wildfires

Yeah, probably

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So many people have been struggling with their gardens this year.

As always, there would be a combination of factors. Where we are, we had a weird spring with hot days, but cold nights, resulting in it taking longer for the soil to warm up enough for seed germination . We also had drought conditions and heat waves, while other areas had very cold summers. All of which we’ve had before.

Then, there’s this.

We’ve had bad wildfire years before, too. I remember in one of our early gardening years, we had drought conditions and also a lot of wildfires. There was so much smoky in the air that particular matter collected on our glasses. I would wash mine off with soap and water, but one of my daughters just used a cloth, as usual, not realizing what was on her lenses. She ended up scratching her lenses, both inside and out, before she realized what has happening.

So yeah. We’ve had it all before.

This year, however, has had the most fires in 30 years. We currently are not under any air quality warnings, but the fires are still burning. As I look at the live fire maps, we still have 94 fires that are “uncontained”, 13 are “being held”, and 14 that are “contained”. We’ve had 4 new fires in the last 7 days.

That’s just one province.

The mountains in south and central BC, all across the territories and northern prairie provinces and into Ontario, is a mass of fires. Then there are the more isolated fires in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. Every province and territory in Canada, except PEI, I think, is dealing with wildfires.

So while we’ve had all these conditions before, affecting our ability to grow food (small or large scale), when it comes to the smoke, this year really kicked it up a notch.

Between that and… politics, shall we say… food prices are looking to keep skyrocketing.

It’s been a rough year all over.

The Re-Farmer

Silly kitties, and under warning

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Just a little while ago, all our phones started going off with alert warnings. Our province has declared a state of emergency due to wildfires. We are fortunate in that there are no fires near us, but several towns and a small city to the north have been, or are in the process, of evacuating. The closest fire is actually to the south of us, and much closer to my sister’s farm, but it is listed as “under control”.

As you can see from the live fire map, there sweeping line of fires runs across the prairies. That area is pretty much all boreal forest. The red ones are all wildfires. The orange ones are prescribed fires.

While we are in no danger where we are at the moment, we always closely monitor the wildfire situation, every spring. ’tis the season, unfortunately.

One a more “normal” note, here is something to smile about.

Sir Robin the Brave, it turns out, can squeeze through a gap between the raised bed cover and a corner of the raised bed walls!

The bigger kittens are all doing rather well outside, taking advantage of shade. The littles in the sun room are getting extra help with ice packs and frozen water bottles, frequently changed out, because they thaw out so quickly.

The littles are getting big, and much more active! It won’t be long before they’re making their way out of the cat cage and exploring. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Captured, and orange sun

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We caught a lovely pair on one of the trail cams this morning!

We’ve got them on the driveway cam, too, running down the road, but the fawn is so small and hard to see against the gravel, it was barely visible.

The girls and I checked on the cats and garden beds this evening. While we were out in the main garden, they called my attention to the sun.

The camera had a hard time showing just how brightly orange the sun is right now. We could look right at it, too, with no discomfort at all. The weird thing it, it doesn’t really seem that smoky out. Certainly not like when we had wildfires all around us during the major drought we had, two years ago. Thankfully, this year we’ve had some decent moisture, though we certainly can still use more rain.

While we were out, we picked a whole bunch of spinach. I’m going to have to remember this variety, because even with the heat we’ve been having, they’re only just now starting to show signs of bolting. So we will probably pull the entire bed of spinach soon. I’ll probably transplant more onions into it after that, since I still have quite a few that need to go into the ground.

I also ended up picking a whole bunch of rhubarb. We don’t use it a lot, but my younger daughter has a recipe for rhubarb cake she got from my sister (who doesn’t even remember giving it to her!) that she wants to make. The girls had gone in by then, and they checked the recipe for how much rhubarb it uses – four cups! – so I went and got another bunch of stalks, just to be sure we had enough.

With how messed up my sleep has been lately, I’m thinking of going to be really early tonight. Hopefully, I’ll get some actual sleep and get an early start tomorrow, and try to make up for the lack of productivity today!

The Re-Farmer

Smoked

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The winds died down today, which means that the smoke is back. Today is one of the worst days I’ve seen yet. Usually, we don’t get visible smoke in the yard until the end of the day, but that’s how we started, today!

In going to pick up the meat pack we ordered, I drove to a town north of us. The fires are all well to the north of us. By the time I got to the exit for the town, I could barely see past a hundred yards or so!

The parking lot we met at was near a bridge. The river, thankfully, is not as low as I thought it might be, with our drought, but it is still much lower than usual. The smoke is actually thicker than it looks in the photo. By the time we finished chatting and said our goodbyes, my throat was completely raw from the smoke.

Once I was back on the highway, I just had to pull over to get another photo. Again, the camera on my phone automatically cleans up the haze, and it was much denser in real life.

On the plus side, we got our meat order, and we’re quite happy. The individual packages were smaller than we would see in a grocery store, but we also got a larger variety of cuts. They change up the package, depending on the time of year. For the summer, they try to include things for the BBQ (though they do have a separate BBQ package, too), while in the winter, they try to include more things like stewing beef. It’s all frozen solid, so for now, we’re just thawing out the sausages and peppettes to try, first.

Around November, when they do their butchering, they’ll have half or quarter beef available. They have to figure out new pricing for this year, due to the increased costs of having to buy feed for their cattle this year, but I am hoping we’ll be able to get a quarter beef for the winter.

The Re-Farmer