Day 269 - Friday Oct 9

I pulled the Brussel Sprouts today. You are supposed to leave them in the garden for several hard frosts but we went from light frost to one hard frost to all day below freezing over night.

I was amazed that after a day and a half of below freezing weather they were not spoiled.

Three plants yielded enough for 2 family meals.

It was so cool to see how these vegetables grow.

Day 264 ~ Sunday, October 4

We had breakfast with Mom and Melanie in our little apartment/hotel and were on the road quite early. Jim had a list of things the length of his arm that he wanted to accomplish before he goes back to work on Tuesday.

Daniel had stayed at our house Saturday night in order to take care of the dogs. He got up when we came in and had something to eat before he went outside to work on the root cellar......






I chose to finish harvesting the root vegetables in the garden......I had already pulled up all the beets a couple days ago.

The Rutabagas included some giants!

The first thing Jim did when we got home was to hook up the trailer and go into town to pick up our dog pen which Andrew had been using. He won't be putting his dogs outside all day over the winter, so we reclaimed it........

Jim's next priority was to figure out what was wrong with his truck's turbo (which was just replaced last summer).....







Dan went to work building a door covering for the bottom of the cellar stairs.......









AhHa! Here's the problem......the hose has a hole in it! An easy fix, fortunately.....








By this time, I had stored the beets in layers of peat moss in the cellar, pulled all the rutabagas, and the carrots......

There weren't as many carrots as we had hoped, but what there is are nice and straight......






I stored the rutabagas and carrots in the same manner as the beets and I pulled all the frozen squash and tomatoe plants. The other day I had taken all the onions and cabbage out when I pulled the beets so all that is left are the broccoli and brussels sprouts. Well, I cut all the broccoli that was ready....these plants apparently benefit from several hard frosts so I'll not be harvesting them quite yet.

The problem with his truck diagnosed, Jim set to work tearing down the old dog pen......








Daniel completed the bottom of the stairs door and then rushed off to work in Edmonton.......

Jim set up the new pen walls.....

The dogs are a little uncertain about this.......I think they can smell Andrew's dogs on the walls - they are not too comfortable in there, yet.

But it looks much better than the old pen, that is for sure.

Jim finished up our busy day by hanging the door on the garage......hopefully, the pigeons were not at home at the time and they will go find somewhere else to build a nest.

Overall, a busy, productive day.

Day 256 Saturday, Sept 26

This is the day we harvested our potatoe crop - or most of it, anyway.

Rob and Lana, their girls, Daniel, Vinj and Kath and I worked from 10 a.m. till about 3 p.m to dig 6 1/2 rows of about 50 hills/row.

The potatoes are beautiful! Not a single one with 'scabs' or blemishes of any sort.

The potatoes started out in this same tractor bucket, as cut up seed potatoes. This is but one row of harvested tubers:

To see a photo of the seed potatoes in the tractor bucket, go to this post.




Daniel did a great job cleaning up the cellar in preparation for storing our harvest:

Just compare this photo with the one from yesterday!

Day 247 - Thursday, September 17

The root cellar did not get worked on today....but here is a photo after the walls had been fixed:

Last night, Vinj called and asked if Seth could come stay with me while he was at work so Kathryn could study all day. So....Seth was here to start the day for us with his sweet smiles.

Wonder what he's looking at like that?

...A pajama wearing violinist, that's what!

He's stunned at his uncle's semi-naked attire....

Daniel made himself waffles for breakfast (which was closer to lunch)....

Since we were expecting Daniel's friends from New Zeland to visit today, we spent the morning and early afternoon tidying the house, preparing for company.

I picked some beets to serve for supper....

Daniel 'posed' for some photos while he was cooking waffles.....

Soon after we'd gotten all our chores done, his friends called to say they would not be coming out after all. Oh well.

Instead, Daniel went to visit a friend he wanted to see even more.....Michael Rostad.

He got dressed and left, toting his dad's guitar on his back since he and Mike were going to spend the afternoon 'jamming'.

Dan called a few hours later, very excited......the Rostad's were going to the private Tim McGraw concert and Nicole was too sick to want to go. She offered her ticket to Daniel. He was thrilled to be able to attend and he enjoyed it very much.

Seth and I hung out and I did some baking for the upcoming shower until I realized I was missing an important ingredient. I called Kath and told her I'd bring Seth home rather than have Vinj come pick him up after work.

Seth had been having a good time - sometimes we played outside, sometimes he rode his 'bike' around the house.....

When we arrived at his house, he ran right to Taliah to give her a kiss. Vinj arrived home soon after and the three of us had a visit. When I went to leave, Seth came over and put his arms up. As soon as I picked him up, he turned to his mom and dad, waved, and said 'bye' as he leaned over to kiss his mom. When we told him he wasn't coming home again with 'Mama', he cried and cried. We tried to divert his attention, but he was determined to come with me. While it made my heart glad that he wanted to be with me, I was sad to leave him in tears.

Day 240 - Thursday, Sept 10

Since he is leaving for work tomorrow, Jim spent some of the day on the phone working. The rest of the day he spent hanging doors.......

The inside of the hall closet holds our 'medicine cabinet'. Of course, it had to be emptied so the door could come off and the new door put on.......

During a break, we went out to the garden - here is one of the few cabbages the dogs haven't eaten.......

The Brussels Sprouts are coming along quite nicely....

.....and the Broccoli is nearly ready to be eaten.....

Our view has changed much over the last couple months. This is the south view today......

And the west view.....

I think the new Pantry door is cute.....

Although the new doors emphasize the need for new paint on the walls, they make a tremendous improvement to our home.

Day 230 Monday, August 31

I took Seth to the doctor for Kathryn today.....he's had a cough and runny nose for about 12 days.

When I got home, Jim and Dan had returned from Edmonton where they had gone to buy us a new freezer. Dan was laying in the hot sun on the trampoline, 'talking to God'.

My garden looked nice, so I walked over to take some photos. My brussel sprouts are still pretty small, but I continue to be fascinated by this plant....

The nastertiums are finally blooming - their bold colors are worth the wait!

Here is the main focus of the day.....still on the trailer.....

After supper it was 'out with the old'.....

The countertops were full of frozen and half frozen food (mostly half frozen - thus the need for a new freezer)

The new freezer, besides being frost free, has a few bells and whistles.....an outside temperature readout, a 'fast freeze' feature, and alarms when the door is ajar or the temperature rises above a certain point.

The interior is slightly smaller, due to the frost free feature, but it is organized a little better....

MOST of what was in the old freezer went into the new.....it IS a little smaller, after all. BUT there are features (like baskets) that make it more efficient.

I am happy to think I will not have to de-frost this freezer!

Day 222 - Wednesday August 12

Jim spent several hours today mowing......I spent the same amount of time picking raspberries.

NEVER have I gotten so many berries in one picking......about 10 litres. Of course, the last time they were picked was Thursday evening, so it had been almost 5 days....but that means that there were more berries dried up, too.

No, I won't be making jam.....we don't eat enough jam to warrant that. What I do use berries for is my smoothies and/or yogurt in the morning.....or for a 'sweet treat' in the evening. Frozen, unsweetened berries cost quite a lot, so I've frozen my berries in small-ish containers to be thawed and used in place of the expensive ones from the store.

I'm also willing to share - if you want to come pick....as long as I get one picking a week. Of course, the yield will be beginning to drop, I'm sure. I'll definately need someone to come pick when I am gone to Montana.

Here is 8 of the 10 litres I picked:

Day 217 Thursday August 6

Jim's still not feeling very good, but he was getting a bit of cabin fever so he decided to come with me to town on my mission to get groceries for the weekend.

Before town, though, we took Andrew a jug of water at his worksite.

We came home, unloaded the groceries, and sat down to check our mail, etc. We were both a little tired (we'd done quite alot of shopping - at different stores) and Jim was especially dragging, since he still isn't feeling up to par.

Less than 10 minutes after we sat down, the dogs started barking and we were pleasantly surprised to find we had guests......Mom and Dad Hutch were in the yard, greeting the dogs. Needless to say, we sat down and visited them - getting the lowdown on Dad's appointment in Calgary with the Cardiologists.

Dad and I took a short tour of my garden to discover that the dogs have been enjoying the cabbage! (Emma had told me this before, but I thought she meant they were eating the leaves)

When I went into the house to unpack groceries and make us some supper, I discovered that there was a 'Mini Pansy' growing between the boards of the deck!

This little guy must have grown from a seed that dropped between the boards from one of the flowers that I grew last summer! Cool, eh?

After supper, we started working on our meal preps for the campout. Jim peeled and cooked potatoes. I cooked eggs and made Jello and ........I forget what else I made, but I also did quite a bit of packing so we'd be ready early in the a.m.

Mom helped me peel eggs.

Rob and Lana showed up during all this preparation......they came to pick raspberries so Lana could make a fresh raspberry sauce for pancakes on Saturday morning.

Lizzy helped her mom. They got a full pail of berries.

Robert and Titus stayed inside and visited with Grampa.

A long, busy day.......Mom and Dad went over to visit at Ritchie's for a couple hours after Mel got home then came back to sleep in our spare bed (which THEY put clean sheets on for me). That is something else I did today - laundry and putting clean sheets on both beds.