What happened To Fall?

Last October I was butchering turkeys, getting firewood, canning, and winterizing the garden.  All things I still need to do this year.    I sure hope this doesn't stick.  It's awfully deep for a first snow though.  Almost two inches...

In other news, I'm still canning.  Down to the crabapples- probably two batches left to do, and any odds and ends I buy.  I'm just doing my canning/recipe posts on my recipe page now, The Country Kitchen, rather than here and a shorter post there.

I'm also writing a fictional little blog, Wendy's Colony, about what I think we would do if the apocalypse started now.  It's a fun writing experience, and it makes me think about things a little differently.

It's also moose season.  We only have calf tags this year, so I guess my heart really isn't in it.  I'd rather be bird hunting.  Especially since Smitty is now The Best Dog Ever!  From day one my boy has shown me he has all of his Grandpa's instincts, and so many more.  He doesn't have his Grandpa's stomach though- not yet anyway.  The girls are thankful for that, as they get a treat when we get back.  If I could just convince him to bring the birds to me, instead of just pinning them to the ground.  Honestly though, at 4 months I wasn't expecting much more from him than to go for a quad ride, so I am super excited for the future.

Here's hoping for a bit of Indian Summer before winter really sets in.  I still have lots of work to do.

Rhubarb-Raspberry Jam

Herdog suggested I try a batch of rhubarb-raspberry jam, and am I ever glad I did! This could possibly be the best jam I have ever tasted. Absolutely delicious. Not too sweet, not too sour. Just perfect!

While out picking the rhubarb, the mint smelled yummy, so I picked a couple of sprigs to toss in.

Yield isn't great on this recipe- barely two pints.  Definitely worth doing again though.

The recipe I started with here, and what I ended up doing here.

Pinky and Smitty.  'Why aren't we allowed in the garden?'

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Pinky and Smitty, napping on my bed.  She's a tub compared to him.

Gardens and Puppies

My first sunflower, in greenhouse #2, about to blossom.  I am very excited.  This is the first sunflower I've grown in the north to even think about flowering.  Growing them between the cukes though- bad idea.  They're all entangled in the vines.

Smitty, still so tiny.  He packs a wallop though, so don't let that tiny frame fool you.  He'll knock you on your butt (while you're trying to avoid stepping on him, of course!)  Puppies are doing very BAD with house breaking, although I'm blaming that on my very BAD children, who think they're too cute to keep penned up in the sunroom, and then forget that they're responsible to WATCH them while they're roaming the house.  At least they know not to mess in my room.

Pickling cucumbers in greenhouse #2 are coming on strong.  While only enough for a few jars at a time, I'm still very pleased with the results.  The marketmores (eating) cukes in greenhouse #1 are just starting to catch up, and I should be harvesting the first ones  in just a day or two.  Tomatoes are starting to turn yellow, ears are forming on the greenhouse corn, tiny squash abound.  I'd like to see the peppers doing more than just flowering, but all in all, I think it's coming along nicely.

Peas are still coming in the garden, but slower now.  Beans are crazy.  Mangels have nice large visible roots, definitely a success, and their leaves look delicious.

Huggie beans and mangels

We've got maybe another week left of volunteer potatoes, and then I think we'll just continue harvesting to eat the potatoes we planted on purpose.  It's much easier on the back to just dig a bit at a time, even if some of the potatoes are a little small.  Carrots are still sad and tiny, but I'm actually thinning them out this year, eating as we go, so maybe the rest will get to a decent size.

The beats in the greenhouses are doing as well as the mangels outside, but in the garden, they're still tiny little things. 

Garden corn has just started tassels.  The asparagus beans are barely surviving amongst them, and no fruit.  I think they were too shaded too quickly.

Lettuce is still going like crazy, with a few forming heads (that never happens here) and a couple starting to bolt. 

Cabbage has woken up, and is starting to form heads now. A lot of bug damage though.  I don't see any worms, but lots of grasshoppers this year.  Do grasshoppers eat cabbage? Still little happening with the broccoli and brussels sprouts.

A walk in the pasture revealed lots of perfect little puffballs.  I picked a bucket full for supper last night.  Yum!

What's that flower?  Cranberry suggested Jerusalem Artichokes when she was up visiting.  There are two patches- one in the garden beside greenhouse #2, and one beside the woodshed, where a former flower bed was.  (The flower bed also has a patch of horseradish, so anything is possible).  The plants are easily 5-6 feet tall, and just started flowering.  I haven't dug up any roots yet.  Most Jerusalem artichoke on google images shows a more defined, daisy like flower, although some do have more petals.  These do seem to have a lot of petals by comparison.

Home Again

We got back last week, Wednesday night, and itès been busy, busy, busy since.

Picking beans, cutting beans, blanching beans... About 9 gallons so far. My back aches. My legs ache. My thumb aches. Why do I love beans? We'll be well fed and organic this winter!

My hugelkultur bean bed is an overgrown tangled mess of beans. The dry beans in the centre are still flowering, which means I can't let any of the green beans go to seed yet.

While I was gone, Husband, the Littles, and my parents all picked beans. They all agreed, I planted too many beans! lol.

The greenhouses have filled out.  I'm yanking the squash plants out of greenhouse #1.  The corn is touching the roof in there, with tassels on.  That's the sweet corn.  No ears yet.  Peppers are filled out and lush, with tons of flowers.  Green tomatoes everywhere.  Pickling cukes are producing, and I canned two jars so far.  Beets and mangels are huge. Peas are still producing. I feel like I'm in some alternate universe where the garden overproduces. It's amazing!  And most amazing- the weeds did not go crazy while I was away!  Except the perennial bed.  It's a disaster.

We're out of potatoes, so I thought we should just dig up a couple of volunteers for supper the other night, before the tops die off and I can't find them. 5 plants produced this bounty. That's more than we got out of 4 feet of hilled rows last year. We'll keep harvesting these to eat fresh until I run out of volunteer plants. There might be enough to get us through til fall.

The puppies grew like bad weeds while I was away.

That's my boy Smitty, laying with his mom. He's still smaller than the rest, but just as spunky and adventurous.

Wonder and a bunch of her little ones. 5 of the pups left to go to new homes yesterday. Brownie, Belle, Miley, Giligan and Goldie. That leaves us with one black female, Shaniqua, and two tan males, Shaggy and Sam, who need homes. And they're just 8 weeks old today! Pinky will be staying with us as well.

Our trip was good. Lots of visiting, family we haven't seen in a while. No surgery for #1. It was found to be ineffective, and they've stopped doing it. He's three letters shy of being legal to drive right now. They've recommended rigid contact lenses. Because they'll scrape his eye lids and annoy him, his brain may tell his eyes to slow down, which might get him over the edge. and practicing the letter charts, at a distance, to help strengthen the muscles. We have to go back in six months so he can be retested. Oh joy. Winter driving on a long trip. I think I may let Husband take him on that one.

 The Littles did great while I was gone. Grandma had to wake them up once, and Husband had to do a few repairs, but they survived, the critters survived, the garden survived. All is well.

#2 returned from camp on Saturday.  He was a little home sick, but now he's missing camp.  Go figure.  He figures he grew a couple of inches, but I don't find it as noticeable this year.  Probably because he was already towering over me when he left.  It's good to have him home!

And Another One Bites The Dust

I am beginning to think the universe is trying to tell me to give up on technology.  I am now using #1's lap top connected to my monitor, because #4 knocked it on the floor a couple of weeks ago and cracked the screen.  (My computer still hasn't been replaced.  And will now be on hold longer, because #1's is more important- large screen and set up for his visual needs.)  I had been using the kids computer, which has become infected with the ransomware virus.  If Husband can't get it sorted out, it'll have to go in to see a tech.  What a pain in the arse. 

Shaggy- napping on top of a blanket, on top of the paint cans, on top of the wood stove platform.  King of the hill.  The puppies have discovered a hole at the back of the garage where they can crawl underneath to beat the heat.  Getting out though- not so easy.  There's a small hole at the front where they can see everyone, but can't fit through.  It takes some cajoling to convince them to turn around and come back out through the back.  Turds.

The peas are producing nicely.  They've reached the top of the fence, still flowering, still growing.  I've convinced the cucumbers to start climbing.  They're also flowering.  Beans are flowering like mad, with the first little pods starting to appear.  Blueberries are coming along, although it doesn't look like they'll have a good season.  That late frost may have killed off some flowers.  It's a bit early yet, but the lack of green berries concerns me.  Raspberries are just starting to produce.  Rhubarb is still coming along.  And I am leaving.

Pinky running towards me

#1 and I are headed south on Wednesday, in my new car- 1998 VW Beetle- diesel.  He has appointments with the University of Waterloo for assesments, visual exams, technology enhancements, and info about possible surgery.  Then we'll spend a few days visiting with family and friends.  If the heat doesn't kill us.  Or the traffic.  The Littles are staying home to deal with chores.  Wish them luck!  They have Grandma and Grandpa next door to keep an eye on them, and Husband home at night, but the responsibility of farming falls to them.  I hope they're ready for it.

And of course they'll have the wee beasties to attend to as well.  Or entertain them.  The pups are becoming more dog like every day now.  Happy and rambunctious.  It's hard to believe they're only six weeks old.

We've been working on more hugelkultur piles, with the small trees that were trying to take over the back field (where the pumpkins and squash are out of control!) and more manure.  I think the manure levels will be kind of high compared to wood.  We still haven't got the chicken coop cleaned out!  These are more of a 'where are we going to compost this stuff' huggies, rather than true hugelkulturs.


And that's about all of the news here.  I'll be enjoying a couple of cooler days before heading south into the heat wave.

Camp & Chaos

Just a little update...

A trip to the hospital and an x-ray confirmed that my hand was not broken.  Still it took almost a week for the swelling to go down.  They gave me some serious antibiotics, claiming it was infection causing the swelling.  I was bad and quit taking them after a couple of days.  They were making me sick.  I don't believe it was infected anyway.  I think it was the vein being cut wasn't allowing the blood to drain out of my fingers.  Almost good as new now, just a bit of a sore left to heal up.

Cranberry and co have been up visiting for a bit.  Great to see them, and we've been taking some extra play time (in other words, shirking the chores).

Blueberries are starting to ripen.  I haven't started any serious picking yet, just a mouthful here and there.  Rhubarb needs picking again, and raspberries are barely getting started.  It's like the seasons are out of order.

#2 and I spent the night before he left for camp in the hospital.  He hurt his arm helping grandpa place a beam for a shed.  Poor kid.  Not broken, but very sore, probably sprained.

We met the bus at a gas station not too far from our house.  He had two switches to make before getting to camp.  Thankfully he posted to facebook that he made it there, because I HAVEN'T HEARD FROM HIM SINCE!  If he doesn't call by Sunday, I will be calling his CO to find out what's going on!

Almost caught up with the weeding.  See the TALL stuff?  Popcorn!  It's been warm this year, and it's doing great!  One more row of beans to weed, then the onions, and the garden should be back to a manageable state.  Then just to get the greenhouses caught up, and the perennial bed.

See the big empty space?  That's the brassicas.  Few and far between this year.  It's been warm.  Go figure.  The beans are flowering, we have tiny cukes in greenhouse #2,the potatoes are flowering!!  That's a first for us up here!  We're eating peas, leaf lettuce and romaine, and have some lovely little green tomatoes on the way.

These white flowers popped up last year, on the far side of the garden.  They're back this year.

No idea what they are, but pretty.  The previous owner's wife worked at a nursery, and was quite a gardener.  She died several years before he sold the house, and he wasn't much of a gardener.  I figure she's the reason things magically appear in odd spots.

We took Pinky and Gilligan with us to pick up #2s kit supplies before he left.  They were sleeping peacefully when we got there.

And isn't that the cutest greeting when we got back to the car.  Before anyone gets upset- evening, windows down, and we were parked right outside the hangar.  No danger, just cuteness.

The pups are 5 weeks old now, and displaying lots of personality!  I haven't made any definite decisions, but Pinky, Gilligan, Goldie, and Shaggy are in the lead- you know, the troublemakers.  We've been leaving the sunroom door open so the pups can go in and out as they please.  Gilligan was the first to go missing.  Disappeared for about three hours, then emerged from behind the wood shed, yawning, looking for his mom. 

Shaggy, Goldie and Pinky disappeared for about 5 hours.  I was in the garden, and I thought I had heard something on the far side.  #1 went to investigate, but didn't see anything.  The Littles looked all over the house and yard and couldn't find them.  We walked past the yard and the pond, into the trees, trying to find Wonder's path to Grandma's house.  (She goes to visit them on her own every day, and I figured the pups had tried following her).  No sign of them.  #4, Ebony and I cut back to the road and started walking toward the house.  #4 was ahead of me, and turned around to say something, and noticed we were being followed.  I don't know where they had been hiding, but they were trotting along behind me like it was a normal thing to wander off in the woods.  Little buggers.

Update & Huggies

Summer has arrived, and it seems that moms taxi is on the go non-stop.  #2 got accepted to camp after all.  Not what he applied for, but rather, military band at Blackdown.  Totally unexpected.  His C.O. worked it out for him.  Awesome.  So I have been shopping to fill his kit list before he leaves next week.  New glasses are on the way for #2 and #4.  I still don't see why they make the darn things so flimsy.  I took the boys to a movie yesterday, Canada Day celebrations at the park on Sunday, and a friend to pick up on Tuesday to go horseback riding.  I'm looking forward to a week at home to catch up with the weeds!

Hugelkultur bed is growing great.  Check out the hay field beside it.  I can barely see the currents in that mess!  But keeping up with the garden weeds is more important.  On a serious note, we have about 300 bales of hay to pick up today.  The farmers are out cutting already!  At this rate, they might get two cuts this year- which would be amazing in our climate.  Some years it's iffy if we're going to get one!

Next year's huggie is under construction.  The goats have found the perennial bed, so we are working on a short fence up the north side driveway.  The tops of the fence post trees and all the branches are now the bottom layer of the huggie, covered with green manure.  This will end up being more of a lasagna gardening huggie, lol.  I figure it will work just fine, and it means we don't have to move the manure twice.  And all of the nutrients will leach into the garden soil over the winter, rather than under a pile in the pasture somewhere.

#1 rototilled between the potatoes for me, and started hilling, last week, before I got behind on the weeds again.

The mystery survivalist plants are lillies, eh?  This isn't the perennial bed.  This is the patch on the lawn that I transplanted them from a few years ago.  They came back, and they're flowering. 

There were three cranes circling overhead as I worked in the garden one day.  I only managed to snap a pic of one.

Puppies are doing great.  They're developing their personalities, wandering all over the house, wrestling with each other, getting under foot, starting to go outside, climbing on things, eating dog food, and generally wreaking havoc.  They bark when anyone comes in the door!  It's so cute, and funny!  I can't remember another litter ever doing that so young!  I found this one curled up in the bowl this morning.  Too cute.  Life with puppies is bliss.  (although a little stinky, lol).  My favourites change every few days.  The polar bears (whites) are currently winning.

Their mother is in trouble.  She has been eating chickens.  My little hens, to be precise.  While I couldn't blame her at first- feeding ten is really wearing on her- I adjusted the doggy stew, adding more protein, and the puppies started eating it as well as nursing- she hasn't slowed down on the chicks at all.  I hope she hasn't made it a habbit.  For now she is tied up when she is outside, until the chicks get too big to escape their pen.

Our heat wave (rotflmao) has broken, with a good dose of rain last night.  I know everyone is complaining about the heat lately.  We had a week of about 28-32°C.  It was really hot for us, with humidity!  It's almost never humid here. Down to 20°C today, but the forecast claims it'll be climbing back up all week. Better than dropping!  Rage on, Father Sun.  Lots of work to do in the north!

Happenings

Beans in the hugelkultur bed

The garden is coming along nicely now.  Still lots of weeds to pull, but we're making headway.  #3 is assisting with weed pulling for the first time.  #1 & #2 pulled just as many plants as weeds at his age, and with some things, still do.  I'm impressed with his efforts.

The beans in the hugelkultur bed are bigger and healthier looking than their counterparts in the garden.  Not that the garden beans look bad, it's just that obvious that they like the huggie.  Definitely more to come in the future.

The back field is growing weeds nicely.  I've only found one pumpkin so far, and no beans.  I'm going to try a little bag gardening experiment on it.

11 Pumpkins around the apple trees in the forest garden are doing well. I can't find any in the trees. Guess I should have marked a couple for curiosity's sake.

New apple trees are planted. I had eleven bags sprout this year, with several seeds in each. I didn't pinch off any yet. I figure I'll do that in a couple of weeks after they're settled in from the transplant.

Wild roses should be blooming in another day or two.

While the blossoms on the rose bush beside the house opened yesterday.

Puppies are growing in leaps and bounds, losing their hamster like appearance. They're still sleeping most of the time, but also starting to get up on their feet, and wrestling with each other.

Wonder is back to her old self mostly. She's still thin, but she's eating and drinking lots, and once the pups are asleep, she leaves them to join the family.

The chicks have adjusted to their move into the hen house. The turkeys are aching to get outside, but I don't trust them to stay on their side of the fence just yet.

Sharlotte and Shiloh have become best friends. It is so cute to watch them running through the pasture together, although I have to say, neither one of their moms looks impressed by it. Dorie is still huge, and still no new calf. Casper is finally staying on his side of the fence- although I'm not sure if that's because the grass has finally thickened in the pasture so he doesn't care, or if it's because he can't leave. 

And that's pretty much the news here in the north.  Hope all is well with you.

Wonder Mutts

Wonder had her pups on June 4th.  I looked out the window and saw her laying awkwardly in the middle of the lawn while Casper grazed around her.  I went out to deal with him, and heard the soft squeaks of the first three pups.  I have no idea why she decided to have them outside.

I scooped them up and brought them in the house.  She followed after a couple of minutes.  She had the rest of them inside and has been doing a great job with them.  Too great, I think.  The first day she only went out to pee once, for about 2 minutes.  She didn't  eat either.  They seem to be eating constantly, and she is all but skin and bones.  We're giving her extra protein, and I've started adding whey protein to the doggy stew pot.  The problem though, I think, is that she just doesn't want to get up and eat much.

The puppies though, are adorably fat.  There are ten all together.  2 black females, and one black male, with white toes, tips of tails, and patches on their chest.  There is one adorable brown female, with a black nose.  The whites are a strange sight.  They are so much lighter than Ebony's yellow pups, and all of Waldo's pups were black with white patches, (grandparents).  Wonder was supposedly a lab/bouvier cross, although she looks like a hound dog.  Perhaps they'll get super fluffy and turn out more bouvier looking.  Four of them are male, and two female.  I can hardly wait for them to grow and start developing their personalities so I can pick out my keepers.  For now I'll just sit and cuddle the little hamsters, lol.

Fires in our area are all listed as out, under control, or being held.  It's been raining at least a bit every few days, and the woods are greening up nicely now.

Busy in the garden.  Almost everything has sprouted, including every single weed seed out there, I think.  I'll be busy for awhile, trying to keep ahead of them.

Boomer

Remember this guy?

 That's our Wonder mutt in the blue collar, having a nap with Ruckus.  He was the last of Ebony's puppies to find a home in January 2011.

He's gotten a lot bigger since then!  And his name is Boomer now.  It suits him.

#2 is friends with a girl who is friends with the girl who took him home.  (It's a true story- it happened to the friend of a friend of mine...)

#2 told his friend, almost a year ago, to tell her friend, that if she ever wanted to give him up, to let him know.  She doesn't want to give him up.

However, after finding Bruno a new home (the dog who kills things just for fun), in the city,

#2 was kind of sad.  Not so much about Bruno.  The boys all understand that the only way Bruno could stay here was to be tied up all the time, and that is a very SUCKY life for a dog.  They're happy that he has a nice fenced in back yard and a new family.  But #2 was sad, because Bruno could not be our boy.

It's been almost a year, and we are all still hurting from the loss of our boy.

Waldo was the BEST DOG EVER.

So #2 asked his friend, again, how her friend's puppy was doing.

And her friend friended him on facebook.  And asked him if we wanted to come visit her puppy.

I didn't want to visit.  Our neighbour kept two of Waldo's daughters, and it hurts to see them.  But I told him to ask if they got him fixed.  They didn't.  He got the phone number, and Husband called.

They agreed to let us borrow him.  We can make puppies.  We can have a grandson of Waldo!

The very next morning, I noticed blood spots on the floor.  It took half the day, and I'm sure my girls were getting tired of me following them around, but I confirmed it was in fact Wonder.

And now we have Boomer as a house guest.

There's been a lot of sniffing going on, but so far, we haven't witnessed any action.

It's quite the experience.  We don't know if he remembers us, or having lived here, but he's settled in like one of the crew.

His mom, Ebony, growls at him at feeding time.  It's kind of funny, because our dogs have food down almost constantly, share bowls, and the only time Ebony ever growled at anyone for eating alongside of her was when she was ready for her puppies to get out of her dish and find new homes.  But she growls that low growl every time I fill a dish, telling him to back off.  Otherwise they get along great.

His sister, (Ebony's daughter from another litter, different father), thinks he's great fun to play with.

Wonder hasn't cuddled up with him quite like she used to, but they're getting there.

But the strangest thing has got to be the cat.  Lucky does not like dogs.  We picked him up off the street about 11 years ago, a mean lean scrapping street cat.  He used to beg for scraps where I used to work.  When we brought him home, he cornered our jack russel in the bathroom, growling, loud, like a dog, and I swear he was going to kill him.  He has smacked around every dog we've had since then.   Somewhere along the line he decided he liked Waldo, and he would curl up beside him on the floor, and even play with him.

                                                                           

So, imagine my surprise to find him rolling around on the floor beside Boomer.

 

Boomer does not have a cat at his new house, and was not interested in playing with Lucky. So Lucky just sat and stared at him.





He's a lot like his dad.  It's hard to see it every day. 

His long, lean body.  Curly black fur.  The white patch on his chest.

The way he barks when someone comes in.  Not really aggressive, but a very clear warning, that you don't belong here.

The way he plays with the other dogs.  He's the biggest, and the only male, but he totally lets them be dominant.

The way he climbs up on the couch or bed slowly, front first, and then dragging his rear end up behind him.  No jumping.

The way he stretches his huge awkward self out in the middle of a room, in the way, and makes everyone walk around him.

The howling.  I didn't even realize I missed the howling until I heard him.  Waldo was part husky.  The girls don't howl.

The way he just loves to be outside.  All of the time.  Even at -16°C.  The girls rush out, do their business, and rush back in.  Waldo loved to be outside.

The way he eats his veggies.  He likes potatoes, beans, and apples.  He took a carrot, but then didn't seem to know what to do with it.  Waldo ate everything, but he really loved a good carrot.  Especially one earned in the pasture by utter cuteness when he knew darned well those carrots were supposed to be barn critter treats.

The way he lays down with his back legs tucked up tight, like a rabbit ready to pounce.

He's a lot like his mom, too.  He has her face.  He must scratch and rearrange the blankets before he lays down.  He must squeeze in front of the other dogs, under your arm, 'pet me first!'  The way he wakes me up because he needs to go pee!

And on top of all that, yesterday one of the ducks was out in the yard alone.  He was way out of reach.  He went running.  But he didn't pounce on it and kill it.  He just stopped and sniffed and nudged it, and looked back at me as if to say this isn't supposed to be here.

It's been a pleasure and a curse.  He is absolutely great.  And hopefully he will soon realize that he has work to do and get the job done.  He is exactly what I want, and I am very excited for the future. 

But I am also crying every day again.  I miss my boy.  It hurts to see him every day, but just not quite.  I miss my Waldo.