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Water, water, everywhere! Also, I love my phone case

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The rain has slowed down quite a lot, but it’s still coming down. The worst of it has passed us by, and at this point, we’re getting more of a sprinkle than a rain.

Continuous rain for almost 2 days, however, does accumulate!

The area behind the garage is quite the lake. It’s actually larger than it appears in the photo, as much of it is hidden by the grass. The paths between the raised beds are full of water. The area I think someone tried to make into a ditch, along the fence line north of the driveway, is full of water, as is the driveway and the “moat” around the garage. There’s a moat around the storage house, as well, and more water in the space behind it.

The main garden area, where it’s still rough from the last time it was plowed (badly) before we moved here had little pools of water all over, of course. There’s also water in the paths between all the raised beds, and pooling in the area where we tried to grow potatoes, the year it flooded. At the far end of the crab apple trees, where water accumulates every spring, is another area of water that extends almost half way up the rows of silver buffalo berry! There’s even pooling under the crab apple trees.

The old basement is, of course, quite wet. The fans are keeping it down a bit, but some areas don’t just get damp, but pool, so we have go do down and sweep the water into the sump pump reservoir in one area, and into the floor drain in the other half of the basement.

I ended up making an unexpected trip to town. After unlocking the gate and getting into the truck, I reached into my pocket to put my cell phone in the spot I keep it while driving… and it wasn’t there.

Figuring I forgot it in the house, I backed the truck up to the small gate in the chain link fence, so I wouldn’t have to wade through the moat again, then went in to look.

Nothing.

So I tried phoning my cell phone with our land line.

It didn’t even ring, but went immediately to a message saying I was being automatically forwarded to voice mail. So I hung up.

The only thing left was that it somehow fell out of my pocket while I was going to the garage and the gate. So I started back tracking.

I was just reaching the part of the driveway that goes into the yard – which is under the moat surrounding the garage – when I saw a dark rectangle in the grass.

With a muddy tire track running right over it.

Much to my shock, nothing was broken. The case I have for my phone is a very basic wallet type, with a cover over the screen. That case saved my phone! It was quite wet, of course, so there was the warning not to plug in the device. A warning that finally went away, just now!

After wiping off the phone as best I could, I set it over the window vent on the dash and headed into town, did my errand, then headed back. I was able to use the phone to message my family without any problems.

Once inside, I used the toothpick end of a floss pick to clear out any debris that might have been in the port. I also took off the cover, and wiped up the moisture caught in it. Then I used a dual valve balloon pump, kept from our busking days, to dry the port a bit before just setting it on its stand to dry. All seems to be working well, except it’s telling me I can make emergency calls only. So I need to fuss with that for a while.

The main thing is, this thing fell into the edge of a pool of water, got driven over by a truck, and didn’t break!!!

What a relief!

Meanwhile, as I was in town, I got a message from my brother. He has started getting alerts on his phone about overland flooding, telling people not to try to try through flooded areas. It turns out while I was in town, they got flooding alerts, too, though where I was, there didn’t seem to be any issues at all. Where we are, we’re not getting any alerts for flooding at all, so that’s good.

It will probably take several says of no rain for things to dry up enough that we can get back to work on the garden beds and harvesting the dead trees. I am most definitely not complaining, though. This hopefully makes up for the lack of moisture when the snow melted, since we had so little snow this past winter. I definitely want to take a walk beyond the outer yard and see how gravel pit, etc. are. We should have a flowing creek in the municipal drainage ditch right now. When outside, we are hearing cows, but not seeing them, so I’m not sure if the renter’s cows are on this quarter, or if we’re hearing someone else’s cows. The important thing is, the gravel pit and pond should be full of water for them, and the gravel pit, at least, should stay full for the year, since it has so much clay to hold it all in.

It may make some things inconvenient, but I am very thankful for all this rain.

The Re-Farmer

Wet, wet and more wet – and new growth!

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So the rain started early this morning, and has been pretty constant, so far. The rainfall warnings include possible flooding in places, including our region. Our region is huge, though, and contains quite a few rural municipalities. Where we are is unlikely to have much, if any, where we are. The newly graded roads, however, are probably going to be a real mess!

With the rain, I did short rounds this morning and skipped switching out the trail cams, since I won’t want water getting into the cameras. Short rounds was good, though, because…

… a lovely surprise!!!!

My husband actually came out with me!!!! He caned it rather than drag his walker into the rain, but he did it! I could see he was really struggling near the end, but he did it. I honestly can’t remember the last time he went outside and walked around. It’s probably been at least a year.

As we went around, I checked the beds and we had a lovely surprise in the bed of Purple Caribe potatoes.

The first plants have emerged! Just two, so far that we can see, but this rain is going to be so good for them.

When I was mowing yesterday, I’d put one of the raised bed covers over the German Butterball potatoes, then forgot to take it off, so my husband helped me lift it off to the side, so they could get some rain, too. I had also forgotten to put the extensions on the eavestrough downspouts back after mowing. I’ll have to check the new basement later, and see if that caused any problems. The one corner was already damp and has a fan on it. That was the corner a rain barrel had been left to overflow during a wet summer, and is why we now have weeping tile problems. This basement used to always stay dry, even when the old basement was wet, but not anymore. My brother had found that corner so wet, for so long, there was mold. He cleaned it up with bleach, and when we clear the basement, we also bleached that entire corner, but it still gets wet at times.

So forgetting the extension on the downspout above that corner is not a good thing!

When feeding the outside cats, I didn’t see Broccoli, but we still went around to the garden shed. If I think she might be in there with her babies, I knock on the door, first. Opening the door still startles her, but she doesn’t always run out completely. She gets in and out through the hole in the back wall, and there’s an old chair in that corner. Sometimes, I can just see her butt under the chair, as she waits while I put food out for her. Today, she did actually leave the shed, so I took advantage of that to pick up her kittens and straighten out the self warming mat for them. My husband got to see them, too. If it hadn’t been raining, I would have passed them to him to hold while I straightened out the bedding. More human interaction would be a good thing, but not if they get too chilled in the process!

Speaking of chilled, as I write this, we are at 5C/41F – with a wind chill of -4C/25F! Our expected high for today is supposed to be 8C/46F According to the weather radar, we are under the light rainfall area, with the moderate rainfall passing by to the west of us, with a few places in the south and west of us, getting occasional heavy rainfall. In total, we’re expected to get 50-60mm of rain, which is roughly 2 – 2.5 inches. The rain, with another high of 8C/46F, is expected to continue until about noon tomorrow. Starting Sunday, things are supposed to warm up and we’ll have dry weather for at least a couple of weeks. Hopefully, that will be enough time for us to get those beds reworked and ready for planting! We should probably lay plastic down to help warm the soil up faster, too. Looking at the long range forecast, there are still going to be cooler nights in the second week of June. Not cool enough for frost, but cool enough that I’d want to find ways to protect our more heat loving transplants.

Which won’t even be in the ground for more than a week.

Pretty much everything we do, revolves around the weather.

If the really long range forecasts can be trusted (they can’t), we’ll have only one day of rain in June, and none in July. June is supposed to have a few highs reaching or surpassing 30C/86F, but right now, July is supposed to have highs of 25C/77F, every day. Literally, every day except the first four, which are supposed to have highs of 24C/75F. So you know that’s going to change a lot by the time we get there!

Well, that should be good for all the squash and melons we’re planting this year! Plus the eggplant and peppers. As long as we can keep up with the watering. One of our best gardening years was a drought year with heat waves. I’m still amazed by how many melons we got that year. It was so hard to get them properly watered on the squash tunnel, and the plants were so spindly, and they they produced so well! This year, they will be closer to the house for easier watering, and have better soil conditions. I am hopeful that we will have a much better gardening year, this year, and actually harvest enough to do some canning and preserving of things other than tomatoes and onions!

Time will tell.

The Re-Farmer

Hello, little ones!

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I got to sneak a visit with the babies this morning! 🩷

They weren’t too happy to seem me. 😁 Still, I got to hold them for a bit while I straightened out their bedding, then pet them before putting them back. Then I left food for their mother. I’m so glad she hasn’t moved them! The outside mamas have all been notorious for moving their babies as soon as we figured out where they were, until they were too big to conveniently move. Which means these once have a chance of being socialized. I have no idea how many other litters there are right now, or where they are. None of tried using the cat house, nor the old dog houses behind the garage that were set up as general critter shelters. I think Brussel might have had her kittens in the garage, but only because I see her there fairly regularly. It seems to be her preferred home, in general. Where in the garage, I can’t figure out. Nothing in there seems like it would be a good nesting area for kittens.

Ah, well. When the times comes, they’ll start showing up, and then we’ll figure it out.

The Re-Farmer

Checking on the babies

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I had a really hard time getting going this morning, so I was a bit late in feeding the outside cats. Once I saw Broccoli, though, I just had to go and check on her babies!

They are definitely getting bigger and more attentive to what’s going on around them. The little calico would let out a hiss, every now and then. I picked them both up to straighten out their blanket a bit, and made sure to pet them, so get them used to human interaction.

Then I left some food for Broccoli inside the shed, plus a sheltered area outside the shed.

I’ll have to go out to check later, but as I was finishing up, I took the container with the remains of Cat Soup out. Yesterday, when it seemed most of cats weren’t too keen on it, I tried something. I emptied the remains of dry kibbles from the other bowls into the Cat Soup and mixed it all up. That made it more of a paste than a soup, and it made a big difference. Most cats were willing to eat it. So, next time we do this, we’ll use less water. My daughter suggested reducing the amount of ground pumpkin seed, too, as that likely has a stronger taste than using the same amount of pumpkin puree.

One thing that made me happy was seeing our elderly Freya going back to eat throughout the evening. She ate more last night than I’ve seen her eat in quite a long time. That alone will keep us making this stuff when we do their wet cat food!

Still, with the kibble mixed in, there was quite a lot, so I took what was left in the morning and set it outside for the yard cats. I’ve no doubt that bowl will be licked clean by the time I go back to get it!

The Re-Farmer

Cat Soup!

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Soup FOR cats, of course.

I had to do a dump run today and took advantage of the trip to head into the nearer city’s Walmart and pick up a few things. While there, I tried to find canned pumpkin to use in Cat Soup, but couldn’t find any. They didn’t even have pumpkin pie filling. Or any pie filling, for that matter.

This is a very small Walmart.

So I got raw, unsalted pumpkin seeds, instead. Once at home, I ground them to a powder, and we made a half recipe of the Furball Farm Sanctuary cat soup recipe. The leftover powder is being kept in the fridge. Pumpkin seeds are an oily seed, and we don’t want it to go rancid.

Most of the cats ignored it, but Freya, our grand old lady, loved it! She’s one that I am concerned about, as she seems to have something going on in her mouth that she won’t let us look at, and isn’t eating as much. She has trouble with the dry kibble in particular. So seeing her enthusiastic about this stuff is very encouraging.

Now, if we could get Peanut Butter Cup eating it, too, that would be great. The lysine in it should help with her respiratory issues, and the ground pumpkin seed with her… leakiness. Actually, several cats are more… liquid… than they should be, so it’ll be good for all of them.

PBC, however, slept through the commotion.

*pause*

I just woke her up with some pets, then set her by the bowl we have in my bedroom. She is now enthusiastically enjoying it!

Since this is the first time we’ve made it, we don’t have any appropriate bowls. Instead, we’ve commandeered a lasagna pan for the dining room, and a cake pan for my bedroom. If this becomes a regular thing, we’ll make sure to have something just for the cat soup and 22 cats!

We’re running low on lysine, though. Gotta order more. We’re stuck with the granular type still; it’s the only kind I can find in the larger bulk sizes. Still no luck finding it in a fine powder form, which will stick to the kibble when we toss it together. There is a type that’s available in 4 pound buckets. It’s meant for horses, but lysine is lysine, isn’t it? I don’t know if it is granular or fine powder, but since we’re already using the granular, I guess it doesn’t matter much. Another reason to be making the cat soup. We can dissolve the lysine in it.

Anyhow. This is our half recipe, based on the one from Furball Farm Cat Sanctuary.

  • 1 1/2 tsp lysine
  • 1/8 cup pumpkin – in our case, raw, unsalted, hulled pumpkin seeds ground to a powder
  • 6 cans cat food
  • 1 cup warm water

To make it thicker or thinner, adjust the amount of water or canned cat food. Today, the tins at the top of the case where shredded turkey in gravy, so we probably could have reduced the water by half. Instead, I accidentally put in 1 1/2 cups water. The markings on our plastic liquid measuring cups as worn off, but I thought the one I used was only 1 cup. My daughter was helping me and pointed out it was 1 1/2 cups! Oops. 😄

We don’t have a pitcher type blender, but we do have an immersion blender, so that’s what we used. Our deep, 8 cup measuring cup was a good size for this, with room enough to keep anything from splashing outside the cup while being blended.

So far, only a few of the cats seem to like it, but the two we are most concerned about like it a lot, and they are why we are trying this! Yay!

The Re-Farmer

First, the cuteness

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I got an early start today, and a lot has been accomplished this morning. I’ve come inside for a hydration brake. More on that later, though. First, the cuteness!

While feeding the outside cats this morning, Broccoli came over – and she even let me pet her! It’s been quite a while! So I went to check on her babies, straightened their bed out a bit, and left some food for her in the garden shed.

I counted 19 or 20 cats this morning, and one of them was Driver. I haven’t seen him in a while! He was very vocal about wanting breakfast. He even let me not only pet him, but remove some ticks as well.

After getting a few other things done, I started working on the garden bed I’d started yesterday, and was thoroughly entertained.

I’ve been finding some of the markers on the ground pretty regularly. One was hitting a rock, so I dug that out, and now it stays up. Another was down this morning and I was hitting something as I tried to put it back. I figured I would dig out the rock, except it turned out to be a root! One of the markers holding the twine by the first trellis bed was on the ground, too, even though it was braced with a rock.

Yes, all of them have the spinners on them. I figured the high winds we’ve been having were part of the problem, but now it looks like it’s been cats helping them down, too! At least the one at the far end is deep in the ground and staying up. 😄😄

In one sense, I got a lot done this morning. In another, I did not get much done – at least not in what is the biggest job. More on that in my next post!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties!

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With the sun room converted for the transplants, we don’t feed the cats in there anymore, though they can still access the room and the beds we have in there for them. Instead, I’ve been making a point of spreading the kibble around more. Knowing there are likely still kittens in the junk pile (I haven’t heard them lately, and wouldn’t expect to see them for weeks yet), we’re back to leaving kibble under the shrine nearby, but I’m also leaving little piles of kibble on the sidewalk blocks in front of the sun room, and even under the swing bench under the kitchen window. This allows the shier cats to access food – and prevent fights. Sad Face and some of the boys do not get along, so if they don’t have to go near each other to eat, that reduces the potential for fights.

If I see Broccoli at the kibble bowls, I also go to the garden shed to check on her babies. Yes, they are still there, and I think she is okay with us knowing they are there.

This morning, I actually took them out and set them in the small bin I use to carry the kibble around, so I could rearrange their “nest”. It’s sitting on top of one of the cover pieces for the carport we found in the barn, but couldn’t assemble last year. It’s been pushed around and got all lumpy, making it hard for the self warming mat I gave them to stay spread out. I didn’t want the kittens to fall into a fold or crevice they couldn’t get out of. So I fixed that up a bit, put the self warming mat back, and returned the kittens. The bonus of doing stuff like this is, it helps to socialize the babies – something we’ve never quite been able to do with their mother!

I think they liked the new set up. More fluffy blanket to squirm around in!

I had closed up the door and was leaving more kibble outside the shed, in a sheltered spot, when Broccoli came around the house and saw me, so I left a bit more kibble while she could see where I was putting it. She came over quickly as I left, but started to run off when I paused and tried to see if she’d let me come closer. Our attempt to get her and the kittens into the sun room seems to have backfired with her (though not with the kittens). She’s been more standoffish since then. It’s a shame. I wonder if that third kitten would have survived if they had been in the sun room, instead? Not knowing why it died makes it impossible to be sure.

Meanwhile…

… the boys are the complete opposite! While the females are getting harder to get close to, even at feeding time (I think Caramel has had her litter; she’s looking a bit skinnier this morning), more and more of the males are getting friendly! In the video above, there were six of them, but three more joined the fray. Not only is it a challenge to pet nine cats at the same time, but Syndol wanted me to pick him up and kept trying to climb up my shoulder!

He is such a sweet boy!

Speaking of sweet kitties, I was chatting with the Cat Lady yesterday. The Wolfman is still with them. He’s so gorgeous, there have been quite a few people interested in adopting him, but every time someone has come to see him, he makes strange and disappears! Which is so weird. He was always the more gregarious one among last year’s kittens that we brought inside. Going to the Cat Lady and all that vet care and treatment for his injured eye seems to have made him much less trusting. He has bonded with their younger daughter, though, and they adore him – in spite of the fact that he likes to destroy their plants! – so they’re not in any hurry to adopt him out.

The Cat Lady is burning out, though. She told me her phone goes off constantly, every day, with people wanting her to do something with strays to the north of us. She’s telling people, no more intakes. Part of the problem is, while there is a local branch of the Humane Society, she’s basically the only rescue specifically for our region. Right now, they’ve got so many cats that are pretty much unadoptable – too many medical needs – it’s pretty overwhelming, even with at least 7 or 8 people taking care of them. That fact that she’s still open to helping us is so greatly appreciated. There is the province wide rescue that she used to be connected with, but we won’t be going back to them. Aside from how badly they treated her, finding out that they were accusing us of deliberately breeding cats means we likely wouldn’t be getting help from them, anyhow. Plus, it seems the bigger a rescue gets, the less they become about the animals, and more about internal politics and drama.

So we do the best we can, and try not to put too much on the Cat Lady.

I’m glad that The Wolfman is with them, though, and his eye is all healed up. We couldn’t have done that for him. As it is, we’ve got two cats that need to see a vet, and we just don’t have the funds. Peanut Butter Cup concerns me. She still has leaky butt issues, though at least it’s not so liquid anymore, but she’s having increasing problems with her breathing. Not constant, but sometimes she sounds like she’s got stuffed sinuses, and starts coughing or sneezing. Something is definitely going on with her breathing. The fact that it comes and goes is curious.

Then there’s our old grandma that moved out here with us. She’s about 14 or 15 years old (we’re guessing she was about a year old when she first showed up on our balcony). There’s something bothering her with her mouth, so she’s not eating as much as she should be. She won’t let us look and see. I’ve been making a point of making sure she has soft food, including softening lysine enhanced kibble for her. She enjoyed the cat milk that was donated a while back, but we’re all out of that, and my goodness, those little boxes have gotten expensive! We pick some up when they are on sale, but that’s not often. We do what we can for them, and have to be satisfied with that. There’s no sense in angst-ing over something we have no control over. 🫤

Oh, there’s something we’d like to try one of these days; making “soup” for the cats. I found a recipe on the Furball Farm Cat Sanctuary website. They are for adult feral cats only, and I absolutely love their facilities! I’d love to make a smaller version for our own yard cats. It would be much easier to get those ladies spayed if we could get them into a giant fenced in haven!

Anyhow, this is their recipe.

“Soup” Recipe makes one blender
1 Tablespoon Lysine
1/4 cup pure pumpkin
10-12 cans pate/grilled/shredded cat food**
2 cups warm water**
**actual measurements for these items can vary based on cat preference of soup consistency

We’d be doing this for the inside cats, and would probably do half the recipe. Maybe even a quarter, since it would be a supplemental treat. We have no pumpkin, though. The next time we’re at a grocery store, I’ll see if I can find canned pumpkin with nothing else added to it. I supposed we could make it without the pumpkin at first. Pumpkin is supposed to be helpful for loose stools, constipation and hair balls, and very little of it can go a long way. Something to try, anyhow!

It would also make it easier to dose the cats with lysine. I had found a new source of the fine powdered lysine that sticks to the kibble when tossed together, but it has disappeared. That’s two different brands that carried lysine in that form that have disappeared, since we started using it! I had to go back to another brand, which is more granular. It doesn’t like to stick to the kibble very well at all, and most ends up on the bottom of the kibble bin. Making the soup won’t help the outside cats any – we just can’t afford to feed the outside cats wet cat food as well as the inside cats. Plus, they hunt, so they don’t need it like the inside cats do. If we do end up making a fenced in sanctuary for them, though, that would change, to supplementing with wet cat food would be on the table.

What can I say.

We’re sucks for the cats.

Now, about winning that jackpot, to pay for all this…

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: starting to rework the low raised beds (video)

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As I write this, the video I made is still uploading, so I’ve scheduled this to be published tomorrow morning.

One bed is prepped and ready for logs to be placed around it. My younger daughter is working in the spruce grove to get them for me, but has to clear away pieces of trees and branches that have fallen in high winds, and other debris, just to reach them. She handles heat even worse than I do, and the humidity sure didn’t help. She ended up needing to use a cane to get around the house until the painkillers kicked in.

She’ll have tomorrow to recover, though. The rain started up again this evening, with thunderstorm warnings. It’s supposed to keep raining all through tomorrow (meaning today, by the time this is published). A good day for me to be helping my mother out with her errands.

Sunday is supposed to be sunnier, though rain is expected to start again in the evening, so we might get a few hours of work in during the day. Then the rain is supposed to be back on Monday.

This weekend is a long weekend, when many people will be putting in their gardens. While we could probably direct sow some things, our area still has a while to go. Looking at the 14 day forecast is frustrating, since it seems to change every time I look at it, but at one point I was seeing predictions of overnight temperatures dropping below freezing in the last few days of May. When I look at it now, though, it shows a few chilly nights, just above freezing, and then overnight temperatures are predicted to be considerably warmer. Once I look into June, the daytime highs are all supposed to be 20C/68F or higher, for the entire month!

Of course, that might change completely, the next time I look.

Well, whatever ends up happening, we’ve got a lot of hard work to do before we can plant in the main garden area.

The low raised beds have been wildly overrun by crab grass in particular, with some beds heavily invaded by dandelions, and at least one has a pretty bad infestation of Creeping Charlie. Since they all need to be heavily reworked anyhow, we’re going to go ahead and redo them. Or, more specifically, I’ll be doing the weeding and shifting. My daughter will be harvesting and processing the dead spruces to build walls around them. This late in the game, I’ll be happy if we build them just one log high. They just need to be done! We can add more height to them, as time goes buy. Once these low raised beds are reworked, we can switch our focus back to building the trellis beds. Those will require even more work, since we’ll be bringing soil in from what’s left of the purchased garden soil pile, as well as layers of organic material at their bottoms.

For transplants, we’ve got the winter squash and melons, which will take up the most space, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, onions, gourds, some thyme and Orange Butterfly Flower (a milkweed) plus the mulberry saplings to transplant. Depending on the space available, I want to direct sow summer squash, shelling peas, bush beans, pole beans and more carrots, plus the dwarf nasturtiums. If we really do well for space, I’d like to plant at least one variety of corn, but I don’t expect that to happen. There will be a fair bit of intercropping, plus we plan to have things growing vertically as much as possible, so that should help with space. Still, there are quite a few things I expect to skip entirely this year, like cucumbers, beets, radishes, chard and lettuces, simply because I don’t expect to have the prepared space for them. Mind you, things like radishes and chard can be planted later, after the garlic is harvested and those beds are freed up.

Weather willing, I hope to be able to get at least one of the low raised beds weeded and shifted over in a day. With one done today, there’s four left to do. If the weather forecasts are at all accurate, that means they should be done by the end of next week. Then the log walls need to be placed and secured, and the soil amended with sulfur granules. Hopefully, that will also get done by the end of next week, because the week after has me doing a lot of driving around, from getting my mother to a medical appointment, to our monthly stock up shopping, to hopefully being able to connect with a friend that is back in Canada for a while.

It’s a very busy time of year!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a preview

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I headed out to do some weeding and prep in the main garden area. Just to get the beds ready for planting, and for adding more permanent walls around the low raised beds.

Of course, things turned out to be more than I expected, so I decided to set up the tripod for a future video. Here is a preview.

The plan is to have the beds in uniform sizes in this area, to match the trellis tunnel beds that will also be added. We don’t have a lot of time left to prep before things need to get into the ground, so we need to shift focus to getting these existing beds ready.

Part of the problem with the existing beds is that they are bordered by shorter chunks of logs, just laying on the ground. They don’t do a very good job of keeping the soil in place, and some of them get knocked out of position more easily. Plus, the crab grass rhizomes just grow right under them.

What we’re working towards is beds that are 4′ wide from the outside, with 4′ paths in between. They will also all be 18′ long, so each bed could fit a pair of the 9′ x 3′ covers we’ve been making (taking into account the width of the logs, the growing space will be closer to 3′.

Using the high raised bed as the starting point, I marked out the 4′ distances for the paths and the beds.

You’ll notice that the markers don’t line up with the existing beds. We never measured anything when we laid those down. To get the sizes and distances we are after, they will all need to be shifted over. Some more than others.

The photo above, however, was taken before I realized my mistake when I first started measuring them out.

My brain was thinking about using those covers on them.

The 9′ x 3′ covers. The ones made to fit over 9′ x 3′ beds built out of 1″ x 6″ boards, so they fit exactly right.

I had marked the rows at 4′, but the beds at 3′.

Thankfully, I caught my mistake early enough and reset them all 4′ apart.

At the far end, I only marked out the two beds closest to the high raised bed. Which required digging out some rocks, so I could push the markers into the ground. Since the high raised bed is shorter, I used the end of the first trellis bed as my guide. It doesn’t have to be exact. Just within an inch or so.

I got most of the bed with the Red Wethersfield onions in it done – I was originally going to just weed that one, but when I saw how much things needed to be shifted, I decided to transplant the onions and get it done right from the start. I paused for a break when I was working at the far end – the one closest to that row of trees – when I started breaking new ground, and hitting larger roots and more rocks.

So I paused to take a break, transplanting the onions I pulled out, into the first trellis bed.

Then it started raining.

So I too a longer break!

My daughter, meanwhile, has headed out to process logs for the beds. If we get them framed just one log deep this year, that will do. We can add more logs to make them higher after that, but we really need to get them ready for planting. Something that it taking far longer than it should!

I won’t be able to work in it tomorrow, since I’ll be helping my mother with shopping, so I’ll head back out in between the rain to keep at it. It’s not supposed to start raining hard until 7pm, so I should get at least a couple more hours in.

But first… food. It’s 2pm as I write this, and I forgot to have lunch!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: hardening off begins, and new growth

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We had rain all night, with a foggy morning. We’re supposed to get possible showers this afternoon, with thunderstorm warnings for the night, and roughly the same tomorrow. Hopefully, this rain is reaching the fires to the north of us in adequate amounts. Currently, we’ve got 5 forest fires burning, with 2 still listed as out of control. That’s actually down two fires from when I checked, yesterday.

With the overcast morning, it was a perfect day to set the transplants outside to begin hardening off. Just a couple more weeks, and we can start transplanting them into the garden.

Oh, my sad, sad San Marzano tomatoes!

While I took out the trays in the sun room, my daughter brought the last of the trays that were in the mini greenhouse frame in the living room. As of now, the only things left in the house are three pots in the aquarium greenhouse; one Zucca melon that’s finally breaking the surface and one Pixie melon. There’s a second Pixie melon that has yet to emerge. The seeds that were left for pre-germination, however, have shown no progress. The Zucca seeds will be going into the compost, as they are starting to show signs of mold, but the three remaining Pixie melons look completely unchanged.

Most of our trays of transplants fit on the folding table we made, while a few went onto the set up we made above the seat of the laundry platform. A handy spot, though I always feel nervous going up those steps while carrying trays of plants. I’m never quite sure my knees won’t just give out at some point. Stairs and I do not get along, at all! 😄😄

While continuing my rounds, I checked on the bed with the peas, carrots and spinach planted in it. Of the first peas that were planted, there is one sprouting. I did see what might possibly be a second one, but it’s so tiny, I’m not sure yet. The second planting doesn’t have anything showing yet.

I checked the Royalty raspberries, as usual, and we are finally seeing new growth at the bottom of one of last year’s canes. These were supposed to be first year canes, which should have fruited for the first time this year, but they ended up producing berries last year, then dying back. I contacted Veseys about it and they assured me they would come back this year. So far, they are right about one of them! However, this does mean that any growth we get this year should not produce any berries until next year.

In other things…

I counted 25 yard cats this morning, though at least one or two more showed up later on. When I saw Broccoli while I was still setting the food out, I went around to the garden shed and left some food in a dry spot, then checked on the babies. They seem a bit more active. I ended up leaving some food for Broccoli not far from her baby nest.

With everything being so wet, and more rain and possible storms to come, I decided this was a good day to make a run to the nearest Walmart to get a few things. That took enough time that the transplants were brought back inside when I got back. We’re actually seeing a bit of sunshine, peeking through the clouds right now, too.

As I write this, it’s just past 2pm, and we’ve reached 16C/61F, with the humidex making it feel like 20C/68F. We’re supposed to get just a bit warmer before the end of the day. With how muddy things are, a lot of what we need to do outside has to wait. Very frustrating!

Ah, well. It is what it is! We just shift gears and do other stuff, like going into town for some errands, a bit earlier than planned – which I will cover in my next post. 😊

The Re-Farmer