Gal in the Garden : Gardening in Hard Times Series

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

Good Afternoon to my fine fellows, what a time we find ourselves in right now. I do understand that here in Canada, and i expect in many other counties that we are very much seeing the K economy happening in daily life. While those in the upper part of the K can afford their current lifestyle, they are not immune to inflation.

The Gal in the Garden Series is coming back in full force this year but it will also have a few different sub groups added to it, you will be able to tell in a glance which ones it is. so let me introduce

Gardening in Hard Times

Like so many people, we are currently waiting to see what and how the next round of layoff’s will or won’t effect Dear Hubby, what we do know is that with the new back to office mandate means that he will be needing to commute more days of the week. I would like to say that Dear Hubby had been working a hybrid home/office successfully for 15 plus years before it was made a “thing”

This does effect the bottom line in terms of direct costs and somewhere those costs need to be made up in terms of savings and lets face it straight up, when it comes to certain things you have little say or control on the costs of things, those bills are going to come in and they will need to be paid.

However there are ways to save money if you have the time and willingness to work on it, i am going to be coming at it from the homestead, garden, forage, local sourced and store sales (limited though they may be) Some of it will be old hat, others will be odd out of the box thinking!

I am gardening in a northern climate, zone 5a, which used to be a three season climate and is now a two season zone at best and with the past few years, its been as unpredictable as possible with flood years, drought years, wild weather events and more which has lead it to be a one harvest season on plantings that should be at least two per our frost free average dates.

There is a be as much focus on fodder for any and all household and homestead and farm animals, just like inflation is hitting us and what we put on our plates, so it is effecting feed costs and just like us, what we feed is reflected back in health and productivity

I will do my best to include a good amount of hard data for my local area, i am well aware that it will only be my part of canada, may places would have much higher prices and few might have lower, i would always be interested in hearing how it matches up in your own neck of the woods.

I have upgraded the website and that means i will be adding in video’s at times along with my photography and like always unless noted, all photography on the site is taken by me, its the real deal, not some random photo selected to match the subject matter.

For recipes, i will do my best to keep things short for those that just want the recipe and go, but you can expect a mix of longer, shorter and in some cases photo heavy posts, like always there is really no way to know what i will talk about!

Cheers to spring!

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Feeding out Crushed Eggs Shells to Chickadees and more

Posted on February 24, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

Log into any chicken group or homesteading group and folks will talk about saving their egg shells, baking them and crushing and feeding them back to their flocks

I have done a detailed post on it myself and its good practice

Head over to your local gardening group and they are going to talk about egg shells and there is going to be split thoughts on this, some will dry/crush and use directly in the gardens, others will just crush or toss them into the compost bin/worm bins or in trench composting, others will dry and crush them, soak them in vinegar water to create a type of compost tea.

All work in their own way, i have used crushed egg shells as slug rings, all those super tiny sharp cutting edges are awesome at giving a helping hand. That’s about where i crush to for laying hens, or garden use or compost and so on

Today however i would like to talk about offering dried finely crushed egg shells to a different bird or birds then we would normally think of and its layered effects. I would say that i crush these at least to half the size i do normally, i hope you can see the difference between the two sizes?

These ones will go out to both the ground feeders and the hanging feeders for all the little wild birds, this is for the females and i started feeding this out in early fob and will continue to do so until the spring is well underway.

While this little Chickdee is very fun in winter, it and so many other of the year round smaller yard/farm birds are so important in our food forests, and kitchen gardens and even into our big homestead gardens.

Trying to stay away from chemicals, then you need to be doing everything you can to be supporting your feathered garden helpers.

When it come to Chickadee’s and around 90 plus percent of small birds, they feed their babies insects and a lot of them! I mean A LOT!

Bugs are for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and multiple snacks per day in baby bird world. In fact, a group of scientists from the University of Delaware conducting research on chickadee feeding patterns determined that it took between 5,000 to 9,000 insects to raise one brood of baby chickadees.

That’s right getting one or two sets of breeding/hatching parents can mean that you as a gardener can have up to 10 to 20,000 less issues in your gardens and fruit canes, bushes, and trees etc and each breeding pair tends to do this twice a summer!

In the wild, snails and their shells make up a massive part of making sure those momma birds have enough Calcium in their diets to make strong egg shells, otherwise, they will pull from their own bones leading to weak bones, thinner egg shells and lower hatch rates.

In Zone 5a an in large parts of canada, as well as other counties in the same temp zones, we are in that odd time of false spring, temps are going up, longer sun hours are here, sugar snow is happening, and sap is starting or is running for the first of the maple syrup harvests, and that means that the birds are starting to preen, find their mate, and so on.

We want the best health of our mother birds, we want strong egg shells to help create higher hatch rates because for every healthy chick that hatches, that is a thousand or more worms, bugs and so on that is going to hunted out of your yard, garden and orchard or food forest! NO spending money on tapes, or bags, or sprays..

Just working with nature.. So might i highly recommend that bird feeder is idea but even if you don’t feed the birds, find a spot they go by, bird water, favorite sitting sunning and singing spot, and consider putting out some dried, finely crushed egg shells, sprinkled in the dish, stump or ground feeding area.

Yes, once spring truly gets going, you are welcome to let them harvest snails and snail shells but while there is snow on the ground, while its cold enough that they are not going to be able to find that naturally yet, lets give them a tiny simple helping hand from a by produce that we would tend to throw away or compost.

This is a great little kids project for those that live in town as well, helping nature, learning about life cycles, and helping them understand how little things can have great impacts down the road.

Posted in Birding, Critters, Gal in the Garden Series, Garden, Kitchen garden | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Lets talk about Garden Seed Prices, shall we!

Posted on February 10, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

While it is true that i personally ordered in my main seeds (from OSC) a company that has been in my province for 125 years. They have proven to be a good company to work with, including during the pandemic when things seed wise got wonky!

I do have a good amount of older seed and lots of homegrown and saved seeds, but the simple truth is that the cost of seeds in the seed catalogs coming in is shockingly high and the amount of seeds in per package has in some cases shockingly shrunk

Case in point, a new catalog came in, its a good company, its a Canadian Company that has been around for 75ish years, not small, not the biggest either, good seeds, good service.. I ordered these same seeds four years ago and that package of seeds was 3.95 for 50 seeds, which had risen from 2.99 for x weight in the package, not seeds at that time but by weight

Today when i went to order that same package, today it is a 5.85 for 8 to 10 seeds. Yes the seed package in the catalog clearly states 8 to 10 seeds.. I am in a bit of shock to be honest!

Now, i know that there is a rising pressure costs, i get that, overhead costs and rise of living costs but this kind of price point increase for home gardeners is just wild! wow!

I will admit i am not ordering it, i will be carefully starting the few remaining seeds i have, growing it only for seed saving and restocking both my own needs for the next three to five years and also having extra for offer at much better price points to my local community food shed!

Its not just the price point (which is huge) its the fact that climate change is such that things can be wiped out in a storm, new gardeners can struggle to get seedlings to grow, what if they are learning and damping off takes out that row in the tray, investment gone.. what if they are growing nicely and a mouse comes along, gone.. or they grow just lovely and you plant them out in the just right, its a mild day, they have been hardened off, they look amazing its a overcast day and you did everything right and the next morning the cutworms had a party and gone!

Do you know how easy it is for so many things that could cause losses of 8 to 10 plants in a big garden?

We used to talk about help cut costs and seed share packages, and that is an can be very helpful indeed, buy a package with 50 seeds and share it out with garden friends, they do the same an everyone has a year or two worth of seeds and can do seed saving and cost savings..

at three dollars for 4 to 5 seeds split only two ways its still just plain highway robbery! At a time when being able to tuck a bit of extra plants to help feed your family in a spare pot, flower garden, kitchen garden or main garden counts, this is very unwelcome.

So i can see this is happening across the seed catalogs arriving for Canadian company’s to different degrees. How will this be effecting your garden seed buying this year? How will seed cost effect your style of gardening? Will it effect your seed saving efforts?

If you live outside Canada, be it USA or EU or elsewhere in the world, i know from my daily stats that folks from many different countries around the world are reading here daily, what is it like your area? Are seed prices doubles or more, have the number of seeds in your packages had such bad reductions?

I would love to hear what you are seeing your local stores, your seed catalogs?

Ps, i also noticed that a couple catalogs that always offered free shipping if spend over $75 didn’t offer anything like that this year.. hmmm

Posted in At the kitchen table, Gal in the Garden Series, Garden, Seeds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Beef on the Waddle, The Muscovy

Posted on January 22, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

I have had these amazing ducks on the farm since the first spring we arrived coming on 22 years now. The amount of ducks has come up and down but they are one of the main livestock we always have, the reasons are vast, they are sweet quiet birds, amazing layers, great mothers, taste mighty fine indeed and they also are outstanding fly control

Having said that with my health issues over the past years, the number of them in our keep year round flock has gone down in numbers, shifting from eggs/meat to more eggs/farm bug/small amount of meat, no one local will butcher them, which makes them a home butcher and i have been enjoying buying half or whole beef from down the road.

I quite like having them be helpful working flock in smaller breeding numbers with less butcher but the cost of beef has made it clear that i will need to expand my duck breeding this year. In keeping with this, i am adding in four 2 year old proven unrelated hens that coming from one of the local 4-H, supporting a youth just adds the cherry on top.

I am not at all happy to be adding that much small stock butchering back onto my work load but i will be happy to have a small stock that can be raised on the farm in a great value way, the young ducklings are going to be used to help with bug/slug/snail issues in the gardens, I will be pulling all ducklings at a certain age to go with one hen and let the others go back to egg laying, setting and hatching.. While i know that sometimes i do get three sets per year, most of the time, i don’t let them set more then twice, this year i might go for three, we will see.

A select number of the males will be allowed to grow out for our Mock Beef use, but i expect most will be done at a younger age but time will confirm that. As the cost of feed goes up, there are choices to be made and many of them mean more work to keep the plates filled.

What is your plan to get access to a cheaper protein source, growing more beans to add to rice, more chicken, a pig, hunting, fishing, eggs? If you have space, time an the health to do so, its a good idea to raise, grow more of your own calories for your meals if you can.

I look forward to picking up the new females next week, as the sunlight grows, they will trigger the duck hens to start getting ready to lay again, the first hatches will be the right age to able to go out in the garden tractors.

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Bird Feeders -ways to beat the winter blues

Posted on January 15, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

While thanksgiving and christmas can for some, most bring extra everything, they do bring company, colorful lights and decor. January at least here in garden zone 5a, eastern ontario, canada its winter. The darkest days are now behind us, each day brings a little bit more light but it also brings cold temps, freezing rain and snow, lots and lots of snow

It also for the farm brings the bird feeders, sometimes i create little sets the one above that are temp for photography and if the offerings are good, the birds will pose for me just long enough.

Sometimes we head for our sunday drives and spot the bald eagles by the creek or the south nation river.. Sometimes we head into the forest and spot ravens, moose, deer and often doves and if we are very lucky indeed owls

However most of the time, the main bird photography happens in the yard at the different bird feeders, here the regulars join us on their preferred feeding stations, some like the wide open platform

Others love the stump feeder station, including our rare (should be way down south for the winter) Brown Thrasher

But most of the time its more common to our area birds, the Evening Grosbeaks are bright and colorful! The older males are so much brighter then the young males.

Rarely do you get a photo of a white breasted nuthatch not hanging upside down!

We are blessed with two types of woodpeckers and we have a mated pair of them always, some years the females will have two males in a three way bond, i have seen this in Gold Finches as well

What are you seeing at your feeders in your yard? Do you have certain birds that you enjoy seeing, we are keeping count of the birds daily to do a wee report to Ebird for our local area and we did a full recorded account for the winter bird count for our area and across the globe.

Do you enjoy bird watching? Bird Photography?

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Salad Greens and Seeds are starting to come in

Posted on January 13, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

As we have a large indoor seed starting setup area in the cellar (it was in the basement of the new part of the house) but has now moved to the Cellar which is the the basement of the old part of the house, they are same ground level but have a solid wall between then but for the narrow opening that brings in heating ducks/power and so on.

Given the price point of salad greens, i have leaf type lettuces in seeding rotations, some being used as leaf picking but more being transplanted up into larger sized but still smaller pots to grow to mid size an being cut and serve. Add to that we have started patio size cucumbers, zucchini and cherry tomato, along with green onions, radish and i think i am going to start some beets in a larger pot this week as well, just for wee baby whole with greens as a lovely change of a side dish.

The price of food along with all the rest of the “things” happening, i did a good top up on basics that while i might have a good amount of yet in my seed drawers, they were getting either close to or outdated and they will get used up but i wanted to make sure i had fresh seed with the highest possible germination rates on certain things. The drought last year was brutal and it meant that a few things got full seed out planted that are favorites that i had come to count on that always gave me seed saving at the end, I do still have saved seed on most but its older stock as sometimes i only grow certain things every three or even four years.. and i got caught on it last year, i expanded the garden massively, used a lot of seed and then had almost all of them die in the heat and lack of rain/drought

Thankfully at this time, we had the funds and the ability to restock the seeds from a local ontario seed company. Last year in some cases a single flower plant could cost up to a $1 each, including my favorite marigolds that are used and interplanted in my gardens in large amounts, i have always loved supporting my local greenhouse family five min up the road, they are a multi generational greenhouse family and they do have some of the best price points and i will buy my massive in bloom often with some fruit already three plus foot tall first tomato plants and a few other things, if you do not support your locals you will lose them.

None the less, this year despite the lack of space inside for early flower starts, i need that room for veggie starts, i am going to do a good amount of winter sowing and i have my eye on a space in the croft barn that might have to be changed into a plant growing space for a while this spring and then it can be shifted back into more regular stall use.

I am going to try a few different ways to winter sow, the one thing i am going to do this year for sure, is go pick up a load of garden top soil and bring it back, while it might prove hard to keep it covered and dry compared to the bags, the cost price point and the fact that i want to make a new raised bed and need to top up all the beds in the kitchen garden means this is very much needed.. The kitchen garden beds are coming 6 years old this spring and while we have lightly dressed them and certainly feed them, they need a good top up of three or four inches of garden top soil added and this is a the year for it.

Are you already using your indoor seed starting equipment to grow a little extra for the kitchen, are you planning on trying to start your own garden starts from seed or are you buying at your favorite center, have your seen a price increase at your local centers? Will you be needing to make the investment into a top dressing of beds this year?

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Rhubarb -Frugal Starts

Posted on December 17, 2025 by Just another day on the farm

I love rhubarb! In northern zones, this plant can be found tucked away on every old homestead, into a community gardens, tucked behind most churches back doors.

There is a solid reason for the love, its one of the first fresh spring “fruits” you will get, it is the spring filler plant, take the smaller fruits and stretch them out with our amazing rhubarb which grows in great abundance It also worked well on its own as you can see in this lovely stewed rhubarb with fresh dumpling.

Last year we opened up a new garden, a truly massive space, so big i hired someone to twice plow it, add in 18 tons of compost and have a machine build the rows..  WOW, i have never seen such bad soil on our farm.

What we did do very successfully was turn up the seed pack, o that seed bed was ready to go and go it did.. health in the family changed,  and then the drought came.. so much weeds, so much drought, thousands of dollars worth of trees, fruit bushes, whole flower meadows, grape vines and so much more where planted in good faith and i expect to find very little to almost nothing alive this coming spring of 2026..

Anything that did make it, will have had a stunted start and will need extra care, one of things ordered in was new rhubarb starts as we have active strawberry farm up the road from us and i wanted to start offering Rhubarb for sale on the same route or even perhaps picked and delivered daily for sales there.

They were ordered and they arrived in rough shape, I babied them along and planted them, i do not expect they will be alive and i am not putting out that kind of money to redo that row. I have lots of rhubarb for the farm personal use and so as i have the time, space and indoor equipment, i ordered in Canada Ruby Red #1 rhubarb seed.. now it won’t breed true in the same way taking a root will but its going to be very close.

My own rhubarb seeds are quite a bit more variable as i have five kinds of rhubarb in my gardens/food forest and there is just no way to know that they are not cross pollinating and my biggest rhubarbs are unnamed, i got them 21 years ago on the first spring we moved to the farm a women had bought a condo in Orleans and in the back yard the retired elder farmer grandma, had transplanted her families rhubarb with her and it was come and take it all. there were four massive plants, and its a good rhubarb but its more green then most folks are used to

So by buying seed from only a patch for Canada Ruby Red, it will give me a more standard results, two full trays of seeds are done and under lights in the cellar garden area.  They join a tray of lettuce, and the starting of patio cherry tomato’s, cucumbers and zucchini plants.  These will all be well ready to either harvest and eat or transplant into pots for late/winter and early spring eating in time to give their main spaces to garden starts for the spring and summer garden

If you don’t have a rhubarb plant or two yet and you live in a cold enough climate and you have a spot to offer it, its worth adding in..  They want 5.99 or more per pound at the store and i have seen it as high as 9 a pound..  while you can still find that friend that will gift you some for a pie, if you don’t grow your own, you can expect locally (Ottawa Valley) to pay between 4 to 5 dollars a pound for fresh picked good quality rhubarb stalks

What is the going rate in your neck of the woods!

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Ground Turkey Meatballs made with Cornmeal Recipe

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Just another day on the farm

Turkey Meatballs with Cornmeal instead of bread crumbs

  • 1 Pound of finely ground turkey
  • 1/4 cup of finely ground cornmeal
  • 1 tbsp of herb blend of your choice, in this case i used smoked bacon/maple flavor
  • 1/4 tsp of salt
  • 1 tsp of fresh cracked black pepper
  • 2 tsp of your oil of choice for frying, in my case i used peanut oil

In a bowl mix meat, herbs and cornmeal, you should see a texture change when you work the cornmeal in, it should not be sticky once made, if its still sticky, add a scant teaspoon of cornmeal and work it again.  No need for a egg in this recipe as the pate texture of the ground meat does not need it.  Once you have a rolled ball, pinch off a small ball and round it out, approx. a tablespoon and into your preheated frying pan on med heat with the oil in it. Cook till crisp brown, flip and repeat.

Gravy, pan drippings, two cups of water, 1 tsp of veggie broth powder and 1 heaping tsp of corn starch.

To make your gravy, add in the two cups of water into the pan (you can take the meatball out if you want, i had enough room, i did not) or broth, deglaze the pan and if water add your powdered broth to fully blend, then in a small bowl with cool water, mix just enough water and corn starch till smooth and fluid and slowing pour in, stirring the whole time, blend from the middle outward to bring it all together, turn down to a simmer and simmer for two or three min till cooked clear and thick.

Now for the back story..

A few months back one of the local grocery store had family pack sizes of ground pork and ground pork/beef blend on a super sale of 10 dollars.  I sent a note on my shopping that we were looking for the different meat trays at were the ten dollar sale price.

What came home was ground pork, ground pork/beef blend, a package of crazy fine grind chicken and turkey in a bag with five pound logs. While the ground pork was turned into amazing breakfast patties and the blend was made into sandwich meat and or meat pies

The ultra processed ground was harder for me to figure out how to use, the first one i opened and realized it was pate ground fine, i chopped it up from cooking it flat and used it in a sauce and it was ok. I set it to the side and there they have sat in my freezer.

This way of making them into a meatball is very good, the cornmeal is a pantry staple, and with the amount used its economical, don’t have cornmeal, Cream of wheat porridge can be used in the same amounts and create the same silky but firm texture. I expect if you wanted to fine grind oatmeal it would also work very well

I expect that with the price of meat these days that many people are turning to these lower priced bags of ultra ground meat in one pound portions.  Meatballs are a wonderful way to stretch a smaller amount of meat into a more carb heavy dish.

The home grown and canned young green and yellow bean have a delightful sweetness to them, while the potato’s are leftover from a big pot i cooked up and have in the fridge for use in different ways.  We have already finished our potato harvest from 2025 and are now onto store potato and they are med to poor quality even gotten as fresh as you can in the bag.  If they are held in storage, they seem to go bad so fast so in order to help keep food waste down, i am actively cooking or peeling the whole bag as the cooked potatoes last so long in the fridge smart tubs.

Are you finding fresh foods including staples like potato’s are not holding as well as they used to? Are you buying smaller amounts or are you cooking and fridge holding or freezing or home processing to cut down on food waste?

Side Note, Potato peels are cooked and feed to the chickens as household scraps

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Fall Meat Bird Grow out Stats

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Just another day on the farm

In Sept 25 White Rock Meat Chicks ordered from Frey’s Hatchery here in Ontario though our local coop arrived on the farm and were cuddled by Miss R an coo’d over indeed.

Dec 10th 24 healthy White Rock Meat Chicks (with a loss of one at a very young age) were delivered to be processed about 20 minutes down the road and then into the freezer they went the next day after they were picked up and brought home

That made them 77 days old or 11 weeks old. I had tried to book them in at the tenth week but i got the 11th, so be it

Per Frey’s Site “Produces a table bird in just 12 weeks. Females will be 5-6 lbs and males 7-8 lbs live weight” I am have the data to break it down per bird from my records given back to me, but I am going to average it out as i did a mix sex run on the chicks, so i had a mix of males and females

Here is a photo of some of them in mid november, another month to go and they are eating and growing!

Other then the loss of the one, they never gave me a moment of trouble, active, healthy, bright birds that grew well, and on the day they went in, the gentleman that came back out with the paperwork, said they were VERY nice birds, great job! i mean i knew that but nice to hear it none the less.

They averaged out at 7.3 pounds per bird for a total of 175 pounds of finished, ready for the freezer dressed weight..

It cost us $23 dollars per bird to buy, shelter/feed/bed and butcher them, this did not include our time or gas to pick them up or take them for butcher. Nor the barn itself, it came with the farm, its been used since.

On the flip side, it also does not account for the compost that they produced that will be used in gardens and not bought next year.

This works out to $3.15 a pound, now these were raised on locally grown produced feed, locally grown straw from down the road, and i know their care since they arrived as day old’s so i really do not like to compare them to store birds in terms of prices.

So lets break it down two ways, locally family raised chicken, pasture raised runs between $5 to $8 per pound, now because i am way into bio at the moment, all my chickens are inside with windows and screens and the garden/bugs and greens comes to them, so they are not truly “pasture raised” but try and find price on a local family that does not market pasture but indoor but treated like pasture otherwise is hard to come by

Now we can look at the store, family pack of legs is 4.99 per pound, Chicken breasts can run between 9 to 11 per pound, other parts range in the 5 to 9 pound per pound..

So i am going to go with the $8 per pound, that means I saved $4.85 per pound or more raising them myself compared to trying to buy something equally raised. We could have saved even more if we had butchered ourselves but for us it was worth sending them out to be done.

If we had done them ourselves here on the farm, they would have come in cost wise at $16 a bird or $2.19 per pound, it would have most likely been closed to 2.25 as i would have needed to buy my own freezer bags and that would have added just a touch more.

We will be getting meat chicks in the spring and we will be enjoying these though the winter/spring. Did you raise meat birds this year? The cost of chicken is going up, up and up at the stores, and to be fair so did the cost of raising these from last time but compared, its still far cheaper to raise our own!

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Dough Maker Review

Posted on March 7, 2025 by Just another day on the farm

I do not make nearly as much bread as i did, as bread is quite limited for Dear Hubby at this point, However as the household grew by one, bread needs have grown again. The price of bread and the ability to control what goes in my bread matters to me.

However it turns out that standing and properly kneading bread currently both for smaller and for sure bigger batches is proven challenging combined with my health issues. While Miss R makes a amazing loaf of bread, i like to continue to make my breads, doughs an even pasta

I didn’t need a bread maker as i want very much to control my bread shapes and bake, but i said to hubby, i sure could use a dough maker and that is just what i got, its big enough to do three standard loafs and it makes dough and proofs it, that’s it!

The rest is still all hands on for me.. While there is a learning curve, its been a easy one for me and i am loving it. There is a very slow rise for sourdough, there is the faster rise times for regular yeast doughs and there is no proof/heat for cold doughs.

I have been using it for a month now, and have made a number of doughs with it, and so far i am giving it a solid 4.5 out of 5

It only gets .5 off because i would like to be able to have more choice on the heat used for the ferment/rise timing. Its very minor indeed and of course the other downside is that it does take power to use, so there is that added cost.

I am thinking of it as a mobility aid and if i need to choose between using a aid to make sure we can control what we eat, how things are made, well worth doing so.

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