Okay, this is a first. Planting something in April!
We had a bed prepared and covered with plastic over hoops for the soil to warm up more, so that is where I started. All of the carrot seed tape we made fit into the bed, with even a bit of room to spare. After that, another bed was finally prepared and covered with more plastic, and in a couple of days, it will get spinach planted in it.
I tried an experiment this time, setting up an old phone to take a time lapse video of both jobs.
Plus some random cat appearances.
The time lapse made for a short video. I hope you enjoy it!
The video I was working on yesterday finally exported into the format I needed without any visual corruption, and I was finally able to start uploading it to YouTube.
It’s only 26 minutes long, but the uploaded told me it would take 2 hours to upload. !!! So I went for a nap for 2 hours.
When I got up and checked, it was at under 50% upload, and said it would take another two hours.
Yikes!!!
So I went into town early to run some errands before meeting with the egg lady. I got just a few eggs. 😉
I’m looking to boil a whole bunch and pickle them for snacks or quick breakfasts.
One of my other stops was to the post office. See that white box over there? Guess what was in it?
Popcorn!
😂😂😂
That all went for the birds when I was done.
Cheddar helped me check out the rest of the contents! I love the vintage jars. Especially the milk jar with a handle on it. I’ve never seen one like that before!
I will definitely have to look up that brand of stock cubes. The store these came from had a brand that used to carry all kinds of interesting flavoured stock cubes. Garlic and Basil, and mushroom, like these ones, but also Fines Herbs, fish, seafood, and pork, along with the usual beef, chicken and vegetable. After we moved and we started running out of the ones we brought with us, I found the company’s website, only to discover they carry just the basics now. None of the interesting ones, anymore. This brand is from Italy. I hope they are available online, from a Canadian supplier. Otherwise, shipping costs would be through the roof! Those Polish candies… what a treat! I’ve loved those since I was a child, but they are not easy to find. After moving out here, I found some and was quite thrilled to buy them, only to discover they were… another brand? I don’t know. They looked the same, but they didn’t taste the same, and were rubbery to chew on. Like they were a knock off brand or something.
Yes, I allowed myself to have one, even though I’m cutting sugar. I’m not going to be too extreme about things!
We’re really looking forward to cracking open the sun dried olives. Even before we moved, the ones we used to get – sundried and packed with salt in jars – seemed to have disappeared. Finding them packed in oil is not that difficult, but there’s just something different about the dry packed ones.
And finally, the seeds! I can’t find a country on the packaging, but that could just be my crappy vision. It looks like they’re from Italy, too. I know forget-me-nots can grow here; my mother used to grow them. My younger daughter was quite excited to see those. I’m the food grower. She’s the one that wants to grow flowers! Of course, we’ll have to try the lettuce, too. At some point, after we’re done with the seed starts and transplants, we’ll be setting up a pot to grow some salad greens indoors. Just a few plants in different varieties. Planting them in the garden was just too much for our needs. Plus, even when we didn’t have groundhogs trying to eat them, we still had to protect them from the kittens wanting to roll all over the beds!
Thank you so much, M, for sending us these! What a treat! You’re awesome. 🧡💛🧡💛
Oh! And here’s that video I was finally able to upload!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
The Re-Farmer 