Here we are in February. Valentine´s Day has passed and my birthday is fast approaching. The kids have been working on getting their school work done. We have been a bit behind in a few subjects because of building the house, but now with all of the covid lockdown nonsense we certainly have time for catching up! I ordered all of our seed in late December as I feel like there will be a rush on seeds and chickens and building materials as there was last year. I seem to have an almost overwhelming list of things that we want to grow this summer. We will begin to plant seeds inside next week! I´m excited about the different tomato varieties that we have, as well as about the leeks and turnips and celery root that we will try out.
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By now all the seeds have been started |
Last autumn we made a fermented soup base using vegetables, herbs and salt. By growing the more expensive of these it will cut down on the cost of making that this year. It is SO convenient to have in the kitchen! I use it to not only make soup but also to flavour sauces and gravies. It smells amazing too! So fresh!!!
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| Everything we made could last for up to 2 years |
About three weeks ago now we had three pigs delivered to us. They were born in November and we will continue to grow them up until we butcher two of the three in the early autumn. They are currently in one of our permanent chicken pens, but as soon as spring hits we will move them and the chickens back to the garden and use and electric fence to keep them there. My plan is that they will root around and fertilise our garden, giving it what it needs. We have expanded our garden size from last year and we know that we didn´t have great yields last year likely because of a need for more fertile soil. This is one step in getting the soil ready! And it is much easier to let them turn the earth than for me to do it!
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Bacon, Peppa and (piggy-)Bank |
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| Making a feeding trough for the pigs |
Today is sunny and lovely outside. We woke up to see a wonderful, sparkling frost on the trees. Now I can easily imagine that we should be boiling maple syrup in less than a month! We still have a little more than one litre from last year left, so the timing is perfect!
In construction news, we finally found someone with a sawmill from whom we can get boards to do our board and batten siding. He will start cutting boards after he has finished doing his maple syrup! Inside Dominik is working on some benches for the kitchen and entry way. After that he can make our kitchen table. The wood that he is using for the benches and table are ones that he cut himself here from a large maple tree. To have furniture made from wood that grew on our property is pretty amazing! He has already made beds for the girls and Jonathan, from bought wood, and they are all thankful to be up off of the floor at last!
Six weeks have past since writing the above! We still have spring weather, thank goodness! We had such warm weather for a week that we worried we might not be able to make as much maple syrup as we would like this year. Thus far we have abour 8 litres, but today the sap is flowing and we should be able to boil again tomorrow.
We did indeed start planting and have had two sessions of starting seedlings. We start them at different times depending on what variety of plant they are. First we did cabbages, celery root, celery stalk, peppers and onions. The peppers were older seeds and none of them germinated! That was disappointing. We have now re-planted with some seeds that I ordered this year. We also have some tomatoes, broccoli, kale and cauliflower started. We have some grow lights- a new thing for us this year- and a little indoor greenhouse. The kids also planted some flowers as they are eager to see them. Josiah planted a morning glory and it is growing all over the place now! We still won`t be able to plant outside for a while. We are in climate zone 5a/b, but things like kale and spinach can go in sooner. The mice chewed up a bunch of our seed potatoes this past winter (out in a field where we had them dug in and covered with straw) so we might need to work on more of those. Building an above-ground root cellar ala Gridlessness is on our priority list. Gridlessness is an amazing Northern Canadian channel on youtube which we love and watch regularly. They are also a family of 7 and they do the most amazing things and are funny as well! :-)
One last garden note is that after last week`s rain we found that our garlice had all popped their little green shoots up out of the ground! We planted about 240 cloves so we should be well set for garlic this year!
We have finally purchased our kitchen! This is very exciting news. Even though I can prepare meals quite well in the make-shift kitchen that Dominik built, having a lovely, finished one will be beautiful. We will do the tile backsplash and get it all together after Easter, but at least we will have it here. We also found a bath tub on the same trip to Ottawa. The house is coming along!!! With the way the economy is going, and the price of goods rising, we are fortunate to be able to buy these things now. Last year we bought 2X4`s for just over $2 and now they are about $8! Plywood boards were $15 or so and are now approaching $80! We are very thankful to have built when we did.
