seedlings

Our 2024 Garden: morning firsts

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I had a couple of nice surprised while doing my morning rounds!

The first was spotting new seedlings – of White Scallop patty pan squash!!!

This was our third attempt of sowing these, and I planted two pairs of seeds in the bed with the onions and shallots. There are still none in the pot (sowed them twice in there) and I had been thinking of what I could plant in the empty space where the Magda and White Scallops had failed, only to find these! So far, it’s just the one pair of seeds. No sign where the other pair was planted, but if it took this long for the first ones to show up, there is still hope!

Now, they just need to survive.

Still no Magda here, but a second one germinated in the pot on the steps.

There is also a nice little row of tiny kohlrabi seedlings popping up in the potato bed at the chain link fence.

I got a surprise phone call this morning, too. The scrap guy was going to be in our area. Did we want him to come by?

Today???

Yes, today.

*sigh*

I’m taking my mother to her medical appointment today, so that won’t be an option. We talked a bit about the state of the ground for getting to the barn and stuff. He’s going to be in the area again later – he has to wait for the ground to dry out more, first, so he can’t say exactly when, but he can call us first, if we want.

Yes, please!

We need to re-bag the aluminum, anyhow. Between the cats, racoons and skunks, quite a few bags have been torn up. That’s the down side of having so many cat food cans in there!

Since I’m going to be in the area, anyhow, after I bring my mother home from her appointment, I’m going to head over to my homesteading friend that sells eggs. She’s overwhelmed with eggs again – this has been a good year for eggs for a lot of people! – and is all but giving them away. When she posted about it on FB and someone asked the price, she just said “whatever is reasonable!”

We still had eggs, but the girls cooked some up with their supper, and boiled the rest for egg salad, so there is room in the fridge again. I’ve asked for 4 flats. I remembered to ask if she needed egg trays, and she does, so I’ll be bringing a bunch of those over for her, too.

With all the driving around, plus the likelihood that my mother will be seen late (hard to say; I’ve actually been seen early, at this clinic!), and a trip to pick up eggs, I’ll probably not get home until well into the evening.

Today, we’re supposed to reach a high of 28C/82F, and now the forecast has the same high for the next two days. As I write this, we’re at 23C/73F, but the humidex is already at 31C/88F! Humidity is at 81%, but apparently there’s just a 9% chance of rain this afternoon – or thunderstorms, if I look at a different app!

Next weekend, we’re supposed to reach highs of 30C/86F, and stay there for days.

I do wish we had better forecast regarding rain or storms, so we know whether the garden needs to be watered or not! I probably will anyhow, tomorrow morning, just so the garden can better handle the heat.

Especially our tiny little seedlings!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: cat damage and garlic

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While we no longer have cat food bowls in the sunroom, we do still allow them in, and I keep an eye on things through the critter cam.

I checked it shortly before heading out this morning, and had an unpleasant surprise. The extra board we put over the cat cage was on the floor. From what I could see, so was at least one of the bins.

I rushed out to see what could be salvaged and didn’t stop to take any before pictures. Thankfully, it was just the one bin on the floor – the one with only two pots with the Crespo squash in it. There was a tray that had a couple of pots knocked over, but the damage was nowhere near as bad as I feared.

The Crespo squash that has a pot to itself had a bent stem. I was able to use a couple of sticks and some plant wires to make a splint around it. I think it will survive. We’ve had one with worse damage last year that survived.

The cats did not actually damage the plants directly. The problem is that we have to keep one of the sawhorses holding the table at an angle. The board is there to cover the cat cage, but also gives them a ledge they can lie on, and not try to squeeze in between the trays and bins. One of the heavier cats must have jumped up onto the corner of the board that doesn’t have the sawhorse under it, and knocked the whole thing off. As it fell, it took the one bin down with it, but only jarred another tray, knocking over a couple of pots. One squash and it soil was almost completely out of it’s pot. Hopefully, it will survive being put back. A peat pot had a piece broken off and lost a bit of soil, but is otherwise fine. I will find a plastic pot of an appropriate size and pop the whole thing in, to hold it together. A couple of other pots are broken above the soil line, so they should be okay. It could have been a lot worse! I rearranged a few things so that, if the board gets knocked off again, it won’t take any trays with it.

Once that was fixed up, I did my morning rounds and checked the garden beds. The garlic continues their growth spurt!

I can see gaps in some places, particularly in the larger rectangular bed, that shows some cloves didn’t survive the winter, but most of them have made it.

The walking onions in front of the tiny raised bed are looking really strong and healthy. This is the second year for the bulbils I’d planted there. They produced their own bulbils that are just resting on the ground; we didn’t try to plant them, and are letting nature take its course with those. The only thing is to keep them from spreading into where my daughter had planted some irises, though we don’t know if they’ve actually survived. We’ve seen some try to grow, then disappear. It would seem they didn’t make it, but we do have those tulip bulbs that we thought had died, suddenly emerge this year, so it’s possible they survived, too!

The rhubarb in the south corner is also getting pretty big. Those ones always do better than the ones at the north corner. One of these years, we should transplant the lot of them, away from those apple trees, so they have better growing conditions. We typically get just one decent harvest per season, out of them.

By the time I was finishing up my morning rounds, my daughter was outside and starting on our project for the day, but that will be for my next post!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: sunroom progress

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It’s done!

Sort of.

The half of the sun room we use as a greenhouse is now done, and we even have spaces for the cats, several of which have been quite happy with.

Especially Syndol. He loves that baby jail! I did have to add an extra board next to the closet door on the saw horses, though. I found one in the garage, just wide enough, and cut it to match the length of the closet door. The cage is wider than the door, and I didn’t want the cats jumping up on it, like they normally would, as it was a favourite place for some of them to sleep. One sawhorse is angled, to allow access to the shelf at the south window. Unfortunately, that extra board does get in the way, but we can work around it without risking knocking the sawhorse right over!

We’ve started to move more of the heat loving seedlings in, what with the thermometer in there reading almost 30C/86F! It didn’t actually feel quite that hot, though – the ceiling fan certainly helped – so I got out the temperature gun to do some spot checks.

The ceiling was right at 30C/86F, while the floor was 20C/86F! At table height, the temperature ranged from about 24-27C/75-81F, depending on where I aimed the gun. Overnight, we’re supposed to drop to 3C/37F, but the sun room should remain adequately warm.

With the evening sun coming through the West windows, I put the trays on the table for now, then gave them a misting with the hose. In the morning, I will move some onto the shelf in the south facing window. I’ll also bring the two remaining tomato trays. I might leave the onions in the living room, as they prefer cooler temperatures. The Summer of Melons tray could probably be moved, too. The last pot’s seedling showed up today, so all 21 seeds from that packet are now growing. They just have their seed leaves, but melons are heat lovers, so they’ll probably do better in the sun room than even in the aquarium greenhouse.

I was going to work on the other half of the sun room once things starting cooling down, but… well, things haven’t really cooled down, yet. To top it off, instead of getting to sleep early last night, I ended up awake most of the night, and I’m falling asleep at my computer right now. So my daughters will do what they can in there, later on. My older daughter has commissions to work on, but they should be able to get at least some clean up done in there, once things cool down.

As for me, I’m mightily resisting going to bed right now. It’s barely past 6pm, as I’m writing this, so it would end up just being a nap, and that would really mess me up!

I definitely want to try and get an early night and an early morning, though. There’s lots to do out there, before things get hot again. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 20C/68F again – and a couple of days from now, we’re looking at possibly 24C/75F, with things cooling down a little bit after that. Looking at the low raised beds this morning is downright depressing. We pull so many rhizomes out of them, every fall, but you’d never know it from all the crab grass popping up in them right now! It’ll be easier, once they get converted to higher raised beds, though some crab grass will still find a way through.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: making room, and starting melons

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We got some progress with our transplants today!

We now have various melon seeds set to pre-germinate above the heat mat – indirect, so they don’t get too warm.

As with the Wild Bunch Mix of winter squash, I wanted to do all the seeds in our Summer of Melons Blench, There were four more of the Wild Bunch winter squash ready for potting first, though. There were still some seeds left, but I put those in the compost bucket. Some were looking like mold was starting to grow on them, and others were looking slimy, so I figured they were done for. Which is fine. We have so many from the Wild Bunch mix that successfully germinated, we won’t be starting any other winter squash this year, as much as I’d like to. We just won’t have the prepared space for that many large plants, even with trellises.

All of the smallest and not quite emerged Wild Bunch Mix squash are now together in the one half of the aquarium greenhouse. The larger ones got moved to the mini greenhouse frame at the window. The larger ones that were already in the mini greenhouse frame in the window were tucked into a bin and, together with the bin that had peppers and herbs in it, are now in the sun room. The cats like to sit on these shelves to look out the window, but the bins should protect the transplants.

The tray with the hot peppers and eggplant is now on the shelf between two windows in the sun room, along with one of the tomato trays. There’s also space for a cat to sit by the door, as a few like to do. These trays will get plenty of light through most of the day. I’m taking a chance on putting them there, but last year the cats were good about leaving the transplants alone, for the most part. They were more interested in getting at the window, so as long as they can still do that, the transplants should be okay.

Once the space was made in the mini greenhouse frame and the aquarium greenhouse, I made some decisions as to which melons I wanted to start.

The Summer of Melons Blend was the only for-sure choice. The package had 21 seeds, and I set all of them to pre-germinate.

For the others, I decided to try the Zucca melon again. It’s been rough going for these, even though we’ve had success starting them out, so I’m hoping to actually get some this year. They are supposed to get quite massive in size. The seeds are pretty huge, so they got where the only ones to be scarified to help with germination. I decided to try only 4 seeds, with plenty left to try again next year, if it doesn’t work out this year.

The Pixie melon is one we’ve grown successfully before, during a drought year, which is what we’re supposed to be getting this year, too. They are a small “personal size” melon. I set out only 5 seeds, which left another 4 in the package. If we have the space, I might try direct sowing the last seeds, since they only need up to 75 days to maturity. The plants are very productive, though, so even if we only have a couple make it, that should still provide us with a decent amount of little melons.

The Sarah’s Choice is one we tried last year, but I think only 2 seedlings survived to be transplanted. They were planted together with some other melons and, to be honest, I’m not sure which variety was which, the vines were so interwoven. The plants did well, but they didn’t start producing both male and female flowers at the same time until quite late in the season, so we didn’t get very many that fully ripened before frost hit. So I want to try them again. This year, I’ll make sure we plant them away from other melon types, so we can tell them apart. Again, I started only 5 seeds, which was a little under half was what was in the package.

I had two types of watermelon to choose from, and I decided to go with the Cream of Saskatchewan. Both were short season, cold climate varieties, but I only had one container left. 😂 Again, I picked out 5 seeds, which was half the package.

The 7 day forecast has changed, and we’re now looking at a cooler day tomorrow, with possible rain, and only slightly warmer days after that. We won’t be back into highs in the double digits (Celsius) until next Monday, if the current forecasts are anything to go by. Which I don’t mind too much. Unless the winds are a problem, the cooler days make it more pleasant do to manual labour in, and we’ve got garden beds to prep, and new ones to build! We need to make room for all those transplants, plus the stuff we want to direct sow!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden, and the morning so far

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First, the cuteness!

Syndol was keeping me company this morning!

I counted 33 yard cats during feeding time. !!

But Syndol was my only helper.

While doing my rounds, I was able to get a bit of work done on the bed against the chain link fence.

It’s finally thawed out enough to dig into. I just loosened things up this morning. There are many roots and rhizomes that need to be removed, some of which are now drying in the sun until I can get back to it later.

Syndol would follow me along as I worked my way down the bed, reaching out every now and then to bat at the garden fork, or the roots I was pulling up!

He’s such a cutie!

On another note, my younger daughter now has a nice new pair or steel toed shoes.

I confirmed that the pain in my left foot was from my outer toes hitting the edge of the steel toe cap. The problem is not so much the shoe, as my deformed feet. *sigh* This is not something that is going to get better, so I got my daughter to try them on and walk around in them for a while. She can feel the edge of the toe cap, but it’s not a problem for her.

So it’s back to my old ones or my rubber boots, until I can get another pair of steel toes. I’m really glad my daughter can use these new ones!

Before working on the bed by the chain link fence, I uncovered the carrot bed and removed more of the mulch over the carrots. Unfortunately, there are still frozen chunks that just won’t move. The three beds in this location do get quite a bit of light throughout the day, but no morning light, and that seems to be making the difference.

Which means the carrots frozen in the bed are likely not salvageable. Lesson learned!

Oh! I got a call while I was writing the above. The Cat Lady updated us on Wolfman. He did get those fancy drops and his first treatment, and his eye is already looking almost completely healed! The vet says that for sure the injury was blunt force trauma of some kind. There may even be a tiny fracture in the bone. We’re at a complete loss as to how this happened! He’s going back to the vet on Monday, and they’ll get a look at the back of his eye to see if there’s any other damage to be concerned about, but so far, he’s healing up really well.

Such good news!

Now… where was I?

Ah. Garden stuff!

Before heading outside, I turn on the lights for the seedlings and check on them. Check these out!

They are just exploding in size! Even the comparatively small luffa are growing so quickly! I’m quite thrilled.

I will have to decide, though; will I thin them by removing, or transplanting? I’m very tempted to try transplanting the extras. The more potential transplants, the more likely we’ll have at least one survive outside.

I still have time to decide.

Among my goals for the day is to finish up that bed at the chain link fence, but I will start on that after I’ve gone to the post office when it reopens for the afternoon. According to the tracking information, our potatoes are ready for pick up at the post office, and the owner of the store has signed for our Fed Ex delivery, so that’s ready for pick up, too.

I hadn’t decided on what will be planted in the bed by the chain link fence. Once that’s done, it should be suitable for the 1kg of Caribe potatoes. Then we’ll just have to prepare space for the 2kg of Butterball potatoes.

We shall see how it works out!

Lots that can finally be worked on outside!

I’m loving every minute of it. 😁😁

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: exuberant growth, and seeds are in

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Check out these seedlings!!

The first seedling to break soil surface was a drum gourd – one of the two in the middle pot – but then a Crespo Squash, on the right, burst through and exploded out of the soil. It seems like every time I look at the pots, there’s more visible growth.

What I’m really happy about is that not one of the seedlings emerged with the outer shell of the seed stuck on the leaves. Last year, there was more than a few times that I had to very carefully remove the shell, because the seed leaves were being killed off. As careful as I was, sometimes pieces of the leaves would break off, because the shells were so tightly encasing them.

I really like this pre-germinating technique!

The heat mat will need to be unplugged very soon. I won’t move them off right away, as I need to arrange space. I won’t need it until I start more seeds.

This weekend will be 7 weeks before our last average frost date. I will go through some of my seeds to see what I want to start first. The seeds we have left are pretty much all supposed to be started 3-4 weeks before last frost, but if I started all the ones I want to, I’ll run out of space in no time at all – and I will have way too many things that need to be transplanted, all at once. So I plan to stagger them.

I might even start some of these.

Baked Potato Squash
Mashed Potato squash

I had to go to town today and finally picked up the mail. There were probably in and waiting for a while. Since we have so many varieties of winter squash seeds, we will probably start just a couple of seeds of each. At this point, we’re still after trying out different types to see what we like the most, and will then probably drop it down to one or two varieties.

Who am I kidding. We’ll probably be constantly trying new ones! Just maybe not quite so many different types, all at the same time.

That’s one thing about having the luxury of space like we do. We can spare some to try growing new things we don’t even know if we’ll like, yet.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: Noooo!!!!

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Okay, it could have been worse, but I had a bit of a disaster this morning.

While trending the seedlings and doing a tray rotation, I topped up the larger cell tray of San Marzano tomatoes with more soil. I’d deliberately half filled the cells to start, and now I’m “potting up” the seedlings this way.

After carefully putting the soil around the seedlings, tamping it down gently, then gently top watering to settle the soil around the stems more and avoid air gaps, I went to put the tray back into the mini greenhouse frame at the window. I had to rotate the peppers and eggplant tray back to the top, as they’re getting too tall to be anywhere else, so the tomatoes needed to go one shelf down. I’ve got the LED lights set up above the lower shelves, but I did move the cables around to get them out of the way.

Well, not enough.

Between getting caught on a cable and the uneven bottom of the tray catching on one of the wire squares on the shelf itself, the entire tray ended up sliding off the far side. There is a gap between the shelf and the wall, because of a baseboard heater (these are never used and the breakers are off. I don’t remember them ever being used when this part of the house was built!). The tray, however, landed against the window sill, rather than sliding all the way down to the floor.

In the process of falling, it knocked one of the onion trays on the shelf below, off in the other direction.

What. A. Mess.

I was able to retrieve the tray, but a lot of the soil – and water! – was all over the window sill, down the wall, and on the carpet below.

The shag carpet.

*sigh*

I think they’ll survive, though.

Once the tomato tray was cleared away, I had to pick up the onions before I could reach anything else. They are in four sections of a vegetable tray, and the roots actually held everything together pretty well, but some soil was lost. The bundles could be popped back into the tray. I think they’ll survive, too.

The mini greenhouse frame had to be cleared of everything else before I could move it and reach the biggest mess. I was able to save some of the spilled soil, but most of it will have to be vacuumed up.

I fixed up the tomato seedlings as best I could, and had to add more soil to a few of them.

For now, I’ve got the trays spread out in various sun spots, though those will be gone soon. We have a fan going in the room for the seedlings all the time, so that will help dry things out faster. Once the mess can be vacuumed, we can put the frame back and return the seedling trays.

It could have been worse.

Well. I suppose it still could be. Let’s see how the seedlings survive over the next little while!

The Re-Farmer

This and that – cats and seedling stuff

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It’s been a quiet, homey sort of day today. Not much to write about.

I head-counted 31 while feeding the outside cats this morning.  Then, as I was returning from my morning rounds, I saw Broccoli and Sprout had arrived – they, at least, are very distinctive! – making 33 in total. 

I heard back from the Cat Lady about Wolfman.  She talked to the vet about his eye, but the vet would not comment either way without seeing Wolfman directly.  I was hoping to at least get a ballpark figure on what a removal might cost, if one is needed.  So she will let me know the next time she needs to be near our usual half way meeting point to pick up Wolfman and pass on some kibble donations.

As for Wolfman, if we were to go strictly by his behavior, you might miss that there is anything wrong at all.  Just a little while ago, I saw him dashing around me, and it does seem like he can still see through that eye.  Given what it looked like in the photos I managed to get, that’s surprising.  He may simply have gotten used to it.  She still sometimes squints with the one eye, but that’s about it. There is no appearance of discomfort, and he’s his usual playful self.  He’s even still play fighting with his adopted siblings, which may well be how the eye was injured in the first place!

In other things, I’ve decided to try sprouting the seeds I got soaking yesterday, before potting them.  They are now between layers of damp paper towel in a take out container.  With large seeds like this, I covered the semi-transparent lid to reduce light exposure, and I did also scarify their outer shells.  

While tending the seedlings, I noticed a strange thing with the large tray that has the eggplant and hot peppers.  Most of them are getting nice and big, but a few seem to be wilting, and are more stunted.  The stunted ones are all on one side of the tray.

I need to look up my old post about starting these.  This tray may be the one where I ran out of one brand of seed starting mix, and opened a bag from another brand.  Most of the cells in the tray would have a bit of both, but one end would have had only the second brand.

What I didn’t do was mark which side that was!

If this tray is the mixed brand one, then the San Marzano tomato tray is all the second brand. So far, they seem fine. In fact, I’ll be needing to add more mix to top up the cells around their stems soon. I’ll leave them in these cells a while longer, before I thin by transplanting.

Ah, I just went and looked up my old post. Yes, this is the tray with the two different brands of seed starter mix. Considering that I had the tray mostly full before I had to open the second bag, there would be fewer cells with the second mix, only, and the others would have had the first brand in the bottoms, and then just got topped up with the second brand before the seeds were sowed. Which means the smaller number of cells that have stunted seedlings in them would most likely be the ones with the Miracle Grow brand of seed starting mix. I believe the other brand was Jiffy, but I’m not sure.

Dangit. I should have taken better notes! Ah, well.

We have more seedlings that we need, so if some don’t do as well, that’s okay. At long as we have at least a few of each that survive transplanting, we’ll have enough for our needs.

It’s always a learning experience, isn’t it?

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 garden: more seedlings!

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Shuffling the trays around has certainly helped! Check this out.

When I turned the lights on yesterday morning, there was nothing in the tray. When I turned them off in the evening, all the cells on the far right of the photo had seedlings breaking ground. By morning, they were opening their seed leaves, and I could even see one starting to break the surface in the middle row, though it’s not visible in the photo.

That row of seedlings on the right are the Black Cherry, which are new seeds for this year. The middle row are the Chocolate cherry, which are seeds from previous years. The ones on the left, which we got this year as a freebie with our order, are a completely different type of tomato, so I expect those to take longer to germinate, compared to the cherries.

I will wait until there’s more sprouts before I raise the tray off the heat mat. I’ll just put one of the dome lids under it, which will raise the tray about 5 or 6 inches off the mat and closer to the light. I don’t want to unplug the mat until the peppers start germinating, which will take longer.

The tray with the San Marzano seeds has been a bit of a surprise. There weren’t many seeds in the packet, but it turns out that there were more than I thought. There are seedlings in all the cells in the tray, but in the row where I had enough to plant only one seed per cell, there’s extra, and in some of the cells where two seeds had been planted, there are three seedlings! These would have been seeds that had stuck together in the package. Some are so close together, I’ll just cut away one, rather than thin by transplanting, as removing one would damage the other.

This weekend is 10 weeks before last frost.

Must resist starting more seeds too early!!!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 garden: seedling shuffle

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What a strange day we are having out there! I just got back from a quick trip into town, but I’ll get to that later.

First, the seedling shuffle!

The San Marzano tomato tray got moved to the other half of the big aquarium greenhouse. You can see there are quite a few more seedlings in there now, too! This side is elevated quite a bit compared to the side with the heat mat, so the seedlings are now quite a bit closer to the lights.

These guys, on the other hand, are quite a bit lower now! I considered putting things under the heat mat to raise them higher, but for now, there is no need. They need the warmth more than the light. Once there is germination, the heat mat will be unplugged, anyhow. At that point, I can either put stuff under the trays to raise them closer to the lights, or put them on the mini greenhouse frame in front of the window. They have better light in the tank, but better air circulation in the window.

I look forward to when we can build up a dedicated seed starting area in a cat free zone! Which can’t be the living room, because there’s just not a lot of space. We might have to find a way to use the new part basement. As long as we can keep it warm enough and bright enough. Since bringing Peanut Butter Cup indoors, we closed up the new basement (the old basement isn’t safe for the cats, so it’s always closed to the cats), because we didn’t want to crawling around under stuff down there, right after being spayed. Since then, we just haven’t bothered letting them down there again, and that doesn’t seem to be a problem for them. We might actually be able to reclaim the space as a workshop again. There’s space at one end where we could set up tables or shelfs and hang the shop lights from the ceiling, but once things start melting, the floor there starts getting damp. The weeping tile at that end isn’t doing it’s job anymore, ever since someone left a rain barrel to overflow outside that corner, during a couple of months of heavy rain. When my brother found it, that whole corner was molding, and it took him a long time to get it cleaned. My daughters had been working hard to keep that end cleaned and bleached but, for some reason, cats would ignore the four litter boxes and crap on the floor against that wall. Which cats, we never saw. If we can turn that basement into a cat free zone, that would make a big difference in where we can do things! Come summertime, though, we’d have to start opening the door, as the basements help keep the house cool. We’ve got a hardware cloth door for the old basement door – which is currently being stored by using it as a cat platform in the sun room. We’d have to pick up some lumber and made another one for the new basement door.

Ooooh… If we can keep it a cat free zone, then we can remove the hardware cloth “door” we made for the opening between the two basements. I can’t really call it a doorway, since it’s just an opening that was broken through the old basement wall that’s now an odd shape and size. We’d put in the barricade in such a way that, if we wanted to go from one basemen to the other, we could just unhook the bungee cord holding it in place and slide it to one side.

We didn’t consider just how determined the cats would be, in trying to get through. Not only did we have to barricade it with whatever we could find from the old basement side, to keep them from simply pushing through, we had to use more hardware cloth above opening, to cover a gap between the floor joists and heat ducts above.

The end result is, we basically can’t get from one basement to the other right now, without having to dismantle the whole thing. The old basement is where we have the water taps from when the laundry used to be there. Now, when we need water to mop the floors or whatever, we have to get it from the bathroom in the old part of the house and haul it through pretty much the entire ground floor to get it to the new part basement.

There is a lot of space down that that isn’t being used right now. The only down side it, my knees and stairs do not get along, but I’d learn to live with it!

Things to think about, and set up for next year, perhaps.

In other things…

As I write this, we’ve warmed up to -10C/14F, with a “feels like” of -9C/16F. However, it is also bright and sunny. Which means that anything dark out there is warming up more, and things are starting to melt around them. Things are both freezing and melting, at the same time!

It also means the snow is starting to soften.

When I got back from town, I drove the truck into the yard to unload, since I was not about to carry those water jugs across the icy path. The snow drift the truck had no problem climbing over yesterday was still manageable, but the truck did have a harder time of it, since the tires started sinking this time. Then, while backing up in the yard so I could turn to the gate and leave, I felt the back end of the truck suddenly sink, and I almost got stuck. It looks like the frozen “lake” of water behind the garage extends quite a bit further under the snow than I thought. The tires broke through the snow covered ice. The “lake” is deep enough that our recent cold hasn’t been enough to freeze it solid, so there is still liquid water under there that the truck is heavy enough to break through to.

Which means I may not be able to drive the truck up to the house again for a while! At least not without digging out a couple of spots, first. We’re supposed to stay in this general temperature range for at least a few days.

No matter. As long as I can get to the house when it’s time to unload our stock up shopping, and that’s more than a week from now.

On a completely different note…

Do you have any idea how hard it is to type while a cat insists in laying across your wrists and rolling?

The Re-Farmer