Berry garden

It's been another busy few weeks, and we've been trying to power through some projects between work and visiting.

About three weeks ago, we had a line locator come out to find our power and phone lines.  The yard now looks ready for a party, with little orange and red flags all over the place.

A party?  For me??  You shouldn't have! ;)

I had hopes of putting in a walipini on the north edge of that mini-field that's in the middle of the home site.  But, we now know that there are lines there, in some spots only 2' below the surface.  So, we'll find another place to put it; my second choice is up near the trailer.  We'll see - that will be dependent on the state of the water line to the trailer.  If it's still intact and works fine, then all is well :)

We've also had a few companies come out to give us a quote for a new roof.  We picked a company, and we should be getting a new roof in 6-8 weeks.  We'll be reinsulating the roof while the tin is off.  The bats are being persistent little buggers - even though they can't get in to the roof proper, they're still hanging out in the ridge cap.  Crap.  I've been working on the bat house (still, I know) and I really, really, really hope to have it up this week so we can evict them AGAIN before they have babies.  I've given the roofing company a heads up though, and we'll get a conservation officer to come out if we need to.

It's getting there!

Last weekend, I took another trip down to visit Kim's family.  We had a blast (as always!) and I got to meet some more of her aunts, uncles and cousins.  I had a few nice chats with her Grandpa, and got some more advice (including simple farm accounting).  I came home with more plants (raspberries, flowers, and a mock orange shrub).  We needed somewhere to put the berries, so we decided to turn last year's kitchen garden into a berry patch.  I tucked the canes in a hole when I got home on Monday, to tide them over until I could plant them.

Zim and Doodle playing tug-of-war with a stick.  Notice that each is where he is happiest: Zim in the lake, Doodle on shore.

Brave Zim, walking some logs to check out a different lake.  He didn't fall in, though he managed to fall off the dock and into the lake.  Goofball.

Raspberries, awaiting a proper planting.  Thanks Hal and Cathy! :)

During the week, I was having lunch with Kim and another coworker, Flossie, when Flossie offered me some strawberry plants from her garden.  Sweet!  I got the strawberries planted out that night, and just finished the raspberries this morning after incorporating about one and a quarter wheelbarrows of well-aged manure from the huge pile behind the barn.  Total count: 24 strawberry plants and about 100 raspberry canes.  Fabulous :)

Strawberries!  Thanks Flossie! :)

The berry garden!

The raspberries won't produce this year, but our established patch is going hard already so we should have some berries within a month.  And the strawberries are mostly doing fabulous; none of the flowers wilted since I planted them, and a few more have popped up.

I like to think that the gifting of these plants to me is karma - a few weeks ago, someone at work put out a request for any perennials, and I brought her a rhubarb (because there's no shortage of rhubarb here!).  Neither Flossie nor Hal knew that I had gifted this rhubarb.  This has also highlighted something I have heard, and noticed: talk to people about your interests, and if they have similar interests they'll want to help.  It's just how we are, especially in the library world (I find that most library folks are 'helper people': we chose this career path because we want to help people.  This help takes different forms - I work hard to make sure people can access resources, while others love to answer questions and connect users with the information they need.  All of us, however, try to anticipate what users need and provide that to the best of our ability, be it acquiring relevant items, making those items accessible, getting those items to the shelf, directing users to the items, and making sure users walk out the door with those items in hand.  It's what we do).  I have helped others with book repair, putting on two workshops with another early next month, repairing personal items and offering advice to anyone who asks; book repair is something I know enough about to feel confident helping others.  As I gain more experience with gardening and farming, I'll be confident enough to help others the way that I have been, and will be, helped and encouraged.  This was one of the reasons I wanted to start the forum - so we could support each other.  But, I digress.

While I was putting in the raspberries, I found a little friend in last year's mulch:

And Zim didn't even eat him!

There were noticeably less mosquitos today than there were yesterday, so he can stay so long as he continues working this hard ;)

We also rented a sod cutter on Friday and cleared a large garden for this year: 36' x 36'.  We're about half done removing the sod - we cut it into 2' x 8' rolls, which at about 50 or 60 lbs are too heavy for me to lift.  We'll likely finish it through the week, then pick up a truck load of compost from the city and rent a heavy-duty rear-tine tiller and till it all in next Friday.

Jordan working hard, cutting up the sod.  The machine wasn't too hard to run - I could handle it so long as I didn't get it stuck in the ridges and divots.

Done!  And with half the sod removed :)

I also got a chance to talk to our neighbour yesterday - he was out doing his spring fence check while I was getting the planting guides ready for the raspberries.  He is very supportive of us growing veggies for market, and has offered to work with us to repair a section of fence that is between our field 4 and his back hay field.

We anticipate another busy week, of course - finishing the bat house, heading to the rescue for some quality volunteering time (hopefully!), finishing the garden on Friday and heading to another auction on Saturday.  Our seedlings continue to survive - the corn is thriving, but it hasn't been hot enough or light enough for the tomatoes.  They're hanging in there, but they're still pretty spindly.  Hopefully I can get them into pots next weekend and put them in the greenhouse - which we still have to move and re-cover with plastic.