Six-month performance review

Posted on June 29, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I like setting goals. It helps me stay focused and actually accomplish some things. When it comes to projects around the house, my annual home goals are what I use to stay on track. I’ve learned over time that it’s helpful to check in during the year to see what progress we’ve made.

We’re halfway through the year, so it’s a good time to see how we’re doing on Home Goals 2015.

In keeping with my goal to be a little more flexible this year, I haven’t been super ambitious when it comes to projects and schedules. I have to say that as a result this year has been a bit more enjoyable, project-wise.

I also feel like we’ve been decently productive though. Here’s how we’ve done so far this year.

Master bedroom

With a little extra motivation thanks to the One Room Challenge, the master bedroom is done. I love it.

Basement art

I haven’t tackled this light-weight project yet, beyond buying a few frames and formulating some plans. This seems like a good indoor project once the weather changes.

Furniture

I haven’t made a lot of progress in this area either. I did buy a ladder/step-stool/chair that reminded me of my grandmother–and a lot of you of yours. Furniture shopping and building is another good fall project.

Vegetable garden

The vegetable garden has been front and centre for the past few months, and I’m thrilled with all of the progress we’ve made. It’s been on my wishlist since we moved to the farm, and it’s totally happening. The garden has been a tonne of work, but things are growing and we couldn’t be happier.

Beyond the vegetable garden, I feel like we’re a bit ahead when it comes to outside tasks for the first time since moving to the farm. Part of it is because I’m choosing to not worry about the rock piles and old flowerbeds that I want to get rid of. A bigger part of it is that we’re three years in, so the gardens that we’ve worked on since moving to the farm are actually starting to look like gardens.

So two out of four. We’re midway through the year, and we’re midway through my Home Goals 2015. Appropriate.

How are you doing on projects this year? Do you set annual goals? What do you want to accomplish in the second half of 2015?

Guess what

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I used to do guess what posts every so often. Always on Fridays. And I always revealed the answer on Monday.

It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these posts. In fact, it’s been more than a year. I’m doing one today, but it’s a bit different.

You see, I don’t know what this is.

We uncovered it in the garden.

It’s metal (obviously heavily rusted). It has a hole in the rounded end.

Anyone know what this might have been used for?

Garden update

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

Unlike Mary, Mary, I am not feeling at all contrary. I am feeling quite excited. Our garden is growing!

Matt and our rototiller Fairfield were hard at work again this past weekend, and they got the whole garden tilled (or at least the half that we’re using this year) for the second time. I weeded where Fairfield couldn’t reach and went over everything with the cultivator to pick out the last of the roots.

We still need some more chainlink for the fence, we still need a gate, and we still need to pull out the weeds along the rest of the edge (and of course there’s the whole other half of the ring to clear), but it’s already looking like a garden.

And we’re going to have a harvest.

The tomatoes are big enough that Matt had to put the cages around them. Blossoms are forming and even a couple of very small tomatoes.

Squashes are our main crop. First is the zucchini.

Then there’s the butternut, acorn and pie pumpkins.

In the middle of the garden is the beginning of the first of two rows of raspberries. I got them from my parent’s garden last weekend, and they all seem to have rooted.

What’s not doing so well are the bush beans. I don’t know what’s happening, but they don’t seem to be very happy.

Also not so happy are the peppers. I think maybe they’re not getting enough sun because they’re up close to the fence, and they were a bit shadowed by weeds.

However, one in particular has been grievously abused by two weekends in a row. First Fairfield uprooted him, and then I got a little too close with the cultivator and pulled him out again. Hopefully he recovers.

The crop that seems to be thriving the most are the rutabagas. I think every single teeny tiny seed sprouted. I still have no idea what one does with rutabagas. I’m going to need to figure it out, though. Look at how many there are!

Since taking these photos, we’ve also planted potatoes and lettuce. So much goodness!

There are no silver bells or cockle shells, but I’m not sure I’d want them. I’m more into edibles this year. Vegetable garden 2015 is happening!

Any advice on the beans or the peppers? How about some ideas for the rutabagas? Anything else we should consider planting this year?

Dealing with my hang ups

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Hang up #1: Plumbing makes me nervous.

Hang up #2: The hose by the driveshed lies on the ground and is super awkward to use. It drives me crazy.

Hang up #3: Less emotional. More physical. As in galvanized. As in the solution for hang ups #1 and #2.

Allow me to back up for a moment.

When we had our whole water system fixed during our first summer on the farm, my Dad had our contractor trench across the driveway and add an exterior hose at the corner of the driveshed. Since then the hose has been laying on the ground–a very inconvenient configuration.

Every time we mowed the grass, we had to move it. Turning the hose on and off and coiling it up were a pain.

Hose coiled on the ground

It was on my to-do list last May to fix this situation, but I didn’t get it done. I was distracted by other projects, and honestly I was a little nervous about tackling even this simple plumbing job on my own.

Now that we have the vegetable garden, we’re using this hose all the time. My frustration finally motivated me to pull up my big girl pants and deal with my hang ups (all three of them).

The first step was shortening the waterline. I turned off the water, pulled out the hack saw and sliced the pipe. I yanked the tap out of the original waterline and jammed it back onto the shortened pipe (hint: some boiling water softened the black pipe enough to slide the tap into place). I tightened the clamps to hold it in place.

A 2×4 mounted on the side of the driveshed holds the tap far enough off the wall so that I can turn it easily, and some metal brackets hold the waterline to the 2×4.

Then comes hang up #3. The galvanized hose hanger holds our three hoses. Yes, three. We need every single inch of hose to reach the vegetable garden.

I’ll admit that lugging three hoses out to the garden is still not super convenient. However, having the tap attached to the wall and the hose hanging on the wall are an improvement.

Some day, I’d like to split the waterline and add another tap out at the garden. Despite confronting my hang ups, that’s more plumbing (and trenching) than I want to tackle on my own at this point.

However, this simple update boosted my confidence about tackling a simple plumbing job on my own.

What hang ups do you have at your house? How do you handle plumbing? How do you handle irrigation?

Stop and smell the flowers

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I had a different post in mind for today. But the project for that post is not done. So instead you get a reminder from Ralph to stop and smell the peonies.

Apparently, I’ve been doing a bit too much of that, hence no project for you today.

I hope that you have a great weekend. Make like Ralph, and take some time to relax!

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: