Tuesday 28 July 2015

... little stinkers!

Hello everyone,

As you probably know if you have read this blog before, we live out in the country in eastern Ontario, Canada. 

There is abundant wildlife all around us. Just last week we even had a bear come calling and it checked out my compost bucket (but thankfully left it alone).

We have two dogs, both retired service dogs, Yellow Labrador Retrievers, brother and sister. They love it out here. The female, Amber, especially as she is an adventurer. When we let them out she will go bounding off into the trees to see what she can find. At night one of us goes out with them to be sure there is nothing lurking out there that could cause trouble. So far, so good. Nothing at all has happened to either of them.

We were in Burlington, Ontario to attend a family function this past weekend and we took them with us. We stayed at Frank's parents house, right in the heart of Burlington. We were sitting in the back garden after dinner. The mosquitoes had gone and it was a lovely evening. Then, suddenly Amber got up and dashed around the back of Dad's shed. Her brother, Teally, followed. Both came out the other side almost immediately snorting and rubbing their faces on the grass. Teally was actually frothing at the mouth.

What had happened? I am sure you have already guessed. Sprayed by a skunk.

They have managed to live for several years here in the country and nothing has happened to them but their first trip back to the big city and they get nailed.

We bathed them three times that night. Toothpaste lathered up and rinsed off with tomato juice. Then peroxide mixed with baking soda and dish soap. We did that one twice. After we had got them washed, Amber saw the skunk again and off she went. You have no doubt already guessed what happened. She got sprayed again.  They say that Labs are one of the smartest breed of dog. I have to tell you after this experience, I have my doubts. She got washed again and both dogs slept in an enclosed porch overnight. 

The next day we had a 5 hour drive back home with 2 stinky dogs in the back seat. 

I called out Vet who has recommended a product called Skunk Off shampoo. Frank has just thoroughly washed the both of them with it. We will see how well it works. Frank says that the spot on the lawn where he washed them really smells bad so we can hope that he has washed off all the oils off them and the smell will dissipate outside. Stay tuned for the results. We will see how they smell after they are dry. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for visiting. If you know of any foolproof methods for getting rid of skunk smells, I am all ears!! Cheers.

Friday 24 July 2015

... green beans

Good evening everybody,

The green bean are growing a treat out in the garden and when I checked them today found that there was a decent amount ready to be picked. I do find it very interesting that I planted the green and yellow beans on the same day and yet there are no yellow beans ready to pick at all. 

I have a lot of bean plants out there and I am hoping to get quite a lot from them, in fact, enough to freeze to supply all our beans for the year.

In the past I used to weigh the beans to make many many individual little packages, blanch them and then put them in little bags to freeze. It was hugely labour intensive. Frank made a suggestion this year that I thought was truly brilliant. He said "why don't you just freeze them on a cookie sheet like you do with the berries?" Why not indeed?

So this has now become my new method. After picking the beans I cut off the tops and then dumped them into the sink for a good wash. 



After that it was into the pot of boiling water to blanch them. My farm journal says 3 minutes from when the water returns to the boil.



Drain through a colander and then immediately into a bath of ice water.



I again drain them, very thoroughly, and then lay them out on a wax paper lined cookie sheet and pop them into the freezer. I really try to keep them separate on the cookie sheet so they do not stick together when they freeze.



When they are frozen solid, I package them up in a large zip top bag clearly labelled. I will just keep adding to this bag until it is full and then start another one. Because they were all frozen separately I can just remove the amount I want for a meal from the bag. Simple.



Well that is all for me for tonight. Thanks so much for visiting. Cheers.




... leftover night

Hello everyone,

If you have been reading my blog for any length of time you already know how I feel about wasting food. I believe it to be totally unacceptable. Period.

In order to prevent that sort of thing from happening at our house, we have what is known as "leftover night". It is regularly written on my menu calendar.

We are probably like many other households in that there is often something leftover after a meal. Maybe it is some veggies or some potato or even some meat.

About once a week, and certainly no longer than every 10 days, I have a good look at everything lurking in the refrigerator and I clean it out. And we make a meal out of all of it.

Tonight will be one such night. At the moment there are some roasted potatoes and carrots, a couple pieces of roast chicken, about 6 BBQ ribs, a small bowl of salad, a container of chicken gravy, some crudite and some hummus and a couple other items. It may well sound like a hodge podge of food but it can all be transformed.

The chicken can be cut up in the heated gravy along with the potatoes and veg. We can have a starter of the bowl of salad along with the crudite and the hummus with the cold ribs on the side. That will almost completely clean out my refrigerator and absolutely none of that food will go to waste. None of it will be as "pretty" as the original dish was but it will all still taste great and that is the important thing and still be good for us.

Give it a try for a week or so and see just how much food waste you can prevent in your kitchen. You will be surprised just how easy it is.

Thanks for visiting. See you again soon. Cheers.

Thursday 23 July 2015

... fly fishing

Hello everybody,

This may come as a bit of a surprise, especially to those of you who actually know me, but I have taken up the art and sport of fly fishing.

I had never taken a liking to fishing in the past but then I watched a show about fly fishing and there was just something about it that caught my attention. I decided that I wanted to give it a try.

Then a very sad and unfortunate thing occurred. The father of my very dear brother-in-law Ernie passed away. After the funeral Ernie said that he wanted me to have his dad's fly rods as he thought it would make his dad smile to think of me fishing with them. I was so touched at his kindness and thoughtfulness.

So today I gave it a try. A friend of mine, who knows how to do just about everything, gave me some lessons to teach me the basics. We went down to the river, waded in wearing my running shoes (yes, waders or even high boots would have been nice) and we fished for an hour or so. In that time I caught about a dozen fish, all of which went right back into the river. A few of them were large enough to have kept but we did not keep any today. 



 

I have to say that I immediately fell in love with this sport. I said already that it is an art in addition to being a sport as there is such a grace and elegance to it. I am hooked.  :)  

I will be back at it again soon, this time, I will be looking for dinner.

Thanks for visiting. Have a great day. Cheers.

Friday 17 July 2015

... one perfect berry

Hello everybody,

It is a rainy day here in Ontario. We know that truly horrific weather (humidity) is on it's way so Frank and I were out in the garden doing some work. Frank was tying up and suckering the tomatoes and I was removing all the runners, again, from the strawberries. Boy are they prolific little things!

As I was working my way along the rows, something caught my eye. It was bright red!

It was one single perfectly ripe strawberry from the June bearing bed. I have been trying to remove all the blossom from those plants but I guess I missed one. I picked it, cut it in half and Frank and I shared it.

Utterly delicious. It tasted like a hot summer day!

This is why I grow my own food. For moments like this one. You cannot get anything fresher or more perfect than when you grow it yourself. Never a drop of chemicals on it and yet it was absolutely perfect looking.

In that same thought, all our beans are flowering like mad and we expect to see some little baby beans on them soon. 

The scarlet runner beans are also flowering and that bright burst of red is so cheerful.

The courgettes are growing a treat and I picked a small one to have with a salad for dinner tonight. We have 9 plants in total. The 6 in the raised bed all have little courgettes on them. The 3 in the open ground have nothing yet. We will pick them when they are small so it is easy to stay on top of things. I hate when you miss them and before you know it, it is the size of your leg!

Most of the tomatoes are flowering and several of them already have tomatoes about the size of plums. My mouth waters just at the thought of that toasted tomato sandwich!

I am working on a side pathway that will run along at the end of the first row of raised beds. When I have the pathway finished, we will order in more lumber and continue making beds. I have a couple of flats of brassicas to plant out in those new beds as soon as they are done. I may also plant a crop of carrots that I can protect under some row cover and straw in the autumn and of course lots more spinach.

Well that is it for me for today. Try to stay cool when this humidity wave hits. Thanks so much for visiting. Cheers.


Tuesday 14 July 2015

...figs

Hello again.

I am back with one more post for today.

A couple of years ago I was at a garden centre and happened to spy a plant that I thought I might like to try. I am completely certain that I am just like many other gardeners in this habit. We look at a plant, really wonder if it will survive where we garden but then decide to have a go and buy it anyway.

We gardeners are eternal optimists you know.

The plant I purchased was a fig.

Now as you know, I live in eastern Ontario. Canada. Where it gets pretty darn cold over the winters. Figs are definitely not native here.

Completely disregarding all these things I bought the little plant and brought it home. It spent the summer outside where absolutely nothing happened. I brought it into the house for the winter. It sat in a bright window and did nothing all winter. 

Then this spring I got a bit of a shock. It suddenly dropped all it's leaves. I though to myself that I had somehow killed it. 

But amazingly enough, I did not kill it. (After some research I have found that I should have removed all those leaves myself.) It began to grow out a new crop of leaves and then the most amazing thing happened. It began to grow out a fig. There is only one of them but it is there. At this writing it is about an inch long and too cute.


I have transplanted it into a larger pot and it seems to like it. I also moved the location outside to the front of the house where it gets all morning sun and then it is in shade from early afternoon. It seems to like that also. I noticed that it is now beginning to show signs of new growth as well.


So you see, it pays to be optimistic. It may have taken two years to produce that wee little fig but that does not matter. It is the pleasure in knowing that I can do it and if it does ever reach full size I am going to thoroughly enjoy eating it.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day. Cheers.



... cabbage white butterflies and spinach

Hello everybody,

The weather has been vile in this part of the country. It has been hot and humid. Like a lot of other people, I cannot tolerate this kind of heat. Most of the work in the garden has ground to a halt. I can only get out there early before the real heat of the day sets in and then I have to hide out in the house.

I have been putting in a new pathway beside my soft fruit boxes. It will make mowing the weeds that much easier. I have spent the last week clearing the area of the aforementioned weeds before laying the landscape fabric and the stone. I worked under an umbrella the entire time with the sweat pouring in puddles from my face. To add insult to injury, it is now deer fly season and the little monsters are everywhere. I will post some photos when it is finished. Nothing to exciting as really, it is only a pathway.

We are planning to put in some addition raised beds in a little while and I have started some brassicas to replace the ones that SOMETHING ate.

I have now transplanted them into 4" pots and they are sitting in front of our house basking in the sunshine. Here is the thing that I find amazing. The Cabbage White Butterflies have found them anyway, tucked right against the house. And the little beggars have of course laid their eggs and the teeny tiny little caterpillars are munching away on the leaves as you can see.


In reality it is merely cosmetic damage as there are not enough of them to seriously affect the plant. I sat down this morning and checked every single leaf on all the seedlings and picked them all off by hand. If I had planted these out into the garden bed I would have covered the entire bed with row cover until the plants were really well established and thriving. It did not occur to me that they would find them by the house. Lesson learned.

I harvested the last of the spring planted spinach last night. It was just starting to think about going to seed so I caught it just in time and absolutely none of it was wasted.


We had a terrific spinach salad for dinner with mushrooms and a creamy garlic dressing. No more spinach now until we plant out some seed for a fall crop as it is just too hot.


Well that is it for me for the moment. Thanks for visiting. Cheers.






Tuesday 7 July 2015

... a vegetable comparison

Greetings everybody,

It is going to be a real stinker of a day here today. The humidity at 7:00 am was already nasty. 

I was out in the garden just now watering. The Weather Network is calling for rain today, thunderstorms in fact, but the garden will need to make it through another miserable hot day before the rain comes. Actually the plants love the nice hot weather but they need water. And here is where the problem lies.

Our soil is very sandy. VERY free draining. That basically means very dry. So, we water.

Now here is where the comparison part comes in. As you know we have installed 5 raised beds in one corner of the garden. They will be the first of many but it was at least a start. We filled those beds with what is called triple mix. This is a combination of top soil, compost and well rotted manure. I have to admit that this is NOT the best triple mix I have ever bought as it contained about a million perennial weed seeds and an astonishing amount of pea stone. I daresay it was mixed up in their yard and that is how the stone worked it's way in. I will not order triple mix from them again but will see what other options they have. But I digress....

The vegetable that I am comparing today is Courgette, or Zucchini.

I started them in pots and planted them all out at the same time. Some went into a raised bed and some went directly into the garden soil. I was very interested to note that the plants in the raised bed are far and away larger and thriving. All the plants are doing well but the difference is very evident. Other than their growing medium they have been treated exactly the same. No extra fertilizer and they are both watered when necessary, which is pretty much every day here unless it actually does rain.

Here is the plant in the open ground. There are three of them so I measured the middle sized one to be fair. The total plant is 11" in diameter and the largest leaf was just 4".



Now, compare that with the plant in the raised bed. Sorry the picture is not better but I had some difficulty holding the tape measure and the camera. :)
The plant is a very healthy 28" and the leaf is 10".



I believe that this comparison is definitive proof of what organic growers have always said. Feed the soil and the soil feeds the plant. The triple mix may not have been a great batch but the addition of even that little bit of compost and manure have made the soil just that much better for the plants. I have been convinced of this all along.

Thanks so much for visiting today. If you live in my neck of the woods I hope you can keep cool today. Cheers.

Sunday 5 July 2015

... kiwi and the "other" veg patch

Hello again, second post of the day.  :)

I completely forgot about posting about the other area of the veg garden, so here it is. 

Back in 2012 we cleared a section of the garden and I planted it out with veg for Frank to eat while he was living here building the house. It was great that year but then we did not plant a garden the following two years.

We cleaned it out somewhat this summer, well at least part of it anyway, and we planted it out.

I have stuffed one section with the rest of the tomato plants. Gosh, I bet there are 60 to 70 of them in the entire garden now! I plan to can the tomatoes as well as making sauce and of course, the toasted tomato sandwich. The plants are small but they have a couple of months to put on some growth and hopefully produce some fruits.



Another good sized section we filled up with squash. Some are bush and some are a vine type but they can grow all over wherever they like. There is also another space where I tucked in a couple of tows of beans from old seed that I found. If it does not come up, not a problem.



In addition to the strawberries we planted this year and the aggressive raspberries, we have three hardy kiwi plants. This year we had a late cold snap and all of the growth was killed off. Fortunately the plants are in fact quite hardy and have begun to grow again. There will be no fruit this year but there is always next year. Gardeners are eternal optimists, are we not?  :)



Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Thanks for visiting with me. Cheers.

... growing raspberries

Hello there everybody,

It is another really horridly hot and humid day here. I simply hate this weather as it makes you feel like you have been wrung out. I work a wee bit in the garden and then have to come inside the house for a while to cool off. We do not have air conditioning but because of all the insulation the house stays somewhat cool.

As I have mentioned before, when we bought this land one of the first things we did was start on the kitchen garden. We both love raspberries so we put in a good long border full of several different varieties of raspberries and blackberries. We even dug up and transplanted our raspberry canes from our old house as they are an exceptional variety. Do not ask what they are as I have no idea. I bought them over 20 years ago via mail order from someone.

Then we started to work on the house and did not have the time for the last two summers to do much of anything in the garden. We are paying the price for that now, in a huge way.

Raspberries are really energetic little fellows. They love to grow where you have planted them but they also LOVE to explore. And they do this by sending out underground runners which pop up all over the place and turn into new plants. As you can see from this photo.
 

Now if you are doing the Permaculture idea and do not mind their wandering ways, that is all well and good. For myself, I like to keep things a bit more under control. For one thing, this garden is bursting with perennial weeds. I am sure you can see them in the photo. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to get in there and get the weeds out. And you know the old saying ... "one years seeding is 7 years weeding".

I began at the other end of the garden this summer, cleaning out the bed as best I could. These are the canes from the old house. To begin with, they are not nearly as adventurous as the new canes we bought. I have managed to get them a bit under control but the bed is still full of couch grass.


I have made the decision to dig up all the rest of the bed completely and transplant all the raspberry canes into a part of the field behind our house. We will create a sort of hedgerow out there and we can leave space to tuck in other hedgerow plants like hawthorn, elderberry, etc. They can go as crazy out there as they want to. I will leave the bed empty for the rest of the summer and fall and every week or so I will go at it as the weeds attempt to regrow. Hopefully I can get it cleaned out. If all goes well, I will transplant our old canes into the cleaned out area, separating them as I go to make more plants. Then I hope I can get rid of the couch grass where they are growing now. A huge task I know but I do not see any other way to do it. I will do additional posts when we actually get to the planting part.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Have a great day. Cheers.



 

Saturday 4 July 2015

... fish for breakfast

Hello everyone,

Yesterday my dear hubby Frank did something that he has wanted to do for many years. 

He went out and bought himself a little fishing boat. It is not new. In fact it is a 1989 Springbok. Came with a trailer and the motor. Really good shape. Runs well and the price was reasonable. 

As soon as he got it home, he went fishing.

This is definitely one of the benefits of living in the country. Where we live we are surrounded by dozens of small lakes. Frank loves the idea that he can get out there and provide for the family by "bringing home the bacon" or in this case, the fish.

We cooked it up for breakfast this morning and it was utterly delicious.

I find when you have something wonderful like a piece of truly fresh fish you do not want to mess about with it and try to do something fancy. Treat it with respect as it was once a living creature and cook it well. Here is what I do.

I dredge each piece of fish lightly in flour, shaking off any excess.


The fellow from whom Frank bought the boat lives out in the country as well and he keeps laying hens. He gave us a carton of eggs as a gift. They are all different colours as he keeps many different varieties of chickens. Just beautiful.
 
I break up one or two eggs into a pie plate. Just look at the colour of that egg yolk! Not like an egg from the supermarket.


I have a separate little pile of fine breadcrumbs on a piece of wax paper.

After dusting the fish in flour they go into the egg to be well coated on both sides.

 Then they go into the breadcrumbs.  Finish breading all the fish pieces.



I fry them in melted butter. You want them nicely browned but do not overcook them. These only took about five minutes as the pieces are not very thick.

I just shove the fish to one side and crack a few eggs right in the same pan. Just look at those yolks.

And here is the finished product, all ready to eat.

 
When you decide that you want to try to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle it can mean taking advantage of what nature has to offer to you. In this case it means going fishing. Before he bought the boat Frank would either fish from shore or go out in a friend's canoe. We do not consider the boat to be an extravagance but rather an investment like any other piece of equipment that we have around here. Frank will likely fish once a week and as you can see two small fish were enough for us for a meal. And a delicious meal at that!

Well, that is all from me for today. It is a very hot and humid day so I am spending time inside starting the next round of seeds for the garden. Do visit again soon. Cheers.
 

Friday 3 July 2015

... garden update

Hello everybody,

Gosh, I had no idea that it had been so long since I posted. Time gets away on you sometimes. We had been away for a family gathering and I had to work like mad to get caught up when we got back.

The garden is doing quite well so far this year.

The strawberries have settled nicely into their new home and are thriving. I have been removing the blossom and the runners from all the June bearing plants. They keep trying to send out more runners and they can be hard to notice in the straw mulch. We are allowing the Day neutrals to bloom if they want to and I very much hope that they will so we can have at least a few berries.


The rhubarb has taken the transplanting into their new homes and each of the plants is growing a treat now. They have never put on this much growth before. Just goes to show you that you need to provide the right soil conditions and away they go. We will just let them grow this year and harvest next year even though there is probably enough there to take a few pieces. I prefer not to stress the plants at all this year and will wait for my rhubarb pie until next year.


The five raised beds that we have installed are all doing great.
 
  
There are two beds of the heirloom tomatoes. We have not staked any of them as yet but they are incredibly sturdy plants. The stalks are almost as thick as my thumb and the plants are only about a foot tall at this point. Frank believes that is because it is pretty much always windy here and he thinks that has helped them to toughen up. 

This first bed is inter-planted with spinach and lettuce which is also doing well. We should be able to start to harvest the spinach in another couple of day which is just as well since the hot weather has arrived and it will soon bolt if not picked.


 This tomato bed has Swiss Chard down the middle. I would normally just cut it off close to the ground to allow it to re-grow but the tomatoes will need the room so we will just remove the entire plant when we harvest.


This is the bed of beans, both green and yellow. The empty spot is where I planted out the beans that had not germinated when I pre-germinated all of them. As you can see, they were dead seed as they never did come up. I have tucked three small kale plants in the space. I plan to harvest them leaf by leaf for salads so will not need to worry about the fact that they would normally get far too large for that space.


This bed contains the root crops, the beetroot, carrots and parsnips. You can see that the beetroot is growing a treat now with lovely healthy plants.


The carrots are smaller because they are much slower to germinate than the beetroot but they are healthy and getting bigger each day.
 

The parsnips are very very slow to germinate, sometimes taking up to three weeks, which they did this time for me. They are quite small but making progress. They have a very long growing season so we will need to protect these as they will not be out of the ground until October.
 

The last bed contains the runner beans, courgettes and cucumbers. They have all put on amazing growth since planted. I am sure I will soon begin to wonder what to do with all the courgettes but I do love to eat them. We are growing both the dark green variety and a yellow summer squash also.
 

There is another area of the garden that I have been working away on in addition to these raised beds. It is not at all pretty but hopefully it will be productive. I will make that the topic of my next post.

Thanks a lot for visiting with me. Do leave me a comment if you wish as I love to hear from you. Cheers.