I am not usually a fan of modern covers of traditional Christmas carols, but I do love this low bass version!
video
On growing garlic
This year, I joined a number of gardening groups on social media. Either local groups or cold climate/zone 3 gardening groups. It’s pretty cool to see how many first time gardeners have been joining the groups and asking all sorts of questions.
This is the time of year for planting hard neck garlic, as we did yesterday, and there is a LOT of discussion on these groups right now, and people are sharing some really good links.
One really good video I saw shared was uploaded just yesterday, and it give a lot of good information. I think you’ll enjoy it, too.
He talks about hard neck garlic, soft neck garlic, seed garlic and even using store bought garlic, too.
I didn’t realize Elephant garlic isn’t actually garlic!
He talks about lots more, including harvesting “wet garlic”, which was something I wondered about when checking our own garlic last year.
Among the most discussed things I’ve been seeing in the gardening groups has been how deep to plant the cloves. There is a LOT of differing, even conflicting, advice. The thing is, the conflicting advice isn’t necessarily wrong. There can be quite a bit of variance, based on climate zones. For those in zone three, like myself, this was an excellent link that was shared. I also found this video, specific to planting garlic in zone 3.
I found it interesting that he says to leave the curing garlic out in the rain!
For those who aren’t necessarily in colder climates, here’s a video from MI Gardener (published September, 2018)
A lot of gardeners on my groups get seeds from MI Gardener, too, and are very happy with what they get.
There is a lot of information and advice out there, but if you can’t follow all of it, you know what? You can still get good garlic! We didn’t plant our cloves as deep as recommended for out zone, yet they survived the Polar Vortex just fine. We don’t have compost or manure to add, and we still got decent sized bulbs. That’s one of the beauties of gardening. You can do all sorts of things “wrong”, and chances are, you’ll still get decent results. What works in your own specific garden may also be quite different from what works in other places, too, so it will always be a learning experience.
Which is half the fun of the whole thing!
For those reading, do you have other things you plant in the fall? I’ve read about a number of vegetables that can be seeded in the fall, and plan to try it in the future, as we get our garden more established. If you plant garlic, do you plant hard or soft neck varieties? What works for you?
The Re-Farmer
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Our 2021 Garden, fall tour video
This is an “almost” first for me. I’ve made a few little videos now and then, with minimal editing, to post here on the blog. Years ago, I used to make videos on DVDs of photos for my parents, set to music and with chapters, etc. Since we were so far away, I thought it would be a fun way to share lots of photos of their grandchildren with them in a way that would be easier for their declining mobility. When I found out they never watched any of them (and in cleaning out their possessions in the house, I never found them), I stopped.
Yesterday, instead of making another long, photo heavy post, I would try doing a narrated, fall garden tour video. I have very little equipment; I recorded the audio using a headset with a microphone, and the video software I used is the same old one I used back when I was making DVDs for my parents! It took a long time to make, and a long time to upload. Thankfully, we didn’t loose our internet in the process. :-D Anyhow, in the wee hours of the morning, I finally got it done!
It is WAY longer than I would have normally done a video. Usually, I try to stay under 5 minutes, but this ended up being just over 47 minutes. I did try to explain some of the how’s and why’s of things, and I hope I did all right with that.
So please feel free to grab a cuppa, settle in, give it a watch, and please leave some feedback. I’d like to know how you liked it, if you found it informative and useful in any way, and if you would like to see more (I would NOT be making such long videos on a regular basis, but I might make some little 5 minute ones). I’d love to hear your questions, suggestions and anything else you’d like to share.
Enjoy!
The Re-Farmer
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Grog determination
We have been rather entertained by our resident groundhogs under the junk pile of late.
The grog actually managed to drag some of the tarp down into the den entrance!
This tarp is one of several that I found when cleaning the junk off this pile of wood. They had clearly been used to cover and protect the wood, but had been blown aside and torn apart by the elements, along with all sorts of things being tossed into the area. Torn up as they were, I was still able to use them to cover the wood pile a bit, but the groundhogs are taking advantage of the deteriorated state. They are trying to gather it into their den for nesting material.
Last night, I cleaned it up a bit and tucked the tarp under some boards.
This is how I found it this morning.
I was able to see the groundhog in action through the living room window.
That little bugger is really working at it! :-D
I put together the videos I took from the window, too. :-)
These next photos were taken after the video was made.
It got quite a lot of that tarp down and into the den entrance!
In taking this photo, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.
There is now a third entrance to the den in the back of the pile!
I cleaned up and tucked things away again. It should be interesting to see how long this lasts.
While I was working in a nearby beet bed (which will be in my next post), I could hear the grog trying to drag a corner of the orange trap around the back, too.
The gravel you see at the bottom of the photo is from the second entrance to the den.
I don’t think you can see it in the photo above, but there is the nose of a grog in their main entrance. It was watching me.
You’ll notice the gravel is different in this photo. I took advantage of their hard work and used it. I’ll be posting about that after I’ve processed the photos I took.
We seem to have made a truce with the groundhogs. I’m relieved, because we were getting to the point of taking some rather permanent steps. Something I won’t even consider right now, as they are nesting, and I don’t want to end up depriving babies of their mother. The cayenne pepper and covers are working, overall (more on that in my next post), and they seem content with eating the bird seed, grazing on whatever they’re finding in the grass, and leaving our garden beds alone now. From what I’ve been able to find about them, they don’t actually like to have overlapping territory, so if there are any babies, they will not stick around once they are big enough to live on their own.
For all the predictions of rain we’ve been getting, I don’t think we’ll actually get anything of substance, so I will be applying more cayenne pepper this evening. If it rains, well, I’ll just have to do it again.
The Re-Farmer
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Caught in the act!
Oh, the adorable little beast.
I moved the garden cam again, this time onto the summer squash. I’d had to tie some of their stems back onto their supports, and wasn’t sure if they’d come loose under their own weight, or if something caused them to fall.
Our sunburst squash is looking prolific, but we’ve had very little to pick. Lots of them have been withering on the vine, but there have also been bite marks on them.
It is confirmed who is the cause of this!
I had the camera low on its pole, and at some point during the night it slid down and spun a bit to the left. Which is why it caught a raccoon going by. There was a possibility that the raccoons were doing damage, but it completely ignored the squash, other than to go around them.
I was about 99.9% sure it was the woodchuck doing the damage. Now it is 100% confirmed.
*sigh*
The Re-Farmer
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On the menu, and passing through.
My morning rounds were shorter today. I did not water all the garden beds this time. I’ve been keeping a close eye on the weather radar, and we might actually get rain!
Yesterday evening, I grated a whole lot of soap to scatter around in the old kitchen garden. It either worked, or we didn’t get any critters visiting last night.
This morning, I raided our spice cupboard. The newly planted beds of radishes, chard, kale and kohlrabi have now been treated with a hot spices, and when I ran out of that, I started scattering black pepper, including the perimeter of the corn and sunflower blocks. I checked everything carefully, and there were no new nibbles among the corn and sunflowers, that I could see.
Before heading back inside, I was able to gather some summer squash.
It’s been a while since our first harvest of 2 green zucchini and a Magda squash. This morning, we’ve got 5 green zucchini (3 of them from one plant!), 1 Magda squash, and our very first Sunburst squash!
Later, I was able to grab a few garlic scapes, too. We still have a few left to grow more before we gather them.
These will be on today’s menu, for sure! :-D
Once settled inside, I checked the trail cam files and saw this on the garden cam.
I was not expecting the deer to cross through from that side! And there’s no way we can rope things off on that side, without it causing access issue to other beds.
At least he didn’t stop for a snack along the way.
I did put black pepper across the open side of the garden beds, and down some of the bigger paths between blocks. I hope this will convince the deer to go around the garden, instead of through it!
Thinking ahead with the girls, I remembered that the Whiffletree catalog has a wildlife tree package. We’ve been talking about planting things away from the house to feed the deer, so they’ll have less reason to go for our gardens. We don’t want to get rid of the critters. We just want them to stay out of our gardens! I went looking through the catalog and found an item I’d highlighted but forgot about. They also have a Wildlife Plot seed package. There are enough seeds to cover 2000 sq ft with things like turnips, forage kale and other tasty plants. If we get a package like that and plant it in the outer yard, that could do a fine job of keeping the deer – and the groundhogs – out of our garden beds.
I hope to order the seed package this fall, so we can use it next spring. :-)
The Re-Farmer
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Our 2021 garden: first harvest!
Today, we harvested all three spinach beds!
Looking at them this morning, I thought we could just harvest the plants that had started to go to seed and leave the smaller ones, but when we were ready to start, we realized that the smaller ones were going to seed, too!
We ended up using our three biggest baskets to hold it all.
Yes, these are our Easter baskets, and one of them still has its decorations. The flower garland is woven through the basket, so it doesn’t come off. :-D
Each of those baskets is filled with a different variety of spinach, though to be honest, I can’t tell any difference. They were even supposed to mature at different rates, but between the deer, the heat and the lack of rain, they all matured at the same time.
Nutmeg was hanging around while we were working, and my daughter noticed he was playing “cat and mouse” with something. It turned out to be a frog!
She rescued it.
We see frogs fairly regularly in the garden beds. That makes me happy. More frogs means less bugs eating our produce! :-)
We used shears to cut the spinach, so all the roots, along with the plants that weren’t suitable to harvest (like the teeny ones the deer got to), are still there. The beds will get a thorough clean up, probably tomorrow, so we can plant lettuces, next.
We dragged out the screen “door” that fits at the top of the old basement stairs, and covered it with the mosquito netting we’d been using to protect one of the beds. We also brought out a couple of our largest bowls. The spinach got washed in the bowls in batches, which also gave us a chance to start taking out any weeds that came along for a ride, and removing some of the yellowing or damaged leaves. After being washed, they got dumped on the mesh and got another rinse with the hose.
Then it was time to start picking over the spinach and destemming them. I set up the wagon to hold the screens I’d washed earlier, to dry spinach on.
My daughter and I then started going over the whole pile, picking out the best ones for dehydrating or into bowls, and dropping the rejects with the snipped stems for composting. We worked for about an hour, hour and a half, before my daughter went in with a filled bowl, to start supper while I kept working on the rest of the spinach.
The filled screens were left on the roof of the kibble house to drain for a while. They went into the sun room when it started to rain a bit, though we never got more than a smattering.
I’m hoping to be able to set up more batches to dehydrate out of this, but it depends on how well it works in the sun room. I’ve got the light I used to keep transplant trays warm on for the night, plus the ceiling fan. Tomorrow we’re supposed to get really hot, which means the sun room will be even hotter. I’m hoping that means they will dehydrate fairly quickly, and I can set up at least one more batch.
As for the rest, we might blanch some for freezing if we can’t use it up fast enough, but mostly, we plan to just eat it. :-D The girls have been looking of recipes for things like spinach soup to try, or maybe make another batch of their modified palak paneer sauce. We don’t have paneer, though.
I’m rather happy with our first garden harvest – and with being able to have one so early in the season!
While it may have taken a long time to clean it all, we were most entertained.
By skunks.
We had a whole parade of them, coming and going, including the mama and her babies.
All SIX of them!
I don’t know where she’s getting them all from! She started coming by with two. Then we saw her carrying a third. Today, she showed up with five – or so we thought. I took some video and, after I uploaded it and watched it, I realized there was six.
If you wish to see the video, click here. :-)
Gosh, they are so adorable! They came back several times, including just to run around an play.
As for the other skunks that showed up, I did end up stopping to take a hose to them. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see them in the kibble house, but I could hear them, and they were not getting along. It turned out that only one of the containers had kibble left in it, and they were all trying to get at it. Then there was the one greedy guts that just wouldn’t stop eating.
Oh, and a question I had was answered. In the mornings, when I would go to refresh the cats’ water bowls, I would find one of them with kibble half dissolved in the water. It was always the bowl closest to the kibble house, but they’re far enough away that it couldn’t fall in by accident, as I had assumed was how it got into the heated water bowl, when we were still using that. The skunks, of course, use the water bowls, too. This evening, I saw one of the skunks come up to a water bowl, drink some water, then basically pick its teeth with its claws before drinking some more.
The reason it isn’t good for skunks to eat kibble is because of how their jaws are hinged. But they’ve got that figured out. The skunk was getting kibble stuck in its teeth, and was using water to get it out. The kibble would then fall into the bowl it was drinking from, for me to find in the morning.
They’re smart little buggers!
They also made what could have been a long and dreary job quite fun. :-)
The Re-Farmer
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Change in plans (and fire update)
Plans for today have changed a few times! :-D
But before I get into that, we had some activity in the feeding station yesterday evening!
Two pairs of deer came by – but they were NOT together! They kept fighting each other and chasing each other away from the feed. I do try to spread it out, but by the end of the day, there isn’t much left.
I managed to get some video, since I had to use my phone to take the pictures anyhow, and put them together. I’m trying to move away from YouTube, so I’ve uploaded to Rumble. Please let me know how this works for you.
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They were really cool to watch!
Anyhow…
I had considered going to my mother’s church this morning, to have our Easter basket blessed, but the church was needing to have people register and so on, in advance, so we decided to skip it this year. At least they had it this year. Last year, it wasn’t allowed.
So we were to assemble our basket today and just bless it ourselves. I did want to take advantage of things being open to make a run into town. I was going to do it in the afternoon, but I got a phone call from my brother. He and his wife had found a new recliner chair small enough for my mother and wanted to bring it over. I agreed to meet him and help assemble it, in the afternoon.
Which meant I headed into town earlier today, then went straight to my mother’s town to meet my brother before we headed to her place together.
The main thing I wanted to do today was get a second battery for the baby chainsaw. I also brought in the little corded chainsaw we found a while back. It should hopefully just need to have the chain sharpened. Otherwise, it should just need a new chain.
After starting a work order for the chainsaw, the lady tried to find a battery for me. After confirming they had none in stock, she went to the Stihl site to check their inventory.
They had none.
Zero.
Anywhere.
Which I suppose makes sense. Most people buying a battery operated tool will order a second battery so they can set one battery to charge and continue working with the second battery. This little thing has a matching little battery, so a lot of people buying these would not have a matching battery already and be getting a second one at the same time. Since this thing is so popular, they can’t even manufacture them fast enough to keep up with the demand, they would probably be going through more of that type of battery than the cordless pruner itself.
She did place an order for one for me, but has no idea when it could be fulfilled. They will call me when it comes in, though. Until then, I’ll just have to make do with one battery.
Since I was there anyhow, I picked up an extra bottle of oil for the bar, plus an extra chain. These fall into the category of “better to have them and not need them, then need them and not have them!”
Once the little electric chainsaw is in cutting shape again, it will be enough to meet most of our needs. We won’t be taking down any big dead trees with it, but it will go a long way in helping cut up the already fallen ones to make them easier to clear away.
That was taken care of rather quickly, and I had time to visit the beach for a little while.
The ice fishing shacks are long gone, but the ice is still thick enough for people to walk on it, and do a bit of ice fishing without a shack.
Then it was off to my mother’s town. I made a stop at the grocery store there, because I remembered seeing them carry the same type of deer feed and bird seed we usually get.
Not today, it turns out. All sold out! We at least still have some deer feed left, and the birds like that, too, so it can wait a bit. :-D
It did give me a chance to pick up a few things for my mother that I noticed she runs out of very quickly.
Then my brother and I met up, heading to my mother’s and surprised her with a new non-electric reclining chair to replace her old arm chair that she’d been complaining about. Of course, she had nothing nice to say about it, complaining that it was too big (it was the smallest they could find!), or that she didn’t need it, etc. The complaining was less than usual, however, which tells me she was actually very happy with it! :-D I am hoping she will be able to use it to sleep on, every now and then, as she still has breathing issues when she sleeps, and being slightly upright should help her with that.
So that worked out well, and we even stayed for a short visit. Then we loaded all the packing materials, and my mother’s old chair, into my brother’s truck, so my mother had nothing to worry about. Since the chair needs to be further forward, to have room to recline, than her other chair, things needed to be shifted around, and she now actually has slightly more space to walk around than with the smaller chair. :-)
On the way home, my route took me past where the recent fire was.
I am happy to say that the house tucked in the trees I was concerned about untouched by flames. There’s a drainage ditch that cuts through that quarter section, and it acted as a bit of a fire break that kept it from spreading to another house in the same quarter. The only thing that burned was open field. It was “just” a grass fire.
Driving around that quarter, however, showed that a LOT of that field was burned! When controlled burns are done, they tend to focus on specific problem areas, not entire fields. I could see where it had burned out of control, and the tire tracks from the emergency vehicles going in.
It was after I’d turned onto our road that I saw just how far it went. Plus, oddly, there was a burned out car in the middle of the field. ?!? Yes, farms tend to collect old cars, but they don’t leave them in the middle of fields they grow crops in!
As I got closer to the quarter we are on, I saw where the fire had actually jumped the road to our neighbour’s field. It didn’t go much beyond the ditch, thankfully. Another thing to be thankful for; the renter plowed the field he’d grown corn on. It would have acted as a fire break, since there wasn’t enough fuel available.
What I also saw was that the fire had actually burned past the fence, into the quarter section belonging to the younger of my brothers. Not far, thankfully. His quarter is mostly hay, so there was plenty of fuel available for a grass fire!
Which means the fire reached less than half a mile from our place, and my brother’s.
So thankful that no homes were lost!
Meanwhile, while I was away, the girls took care of assembling our Easter basket. Well. Except for the stuff that needs to be kept refrigerated. :-)
Looking forward to celebrating Easter tomorrow!
I hope you are, too. May your Easter be a blessed say of peace and great joy.
The Re-Farmer
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Planning ahead: when to harvest sunflowers
This post is to follow up on a comment from My Home Farm about sunflowers. They’re doing some awesome things on their property and Victorian era house, so do head over to visit their website and YouTube channel!
On learning we were planting sunflowers, my mother had made a big deal about how the birds were going to eat them all. She had planted sunflowers in the garden in the past, and told me they never had a chance to get any, because of the birds.
Well, I know that isn’t quite true, since I remember as a kid, pulling sunflowers out of a head and eating them, inside the house. So we obviously managed to harvest at least one seed head! :-D
The sunflowers we have planted are intended to be used as bird feed over the winter, though we will certainly eat some of them ourselves. To do that, however, we need to be able to harvest and preserve the seed heads before the birds eat them off the plants!
In looking up how to do that a while back, I found this video.
After watching this, I am thinking that my parents may have left the seed heads out for too long, before trying to harvest them.
Any seed heads we harvest will be hung up in our basement to dry.
Right now, our giant varieties of sunflowers are still developing their seed heads. We haven’t had issues with squirrels or mice, but the deer do seem to enjoy them! Of the original planting of 2 varieties of giant sunflowers, we had about a 50% loss. Some simply didn’t germinate, but most were lost to deer. A third variety of giant sunflowers were planted to fill in the gaps, and almost all of them came up, with a few later lost to deer. It should be interesting to see if they will have enough of a growing season left to produce seed heads we’ll be able to harvest, too. We do intend to plant sunflowers again next year, including trying some other, unusual, varieties. We intend to plant more of each, with the expectation of losses, but will also try to fence things off to keep the deer away, too.
But first, we’ll see what we will be able to harvest, this year!
The Re-Farmer
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After a wild and crazy night!
It was shortly after 1 am and, as I was lying awake in bed, something I was seeing finally soaked through my heat-numbed brain.
Lights.
Flashing lights, out my north facing window.
The sky was lighting up, over and over, hardly a break in between! Constant flashes of lightning.
My West facing window was open, but I heard nothing. No thunder. No rain. Hardly even wind.
But the flashes kept going.
After a while, I went to the main entry and watched the storm coming in through the outer door, before finally moving to the sun room.
Creamsicle and Potato Beetle were very thrilled to see me, and just begging for pets and cuddles!
While standing at the mostly-closed outer door, I heard a distinct crunching noise. Using the flashlight on my phone, I took a peak through the gap behind the garbage can, and could just see the tip of a skunk’s nose!
He waddled away, pausing to scream for a while, soon after.
Skunks make the strangest noise!
One of my daughters came down after hearing me go through the old kitchen, but with Creamsicle and Potato Beetle at the door into the sun room, she decided to go out through the main entrance.
After making sure we were clear of skunk.
We stood outside for a while, watching the sky.
Time and again, the entire yard was lit up bright as day!
Then it started to rain, so we went into the sun room. After a while, my daughter went back into the house, through the main entry, making sure to prop a sawhorse in front of the outer door (we still haven’t been able to finish fixing the frame on that!), to keep it from blowing open, while still being open enough for the cats to come in for shelter.
I remained in the sun room, watching the storm through the outer door, when my other daughter came to join me. She was just telling me about how she had checked the weather radar, and the main part of the storm looked like it was passing us by, but we were still getting warnings for hail… when the hail started!
Then the wind pulled open the outer door, sending the saw horse flying. Even though I was inside, I immediately started getting hit with rain, so I quickly closed up the inner door, and continued watching through the window on that.
The video is much MUCH darker than it actually was outside.
Creamsicle was very happy to be inside the sun room, with me! He kept trying to get my attention while I took photos and video so, after a while, I put the phone away and just cuddled him. He was in heaven, giving me all kinds of hugs and kisses!
Then Potato Beetle got in on the action, and soon I was holding both of them, and watching the storm!
The storm passed by rather quickly, and I was soon able to get the outer door set up with the saw horse to keep it from blowing open again, then went inside. Once inside, a quick check on Facebook found I was not the only one up at almost 2am, posting about the storm!
One of the pages I follow is a local weather group, and they posted an image showing the hundreds of places lightning was detected on the weather radar. The storm itself, amazingly, split just before reaching us. Most of it passed by to the North, and a tiny bit passed us by to the South. What we got was the less severe gap in the middle.
Wow.
So when I headed out to do my morning rounds today, I did a more thorough check for fallen branches and see what other storm damage there might be. There was quite a lot branches to pick up. Only two were live branches, though. The rest were already dead. The elm tree in front of our kitchen window lost so many tiny dead twigs, I didn’t even try to pick them up. I’d need a rake to get them all.
I was happy to note that there was no substantial hail damage to any of the garden plots. I did, however, have a wonderful surprise in the squash.
Two of them have suddenly bloomed! These were not there yesterday, and I really was not expecting to see flowers while the plants are still so small.
These are in the second, larger bed that was transplanted later, and they are doing much much better than the others. The long row in the back that was planted at the same time is doing all right, but not as well as the wider bed. The first bed I’d planted, that got frost damage in spite of our covering them first, is still struggling.
Of the three pumpkin mounds, one of the ones that had a packet of 3 seeds planted in it, now has a second seedling sprouting. The mound that had the packet of 5 seeds planted it in has a first seedling just starting to break ground now.
This late in the season, the only way we’ll get ripe pumpkins, I think, is if we have a late and long, mild fall.
Which could happen. We’ll see.
The surviving first planting of sunflowers have also made a very noticeable increase in growth.
No hail damage on anything planted in the old garden area. No deer damage, either.
It wasn’t until I was almost done my rounds that I found the one tree that fell during the storm.
It’s one of the dead trees I need to clean out, anyway, so this actually saves me some work! :-D
With the heat wave, our weekly checking of the root cellar has provided useful information already. With the possibility of building a cheese cave in there, a few years from now, we are looking for a temperature range of between 7C – 12C (45F – 55F) and a humidity level in the 85-95% range, though some types of cheese require different temperatures. As of this morning, the root cellar was at 17C/62F, and the humidity was at 88%. It was the same last week, too. So for most types of cheeses, it would be too warm. It also is not as consistent as it should be. There is an air vent that goes straight outside, with nothing but window screen mesh to keep the bugs out, at the end. I’d tried partially blocking it, but enough of a wind gets through that it blows out whatever is used. It might be worthwhile to add some sort of vent covering that can be opened and closed to help keep the temperatures from fluctuating too much.
Meanwhile, the heat wave continues. We’re already at 29C/84F (“feels like” 33C/91F), with a predicted high of 31C/87F (humidex: 36C/96F). Heat alerts remain. At least the high water and flood alerts have stopped for now, though we have more thunderstorms predicted overnight, so that might change.
Heat or no heat, we have really got to get the counter moved out, so we can put in the new stove. With the old stove, we’d already stopped using one of the elements, due to sparking when it was turned on or off. The girls, who have taken to cooking and eating at night rather than during the day, have noticed other elements have started to spark, too.
It’s going to be dreadful, and take hours to accomplish, but it has to be done.
Installing the stove itself will be the easy part. Juggling the dining table, chairs, shelves, the contents of the counter, and the counter itself, while still leaving room for the old stove to be pulled out, and the new stove to be moved in, is the hard part.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 