Just another Day on the Farm

I used to paint..  when I say that it sounds like I painted a little but that is not the truth, I painted a lot in my early 20’s..  I sold my artwork in local gallery’s in three different provinces.  My painting’s brought me great joy..

I was never more creative when I was expecting my daughter Maeve.. After I lost her, I put down my brushes.. I just never picked them up again.. it just.. felt wrong..  I have opened my painting box time and time again..  I have done other things creative over the year and around painting, pottery. .its a form of painting.  I have gone to a class and painted out words on a board..

But that’s not my kind of “painting”.. I like a strange form of nature/abstract blend..

I finally gifted out the last of my “keep” paintings a few years ago and I gave away my good brushes and threw out the rest of my paints and gear..  It was a put it behind me.. let it go..

Then the other day hubby and I had a date night and afterwards I said I want to browse at Walmart.. and when I got to the craft island.. paints and brushes and water color paper were all put in the cart..   They arrived home mid-week and things have been really busy..

This afternoon, I looked at hubby and said, I am taking a few hours..  and I set up and I painted..  O I am rusty! and those cheap brushes are “as crap as can be” but I painted.. I  feel into that trance I get..

So after putting it down.. here is my first painting in 19 years..

The river run’s on

Man, there are great challenges in sept.. Crafty is doing a wartime ration challenge, that I will join for at least a meal o two.. I will be cheering on the side..

Then Silver just announced her challenge which is eating only reduced or yellow sticker items for the month…

so makes me want to do one to get me back in writing mode.. but I must be honest.. I do not think I can do that.. so how do I take my love of 30 day blogging challenges and pick something I can do..

maybe related to timbit somehow?

Weight control?

Walking?

Fitbit tracking?

hmm should it be timbit related? things there are very day by day .. so maybe something else..

thinking cap on..

Hello Folks,

Its been busy here on the farm and like the rest of the year, I am behind.. I have been behind on so many things.. my poor little farm.. its looking very ragged at the moment.. the plants that did not get pulled, trimmed or grazed (by the normal tied out horse’s) are all massive and drooping with seed waiting to spread those different weeds..  I have  walking paths and a few tiny select area’s that have been mowed..

Even my gardens are so dearly in need of weeding and such but my focus for the energy I have is split between food processing, a combo of drying food and herbs and plants, canning sauces, soups and stews, small livestock butchering and processing in, including making bone broth, rendering fats, and canning or freezing fruits.

and the house.. just trying to keep up on the house, the soap making, the Tupperware and the Chaga sale line.. I am keeping up on the Tupperware sales and getting the items out to the folks ordering.. When I signed up for tupperware to save a massive amount of money on switching my freezers over from single use plastic’s to a product that has a lifetime (40 years if used properly) plastic.  (yes I was still not happy that its plastic but you have to pick your battles).. and I put up the first little sale on facebook and such..

I didn’t think I would get many sales but I thought.. why not share.. turns out I am not the only one searching for well built, lasts forever items and just as important, meets a number of needs.. Sales have been steady and it take me time to learn how to do things and do the back work on orders and delivery’s and so forth.

The Wholesale Soap loaf sales have also been steady and that takes a good amount of time as well to do it properly and well..

I ordered in a new sleeping pillow to help try and make my lower back feel better, and so far so good.. I don’t like the feel of it under my ear and its hot to me.. but O the relief on my back is there, the support is there and I woke up early and with a great reduction of pain..  That allow makes it worth it!

We harvested all the potato’s from the bean teepee over a few weeks, as fresh eating potato’s and the very poor kitchen garden plot 15 potato patch was full dug out this past week and only gave us around 30 pounds of spuds.. not good at all.. but better then nothing.. I do have great hopes for the good potato patches, despite the bug picking off.

The main bean teepee plants are done.. Its the first year that I planted out beans first, normally I do them in pea’s first and then beans and the beans go to frost.. but this year I planted beans and we picked and picked.. (no seed saving on these this year) and I was sad to see them stop producing in the past 10 days.. maybe due in part to drought?

Thankfully in mid july, I have replaced a new 22 foot row of a nice yellow bean and it just came on line last week, and has a crazy amount of flowers.. so hopeful that it will keep on producing for a good while.

So the rains are late.. other places have gotten the late half of aug hard rains.. but not us.. so the fact that we have light rain last night, today and ideally tomorrow.. boy do  we need it.. we have been watching our well like a hawk.. it thankfully has been holding well, its down but holding ok..

Timbit is still with us at the moment.. I have so much support from most folks (thank you again to everyone that has been positive) but I have also had some really nicely truly caring worrying going on by some folks.. I get it and I understand.. but I have also had a few folks that have gone from worried caring right on over to.. WHAT THE BLEEP? did you really just say that..

Its like so many things in life.. I am not sure why people today think they can just blurt things out.. its kind of huh? the good thing about it is that I am chill..  If they had said that in 30’s I would have been a hot raging mess.. now.. I am like.. Whatever! its not your body, your life or your home..  you really get no say in this what so ever.. the only ones who truly have a say is myself and my mate..

I find it the same as many things when you do something out of the norm.. there are those that cheer and those that go.. no you can’t do that.. what is that saying.. those that say you can’t do it, should not try and get in the way of those that ARE IN FACT ALREADY DOING it.. lol

I adore writing but I also need energy to do so.. and now that we are moving this week into the second tri, I am hoping that at least some of the never ending need for sleep will ease a touch and I will have more writing energy!

Everyone have a great day!

Its mid-aug and I think its time for a garden update..  It was a greatly limited garden season compared to normal years and the last four weeks have been HOT and dry.. o so dry..

Its not that there has not been rain or storms.. there have been but the rain just kept passing us by.. finally we did get rains.. we have had a number of very short, very light rains.. not enough to fill up the rain barrels, or the water system..  my pond is very dry.. I am certainly figured out what plants do well in that dry out.. vs the ones that clearly need more water.. Live and learn.

The area’s that were built in the kitchen garden have been outstanding in growth and production. I have been feeding them with composted comfrey and nettle water as well as Rabbit manure tea.  After everything comes out this fall I will be adding a solid inch of compost to all the beds.

In the back potato garden is very poor indeed.. the sub-soil showed me just how much of a difference my normal well done gardens are, despite feeding it, despite covering it with bedding.. it produced about 20th percent of the crop that the well done gardens did..  we will work on it this fall so that it will produce better next year.

I honestly did not expect to get as good of a garden as I have.. the eating garden has been excellent and continues to be so..  I have some limited canning stock.. but I am buying locally produced food or Ontario produced and filling things up

I am limited in what I can do and it changes by the hour at times.. sometimes I get a couple hours where I am pretty normal, and then I move the wrong way and my back reminds me in a big time way that its not fully healed, and that as I am now totally off all pain killers/heat rubs and such.. it leaves me with rest (which in its own way makes me weaker) walking, or ice packs.

Then comes the being tired.. to say that its been draining on my body to be “growing Timbit” is a understatement.. I have at times slept 12 to 14 hours at a time.. its just brutal..  I also have been taking a crazy! amount of naps, and while I mean to sleep for a hour and sometimes that works just fine.. most of the time, my hour nap turns into two to five hours..

I work between sleeping or resting.. and I certainly am noticing the effect on what is getting done!

Still every day hubby goes out and picks bowls of tomato’s and beans and potato’s are now coming in.. and I find the time to top and tail and slice and dice.. I make 0 mile meals and I can up small batches in the pressure canner daily it seems.. 9 jar here and 9 jars there..  It is not as nice as holding things though and doing big batches like I normally do..

However it is working for me.. I am keeping up.. beets come in.. focus and do that one.. plums come in.. focus and make the plum sauce..  and so forth..  The jars are filling, the pantry is filling.  Day after Day!  and many more to come yet..

This is the WEEK that normally our weather changes and we start to get our late summer rain and then the wetter fall rains.. so far, I have been pleased to see it coming right on time.. we have had smaller but still good rains 3x in the past week.. the garden is loving it, the pasture is loving it.

I am pleased..  how about your guys, I have been reading that in Western Alberta, they are in some area’s getting frost this week.. that be crazy.. I know its happened before, I have seen it with my own eyes.. but still ouch!

I have to own up to something about my current garden.. I am not giving space to seed saving.. I know! I know! I always save my own seed and I do have “lots!” of home grown, home saved seed in the house and I will be saving lots of native flower seed this year but I am not saving “garden” seeds.. everything is being harvested for the canning pantry or the freezer or fresh eating..

I ordered in seed for this years garden and had fun trying new kinds of this or that.. so I am not using up “my keep back always” crops.. they are fine.. they will be planted next year and I will save seed like normal.. but it really made me aware of how much you spend on seed if you are not keeping back your own..

Wow.. a fully done garden that is done by all bought seed is more costly then you would expect, I am SO grateful that I got the BOGO sale from Salts Spring.. thanks to my reader that pointed it out to me! I have been totally impressed by the seed quality!