Wed, Nov 26, 2008 · Filed under Autumn
Around here, nothing says WINTER like snow in the trees (except, of course, solid ice in the trees). Three inches (7.5mm) or so of powdery snow overnight transformed the entire outdoors with that magical winter wonderland effect. At some point every year, I’m struck by how strange and wondrous snow like this must look to someone seeing it for the very first time (the feeling does wear off…). It’s pretty, breathtaking, even, if you’re out in the woods, and great for invigorating walks. Eventually, it gets good for winter sports. It perfectly complements the endless strings of holiday lights that’re already going up in the village, completing the classic look of a white Christmas. As for tiny farming, snow moves the action mostly indoors…
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Tue, Nov 25, 2008 · Filed under Autumn, Farm lab (research!), Fieldwork, Harvest, Veggies
Every season there’ve been hardy veggies left to the cold and snow, and this season, it’s a record quantity, with nearly 2,000′ (610m) of broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and kale that mostly started sizing up just as the farmers’ market finished at the end of October. It seems like a waste, but it’s only a typical garden gamble on the weather (I was trying for an extra, really late crop). The risk was clear back in August, and we didn’t get enough sun to push things along a tiny bit quicker. We did harvest a lot of the Red Russian flat-leaf kale (above), for a good four weeks, and one round of 1-2 lb (450-900g) cabbage (a nice size for a meal for one or two). And there’s been a lot of personal-use picking in November. The rest is a giant farm lab experiment, more exploration of the snow-on-veggies effect…
More than the snow, the many nights of extreme cold (-15°C/5°F) that came with it this year really blasted these guys, wilting them and burning leaves and buds. So, none of the crops are too firm or pretty, BUT, they’re still alive: for the most part, there’s good color and texture. The kale, always super-hardy, did the best from a let’s eat some perspective, with good texture and great taste. The broccoli, while a little wilty on the stems and burned on the buds, also tasted great, fresh and flavorful. The cauliflower did the worst, the heads really damaged by the freezing and thawing, too mushy for me to bother with a taste. (Eating raw was fine, but how would this all cook up? We may see…) We’d already reaped most of the filled-out cabbage, so the rest aren’t going to go anywhere from here…
What’s all this odd information worth? Not much, I guess, I’m not planning on deliberately planting for snow harvests. But checking things out is always fun, no experience goes to waste, and there is at least one advantage to knowing there’s still good eating out there: the laying hens will be feasting on a fabulous greens buffet for a while!
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Mon, Nov 24, 2008 · Filed under Autumn, The Farm, Tools
All sorts of old things are being unearthed as the entire farm gets a thorough, top-to-bottom, no-drawer-unpulled going through, something that probably hasn’t been done in a century. There are all kinds of finds, like horse-drawn plows and a farm-built chicken defeathering machine. Today’s most intriguing item for me: an old, iron tricycle (with an upgrade, a much newer seat). No-one here is sure, but the guess is that it’s gotta be a good hundred years old. Except for the plastic seat, which looks more like the last 30-50 years. It’s cool because the design and construction are soothingly simple (and easily fixable), although it looks like it delivers a bumpy ride on those solid rubber tires, especially on gravel in the barnyard. For some reason, though, I also find it mildly creepy… Imagining the squeakily-pedaling ghosts of farm children past, I guess. Yikes… :)
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Sun, Nov 23, 2008 · Filed under Autumn, Building & Fixing, Indoors, People, Storage, Tools
Bit of unusual fieldwork on the menu today, something we don’t do every year. Bob and I brought in about 1,000′ (305m) of 1″ (2.5cm) and 1-1/2″ plastic irrigation pipe, that ran all the way from the pond to the gate into the garden field. Why wasn’t this done in better weather, when, besides having no snow to deal with, warmer plastic would’ve been a lot easier to handle, especially to BEND? There’s no good answer, except maybe, “Didn’t think it’d be this cold and snowy so soon!” Anyhow, it got done, and probably in exactly the same time…
I used the Kubota compact tractor to drag the pipe in three 300′ sections, right into the barnyard (the rope is tied to the front end loader bucket; in the pic, this is at the very end of the garden, where it meets the hay, so all that stubble is mainly long grass). Backing up down the field, I worked it from the far end for the section that lay in the unmown grass right near the fence, so that it could more easily tear its way out of the overgrowth. Then, some coiling (that’s Bob), tying off the loops every few turns with baler twine (plastic twine used to bale hay, it’s all over the place)… Easy!
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Sat, Nov 22, 2008 · Filed under Autumn, Farm lab (research!), People, Winter
It’s taken a couple of days of this pretty intense cold snap for me to realize it’s yet another whimsical display of the crazy weather we’ve been having for the last six years or so. It’s not that overnight temperatures around -14°C (7°F) are unusual for southern Canada, just not in November. This time last year, there was a ton of snow, but without the unreasonable deep freeze. The winter before, I posted here in mid-January that “winter’s a no-show”—I was still digging carrots! Interesting… Inspired by the cold, I decided to see what it would do to chicken eggs and left a couple out overnight (there was a kinda practical purpose, it’s pretty cold in the chickenhouse). Of course, they froze as hard as hockey pucks. And cracked..
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Fri, Nov 21, 2008 · Filed under Autumn, Storage, Tools
The drive shed is in a transitional mess. I’m part way through the post-season clean-up, delving into shelves, unpacking boxes, dragging things around, sorting it all out. Even with the trusty Troy-Bilt Horse rototiller as a bit of a clue (on the left, in red), to the untrained eye, it might be hard to tell that all of this is essential tiny farming gear. Who’d know that the stacks of Rubbermaid storage bins are in fact our mainstay harvest containers? Or that the weathered cedar trays and folding metal sawhorses (leaning on the left), transform in minutes into the farmers’ market stand. Those indoor/outdoor twin halogen lights are critical lighting components for after-dark veggie sorting and rinsing in the barnyard. That front-loading dryer I’ve kept around for years, in case it could become as useful as its companion the top-loading washer has been as a heavy-duty salad spinner. And so on. Every little item in the pic has its purpose. Much of tiny farming gear is plain, old ordinary stuff, pressed into garden service. And it all works!
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