. Almost too thin. Since we will probably make this bed four logs high, I am thinking I should wait until I have thicker logs to use, and save the narrower ones for the top row. The tree that’s still stuck on the branches would give me logs that are just the right size – if we could get it the rest of the way down! :-D It’s either that, or find another dead tree to cut down. The problem with that is, most of the trees that need to be cut down are all really huge. They might be too big!

As glad as I am to have so many dead trees available that are still solid enough for this project, I’m a bit sorry to be using them. These are the trees we intended to use for the walls of the cordwood shed we plan to build as an outdoor bathroom. It’s possible, however, that we will be able to get a load of cast-off electricity poles. These are the remains of poles that broke in storms or had to be replaced for some reason, and we’re on the mailing list with the electric company. They don’t come available often, and not always in our area, but these are cedar poles and would be much better to use for cordwood walls than spruce. So maybe it’s for the better, that the dead spruces are being used to build high raised bed gardens!

The Re-Farmer

Frosted, and planning ahead

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Well, it finally happened. We had a lasting frost, and temperatures were still below freezing when I came out to do my morning rounds.

My husband has still been up to feeding the outside cats earlier in the mornings, and has included putting warm water out for them, too, which they are really appreciating! It’s still not cold enough to plug in the heater in the cat’s house or use the heated water bowl, though.

While there was frost still on the ground everywhere else, this area was already warm and sunny. The kittens enjoyed that while watching me do my rounds!

It does show why what we planted along the chain link fence lasted so long. The tomatoes and gourds are finally done for, though. We can now start pulling them and prepping the beds for next year.

While we will be pulling everything else, the sunflowers can stay for a while longer. They sure are a cheerful sight on a chilly morning!

The chard was still quite covered in frost, as these beds are shaded longer in the mornings. We’ve never grown chard before, but from what I’ve read, getting hit with frost can improve their flavour. I don’t know that we’ll grow chard again. They did well, but none of us really ate them much.

I was already planning on pulling the lettuce. That last batch I gathered was so bitter, it went straight to compost instead of the salad I was intending to make with them.

A bit of a surprise was walking by the purple corn, the remains of which we were leaving to go to seed. They were pretty dry by now, yet most of the stalks were eaten last night! They had been left alone for quite a long time, so this was unexpected. Odd that, with so much fresh food still around, and even with the lettuce and chard uncovered, the deer would go for these dried up stalks.

We are going to have a lot of work to do over the next couple of weeks. We’re supposed to warm up again next week, so we do have time. The sweet corn blocks and, eventually, the sunflowers will be pulled, but nothing else will be done in that area until we get the berry bushes we intend to plant there. My daughter has been researching the ones we were looking to get, and Autumn Olive has been taking off our list; apparently, they are considered invasive! The Buffalo Berry and Sea Buckthorn are still on the list. Sea Buckthorn is also considered invasive in some areas, but not our climate zone.

The bean beds, pea trellises, squash tunnel and summer squash areas will all be used again next year, but mostly we need to focus on preparing the main garden beds closer to the house for next year. Once we get our straw bale in, we’ll start mulching some areas for new beds. We are already making lists of what we intend to plant next year, and will start buying seeds and trees over the winter, month by month. We will use that to help decide where to prepare new ground for planting next year.

At the same time, we are making lists of things to stock up on. Though things are looking mild, we’ve been either snowed in or had our vehicles freeze for two winters in a row now, so we want to be prepared in case something like that happens again. With food prices increasing so much over the past few months, and expected to get higher, it’s getting more difficult to buy those few extra things every month. Particularly since so many other people have realized that “prepping” is a really, really good idea, too!

Having grown up here, as a subsistence farm, I am very familiar with a lot of “self sufficiency” and “prepper” habits. That was just what everyone did, because there was no other option, really. So I’m no stranger to the lifestyle. At the same time, I am always wanting to learn new information and more about how to do it better, so I spend quite a bit of time researching. Which means I’ve lately been seeing a lot of homesteading resources – “subsistence farming” just isn’t a term that’s used anymore! – and “prepper” sites. Lately, it’s been feeling downright weird to go to them, as they are increasingly focused on giving information to people who are totally new to the concept, due to current circumstances. For us, this is just stuff we need to do. We are isolated just enough that we know we have to rely on ourselves if things go wrong, and there are always thing that can go wrong. The power could go out. We could get snowed in. We might have to evacuate due to wildfires. At least flooding isn’t a concern where we are, but running out of water is. We can’t just hope over to the corner store if we run out of things, like we could while living in the city. We can’t even assume we will have telephone (meaning the land line; we already can’t rely on getting a cell phone signal here) or internet for communication. The land line is pretty reliable, at least, but our internet starts kicking out as soon as there is a stiff wind, or if there are storms to the south of us. Of course, on top of all that, we have my husband’s health issues. He and I were just talking this morning about his prescription refills. He gets his daily meds in bubble packs now, including those that are restricted. For the longest time, he couldn’t get refills for his restricted medications until he was, at the earliest, 3 days away from running out. Now, his bubble packs aren’t even done locally. They’re done in the city and shipped to the local pharmacy, and with how crazy things have been, they’ve actually lifted some of the red tape surrounding restricted medications. Which means we should be able to get a couple of months of refills, instead of just one month. He just got his refills recently, so we’ll be trying to get an extra month of refills, next time.

Anyhow. It’s just been really strange to go looking stuff up for ideas and inspiration. So many people are now doing the same thing, with absolutely zero background in it. In one way, it makes me feel thankful for how I grew up. On the other, it’s frustrating, when people start panic buying, without any sort of planning or organization in mind, and it ends up causing problems for everybody.

Ah, well. People need to learn somehow. We just do what we can!

And right now, that means cleaning out the last of this year’s garden, and preparing for next, and making sure we are stocked up for the winter.

The Re-Farmer

First ice, last winter squash and melons

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Thanks to my husband being up at ungodly hours and feeding the outside cats for me, I didn’t have to head out for my morning rounds until things had started to warm up a bit. Even so, I found ice!

We keep a storage bin with tools and various handy things at the far-flung garden beds. It’s in the shade of the rain barrel (which we no longer fill; it has only enough water to keep it from blowing away), and the rain water that had collected on its lid had a layer of ice on it!

The reason I needed to go into the bin was to get a knife. It was time to collect the few remaining winter squash and melons.

The mutant Red Kuri has probably been ripe for a while, and just the outer skin was getting more time to thicken. The smaller one hasn’t reached its mature colour yet. The larger melons are the Pixies. Their vines died off ages ago, but I still had to cut them free!

The two surviving Teddy squash are smaller than they would have been under more optimal conditions, but from what I’ve read about their mature size, not by much. I do think they actually did get a chance to ripen.

The last two Halona melons! They got to this size, and just stopped growing. They are probably not edible, but who knows?

I figure we’ll be cutting into these as soon as we can. I think the winter squash, at least, will be something we can eat, and we’ll want to do that right away. The Pixie melons should probably be fine. Those little Halonas, though… I suspect they will find their way into the compost!

We’re supposed to get a really warm day tomorrow – 18C/64F!! – then back to chilly, but still mild, temperatures. It should be at least a week before we potentially get rain again, then mild for the rest of October. That will give us plenty of time to do more wood chipping, pull of the spent plants, and work on the high raised bed some more. I plan to include garden material among the layers when filling the high raised bed. Every little bit will help!

Yesterday, I consulted with my brother about a job that needs to be done. The old chicken coop – a log building that was a summer kitchen when my parents first acquired the farm – has a corrugated metal roof that was laid over the original wood shingles. A tree had been allowed to grow next to it and, in high winds, the branches had torn away a section of the metal sheets. I cut away the tree last year, so at least there is no new damage from the branches.

This building is still salvageable, but the exposed wood roof needs to be covered, or it’ll end up collapsing like the others. The metal pieces that got torn off are pretty damaged, and I couldn’t even find all of them. There was another building next to the barn with the same type of corrugated metal roof. It collapsed long ago, so the remains of the roof are almost on the ground. It still has several pieces that are bent to fit over the peak of the roof, so I should be able to salvage those, as well as some other pieces, to cover the old chicken coop roof.

The problem is getting up there. I don’t think that roof can hold a person’s weight anymore. Plus, it would be pretty dangerous to try and use a ladder around there. The ideal thing would be to have scaffolding. My brother told me that there used to be scaffolding alongside the building my parents’ stuff is now stored in. I was pretty sure what I would find, but this morning I went to take another look, just to confirm.

No scaffolding.

Something else that disappeared before we moved out here.

*sigh*

My parents ran a fully equipped and functioning farm until their retirement. Sure, it was just two sticks ahead of the stone ages, but as my late brother prepared to take it over, he brought all sorts of supplies and equipment. I’d say it was more like three or four sticks ahead of the stone ages before he died. Now, it’s like I’m down to just one stick ahead of the stone ages. I have fewer tools and resources available now, than when I was a kid and we still didn’t have running water or an indoor bathroom.

It makes taking care of and improving this place, very frustrating!

Ah, well. We make do with what we have. Perhaps, with our vandal taking me to court over the remaining junk, a judge will see fit to order him to return what he took, or pay my mother and brother back for what can no longer be returned. One can dream!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: final harvest? Yes, no and maybe!

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Here we are, in the middle of October, and still there are things in the garden to pick!

Yesterday evening, I went out to work on the high raised garden bed a bit. The notches at the north end needed to be finished. In particular, I needed to deepen the ones at the ends of the side logs. Since so much material had already been removed, I just used the baby chainsaw for as long as the batteries lasted. Checking it this morning, it looks like one side still needs more material removed, so I will work on that today. I didn’t bother taking photos as the difference really isn’t all the visible.

After I did as much as I could on the high raised bed, I went and did a burn. With the rain we’ve been having lately, using the burn barrel is about as safe as it can be, without snow on the ground! :-D What an evening it was! I could hear masses of Canada Geese out in the field, where the renter has already harvested his corn. I could even see clouds of them, though the trees, flying low to the ground.

The burn barrel is in the outer yard, which made it easy to check on the garden beds along the chain link fence. When my daughters came outside while doing their evening chores, I snagged one of them to tend the burn barrel while I got a bowl to pick tomatoes into.

Yes, we still have tomatoes!

It was getting a bit too dark to see the ripe from the almost ripe tomatoes, but there were enough that my daughter finished with the burn barrel before I was finished picking!

While we were out there, not only we were serenaded by the cacophony of geese, but howling, as well.

Very different sounding howls.

We have quite a few coyotes in the area, so hearing them howling and yipping is not unusual. These, however, sounded like wolves! Wolves are rarer in our area. I can’t say I’m surprised, though. With all the fires we had this summer, we had a lot of bear sightings. If so many bears could be driven this way, wolves certainly could be, too.

Last night, temperatures were predicted to drop to just above freezing, which means frost was very likely, even though we had no frost warnings. I figured, however, this would be our last tomato harvest. Especially since the actual temperatures dropped lower than predicted. At least, according to the weather apps.

I think I was wrong!

I checked them this morning, and the tomato plants are just fine! With temperatures warming up again over the next while, we should be picking tomatoes for quite a while longer!

The Ozark Nest Egg gourds are also looking just fine, too. Seeing this has confirmed for me that setting up garden beds in the outer yard, south of the house, is a very good idea, because things were different in the old garden area.

The bush beans are done. There are still many little bean pods, but after last night’s cold, I could see frost damage on them, so that’s it for them.

The summer squash… I’m not so sure. I picked sunburst squash, anyhow.

Most of these are smaller than I would have picked them. There are still quite a lot of little ones on the plants, and I left the zucchini entirely, just in case they survived. This entire area gets full sun, however it parts of it do get shade for longer in the mornings, because of trees along the fence line to the east. The shade does not reach the squash tunnel, however, and when I checked it, expecting to harvest the last few winter squash, I decided to leave them longer, though I did collect a couple more Tennessee Danging Gourds. Even the luffa looks like it’s still growing, and there are a few melons that are still firmly attached to their vines. With the warmer temperatures expected over the next few days, the longer the fruit stays on the vines, the better.

So we shall see how it goes!

Meanwhile, the lettuce and chard are handling the temperatures just fine, so we’ll have access to fresh greens for a while, yet.

Today’s focus is going to be on preparing beds for the garlic. I got an emailed shipping notification, so they will arrive next week. There is no way I will be able to finish the high raised bed in time, so I will finish topping up the new low raised beds built over where the garlic was planted last fall. I’ll prep both, even though we may only need one. The beets in the third bed are still growing. Until the ground freezes, they can be left, as can the fingerling potatoes. One of my weather apps has long range forecasts into November, and it looks like we will continue to have mild temperatures for quite some time, yet! Even the overnight lows are going to remain mild, with only a couple of nights forecast to reach -1C/30F.

With temperatures that mild, we may actually eat all our lettuce and chard before it gets cold enough to kill them! I’m very curious to see how far the Ozark Nest Egg gourds manage to mature, and if the radishes will mature enough to produce pods that we can pickle.

These mild temperatures and rains are just what we needed right now. If we can continue to have a mild, wet winter, and no more Polar Vortexes, that would be icing on the cake!

The Re-Farmer