Wild November

 November has been a fairly memorable month so far, in terms of weather. On the first of the month, gale force winds brought down several trees and left us without power for two days.

This red cedar (Eastern juniper) in our back yard was the most significant casualty. It also took down the power line from the house to the barn and greenhouse.

Mike has been busy with clippers, chipper, and chainsaw since. I still can't get over the amazing colour of the cedar wood, once it is cut up.

A closer look at the root ball of the tree shows just how shallow the soil is here: the roots have wrapped themselves around the limestone rocks below.

A killing frost in the first week put paid to all the tender crops in the greenhouse, so I spent last Sunday clearing them all out and putting the greenhouse to bed for the winter. I'm glad I did, because  this week we had significant snowfall on Monday, followed by record-breaking cold.

It might be an interesting winter!

A severe summer

This was a screenshot from the Weather Network site last month:

It caught my attention, as 'severe' is not usually a word I'd associate with summer weather. But it has turned out to be an apt one for this season.

We are used to dealing with very dry summers, but this has been the worst one since we've been in Canada. At the height of the drought, on August 13th, I forced myself to take photographs of the vegetable garden. With barely enough water for the household, I had not been able to water the garden at all, and the plants were really suffering. In the whole of July we had 23mm of rain and the previous three months were also very dry (April 23mm, May 19mm, June 48mm).

The cabbage patch:

The squash plants:

The row of sunflowers next to the squash:

We got an inch of rain that day, followed by half an inch three days later and that was enough to start the plants growing again. It's still very dry, but the 48mm we received in August has made a huge difference to the garden.

This how the cabbage patch looks now:

And the sunflowers, with the squash behind them, are looking a bit healthier. Two of the squash plants died in the drought, but the others have recovered and I'm now picking patty pan squash. This week I will pick the first of the zucchini/courgettes. The only problem now is that the weeds are also enjoying the rain!

In less happy news, I have to report that my entire flock of chickens (33 birds) were killed by a mink during July and August. I don't know if the dry weather was a contributory factor, but I suspect it might have been. Over the course of three weeks I fought a losing battle with this night-time killer. Every time I thought I'd managed to mink-proof the coop, it found a way through (they only need an inch) and killed one or more chickens. One night it killed eight. On the morning of August 8th I found the last seven chickens dead on the floor.

After eight years of keeping chickens I think I'm going to stop, for a while at least. I am really going to miss them, and their eggs (my birds had produced 15,000 eggs in the time I had them), but right now one less responsibility is probably a good thing. But yes, this summer has been severe indeed.

Winter's last blast

 After a mild few weeks, the weather took a turn for the colder this week. Yesterday an ice storm came through and left a fairly thick coating of ice over everything. This morning it warmed up quickly, so the ice began to melt: we could hear it almost exploding off the roof as we woke up.

The chickens' run resembled an ice rink. And it turns out chickens don't like skating, even if they are Canadian.

Chickens out

Last day of January and a rare sight: the chickens being able to venture outside. For the last two winters they were cooped up for three months in a row. This winter has been much kinder. There are still a few inches of snow on the ground, but today's temperature is due to climb to 6°C/43°F, so I'm thinking by this evening there won't be too much left.

We have yet to have a day this winter where the temperature has gone below -20°C/-4°F, which is fairly unusual, and the average temperature for the month of January is running at -5°C/23°F, where normally it is -7°C/19°F.

The week ahead looks mild, but then there is a return to more normal winter temperature after that. As this week and last week are usually the cold point of the year, I'm certainly not complaining...

Library trip

I don't let the weather stop me returning my library books...

It turned quite snowy here this week, with about a foot of snow falling on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Luckily the book drop box has been designed with Canadian weather in mind!

First and last

...harvest, that is. The first of 2016 and the last of last year's crops, I think.

With winter finally putting in an appearance, and the temperature due to drop drastically tonight, I dug up my remaining swedes/rutabagas and harvested the cabbages, sprouts, purple cauliflower and kale which were still bravely clinging on in my two brassica beds. There were over ten pounds of swedes!

The cabbages were still very small, so I decided to use them up by making kimchi out of them. They're not napa cabbages, which is the usual kimchi one, but I will experiment with what I have, approximately following this recipe, and if it works out, I'll buy the proper cabbage next time I go shopping. I found some baby leeks, carrots and one lone Chioggia beet in the greenhouse, so I've sliced those up and added them to the kimchi mix.

Now I just need to find a way of using up all those swedes...

Christmas Eve harvest

I know it can't last, but the exceptional weather has continued, with temperatures hitting 15°C/59°F today. I was able to harvest quite a few green things from the garden for our Christmas dinner:

broccoli

kale

small but perfectly formed purple cauliflowers

and both sprouts and Brussels tops

I pulled up a swede/rutabaga, too.

We are promised a storm next week and I'm sure winter proper will be upon us soon, but I am thoroughly enjoying this reprieve, however temporary!

Bringing the garden indoors

Still mild here (hope writing that doesn't jinx things) - the greenhouse herbs are still going strong. Here's the dill:

The parsley is still going, too. I mentioned the herbs to a colleague who asked if I bring some in for the winter. I don't normally (apart from the rosemary), but this struck me as an excellent idea, so this winter I have done just that, bringing some in from the garden, others from the greenhouse. The cat is having to share her windowsill with rosemary, dill, sage, thyme, oregano, parsley and coriander/cilantro. You can't see it in this photo, but the rosemary is actually flowering at the moment!

There were still some root crops to harvest: I pulled the last of the parsnips, most of the carrots and a couple of parsnips from the greenhouse and dug up a couple of pounds of sunchokes from the garden, as the soil is still soft enough to dig.

I also got a cabbage from the brassica patch, which is still doing well - there will be swedes/rutabagas to pull and more kale there. I think we might even get some Brussels sprouts, although they won't be as big as the ones happening in the UK this year. They even made the front page of the Weather Network's site (I think they are having to drum up stories about sprouts because the weather is being so un-newsworthy here!).

Winter on the way

November has been so mild, I'm still picking kale from the garden. Which is lucky, because the ones in the greenhouse are being comprehensively nibbled by caterpillars.

This morning was the coldest yet, -8C/17F but gorgeously sparkly. Just a taste of winter.

Or maybe a warning...

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!

Garden in!

The Victoria Day weekend is the traditional one for putting tender plants in the garden, but I was slightly nervous of doing so when I saw that the temperature was going to drop to 4°C/39°F in the coming week. I went ahead anyway, and the next time I looked at the weather forecast it had changed to 7°C/45°F - so with any luck all will be well.

It's been a madly busy week in the lower vegetable garden, which has only just dried out and warmed up after the cold Spring. There has been a lot of weeding and manuring leading up to the last two days when I've been putting in the tomato, corn, squash and brassica seedlings which had been growing on in the greenhouse. Last year I lost most of the cabbages to rabbits. so this year I'm experimenting with scattering some ground-up dried cayenne peppers around them as a deterrent. 

The tomatoes are all in the ground and surrounded by a mulch of grass-cuttings.

In the much drier upper vegetable garden I'm experimenting with some grain crops this year: barley, oats and wheat. The idea is to become a bit more self-sufficient in grain for the chickens in the future, but I imagine that this year we'll probably just keep any grain we gather as seed for next year.

Ice out

'Ice out' is when a lake is clear of ice after the winter. Usually it happens to 'our' lake at around the time of the Spring Equinox, but last year and this year it's been April before all the ice has melted. We had high winds the other night and they must have been responsible for the huge piles of drift-ice that have washed up in places along the edge of the lake. I've never noticed this happening before, but they are really quite something to see!

Spring progress report

It is beginning to get warm enough for me to get started on the Spring jobs. Looming largest in my thoughts was the need to empty the chicken enclosure of the accumulation of winter litter. But I couldn't do that until the chickens were willing to spend some time outside. They aren't happy about walking in the snow, so I needed most of the snow to be gone before I could contemplate the task.

Here's the orchard on March 26th:

Still fairly snowy: the Buff Orpingtons were willing to brave the conditions, but none of the other breeds fancied leaving the coop.

By yesterday most of the snow had gone and the birds were spending their time outside. Here they are this morning. There was a light scattering of snow overnight, but not enough to bother them.

It took two hours of shovelling to get the barn free of the woodchips and chicken detritus of the winter. And there was a rat's nest. With baby rats in it. I won't say any more about that...

The resulting chicken manure heap is huge! You can see that there's still quite a lot of snow behind it.

There are some signs of life in the greenhouse. These seedlings are coming up in the bed where I sowed peas. They're clearly not peas, but I'm hoping they are something edible, so I'll leave them for now.

It's suddenly a lot easier to walk up past the barns, with the snow going. There is still a lot of ice in places - this patch along the fence line is a good ten inches thick!

I was actually quite grateful for the continued cold weather, as our fridge went wrong on the 25th of March and was out of action for  a week. I put our cool box into service and stationed it on the porch. Fortunately the weather stayed at fridge temperature for the whole week, so we didn't have any problem keeping things cold.

It wasn't the most convenient location for a fridge, but having all the food out on the porch did turn out to be a very effective deterrent against snacking!

Springing up

The snow is going...so slowly...but it is going.

Outside enough has melted to reveal some bulbs starting to emerge.

 On the living room windowsill I've got a small army of herbs growing. I'm hoping to take these to the Seedy Saturday event in Trenton in a few weeks.

I've dug my way through to the greenhouse from the small barn and have sown peas, parsnips, lettuce, leeks and some onions in one of the beds in there. The water is still frozen, so currently the most effective way of watering the seeds is to dig up more snow from outside and sprinkle it over the bed. Effective but not necessarily easy!

Regular February service

February seems determined to compensate for a relatively snowless January. It's been cold too, with an average temperature so far of -14°C/7°F (the month usually averages -6°C/21°F here). The temperature hasn't been above freezing since January 24th, and isn't forecast to do so in the next two weeks.

I seem to have spent a lot of time digging out the driveway and my 'eggs' sign: it's a bit of a miracle that the chickens are still laying (some of them have even gone broody in the last month!).

I'm reading Naomi Klein's book about climate change, This Changes Everything at the moment. I'm sure that this cold spell is one of those unexpected side effects of global warming, but right now I'm finding it hard to get upset about the idea of a bit more warmth in my life!

Excursion

Last winter was so snowy that the chickens didn't get outside for a solid three months. I'm looking back at last January's posts and remembering how horrendous it was. There is snow on the ground now, but only a few inches and there is even some grass visible at the moment. When it's very cold or windy I don't open up the back of the barn for the chickens, but today is milder and some of the hens ventured out to take the air.

The lake has been looking very pretty, reflecting back some clear blue skies of late.

 

But it's difficult to walk along our western fenceline at the moment, which is just a solid sheet of ice.

Coup in the coop

After several months when the two Buff Orpington roosters seemed to get along just fine, each with his own little harem of hens, there was a big fight the other week and now the younger of the two is Top Bird. The Welsummer rooster, one of the 'hens' I bought this year, doesn't seem to have been affected by this change in status of the other two.

We had a few days with snow on the ground when the chickens wouldn't go out, so I tried a trick I read somewhere of hanging up a cabbage for them to peck at while they're cooped up indoors. They didn't know what to make of it until I cut a small wedge out. Then they got the idea and they seem to have enjoyed it!

The Ameraucanas are happier about going out in an inch or two of snow than the Orpingtons. It's funny how the one white Ameraucana doesn't look particularly white when you see her against the snow.

The snow has nearly all gone now, so all the chickens have been enjoying being out in the orchard over the past few days.

It's supposed to get quite warm on Christmas Eve (8°C/46°F!), but we might get snow on Christmas Day, as a storm moves through and pulls in colder air from the north. Like the chickens, I will be quite happy watching it from inside.