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Our 2021 garden: final harvest!

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Today, I went out to get together with some friends. When I got back, the girls were in the old kitchen garden, starting our final harvest!

I started off helping with the beets in the L shaped bed, before heading over to quickly do the beet bed next to the garlic.

What a difference!

In the old kitchen garden, all the beets were very small. I was expecting that in the bed along the retaining wall, since they had been eaten by the groundhogs, but I expected more from the L shaped bed.

The girls don’t take pictures like I do, so I just got a shot after they were done. The piles of greens in the beet beds include beets too small to keep. This will all be worked back into the soil. In the carrot bed, you can see the Kyoto Red fronds that had gone to seed, left behind as well. I figure those can be worked back into the soil, too. And if we find little carrots coming up in this bed next year, I’m okay with that! :-D

We got a lot more bigger beets out of the little bed by the garlic! Now that this bed is clear, we can build the last low raised box for it, and the bricks used to frame it will be used elsewhere.

Then my older daughter and I started picking the fingerling potatoes. Being able to dump a bag into the kiddie pool, then go through the soil to pick the potatoes, made the job very easy! We moved the bags away from the fence, so that the picked over soil could be dumped back against the fence before we moved on to the next bag, which also made it easier.

The Purple Peruvians are SO dark, it was hard to find them in the soil! We got a lot more of them than expected, and had to start using another container to hold them.

Of course, some of them got used for our supper! Here, you can see the Purple Chief on the left, and the Purple Peruvian on the right. I cubed them, as well as three types of carrots, added some garlic cloves, tossed them in flavoured olive oil and seasonings, then roasted them. I can hardly wait to try them!

While I worked on supper, the girls finished cleaning the vegetables and set out the beets and carrots in the sun room, with the ceiling fan going, since leaving them outside in the sun is not an option right now. There are three types of carrots here; Deep Purple, from Veseys, Kyoto Red and Lounge Rouge Sang from Baker Creek. It’s hard to tell which ones are the Lounge Rouge Sang, as the colour gradient isn’t very visible. All the beets from the small bed are on here, plus most of the beets from the old kitchen garden as well. We did take some straight inside, and a few of them are in the oven, too. They got peeled and chopped, tossed in olive oil and seasonings, then roasted at the same time as the potatoes.

With the beets, we may actually have enough to make it worthwhile to pickle them. I’m not sure. Mostly, though, we’ll just eat them fairly quickly. As for the carrots, I think we’ll either be eating them quickly, too. I don’t think there is enough to even be worth blanching and freezing.

It’s a very small harvest, considering how much we planted, but I’m still happy with it, since we came so close to not having anything at all.

Now our work is really cut out for us! All the beds can now be cleaned out and prepared for next year.

The Re-Farmer

Window Down

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When doing my morning rounds, I make a habit of checking various things, looking for fallen branches, weather damage, etc.

This morning, I found this.

This is the back window to the “basement” of the storage house. The cats – and skunks! – use it to get in and out, so we put an old bench we found in the spruce grove under the window to make it easier for them to do so, without knocking more of the glass out. The board was there to keep some of the weather out.

My guess: there was another cat fight that made its way under here, and a cat went through the window with more force than usual. The only thing holding the window frame in place are those hinges in the frame above, and a bent nail on the side.

Since the window was out anyhow, I took advantage of the open space to take another look under the storage house. I’ve taken pictures under there before, but that had been by sticking my hand through the window frame, where the pane is missing.

This is looking straight in from the window.

That massive root is looking bigger than I remember it. It looks like the cats have been rolling around in the dirt beside it, as it seems more uncovered than before.

I do wonder about that metal tub, with all those holes in the bottom.

What I could see – and reach – this time, was the glass from the broken pane that you can just see a corner of, in front of the tub. I got that out, so no critters will get cut on them.

This is looking to the north side. There are three windows there. Once is completely covered, the one with light showing through is protected by a lattice on the outside, and there is a third window near it, where you can just see a bit of light. I can’t tell wasn’t on the inside, but on the outside, there is a bench sheet of what I think it aluminum in front of it. One corner at the bottom is bent outwards, and that is the usual way the critters get under here. What usually happens is, when they get started away from the kibble house, the dash in through that opening in the corner, then come out through the window I’m looking through to take this photo.

In the opposite direction, there is another boarded up window on the south side.

Here, you can see the concrete blocks the house is sitting on. It’s on a double row of blocks, with the outer row lined up with the outside of the building, so there is nothing sticking out. The weight of the house has caused all these bricks to sink into the soil. Because the inner row of bricks are not completely under the house, they are all tipping towards the middle.

There are SO many of these concrete blocks! There’s the double rows holding the house itself up, the pillars supporting the floor, and even loose ones scattered about.

I admit, I’m pining for those bricks. I’m seriously considering crawling under here, just to get those loose bricks! They are incredibly useful. I used to play under here with my late bother, but I’m not quite as small and agile as I used to be! :-D We would go under there, using the remains of the basement steps that are still attached. There is a remarkable amount of space under here. I should be able to move around all right. Plus, I admit to being curious about what else I would find.

My parents intended this house to be moved to a permanent location onto the quarter section the younger of my brothers lives on now, but obviously, that never happened. I guess it never occurred to them that their sons would want to have newly built homes, rather than an old one that’s been moved a couple of times. Now it just sits, filled with old junk and stuff we don’t know where else to put!

As for the fallen window, I just put it back as best I could. I don’t want to board up the window, as the space under here is one of the safe places critters can use to get out of the weather. The cats use it a lot. They go in and out through that small hole in the wood. When we first moved there, there was an old metal pipe running through it for some reason. I think it was there to brace the window or something. The board leaning on the bench will keep the worst of the weather out of where the window pane is missing, but should still give the cats enough space to get in and out easily.

I can’t see this building being moved again, which means at some point, we’re going to have to go in there and start clearing it out and cleaning it up.

I am not looking forward to it.

The Re-Farmer

The Breakfast crowd, and first snow

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The outside cats have been downright spoiled by my husband coming out to feed them really early in the mornings! He wasn’t driven out of bed by pain this morning, so I did it later, when I did my morning rounds. As soon as I came into the sun room, I could hear a cacophony of meows at the door, outside!

They were so excited about eating, I actually got to pet Junk Pile Jr and Tuxedo Mask! My husband has been able to pet Tuxedo Mask, too, and I think he is getting used to this whole “human contact” thing. :-D

They are also really enjoying having warm water in the mornings, too! :-)

While doing my rounds, I started a bit more cleanup around the garden beds, removing some of the rope and noise makers to keep the deer away. I also checked the Dorinny and Montana Morado corn beds, to see if there were any cobs left with potential corn seeds.

There was nothing. Not a one! I did find a few cobs that looked like they might have had the corn eaten by birds, but mostly, there were no cobs at all. There weren’t many left to begin with, but what few there were seems to have been eaten completely.

Ah, well. I didn’t have high expectations with them anyhow, just from the drought conditions.

By the time I was starting to head back into the house, I got distracted.

We have snow!

There is just barely enough snow falling to even see it. As I write this, with the live feed from the garage security camera near me, I see the odd flash of white as the camera manages to catch some larger flakes going by. :-D

That’s about the extent of it. :-D Anything that hits the ground, melts immediately.

I know other areas have had some snow before, but this is the first I’ve seen here, this season. We’re actually supposed to get showers, later in the day. Maybe.

We’re supposed to warm up over the next while, with three days of potential rain, before things start cooling down again. That should be when we can sow the wildflower seeds, with no risk of early germination.

I’m really enjoying all this extra time to get work done outside!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: clean up, little harvests and high raised bed progress

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It was a chilly day for it, but we got quite a bit done cleaning up in the garden today.

My focus was on finishing with the abandoned carrot bed that was half done yesterday.

This is how it was left lat night. The second half had the Kyoto Red carrots planted, and after the groundhogs got at them, most had gone to seed when they grew back among the weeds.

Yet we still managed to have some carrots of an edible size!

There were a lot more twisted ones than with the Napoli carrots. This bed had been built on top of one of the potato beds we’d planted the year before, then basically doubled the length. The half the Kyoto Red were on was on top of non-amended ground, and you could see in some of the longer carrots, where they had hit rocks or harder soil, and twisted their way around. Even using the garden fork to loosen the soil and pull up the carrots was harder than the first half.

What a difference with the carrots that had gone to see!

It doesn’t look like we’ll be collecting any; if there are any mature seeds on some of these, I can’t tell.

Once I pulled as much as I could, I started working on cleaning out the weeds and roots. One of my daughter came out after I started that part, and she started working on the sweet corn blocks.

She stacked those next the high raised bed, as I’ll be using some of them in the layers of material used to fill it.

The sunflowers were left for now, but all three blocks of sweet corn were cleared.

She also pulled the summer squash and beans. These beds will be used again next year, so I got her to leave the plants there for now. The beds still need to be weeded and prepped for next year, and I might be able to make use of the plants to improve the soil more.

My daughter also moved the sprinkler hoses, but they were pretty cold and brittle, so they’ve been laid out in the sun for now. It’s supposed to start warming up over the next while, so I’ll wait for a nice warm day before rolling them up for storage.

By the time she got all that done, I was just finishing cleaning the carrot bed. Thankfully, none of the other beds will need as much work to clean them, and will go a lot faster!

My daughter did the final leveling and raking of the bed while I got the tools to continue working on the high raised bed.

I’m finally starting to get a bit of a method down. Between that and the narrower logs, I’m getting the notches cut faster. The logs on the ends are so huge, if I were making this bed only two logs high, I could leave the ends as they are now! As it is, when I add the end pieces for the next level, the narrower side logs means I should only need to cut notches on the cross pieces.

When I got to the point where the second battery on my baby chainsaw needed to sit for a bit before I could squeeze in a few more cuts, I took the time to cut some of the sunflowers. Checking them this morning, I was seeing a lot more losses to birds, so I figured we should get them inside while we still had seeds. :-D

One pile has the Mongolian Giants and the other has the Hopi Black Dye. I don’t know that all the seed heads I collected will give us finished seeds, but we shall see. I cut the stalks pretty long, which meant some of them included the little baby sunflowers that were branching out, too. Those will, for sure, not have any mature seeds on them, but that’s okay.

At this point, we would be hanging them someplace warm and dry. The best place right now is the sun room, and we have no way to hang anything in there just yet, so I made do.

They should still get good circulation around them on these shelves as they dry. I am very curious as to what we will get out of them!

There is a lot more clean up to do, but thankfully we are expected to continue to get mild weather. So much so, that I am still holding off in broadcasting the wildflower seeds for a while longer. Doing this in the fall will only work if there is no chance of germination, so I would rather wait a bit longer. I think one more week will do it, just to be on the safe side.

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

So many kitties, and a garden surprise

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I may have missed the kitties when my husband fed them this morning, but I got to see them this afternoon, when my daughter topped up the kibble containers! :-)

Even Ghost Baby made an appearance!

My daughter was happy because, once they all came running to eat, she was able to pet a whole bunch of baby butts, and they didn’t run away! Too interested in the food to notice they were being pet. :-)

My daughter had come out to take care of something for me. I had earlier been working on the high raised bed and, since I was right next to it, decided to dig up some carrots from the abandoned bed.

I am totally amazed that after the greens being munched down to the ground at least three times, then getting overgrown with weeds, we STILL have decent sized carrots! Certainly not their full potential, but far better than what I expected. Which was nothing! These are the Napoli carrots we ordered from Veseys, and I must say, I’m impressed by their resilience! I picked maybe 1/3rd of the bed’s carrots. It’s hard to judge, with it being so overgrown.

Then one of my daughters came out to hose them off (and feed kitties!) while I did other stuff outside. My other daughter then used them with a roast vegetable dish she made to do with supper. I finished up outside while she was working on it, and we decided to include our tiny winter squash.

The tiny halves in the background are the little Teddy squash. By the time I took out the pulp in the seed cavity, there wasn’t much flesh left! Like the immature Kuri squash in the foreground, their seeds were not at all developed.

I have no idea how edible they are at this immature stage, but we’ll find out!

The Re-Farmer

I got balls!!

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How’s that for a click bait title? :-D

Seriously, though, I do. The Baoding balls my husband ordered for me came in!

These are made from Afghanistan jade, so they do not have any tones. My husband got a pair of chrome ones for himself, which are hollow and produce different tones while in use.

The cats were VERY curious when he first used them!

As you can see, I had a curious cat while taking the above photo, too!

You can read about the history of them here, with very detailed instructions on how to use them, here.

We both got 2 inch diameter balls. I may be 8″ shorter than my husband, but my hands are just as broad as his are, so the larger size works well for both of us. They do come in smaller sized, though. I’ve even found one place that makes them up to 3 inches in diameter! Made from machined copper, so they way over 4 pounds, so… a bit much even for my simian hands! :-D I’m seeing others made from materials like malachite and citrine that catch my eye.

I think having more than one pair wouldn’t be a bad idea… :-D

These should go a long way in helping with the osteoarthritis in my hands, and help build my hand strength and mobility back up. It’s going to take a while to get used to manipulating them again, after not using them for at least two decades.

So far, I’ve only dropped one, once. Onto carpet, thankfully! :-D While using my right hand, of course – I’m predominantly left handed, and it’s my right hand that has the injured middle phalange, so it’s going to be some time before I can use them smoothly with my right hand. For the first while, I will be focusing just on being able to rotate them smoothly, without clacking them against each other. Over time, I should be able to rotate them without the balls actually touching each other.

I am very happy to have these again! I highly recommend them.

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

Oh, the little bugger!

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My husband was able to feed the outside cats for me this morning, so when I came out to do the rest of my morning rounds later, most of them had already moved on. Junk Pile Jr. was by the door and aaaalllmost let me pet her, but not quite! She did sniff my hand, though.

Then I saw Rosencrantz and Toesencrantz at their private dining area under the shrine and had to take a closer look. What was Toesencrantz doing?

He was all sprawled out on the kibble tray, as if he was taking a nap!

Very unusual. Was he okay?

As I watched, he would sometimes lift his head and snuzzle his mother.

Awww… How sweet!

Using the zoom on my phone camera makes for some terrible photos, so I tried to slowly come closer, without disturbing them.

It didn’t work.

Seeing me come closer, Toesencrantz started to get up, then finally move away from where he was lying, to the other side of the tray, watching me to see if I’d come any closer.

His mother immediately moved over to start eating the kibble he had been lying on top of.

The little bugger! He had lying on top of the food, leaving only the little dregs around him for his mother to eat!

So much for being all adorable Rosencrantz! :-D

The Re-Farmer