The question really is what kind of Ice storm are we going to have and that is still up in the air because it could shift and that slight shift could mean a big difference.. what kind of difference?
Are we having this kind of ice storm as we have had in the past?
This kind of storm will drop power lines for days, leaving us to cook on the wood stove and wearing ice cramps on boots for chores and pretty much close things down for a few days to weeks I took this photo from a ice storm here on the farm 11 years ago
Or we could have this kind of ice storm, still going to take down trees, be slippy, work from home but the odds are the power if out will be a day or two and it will melt off without much damage
This type of ice storm means i am out with my camera because while you need to waddle to be safe, its just pretty out there and the odds are highly in your favorite that they will just melt, crack off and have limited damage to trees and more
They are not the same, but the prep for them is, because there is NO way to know what one we will be getting, so extra water needs to be drawn for livestock, for the household, laundry will be fully caught up, extra wood will be brought to the close porch for the wood stove, any extra space in the freezers will have jugs and or any other freezer safe filled and added for extra drinking water if needed but mainly to keep the freezers colder for longer, the camping cooler will come up to act as the temp fridge
We are in the dark purple zone fully, so 10 to 25mm but i am hearing that it could be up to 40 mm
The biggest issue is that the ground water is moving right now and the sump pump is for the first time in 8 plus months running and its running hard which means that when the power goes out, that there will be water in the cellar, its designed for this, everything is raise up for this very reason but its still something that is a pain the , well you know what, unless you run the genny 24/7 to keep the sump pump going, its going to get damp down there.
While its not good for the seedlings and plants to lose their lights, they can be brought upstairs if needed and thankfully i do not have eggs in the incubator yet so i don’t have to worry about that. Charge the battery chargers and so on and plan for possible wood stove cooking and extra uses of the shuttle chefs and we enjoy the sunshine right now and wait!
German Giant Radish has been added to my radish growing this year for a couple of reasons. Ah Radishes, one of the fastest growing crops you can get in the garden. Lets talk about this amazing plant, you have summer radish, which will give you sweeter end results in cooler spring/fall plantings, spicy hotter versions in the heat of summer but are still ideal to be planted into shade spots and then you have winter radishes that are bigger and will extend into early frosts
In Canada Radishes are a very common veggie, when i was growing up, you had small round red with white flesh and depending on when harvested, they could be mild or hot! or HOT! Eaten whole, maybe with a bit of salt or dipped into a dressing or sliced into rounds and added to a salad.
Boy, were we missing out, i still remember being the first time i was served roasted hot radishes, it was in Helsinki, in Finland that first got to try so many different ways that radish could be prepared and i have been hooked. Then came our local food share program and suddenly winter radish became something that i could get regular, why i can’t buy Daikon everywhere is beyond me, the closest store that carries it local to me regular year round is 45 to 60 min away depending on traffic
I am growing six different types of radish on the farm this year, I will be growing
Cherry Bells “Here is a delightful looking summer radish with 2.5-5 cm diameter cherry-red roots that have a pleasing, mild flavoured white flesh. Cherry Belle holds great potential for extending the season as it forces well under glass and maintains its superior eating quality for a long time. An ideal variety for late spring and early summer plantings. Introduced in 1949.”
Easter Egg “This is a colourful addition to the radish family. Stunning intense shades of white, red, purple, pink and violet roots make this tasty radish a visual, as well as culinary, treat. The roots are large and smooth skinned, flesh is firm and crisp”
French Breakfast “An older variety grown since at least the late 1870’s. Produces rich scarlet red roots with white tips that are crisp, mild and surprisingly sweet. A real favorite that has stood the test of time!
New to the farm and to me are
Crimson Giant : H. A. Dreer, in a 1910 booklet that they published, had this to say about ‘Crimson Giant’ radishes, “This variety is suitable both for forcing or early planting out of doors. A remarkable feature of this Radish is that it will grow double the size of other round red forcing Radishes and still remain solid. The ordinary forcing Radish, after growing to the size of two or three inches in circumference, becomes pithy, while the Crimson Giant will grow to six and seven inches in circumference and still remain solid and juicy, free from all signs of becoming soft.”Â
an
German Giant ” German Giant is a solid red colored, round shaped, radish with crisp, white, and pungent flesh. It resists getting woody or spongy and can be harvested from golf ball size on up to about the size of a cue ball. To achieve the larger sized radishes, provide them ample space by thinning the seedlings to at least one-inch apart.”
and of course i will be growing Daikon Radish a winter radish, i will do a totally different post on tillage radish, which i have brought in a whole pound of seed on for use to help in my new garden area that has some of the worst soil i have ever found on the farm!
They can be grown in pots, they can be grown in flower beds, tucked here and there and replanted every two weeks for a growing supply, no one is going to notice if you pop a radish seed in and around your flowers, it will just be green undergrowth to the person walking by.
Radishes should be on your garden grow list and your seed saving list! One of the fastest growing plants to get food on the plate, pickled radish works amazingly well for preserving, Almost everything about them is edible, leaves, radish ball root, seed pods and the seeds can be ground themselves as well as sprouted with ease
While having been grown globally since the time of Egyptian and Roman times and most likely before that, it is a outstanding plant that can be grown in cooler climates to great success! Time to explore its many choices and add some new types to your garden plans!
Globally Radish can be grown for their roots, for their seed oil, for their green tops, they come in many different colors, sizes ranging from tiny to the size of basketballs. They are a powerhouse of a food!
A half-cup serving of raw radish slices (about 58 grams)
Calories: 9.3
Total Carbohydrates: 2 g
Fiber: 0.9 g
Sugar: 1.1 g
Total Fat: 0.1 g
Saturated Fat: 0.02 g
Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.03 g
Monounsaturated Fat: 0.01 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Protein: 0.4 g
Sodium: 22.6 mg (1% DV*)
Vitamin C: 8.6 mg (10% DV)
Folate: 14.5 mcg (4% DV)
Potassium: 135 mg (3% DV)
*Daily Value: Percentages are based on a diet of 2,000 calories a day.
What types of Radish are you growing this year? Do you eat Radishes regular in your meals? Do you eat them fresh? Fermented? Pickled? Roasted? What is your favorite type? Do you only eat summer types or do also use winter type? What is your favorite way to eat them?
The events globally over the past week will be felt in ever widening ripples and one of them will be food costs, last year i was able to pick up a good load of smaller straw bales, the mini kind perfect for the porches for Halloween in town and the standard kind for the farm use. I was thrilled to find a new supplier that is just up the road a bit, close enough for him to swing by and drop the wagon off and leave it overnight for us to unload etc. I knew that with the new land we turned last year being as poorly as it was that I needed extra straw for the garden, as well as having double load’s of wood mulch dropped off
Weather got a touch wonky, and has decided to give us a week of false spring, sap is running hard and it rained, a lot.. we didn’t get the worse of it but we still got a good amount and our best house side micro climate was fully melted out when we woke this morning.. there are four plus feet of snow still covering all the kitchen garden beds and areas.
While i am not a big clean up the yard in the spring to early as i know that lots of things can be overwintering, everything that was raked up was moved to a area to the side so it still has a chance at least of hatching etc., the space got raked out and we made temp straw bale walled microclimates Straw bales used in wall insulation have a R value of 30 to 35 but this will be less do to the way they are being used but they are still going to be very helpful!
What we are calling Block #2 will have a u shaped pea vine climber on the back wall and two bale sides, i will add in fresh garden soil around 4 to 6 inches to start the earliest of peas, a row of radish will be placed in front of the peas in a u shape as well, the front row of this bed will be filled with Winter Sow jugs to help grow spring seedlings for transplanting, giving us both a head start on those transplants and saving room in our indoor growing sets ups The ground still needs to thaw some to get the tines fully down but we have a couple days coming of plus 10c and i am sure by the end of it they will be down where we want them, we will NOT be planting these out till after the next cold snap
Block #1 will have a cover made to place over to trap the heat in much more then Block #2 This block will have soil blend added at a depth of 6 inches and will be planted into radish, salad micro greens and beets and depending on what the night time temps look like, some of our started smaller lettuce greens might be possible or will be certainly added by the end of march. This set up will allow us to plant and grow March/April and depending even into early may while we get the kitchen garden prepped and ready for cool season planting and growing.
As you can see we have a rain barrel set up at the end and so ideally i will be able to use rain water when possible. These will be very tightly planted and as things get taken out for fresh eating,
Pipsqueak was watching carefully and ready to give a helping paw lol, i expect these warm bales will be a purr pride magnet for naps when the weather is fine, but we will see as they do love sleeping on the hay.
Hubby and i are still in talks about what will be placed over the top, I expect it will be a sheet of plastic stapled to either 2 by 2 or larger branches cut from norway maples that have been coppiced and have very nice long poles ready to be cut and used in the garden in multiple ways this year to create a lighter weight plastic top but if the cats are going to like it enough, then maybe we will use one of our sheets of plexiglass instead so its quite solid
Once these are done, we will be able to pull them apart easily and use the straw in the gardens as it was intended for mulch this year.
Do you have a heat sink that warms faster? Consider looking around to see what you might be able to find to create a faster producing micro zone for your kitchen and your plate, grow for speed, grow for calories and grow for micro nutrients. When it comes to super early spring production like this, you are growing for micro greens, eat your thinning’s for the beets and radishes, roast the radish as well as eat them fresh an spring sweet, eat your beets as tiny wee ones , remember everything other then roots are edible on your peas, greens, flowers and of course the pods.
This is very much grow what your family will eat, do not try new things in these spaces, grow for your plate and crowd those spaces, you are not going to grow these to full size, you do not need full size spacing, look to square foot garden spacing, I will share details on the plantings, what it cost me in seed, and what i got in harvest vs what that would cost me in my local stores.. right now a small bag of radish, that has around 8 average size radish is $6 dollars.. I just stood there and stared, shook my head and walked away and that was last week price points.
Farmgal Tip, get your fertilizer now! maybe get a big bag or two enough for say two or three or five years, put it in a safe dry space.
4 cups broth of your choice, i used veggie broth but this could easily be made with bone broth of your choice
1 large potato, peeled and cubed
1 large carrot, peeled and cubed (this carrot could be replaced with celery, or turnip or squash or sweet potato, pick a root veggie you like the flavor on and it will work, use what you have in your pantry and fridge here folks)
2 cups of fresh microgreens, if using homegrown and ideally for cost savings you should
Salt, Pepper to taste, i also used a seasoning salt I like, you are wanting to balance out the flavor but not really add to it, just enhance.
large heaping tablespoon of greek yogurt or sour cream or at least a swirl of heavy cream
Extra ideas, a sprinkle of chili flakes on top, add in some crunch with some croutons if desired
In a med sized pot on med heat, add in your broth, diced veggies, seasonings and cook till they are fork tender, allow to cool just slightly, while cooling, give your sprouts a rough chop and add to the soup, allow the heat to wilt them as you stir them in, then using either a stick blender or a heat proof blender, blend your soup till smooth. Taste, and adjust your salt and cracked black pepper as required.
Add a large heaping tablespoon of your best thick Greek yogurt, a sprinkle of chili flakes if desired.Â
Serve sizes, two main meal portions or four small portions to serve with side salad and bread etc
Here in Ottawa valley in Ontario, garden zone 5a it is the month where ideally we will be pruning hard fruit trees of all kinds. Long time readers know that i have been and continue to be active with other amazing fellow local gardeners to creating local food sheds.
These photos are used with permission given as they were taken at one of my “gifted” out placement spots.. this is a wind zone, the wind blows from the open farm fields all the time, unlimited water and this owner has been excellent about having me out to help her in terms of pruning the tree, what you are looking at is one trees fruit.
One of these ripple effect programs is Sib C peaches, a number of years ago a lovely women in ottawa grew the “mother tree” with great success and she shared saved peach pits wide and far across the community, i got a small bag of pits myself and in the end also was gifted someone’s pits as well, in total i raised 15 peach seedlings, I split them out among friends, some had different soil types, some had shelter belts, others wide open wind swept placements, other still were one zone warmed and I also grew my own here on the farm in different placements.
Those first peach trees have come full circle and are now the proud producers of bushels of peaches, with the best pits from different trees being selected, shared out and in some cases grown out, last year i hand selected, grew out and sold into my local community another 100 plus peach trees.
I am uncertain given the drought on how many of my young peach trees will be alive come this spring, and my oldest need some heavy pruning this year as it was missed last year. I look forward to hearing how it goes with different farms and gardens and i will be excited to collect peach pits this fall from the biggest, most perfect fruits for saving, sharing and some limited growing out.
There is something wonderful knowing that currently dozens of families and soon enough hundreds of families are enjoying locally grown fruit that however briefly came though my world and onward in hopefully ripple effects for years to come. The idea that a child when i am long gone will be reaching up and picking sun warmed ripe peaches in sept or early oct and biting in with juice running down their arm makes me smile.
I am happy to say that many places now offer Sib C peaches for sale online across canada, some are even doing as i am, selectively breeding for size, texture and taste. I am hopeful that will continue to see a impact in the future as we all work towards bringing these amazing hardy white fleshed peaches into the gardens and kitchens across canada and beyond.
I am looking forward to donating one or more of these to our towns new community garden that is working with our local middle and high school, they have a greenhouse, a garden and are working on a small orchard, with the culinary class making food from the fresh offerings, i see peach cobbler and pies and more in their future!
If you would like to add a tree or three to your own garden or homestead, I will be offering peach pits late fall for those that would like to try growing themselves and we will have limited peach seedlings available for sale spring of 2027
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!
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
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.
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
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.
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.
I am sorry to have this rant, I might not even post this.. I most likely will and I am sure I will lose a reader or two.. but I have to write this.. If you live in an apartment or a tiny condo in the city, you can be many things.. You can be […]
Ok, its just going on record that we are going to be “in just in time mode” on most things this year. Let me give a example.. we have pulled at least a hundred or two wild parsnips but then we needed to focus on this or that.. and suddenly this week, we are like.. […]
Just another Day on the Farm 