Meanwhile, back at the Ol' Homestead

Did you ever have a friend that you somehow lost touch with even though you enjoy that friend's company immensely? You didn't mean for it to happen but the more time that passed the harder it was to reach out and have that casual conversation? Before you knew it a ridiculous amount of time had gone by? That is what happened with my blog.


I had been waiting for my house to sell and so had let my blog writing fall away, thinking my new homestead would be the perfect place to start my next entry. Well my house didn't sell and having now taken it off the market and decided to stay here, fall and now winter have come. Add to that, I got a part time job off of the homestead and the business of being thrust into fall preparations such as the arduous task of stocking up firewood. Had we known we were staying, we would have had at least started to process the wood in the spring and summer. A firewood shortage in our area as my wood guy, Danny says is due to "those bloody shady government pulp company deals" meant a wait for the limited amount of wood we could get, then not having enough have had to cut some of our dead wood down and comb our forest for anything burnable. It also means getting a wood delivery at the odd time of January. Heating with wood means lots of preparation.

Once we made the decision to stay I found a renewed sense of purpose and hadn't quite realized how much I had been holding back my plans and enthusiasm for this land and the many projects I could have been doing. Motivation is a funny thing. Now I have so many plans and ideas I welcome this forum just to keep them all straight, documented and shared!

Fall came and I made plans to expand my gardens so I did what I could do as the air grew cooler. The most important time for gardening is not spring but rather fall, when you prepare! I got some loads of horse manure, combined with the bedding and droppings of our own animals and fenced off some more land. I added to the existing beds and created new ones by dumping piles of poop wherever I thought I could plant something. All is under a blanket of snow now.

I have decided there is no point in double digging actual garden"beds" because once I get below the sod layer, my "soil" is sand and rock and usually three foot boulders along with some old fill, aka garbage. We once found a rusty old fuel tank! Once I remove these things, I am then left to replace those them with some kind of soil which I already don't have enough of. The exception to this is my new asparagus bed and any others that I plan to plant deep rooted vegetables or fruit trees.

 I have also decided to gradually shift to a perennial vegetable garden sowing the self sowing versions of the annual vegetables I love to eat. I cannot stand the inherent inefficiency of replanting every year the same things and then having to fortify the soil just to start again. I will admit I am impatient and maybe some will say lazy.

For the food that is best planted annually I am building a greenhouse. My tomatoes, cucumbers and other heat lovers didn't like the hurricane winds we had last year and I have decided to build them a shelter to avoid heartbreak from our fickle maritime weather. I will still plant a couple of regular beds for things like squash.

In my opinion not enough is said in gardening books about the effects of wind on plants, nor is it ever mentioned what to do if you have rock instead of soil! Literally rocks of different sizes make up my soil except on the one slope in my garden in which someone in the past had planted a flower garden. Of course being on a slope ensures that a new rock crop "grows" in my garden every year!

Having read about perennial gardens I was immediately taken with the idea of things like perennial spinach, perennial broccoli and rocket. They are much smaller versions of what we find in the supermarket but as I am not stocking their shelves, the smaller versions may do us just fine. To find these seeds available from anyone that will ship them is another matter. The UK and parts of the US seem to be at the forefront of perennial seed propagation with many of those companies not wanting the hassle or being unable to ship to Canada.

This garden will take years not months. For now I am satisfied with  perennial sorrel, Sea kale, Turkish Rocket, perennial fennel, asparagus, rhubarb, scarlet runners, a variety of herbs and a focus on fruit trees and berry bushes. Fruit being the hardest to get, travelling the greatest distance to my table and the most expensive of the produce.

It feels good to be playing the long game and trying a new angle on gardening.