Saturday 31 May 2014

Adventure #2, Skeeters, Phoebe, and Dash

Mid-April through Mid-May was a busy time for us. As you know (I think I mentioned this...?) Kim and I went to visit her grandparents for Easter weekend.  We had a great time, as always!

A week and a half later, I had another adventure: I took my first trip out of Canada! My employer sent me to a conference in Detriot. The conference was related to the software we use at work, and I went with one coworker (Dad calls her the "electric librarian" as she was an electrician before she completed her library technician diploma, and went on to get her MLIS). I had a great time, learned a lot, met some folks in person that I'd corresponded with at length over email, and got a few people interested in how we were using the software (related to displaying licensing restrictions for online resources). The city was bustling, as cities often do, though even downtown you could see that Detroit was suffering from its bankruptcy. The suburbs are even worse, of course, but I didn't venture out that far - all I saw of those were the many burned or crumbling houses along the highway to the airport. I got out for a walk downtown one afternoon, and my coworker and I went for a stroll along the waterfront another day. The conference was held at the Renaissance Center, which is the world headquarters for General Motors.







For more photos, and a bit more info, check this page.

Jordan and I also had a vacation - a week after I returned from Detroit, we headed out of town for 5 days. More on that in a future post - I still need to sort through the photos.

I enjoyed travelling, but I am happy to be home. We have lots to do this year, and I am excited to get started.

Here on the farm, the first hatch of mosquitos are hunting for a meal. The little buggers are fast!! I'm sure they will taper off soon, and we'll get a bit of a break before the next hatch. With the house lacking chinking, they get in through the cracks, so no matter how quick we are when we open the door, they manage to get in the house anyway. Needless to say, all of us are a skeeter buffet while we try to sleep.

Phoebe is back on the nest - she's been sitting for a week now. That gives us two more weeks to get the other chickens out, or figure out how to move the babes and Phoebs when they hatch. I'll try to candle the eggs tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to see anything, as they are moderately dark shelled (our girls lay brown eggs). I'm pretty sure she's got 9 eggs under her at the moment. Not all are hers specifically, but they all came from our birds. While we were away on Vacation Proper, I got Tessa to come check the chickens, and I hoped that by leaving the eggs in the nest while we were gone, one of the girls would get the idea and go broody. We had left Monday morning, and when we checked them Friday, there were 11 eggs, and 5 ladies on the roost with Foghorn. Hmmm. So I marked 6 eggs and left them in the nest. By Sunday, we noticed someone was missing from the roost at bedtime... Yup, Phoebs is in the nest again. Yay! So I switched out the eggs over the next three days so she is sitting on all fresh eggs. If everything goes well, they should hatch right around the collective birthday of our chickens: June 18th.

Also, Dash got adopted!!! A week ago today she went on a long car ride (well, about an hour) to live with her new family on a ranch. We miss her. Molly, unsurprisingly, does not miss Smash one bit, and has been hard at work, making up for 4 months of missed cuddles and silenced purrs. I think Zim is happy to be an 'only dog' for a while, though he still gets lots of play dates and training with Doodle and Pongo. And we're looking forward to reclaiming the living room that has been dominated by a kennel since mid-January, for now at least.....



I hope to get the majority of the garden planted tomorrow. I need to come up with a layout and decide where to put everything. Planning this seems so overwhelming (what if my plan sucks, and everything fails, and the soil gets terribly compacted, and the water pools/runs off all wrong.....) that I have to keep reminding myself: you can change it for next year if it doesn't work out. Just get out there and get it done, as the frost free date is fast approaching and there is NOTHING in the ground right now.



Tuesday 20 May 2014

Plant sale

Our local botanical society hosts a plant sale every spring on the May long weekend. I have been looking forward to this sale for months, hoping to get a couple sour cherry trees.

Well, May long was this past weekend, and while I didn't get the cherries I was hoping for the sale was not a complete bust. Instead, we came home with three saskatoon bushes and one Arctic Beauty kiwi.

(The saskatoons are in the blue square containers, and the kiwi is the tall one.  I found out yesterday that I will need two kiwis if I want to get any fruit, so I'll have to see if I can find another one. Live and learn, I guess!)

When we got home, I gathered all out outdoor potted plants in the greenhouse, and set up the auto-waterers.

On the bench are the saskatoons and kiwis, which are new this year, along with the smaller plants from last year: a black currant, a lilac (which has already put out lots of new leaves!!!), the flowers, and two herbs: basil and oregano, which I'm hoping will come back (I busted open the seed heads into their pots, and now they're getting water every day). On the ground are last year's lilies from a coworker and another black currant from this year.

Things are leafing out in the garden too. The rhubarb and the raspberries are growing again, and the strawberries are looking good too.



The seedlings are doing great too! A week and a half ago, we started 5 pumpkins, 2 zuchinni, and 27 pickling cucumbers. We always kill the cakes so I'm hoping that by starting almost 30 seeds, we should be able to nurse at least a few to fruiting.  

Is anything coming up in your garden?

Sunday 4 May 2014

Sprouts so far

The new seeds have been very quick to sprout!  Out of the 108 seeds I planted Tuesday, we already have 2 Amish paste, 1 azteca, and 1 black plum coming up for tomatoes, and 10 cabbage sprouts are up as well.  Wow!!





I am most surprised by the Amish paste; I didn't expect any of them to actually grow.  Well done, little seeds!!

It appears that the cranes won the battle for the field. I haven't heard the geese in the last two days, though admittedly, I haven't been home that much. The sun is out today, and the wind is starting to die down, so I'll be trying to spend some time outdoors today. I'll keep an ear out for another squawk-off, and I may let the chickens out as well.

We had an informal snow pool this year, betting on when the giant snow pile in front of the northeast corner of the house would melt away.  Dad bet May15, Jordan picked June 1, and I put my money on June 14. (Bear in mind that we placed our bets in the middle of February.)  Dad won, as the snow will be gone this week.

You can see that most of our other huge snow banks have been succumbing to the sun as well.

I can't wait to get into the garden!!!

Friday 2 May 2014

The Squawk-off

We got home late from some after-work errands last night, pulling up to the house around 7:30 pm.  There were birds all around us: swallows and chickadees in the trees, birdhouses, and power lines near the house; ducks and other assorted birds in the neighbour's pond; and in the field at the end of the road, just past the barn, were two cranes and two Canadian geese.

The cranes were to the North, on a little rise in the field.  I believe their nest is on the next property, which is fairly heavily treed.  The geese were on the road allowance, and we could see them clearly as we stood on the road in front of the house.  And all four were hollering at the top of their lungs.  The cranes stood tall, calling out loudly, and didn't move an inch.  The geese had their necks outstretched and their heads low.  I used to have geese (long, long, ago, and I'll never have them again) and I recognize this as their "serious" stance - they are ready for a fight, likely defending territory they have decided they want.

We watched for a few moments, then carried on hauling in the groceries.  I didn't get a video, for a few reasons: my phone was already inside, and it wouldn't have gotten a good picture anyway; I can't immediately recall where the video camera is; and there was frozen food and other activities to attend to.  I'll keep an eye out for them over the next few days, and I'll dig out the video camera tonight so I'm prepared if they put on another show for us.

I would love to have young cranes and young geese around this summer, but I'm not sure if they will both use this disputed territory.  I'm confident the cranes will stay, as they've been here for at least the last two summers, and seem to have an established nest nearby; however, they just might chase off the geese.  That doesn't upset me at all - these disputes occur daily all over the world, and I'm confident they'll come to some conclusion.  I'm just amused, and heartened, that they've chosen the neighbour's fields for this display.

In other quick news:
The last few days have been warm and sunny, and most of our snow has melted (yay!) so Jordan has let the chickens out while he's been home.  They've LOVED it - this is their first true free-ranging.  Wednesday night, I got home just after Jordan let them out, and all six wandered around and pecked at the new growth for twenty minutes, then fluffed themselves up and sunbathed in a dry patch in front of the barn.  As we watched, they all started falling asleep - or at least, that's how it appeared to us, as they rocked onto their sides, stretched out their legs, and closed their eyes.  Jordan's kindness was rewarded with zero eggs yesterday - they must have been too busy exploring!

Zim's class starts up again on Monday, after a two week break.  Kim and I have taken Zim and Doodle to practice at the school, so they've still improved while on break.

Jordan took down the collapsed carport yesterday; we now have a very large tarp, some long nails, and some broken metal poles.  I'll find a use for everything, so Jordan saved all the pieces for me.  (I'm such a magpie - just ask Dad, who used to have to empty out my pockets before we could leave the local Pick Your Part, because I'd pick up coins, rocks, fuses, springs, light bulbs, washers, trinkets... pretty much anything interesting I could find on the ground or in the cars.  And I don't think I'll ever grow out of that, because it comes in really useful sometimes!)

I started tomato and cabbage seedlings on Tuesday.  For tomatoes: 45 black plum, 18 aztecas (they did okay last year), and 18 amish paste (which didn't come up last year at all, and we're using seeds from the same batch - if they aren't up a week or two after the other varieties, I'll plant something else in those seed pots).  I also started 27 golden acre cabbages, in hopes that the early starts will be strong enough to survive the caterpillars that attacked last year's golden acre (the one that came up...).  I'll seed the red acre cabbages directly, as they did AMAZING last year (the four that came up...).  And, of course, I'll be protecting the seeds better this year for everything we direct sow - the birds ate 870+ carrot seeds last year, and the majority of the cabbage and lettuce seeds too.  Jerks (though I understand why they did it - if someone opened a free buffet next door, I'd probably just eat there instead of bothering to organize my own meals too!).  So I'll use some row cover once the seeds are in, at least until they've got a few true leaves.

In the next few weeks, I'll start pickling cucumber seeds as well.  I might find some other things to start, but I really want to focus on peas, pickles and tomato sauce for us this year. I had a quick discussion with Kim's family about bartering cabbages, so I'll plant lots of those - if nothing else, it will keep our bare dirt in the garden to a minimum, which will discourage the weeds.  We really need to come up with a better garden plan this year...

We took a  huge load of junk to the dump last weekend, and as the snow reveals more items we were to overwhelmed and exhausted to deal with in the fall, we've picked them up and found them a proper home (in the shop, barn, or trash can, as appropriate).  I find spring to be such a hopeful, energetic season - I'm excited to get our place cleaned up, fixed up, organized, and ready for another summer.

Are you excited for summer?