Fairfield goes to work

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the newest member of our family, Fairfield.

Perhaps I shouldn’t say newest. When Matt heard that we were getting a rototiller from my cousins, he said, “Knowing your family, it’s going to be ancient.” I scoffed. Then I had to eat my words when we picked up the tiller from my cousins.

Turns out, they got the tiller from one of my aunt’s friends. This friend was my grade 4 teacher, Mrs. Fairfield.

Matt usually takes responsibility for naming, but he’s still hung up on the tiller’s advanced age, so his only suggestion was Grandpa Joe. I think Fairfield is more appropriate given the tiller’s history and its usual work site. Although I’m not sure Mrs. Fairfield will be flattered. (Auntie Anne, perhaps don’t mention this to her).

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I was a bit anxious about tilling the weedy soil. Would any tiller make it through? Let alone our senior model with its small tines?

We pulled off the tarp that has covered a large section of the garden for more than a month. It looked pretty weed free.

We had covered another section with a piece of carpet that I’d unearthed. I was surprised to discover that the tarp did a better job of killing the weeds than the carpet did. The carpet just made them flat and pale.

We haven’t given up on the carpet, though. We’ve moved it and the tarp over to the other half of the garden. Our supervisor needed an appropriate monitoring post, obviously.

The rest of the family was hard at work. Matt and Wiley mowed the weeds that hadn’t been under cover.

Then Matt and Fairfield went to work.

And they kicked butt.

The rototiller totally worked. Even when they got into the grassy bits, Fairfield powered through.

There was still some manual labour required. Fairfield broke up the soil and the weeds pretty well. But Matt and I did have to go through with the hand cultivator and the pitchfork and pull out the roots. It was much easier though, thanks to Fairfield.

It’s looking like a garden. We actually have space to plant a few things this year (we’re going to leave the other half covered with the tarp and the carpet for the rest of the season, probably).

As of the end of the weekend, we had the dozen tomato plants and four red pepper plants that you’ve seen before, plus a row of green onions, zucchini, yellow bush beans, beets, acorn squash, butternut squash, pie pumpkins and rutabagas (Matt threw that suggestion out as a joke, so of course when I saw the package of rutabaga seeds I had to buy it).

My most important Home Goal for 2015–the vegetable garden–is actually happening.

Thanks to my cousins for passing along their tiller (and thanks to Mrs. Fairfield for passing it along in the first place).

What are you growing in your garden? Any advice for growing rutabaga? How about tips for running a rototiller? How old’s your rototiller? Feel free to introduce it to Fairfield in the comments.

Irises

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

This is going to be our third summer on the farm. Our flower gardens are finally looking like gardens, not just random plants stuck in a big expanse of dirt.

Gardening takes work and it takes patience, but oh it pays off. It totally pays off.

The ferns that I transplanted last year have all sprouted, we’re going to have a ton of peonies, and our irises are amazing.

When I was growing up, my parents had some beautiful irises in their gardens: blue, peach and dark purple. When I was setting up the gardens here at the farm my parents were taking out the last of their irises–the purple ones–and they gave me a bunch of plants. The stalks have taken root and they’re blooming prolifically. I love the frilly showy blossoms.

Out on the turnaround, one particular plant has given us two-tone blossoms. Light purple on a couple of stalks and dark purple on the rest.

I especially like the purple veins of the buds.

You might recall that the farm came with a whole bunch of plants still in their nursery pots. Last year, I finally stuck them in the ground. This spring, I’ve discovered that some of them were miniature irises.

They must be happy to be out of their pots because they’re blooming like crazy.

I’ve been feeling like the gardens are finally established this year. Plants are filling out and blooming. I’m focused more on maintenance rather than actually building the gardens. It’s nice to see the fruits–or the blooms–of my labour.

How is your garden growing? Do you have any irises at your house? What colour are they? Who else is an iris fan? What’s blooming at your place?

Planted!

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It may not look like much–especially considering that there’s still carpet lying over the weeds–but the first plants are in the garden.

We’re still waiting on our hand-me-down tiller to arrive, but that didn’t stop Matt from coming home with a dozen tomato plants and 4 red pepper plants. So that meant I got out the pitchfork and went to work to dig out the weeds in a corner of the garden by hand.

It was just a small corner, but it was home to two heaping wheelbarrows-full of weeds. The roots didn’t go deep, but they snaked along just under the surface making a thick dense mat. I really hope the rototiller is able to break up the ground. It didn’t take me as long as I thought to pull out the weeds by hand, but doing the whole garden by hand will not be fun.

So you’re still seeing a few weeds and grasses and roots strewn through the dirt. But you’re also seeing tomatoes and peppers.

The garden has begun!

How is your garden growing?

Getting ready for the great gardening weekend

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

This is it, folks. The Victoria Day long weekend. The first long weekend of “summer.” The kick off to gardening season in Canada.

And I have ambitious plans.

First on the list is mowing our ~~jungle~~ grass. Every spring, we’re late getting our grass cut. The first year, we’d just moved to the farm and didn’t have a tractor. The second year, the tractor wouldn’t start, thanks to a broken fuel pump. Last year, it took us a couple of weeks to get the mower deck attached to the tractor (the level ground that is required to get all of the pins to line up perfectly does not exist at the farm).

This year we’re delayed because we need to sharpen the blades. I’ve done it before, but always with my Dad and always on much smaller mowers. For the first time taking the blades off our deck, we want some help, so we’re waiting until my Dad can come to supervise.

Next on the list is giving my forsythia haircut. (Dad, can you bring your hedge trimmer when you come over, please?)

After that, I need to weed two more flower gardens–the biggest ones, of course.

And then there’s the vegetable garden.

I know this was supposed to be my one and only outdoor project for this year. Obviously I’m multi-tasking with grass and forsythia and flower beds. Just trust that those things are necessary too, okay?

I’m anxious to get started on the vegetable garden, but I’m not going to be able to do as much as I had hoped over the next three days… and not just because of the other things on my list.

The biggest vegetable garden task this weekend is going to be the fence. We have a nice weathered wood fence. It looks great, but it’s not that helpful for protecting the garden from the local wildlife. I need to add some chainlink, and I need to build a gate. ‘Cause if I leave the door wide open, it doesn’t matter how much chainlink I have on the rest of the fence.

I had hoped that that I’d be able to break up the sod too this weekend, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

The tarps that have been spread over the garden for the past few weeks have not succeeded in killing the weeds. They’ve just turned them a bit pale.

Our farmer tilled our fields last weekend. I ran after the tractor one evening and asked him if it came in a smaller version–small enough to fit inside the ring. He shook his head and said, “I’d have to do that one by hand.”

As the tilling continued, I looked enviously at the tractor every time it drove past the ring.

I had reserved a heavy-duty rototiller from a local equipment rental shop (because neither my Dad nor Matt’s want to sacrifice their rototillers to fulfill my garden ambitions–spoilsports), but it was surprisingly expensive to rent. Matt’s and my cheapskate sides came out, and I canceled the reservation.

I had heard a rumour that one of my cousins had a rototiller he wasn’t using. Turns out he doesn’t need it anymore, and we can have it… in a couple of weeks. So we’re waiting on our new-used (and better yet free) tiller before we tackle the sod.

Even without the rototiller, I think we have enough to keep us busy… for all three days of this weekend.

Wish us luck, would you? Hopefully I’ll survive the weekend and be back next week with an update for you.

In the meantime, let’s keep each other motivated. What’s on your weekend to-do list? Are you gardening? Or hoping to garden?

Forsythia of ’15

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It’s another disappointing year for our forsythia bushes. There are just a few yellow flowers and a lot of bare branches.

There are a lot of buds along those branches, so I think we’ll have a bumper crop of leaves. My plan is to give the forsythia a really good haircut this weekend. I hope that will help to reset it. I’m pretty sure that forsythia set their blooms fairly early, so if I prune too late, I’ll cut off next year’s blossoms… Not that I’m too optimistic about our chances of that given our experience the last two years.

I like tracking the onset of spring by comparing our forsythia every year. The timing of this year’s blooms, such as they are, are in line with two years ago:

2015: Beginning of May
2014: Middle of May
2013: Beginning of May
2012: Beginning of April

What’s blooming at your house? Do you have any tips for encouraging forsythia blossoms?

Black thumb

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I have a bit of a gardening theme for this week’s posts.

To set the scene, let’s first establish that I am not friendly to plants.

Remember that beautiful yellow pot and the ivy I was so proud of keeping alive?

Yeah, it’s not so much any more. Matt’s hear-no and speak-no monkeys are wishing they could cover their eyes like see-no.

Upstairs, my poor aloe has realized she’s doomed and is trying to make a run for it. Harry, the other cactus, is hanging tough… for now.

And outside, where Mother Nature is available to counteract my influence, things aren’t going much better.

I had such high hopes for my pussy willow sprouts.

But over the past week, they too succumbed to my black thumb.

So all this is to say, don’t expect too much out of this week’s gardening posts.

Snapshot

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

A clutch of spring flowers in the forest grove outside our bedroom window.

Woman vs. tarp

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Baxter here with a garden update for y’all.

At least that’s what Julia says we’re making. It doesn’t look like any garden I’ve seen before.

Two weekends ago, Julia lit the “garden” on fire. I used to love that spot of the field. The long grass was super, super sniffy. But now it’s gone. And I got to say, I didn’t love the fire. First, it was very, very big. I thought it was going to reach out and singe my furs. I’m a short-haired fellow. I don’t have many furs to spare. Second, I got all tangled up in the hose which was not very comfortable. And third, smoke makes me sneeze.

I went into the garden to check it out last Saturday. It’s not as sniffy as it used to be. But it didn’t make me sneeze either. I rolled around a bit ’cause that’s what I used to like to do in the long grass. It felt different, but it was okay.

Julia was not very happy after I rolled, and she decided to cover up all the ash.

She and Matt got out the World’s Biggest Tarp. Matt probably should have stayed with her in the garden ’cause it took her a long time to get that tarp unfolded. I dunno what’s so difficult. She’s got thumbs!

Even though she used the World’s Biggest Tarp, it still wasn’t big enough for the garden. Then she decided to use the big roll of carpet she found beside the garden. It wasn’t frozen anymore–I walked all over it and sniffed to make sure–but she still had a really hard time moving it.

Julia vs. the carpet was more interesting than Julia vs. the tarp, but she didn’t make a video of that one. I was sunbathing, but I opened my eyes every so often to watch.

I got up when she went to get Wiley. I keep an eye on that tractor. It took them a couple of tries, but they finally got the carpet into the front end loader. Then Wiley carried the carpet around the fence and dumped it in the garden. He’s pretty helpful even though he doesn’t have thumbs either.

It still took Julia a long time to lay the carpet all out, but eventually it was spread out in the garden. Even though the carpet was wet and dirty and buggy and had plants growing in it, it was nicer to lay on than the pokey dry weeds.

Julia wasn’t any happier when I laid on the carpet than she was when I rolled in the ash. After my afternoon walk with Matt, he took me from the front door right into the bathtub. That was not my favourite part of the weekend. Honestly, what’s the matter with a few smudges on my furs!

The carpet and the World’s Biggest Tarp and two other little tarps still aren’t enough to cover the whole garden. Plus, some of them blew around in the wind, and we had to spread them out again the other day.

I think we’re going to be working in the “garden” for awhile yet. Hopefully it starts to look like a garden soon.

Spring flowers, bulbs and sprouts

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

A colleague at work gave me flowers last week.

A little more wilted than you thought?

They’re actually hand-me-down flowers. Her husband gave her a beautiful pot of spring blooms: hyacinths, mini-daffodils and pussy willows.

She had no desire to plant the bulbs now that the flowers are finished blooming, so she passed the pot on to me. I think the flowers will make a beautiful addition to our gardens, but I’m most excited about the pussy willow.

One of the stalks has sprouted.

Pussy willow is my favourite shrub. I’ve always wanted one. I know they root fairly easily. I hope I can keep this stalk alive, so that it will grow into a bush.

Anyone have any tips for growing pussy willow? What’s your favourite spring flower? Do you have bulbs at your house?

Not too much off the (tree) top

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Once upon a time, more than a year ago, the hydro company came through and marked a bunch of trees for trimming.

It had been a few months since the ice storm, and we had seen how hazardous the trees could be to our wires. Despite my desire to preserve our power, I admit preserving our trees was more important to me. The hydro company was willing to send someone to meet with me, so of course I took them up on that. We did a walkabout talking about what trees to keep and how much to cut.

My biggest concern was the pines along the road at the front of the property.

The suggestion was to “top” them–cutting off their tops. I was not in favour. I was equally opposed to option 2: cutting the branches off one side. I am willing to take the risk, cross my fingers and bank on the trees being far enough from the wires.

Hydro guy seemed willing to listen to me and adjust his plans. But I couldn’t be sure. The proof would be in the actual trimming.

Except the trimming didn’t happen. The orange Hs stayed on the trees, and the trees kept growing all through last year.

Hydro finally came through to do the cutting a few weeks ago.

The good news is the pines–and most of our other trees–stayed. Some lost a fair number of branches, but they still resemble trees.

The bad news is there’s a lot of brush lying around.

When I met with hydro guy, he said brush would be chipped on-site. Some was chipped, but a lot is still there.

The bigger logs we’ll pick up and use for firewood. But we’re going to have to do a bit of unexpected clean-up. Not ideal.

At the back of the property we have a hydro line that runs through the marsh about 20 feet back from the road. Hydro did a lot of cutting back there. We’re not going to bother cleaning up the wood and brush, but I would like to repair the wire fence, which hydro crushed.

So on the not so good side, we have some clean-up to do.

On the good side, we kept most of our trees. We have a bunch of new firewood. And we have less chance of losing power in the future.