Extremes

May was very dry: our big water tanks in the barn never got properly full after the winter and by May 29th the well had run dry. Things were getting desparate! Luckily, the weather changed on May 30th and we got about 10mm/0.4 inches of rain that day. June has been providing some good downpours, too - so far this month the Trenton weather station is reporting 50mm/2 inches of rain, where in the whole of May it only received 30mm (just over an inch).

My Fling swag included a rain gauge - it recorded 0.8 inches (20mm) just yesterday.

The grass around the upper vegetable garden beds was looking very brown at the end of May and the beans I'd sown in the bed to the left of the centre of this shot had stubbornly refused to germinate, so I'd sown some more:

But yesterday it had turned a more respectable shade of green:

 and I've got beans popping up all over!

This morning I noticed some yellow patches in the grass. On closer inspection I could see hundreds of small yellow balls on the grass. I think this is the lawn rust fungus - not something I've ever seen before - these wet conditions must be just right for it.

And more unexpected fungi - these shaggy ink caps were growing out of the side of the chicken manure heap I excavated from the small barn in April.

Our barn water tanks are now full up - to the point of overflowing, in fact - and our basement cistern is also full. Such a relief!

Rain (and other harvests)

We got some much-appreciated rain this morning: about four hours of what I think of as 'Manchester rain', which was just what we needed to refill the barn water tanks and revive the parched-looking garden. I'd sown some more carrots, beets and lettuce at the weekend, so the soaking will get them germinating, with any luck.

Despite the dry spell, the beans are coming along well - I think this variety is 'Early Mohawk', but I won't know for sure until I shell them, as I've only seen pictures of the bean seeds, not the pods (and I didn't keep the seeds separate when I sowed them with the other bush varieties). Very attractive-looking, anyway, and certainly early, compared to all the other dry beans I'm growing this year.

The tomatoes are coming thick and fast, too. I've got my first batch of tomato sauce bubbling away as I write.

It smells delicious! This is the first time I will have used my new pressure canner to make tomato sauce, so this is a preliminary test-run with a small batch (about four pounds of tomatoes). The canner holds four two-pint jars, which I estimate would take 20 pounds of tomatoes to fill, once they've been reduced down.

Fleeting and fragmentary

...and the closest we've got to rain in the last two weeks. But it does mark a change in the weather - and with any luck, one which will result in some relief for the garden and our water supply!

Relief

It's been dry over the past few weeks and the garden has been suffering. The corn and squash plants are stunted and look unlikely to produce much of a crop. I don't think we'll get a lot of potatoes or outdoor tomatoes, either. Luckily the greenhouse tomatoes are doing fine and we've been picking those for about a week now.

We went into 'water conservation' mode a week or so ago. This basically means that the reject water from the osmosis water treatment system in the house is diverted back into the cistern in the basement, instead of going to the big water tank in the greenhouse. So although there is still water in the tank, it's now only half full and the greenhouse plants were going to be the next casualties of the dry spell, if we hadn't had any rain.

It was quite a relief, therefore, when we woke up to a storm this morning. Only 3mm or so of rain, but better than nothing. I was even more delighted this evening when it went very dark again and we had another storm with an extended spell of rain. I doubt whether it's going to be enough to resurrect the corn, but you never know. You can't be a gardener without being a foolish optimist, after all...

Stormcloud over cornfield

"Daddy's on YouTube?!!"

This was the reaction from our children when they heard that Mike's green home interview was up on the internet. I think YouTube just lost its status in our house as a cool website to look at.

Here it is:



The videos of the other homes featured on the tour are all available from the Quinte Sustainability site.

Any day now...

There's a sense of anticipation about the vegetable garden at the moment. Not a huge amount is being harvested: the peas have stopped producing and a lot of the lettuce has gone to seed (there is more growing, but it isn't big enough to harvest yet). Broccoli, carrots and beetroot are the main things that are pickable right now. The warm-weather crops are not quite ready to harvest, but I have a feeling that it won't be long before we are struggling to keep up with them all.

Last night we had half an inch of rain, which was extremely welcome. It's been very dry for nearly two months (there have been some impressive storms just to the south and just to the north, but no rain over us) and recently we've been having to water the whole vegetable garden every evening just to keep the plants alive. The huge water tanks we've installed in the barn and greenhouse over the last two years have made that possible: our water situation in 2007 was so much worse.

The tomato and pepper plants in the greenhouse are producing a lot of fruit, but none of it has ripened yet. These are the appealingly-shaped fruits of the tomato pepper:

I'm also growing cayenne peppers and Corno di Toro Rosso (red bull's horn) peppers. These are almost being swamped by the cucumber plants that are in the same bed:

I'd almost given up on finding any actual cucumbers, despite the rampant growth and the presence of many immature fruit. Then I found this lurking on the floor:

Is there any logic to the way that cucumbers develop their fruit, or is it just random as to which one grows to maturity first? I like the way the cucumber is shaped like a question mark: as though it would like to know the answer to that, too.

In the vegetable garden these crops will soon be ready to harvest:

Fennel and French beans:


Courgettes/zucchini:


Corn (four cobs on this plant - is that a record?!):

Two years on

Two years ago today we arrived in Canada as temporarily-homeless new immigrants. Well, not quite homeless as we still owned our old home in Manchester and were only two days away from taking possession of our house here. It's odd to look back over the last two years and reflect on what has changed in that time.

A lot of the things on our list of 'things we want to do in Canada' seem to have been crossed off. Although Mike occasionally complains that he has never actually seen the 'to do' list. Which is clearly the right way to manage such things, I'm sure you'll agree.

I feel that I ought to be writing something profound about our experiences at this juncture, but that is too difficult, so instead I will do what I normally do and stick to the pragmatic (and possibly mildly distasteful).

One of the enduring mysteries of this house has been its waste-management system. We sorted out the incoming water in various ways, but were never very clear about how to deal with the septic system that dealt with the outgoing variety. There was no obvious place from which to pump the waste out.

Yesterday, with the help of one of our neighbours (who pushed us into doing something by calling in a firm who deal with septic tanks), this was sorted out. The well-hidden entry point to the septic tank was located and a big lorry pumped out the tank in a very short period of time. It won't need doing again for another three years or so.


So that was another thing crossed off the list. But I'm sure that something else will come along soon and take its place.

Only don't tell Mike.

Green Homes Tour

We were invited to take part in the County Sustainability Group's Green Homes Tour this year, which forms part of the Quinte Sustainable Living Symposium event this weekend. Three bus parties turned up today (in wet and miserable weather, unfortunately) to get a tour of the solar hot water and geothermal systems in our basement, followed by a look at the greenhouse and at the solar panel set-up in the barn.

It was fantastic to meet so many people with similar interests to ours and Mike did a great job of transmitting his enthusiasm for the green energy projects that we've been undertaking over the last two years. There were a lot of pertinent questions and some good ideas for making the best use of the greenhouse and barns.

One thing that came up which we hadn't heard about before was a concern about using the rainwater from the house roof as drinking water, as the roof has asphalt shingles on it. People in two different groups mentioned that the asphalt can leach out unpleasant chemicals (including oestrogen-like ones) into the water. We hadn't come across this potential problem, so immediately turned to the Internet for answers when the last bus had gone. It turns out that the best way of ensuring that oestrogens are removed from water is to use a reverse osmosis system. Which is what we have, so that's quite a relief!

Nicely icy

It's been very cold here over the last 24 hours: down to -18°C and no higher than -8°C. There was snow on Saturday night; enough to let the kids go tobogganing for the first time this winter. But by Sunday afternoon they decided it was too cold to stay outside. There was quite a breeze, which made it feel more like -24. Today was as cold but less windy, so it felt more pleasant (as long as you stayed in the sun, anyway).

There were a few icicles hanging from our water-collecting gutters on the big barn:

The stream had several layers of ice over the top of it.


This tree looks as though someone in charge of a line-painting vehicle had got a bit carried away:


The old tree-roots that form much of our western boundary look gorgeous with the snow on them. Well, I think they look lovely anyway, but the snow really enhances their contours and cragginess.

Compost comme de l'art

This installation took me seven hours today. I'm thinking of selling it: I'm sure I put just as much thought and effort into it as many more conventional artists put into their work.

I recycled the posts and wire that the cucumbers had been grown on for two of the three sides, then filled the structure by clearing up the remains of the squashes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, corn and beans.

We needed to work on the drainage of the lower vegetable garden, after this July's tomato disaster, where the entire area became waterlogged. I realise that I've never really explained what is where in the garden/barnyard, so here is a not-to-scale diagram to record the current layout. There is a gentle slope from north to south.


Today, Mike dug a trench along the southern end of the upper vegetable garden and connected it by porous piping to the trench that he dug in the spring to the east of the lower vegetable garden. We're hoping this will divert some of the excess water away from the eight vegetable beds that are periodically drowned.


I also dug some sand into the tomato bed (the only one of the eight lower beds that's empty at the moment) to bulk it up a bit and improve the drainage. This was suggested by one of the solar panel guys (who happens to be an organic farmer), but I also took heart from reading Kate's article about using sand, even though the soil here is not clayey like hers (and the comment about sand plus limestone making concrete did give me pause, but what the hell). A big heap of fine sand was left over from the pipeline-laying that the solar panel work needed. It's been well watered by the dog, but I'm guessing that dog urine is probably good for the garden too. Sorry, was that too much information?

Giant toilet roll invasion

Three more big water tanks arrived today and had to be rolled up to the barn. Here are the children demonstrating the required dung-beetle technique:


And here is their father showing how not to do it:

Getting into hot water

 While I was away the solar hot water system was installed back at home. Here is the array of evacuated tubes, perfectly placed to get the most of the sun hitting the garage roof. The tubes' heat is transferred to pipes containing a glycol/water mixture (so they don't freeze in the winter), which is then transported to the basement.

Down in the basement there is a new hot-water tank which is warmed by the pipe containing the solar-heated glycol mixture. This then feeds the old electrically-heated tank with pre-warmed water. The old tank had two heating elements inside it and one of those has now been turned off. An LCD display on the new tank reports the temperature at three different places in the new system. We'll be monitoring our electricity usage to see how much we save by pre-heating the water.

Water gardening

This was my root vegetable plot 11 days ago. It was still underwater today (there was pond-weed growing in it, for heaven's sake), so I decided to try digging some drainage channels down the sides of it to help get rid of the water. Mike used his mattock to extend the channels down the slope beyond the fence and by late afternoon the bed looked a bit less soggy:

It might even be possible to get my parsnip, beetroot and carrot seeds sown one day soon! Most of the other beds are still pretty boggy, too, although the garlic and shallots do seem to be sprouting despite sitting in puddles. One of the semi-submerged asparagus crowns that I couldn't fit into the tyres has started sprouting too, which seems amazing.

The planned potato and pea/bean beds are both still pond-like at their southern edges: wet enough to be providing homes for a couple of frogs. Child #1 proved rather better than the dog at catching them.

I know I complained about lack of water last year...

... but please, please could we just get it distributed a bit more evenly?

The vegetable garden had just dried out enough for me to feel brave enough to plant the garlic, shallots and onion sets yesterday. Then today's rain arrived - 38mm (1.5 inches) so far and it's not even midday yet. I'm expecting to see the onions floating past any minute.

The basement cistern is nearly full, the water measuring 47 inches (120 cm), so I've had to make use of the diverters on the drainpipes for the very first time, to stop the rainwater from filling it any more.

I think sorting out the drainage in the garden is going to have to be a priority. The annoying thing is that I can be fairly sure that in three months' time I'll be struggling with a drought again.

I've probably been slow on the uptake here, but Google has introduced a really neat conversion calculator - so if you put "47 inches in cm" (without the quotation marks) into the Google search box, it gives you the answer. Very handy.

The only good thing about the rain is that the tulips look just as gorgeous in the wet as they did in the sun.

Historic appliance (complete with provenance)

I thought the dishwasher was old, but this evening we found the original brochure and discovered that it was purchased by Gerry and Mary in 1981. There are people with PhDs who are younger than this thing. The brochure notes that:

Beautiful styling add elegance to any kitchen decor - you'll be proud to show your Maytag to your friends.

I'm just glad they didn't go for the Fresh Avocado or Coffee 'fashionable standard colors' for the front panel, or that sentence would definitely be untrue.

The dishwasher is a portable model (WC300, for you dishwasher spotters - I know you're out there), which means you have to wheel it to the sink every time you want to use it - not desperately convenient. The brochure does give the water usage for the washes, which is useful to have. The 'low energy regular' wash we used tonight takes 32 litres of water (7 imperial gallons). I think that is probably similar to what we'd use in three lots of washing-up at the sink during the day, but obviously a new dishwasher would probably use less water (and less electricity too). This one cost $780 and the equivalent Maytag washer today costs $499 (US), which is probably about a quarter of the price in real terms. A new dishwasher will have to wait for a new kitchen, which will be a 2008 project - but I probably won't be going for a portable one!

Full tanks

The guttering guys came back on Tuesday evening and connected the eavestroughs to the cistern. There are diverters on the end of them which will switch the water away from the cistern when/if it gets full. One of today's jobs is to get some piping so that that spare water is deposited a bit further away from the house than it would be with the current arrangement.

Over the last 24 hours we've had 16mm of rain and that has given us over 30 inches of water in the cistern. The tanks up in the barn are full, too, and the wells are steadily filling up, so now we've decided that we are no longer suffering from a shortage of water.

We celebrated by loading our breakfast dishes into the dishwasher for the first time since we've been here. It looks like it is about 20 years old, mind you, so whether it will work is another matter entirely!

Rain Fall

Most of the guttering went up yesterday: just waiting for the last downpipes and the diverter that will stop the cistern overflowing (although that seems like a distant possibility at the moment!). We've had 9.2mm of rain so far today, so the water collected from barn roof has been replenishing the cistern in the house, which is up to 8 inches of water again. Mike fixed the leaky loo today too.

The Toyota garage fitted a new tyre to the car yesterday and Mike took a taxi into Belleville this morning to pick it up, so we're mobile again.

The nature columnist in the local papers was explaining this week that the Fall colours have been disappointing this year due to the dry and hot conditions during September. The big ash tree in our front garden (dubbed 'Giganto' by the kids) turned yellow very suddenly just this week, but many of the trees lost their leaves early because of the drought conditions. The maples have been pretty magnificent though, so if this is a disappointing year, I can imagine that a good one will be breathtaking.

Tired out

Yesterday was always going to be a bit hectic: work at Deseronto, picking up child #1 from karate, taking both kids to the inaugural meeting of the Consecon cub group, taking Mike to a meeting on renewable energy in Bloomfield, picking up the kids, picking up Mike. All went more-or-less according to plan, even with time for a meal and a cup of tea in between ferrying jobs, until the last journey of the day. A couple of kilometres out from Bloomfield we got a puncture in one of the car tires. Turns out that this Audi has a cover over the wheel nuts that you need a special tool to remove. And we didn't have the tool.

So we phoned the CAA at 9.45pm. The guy got to us at 11.00pm and he couldn't take the cover off either, so he towed the car back to our house and we finally got home just after midnight. I was somewhat surprised that the car didn't turn into a pumpkin at that point. This morning we spoke to the Toyota dealership that sold us the car and they're going to get it off for us, once the CAA take it over to Belleville.

In the meantime, work is continuing on the roof, with the fascia boards going up yesterday. Mike also worked out why our water situation had deteriorated so much over the last week - there's a leaky seal in the bathroom toilet, and Mike reckons that it had been consuming about 17 litres of water an hour. So something else to fix, but at least there's a stopcock next to the toilet which means that its water supply can easily be turned off and the cistern just re-filled as necessary.

Milestones

Kilometrestones just doesn't sound the same, does it? Well, anyway, two big milestones today. First of all, we finally ran out of water in the house - both wells and the cistern were effectively dry. So Mike went off to get a 12-volt pump to attach to the plumbing he's set up to the big tanks in the barns (and the tractor). Then he was able to pump the couple of hundred gallons down the hill and into the cistern this afternoon. There is some rain forecast for the rest of the week, but if it doesn't appear then we'll have to buy a tankload of water from a water firm.

The other big event, a slightly more positive one, was the completion of our new roof. It looks very smart and includes a sunlight tunnel which connects the landing (which has no windows) to the sky through a hole in the ceiling and the roof. The landing is now a lot brighter, especially when all the upstairs doors are shut. The guys who worked on the roof did a really good job and worked incredibly long hours. They had to pack up early on Saturday because the wind became dangerously strong, but otherwise they've been starting at 8am and finishing when it gets dark. They all wander around quite happily on the roof - no scaffolding or obvious safety measures at all. The next job is for the other team of this firm to turn up and fix the new guttering to the house.

Gwen the curtain (draperies) lady came around this afternoon and we chose more fabrics. I feel very decadent, having an interior designer, but I'm hopeless at making curtains and blinds (shades) and haven't found anything half-decent of the ready-made variety. She seems fairly snowed under with work, so I'm not sure when any of the window coverings will actually get made, but at least we're making some progress.

Yesterday I went to a meeting of the Prince Edward Historical Society, which was very interesting. They look after the archives of the County, in conjunction with the library service (a fairly recent union). There was a talk by a speaker from the Archives of Ontario, who seemed to have trouble working his PowerPoint presentation, which was a bit cringe-making. He also claimed that all their copying services were on a cost-recovery basis only, which seems an outrageous assertion given that their digital images cost $20 each, even if the image already exists! Anyway, I joined the society, so might get more involved with the local archives through that route too, eventually.

Gawd's truth

I knew we wouldn't be able to resist. And it did go down to five degrees centigrade last night, so we didn't feel too bad, lighting it. It's been pretty chilly today, too, so we relit it this morning and it's keeping the living room cosy: 21 degrees in there compared to only 18 in the study. Mmm, might have to move into there with the laptop soon.

Today work is due to start on replacing our roof with new asphalt shingles, so I thought I'd better do a 'before' picture. I've also had a particular request for a picture of the front of the house, so here it is (well, about half of it, anyway). So far the only sign of activity is the arrival of a big trailer to take away the old shingles, but apparently they'll work through the weekend, so by Monday we should have a water-tight roof that'll last for 30 years.

The guttering will have to be removed, which means that our water situation will temporarily get even worse, until the next gang of men come to put the new gutters on. Those will be bigger than the existing eavestroughs, and less leaky, so in the longer term we'll get more water through into the cistern.