Yesterday, we made some seed tape, and – best of all! – were able to do some outdoor garden prep. While the main garden area is still buried in snow, the south yard’s garden beds are almost completely clear of snow, and even thawing out a bit.
Here is our progress, so far.
Hope you like it!
The Re-Farmer
I forgot. I should have filled the tank again on my way home yesterday.
Quick Dick explains it well.
The cost of everything is going to go up again.
This is going to hurt so many people.
Folks, if you haven’t started to grow and raise as much of your own food as you can (and this is a worldwide problem), get starting doing what you can, as best you can.
The Re-Farmer
I’ve been working on a project for some time now – with a major delay while we fought with the cat barriers and other things.
One of the things we are planning to build is an off-grid type outdoor kitchen. Before we can build the cooking areas, though, we need a shelter. After much discussion with the girls, we hashed out a plan, discussed location and materials, and figured things out as much as we could. Then, to help figure out some of the details, I made a scale model.
Here is the making of the model, and our plans explained.
I hope you like it!
The Re-Farmer
We’ve had a very quiet day at home today, catching up around the house and being very domestic.
Because of the racoons damaging things and eating everything up, we have not been putting out deer feed or bird seed this winter. I do still see tracks in the snow when I do my rounds, but not very many. We have, however, been getting one regular visitor.
This piebald deer has been visiting us every winter that we’ve lived here, making this the sixth winter of her visiting us! This video is from a few days ago, but yesterday, we spotted her in the yard, making her way to the compost pile. I’ve also been seeing deer tracks around the cat shelters, which tells me she – or some other deer – has been going for the kibble and water, too.
This morning, as I headed out, I heard a familiar huffing noise and looked up in time to see the piebald, half was up the path to the compost pile, leaping away.
We happened to have some roasted squash in the fridge. It was meant for something else and had no seasonings on it, but I decided to put it on the compost pile for our visitor to eat!
It’s getting that time of year when it’s harder for the wild critters to find food, so I’ve got no problem setting out some extra food for them, if we have it.
The Re-Farmer
Okay, so I made this video a while ago, but had all sorts of problems exporting the finished video into a file format that I could upload to YouTube that worked. After trying for days and having it fail, suddenly it worked. Nothing had changed on my computer, and there was no software update. Just, one day no-worky, another day, yes-worky.
Frustrating!
No matter!
Normally, I would have done a long, photo heavy post on making this, but I don’t have the media storage space, so I’m trying to make more videos. I’d found a video on how to make a Tuscan beef stew that looked really good, but I didn’t have the exact ingredients.
So I made it with what I had on hand.
Here is not-quite Tuscan style beef stew, made with mead.
Let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions to improve things!
The Re-Farmer
As I was heading out to do my morning rounds, I was greeted by this adorableness.
I took this photo through the screen window of the old kitchen door, so it looks out of focus. This is the tortie the girls have named Phantom, because she has half her face covered with a black “mask”. Alas, I was unable to sneak a pet before she woke up, saw me setting out the kibble, and ran outside.
As I write this, we are at a wonderful -5C/23F, and are expected to go above freezing. Too warm for my down filled parka, so I was going to wear my hoodie.
Or not.
I’d left it hanging on the back of a spare dining room chair.
A chair the cats use as a bed.
I even made sure the hood wasn’t on the seat, so they couldn’t lie on it. This is just from them leaning against it!
Life with cats. Cat hair, everywhere!
I did have another light jacket I could use. I just don’t like it as much. I still had to take the lint brush to it, since I’ll be wearing it when I head to the city today. Hopefully, I won’t be trigging too many cat allergies when I’m around people, because there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.
As lovely as the temperature is, though, walking out the sun room door was like hitting a wall. We’ve got 30 kmh/19mph winds right now, coming in from the south. It did make doing the rounds much less pleasant than it would have been, but the wind chill was still only -13C/9F, so it’s still not much to complain about! The only down side it that I’m going to be driving head on into it, the whole way to the city with the van, which is going to do a number on my mileage. At least it should make the trip home better!
I’m just loving what I’m seeing in the forecast over the next few days. We’re actually supposed to go above freezing for several days!
We’ll see what we actually get, of course.
The Re-Farmer
Yesterday, after many delays, I finally sorted through all our seeds, old and new. I was happy to find I still had luffa seeds left, so I got those started, along with our onions.
Since I’m running out of media storage space on my WordPress account (the down side of having such a photo heavy blog!), I took my photos and made them into a video, instead. I hope you enjoy it!
Please feel free to let me know what you think of it, either here or in the comments under the video at YouTube. If you watch the video on YouTube, you can subscribe to my channel there. I’ll be uploading it to my Rumble account, too.
I will probably be doing a lot more of these, since I’m not about to spend over $300 a year to upgrade my account, when all I want is more storage space! It takes a lot more time, and I borrow my daughter’s microphone for the voice overs, but it does allow me to use higher quality images, and more of them, than I would here. I’d call it an experiment, but it’s not like I have much choice!
On another note, I’m quite enjoying the Movavi Video Suite to make these videos. I’m just barely skimming the surface of what the software allows me to do, since my needs are really basic, but if I wanted to, I could create some pretty professional looking videos. The only complaint I have is how it keeps wanting me to buy into subscriptions to get more choices in media and effects, etc. But that’s pretty typical of most media software these days, I think.
Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the video!
The Re-Farmer
Almost 2 years ago, I found this video from the 2014 National Heirloom Expo, showing 300 varieties of squash on display. At the time, while watching it, my thoughts were along the lines of, “wow! Look at all those cool squash!”
While trying to find information about specific squash varieties, I stumbled on the video again and found myself watching it with new eyes. Last summer, we tried growing so many different types of squash, and I had been researching so many others, I found myself surprised by how many I now recognized.
Right near the beginning, there was a display of pumpkins I recognised and, sure enough, they were Lady Godiva hulless pumpkins. I was rather happy to see that our own Lady Godivas that we harvested were pretty close in size to what is in the video. For all the set backs, they actually did reach, or come very close to, their full potential.
There were several displays of Boston Marrow, and ours didn’t come anywhere near their full potential! I knew they didn’t, but it was by a lot more than I thought.
The nest egg gourds in the display were just like ours, though! I’m going to have to break one open to collect seeds to start indoors.
I recognised others from varieties we tried to grow but failed completely, and got to see what they would have looked like, had 2022 been a good growing year. Still others I remember looking at in catalogs and websites, trying to decide whether or not to get their seeds. Of course, I found myself keeping an eye out for others we’d grown or tried to grow, but not all of them were there. It’s pretty amazing, how many varieties of squash there are!
I started watching the video while searching for information of growing Crespo squash and kulli corn. There is very little information about kulli corn out there. I’m still trying to figure out why ours never even started to develop cobs. From what I did find, it has a 100 day growing season. That’s cutting it close for us, but not by much, and I’d started them indoors to make up for it. I do want to try them again, but probably not this year.
As for the Crespo squash, all I’m finding is a few – very few! – seed sources, before the hits are just generic squash links. If I look at images, I find my own pictures from the first year we tried to grow them! Other pictures come up that are labelled Crespo squash, but they look completely different.
Well, hopefully as we try growing them again and write about them in this blog, it will be helpful to others, trying to find information!
The Re-Farmer
Another medieval version.
In my family, Christmas Eve is when we celebrate the Wigilia feast. Whether you are starting your celebrations today or on Christmas Day, I wish you and yours a joyous and peaceful Christmas.
The Re-Farmer 