Getting real in the garden

It's that time of year again: the 2013 seed catalogues have come in from my favourite suppliers and now it's time to figure out what the heck I'm going to do in the garden this year.

I really didn't know anything about growing vegetables before we arrived here, and so the last four years have felt like a big experiment, full of the novelty of any new adventure. But now it's time to get real. Or at least real-er. Not that it won't still be fun - it will. But I think I have enough data and experience now to be more realistic about what I can successfully grow. Here's what I'm thinking.

Thought #1: Alliums are the stars at Mucky Boots. The very first thing we planted even before we had moved in was garlic, and we have loved it from the start. There is nothing like home-grown garlic and onions, and somehow the conditions here seem suited for it. So we grow a lot of them: garlic, leeks and shallots, and red, green and yellow onions. I'm very happy with the varieties of red (Redwing) and yellow (Copra) onions in particular - they are indestructible in storage. It may not be the most economically wise thing to do, to devote such a large amount of garden space to growing things that are so inexpensive to buy, but we continue to do it because the quality is so much higher and because it means we get the satisfaction of cooking almost every day with something we grew.

Thought #2: I should only grow what I'm willing to eat. Take beans for example. In my first year's garden I grew lots and lots of beans. Pole beans and bush beans. Yellow beans, green beans, purple beans. Soybeans, filet beans and beans for drying. Consequently I preserved a lot of beans. I pickled beans, I blanched and froze beans, I dried beans. And I learned a few things - namely that there is only so much pickled anything I am willing to eat (I'm much more likely now to reach for something fermented than traditionally pickled), and frozen beans have an awful texture. So awful that most of that first year's frozen beans ended up being given to the chickens. I thought maybe I did something wrong (I blanched for a short period of time, then shocked with ice water, then used a vacuum sealer) so the next year I followed a different set of advice and didn't blanch, I just cut up and vacuum sealed. Still awful.

And the dried beans! My third year I wanted to see how much protein I could get out of the garden so I grew two different varieties of beans for drying. They did pretty well, and I'm happy to know it can work, but it was too much bed space and labour for the result. So last year I planted four measly feet of pole beans for eating fresh, and that was even more than we wanted to eat. This year: three feet.

On the other hand, I keep planting more and more carrots and more and more hardy greens, like chard, bok choy and (gasp!) kale. Between interplanting with onions and covering seedlings with remay cloth I seem to have found a way to produce pretty decent carrots, which we can't seem to get enough of. Ditto for the greens, which seem especially suited to our climate. I can grow them, we like to eat them - this is a recipe for success.



Thought #3: Pelleted seeds are wonderful.  Last year I planted my first pelleted seeds: carrots and lettuce. If you have grown either of those vegetables you know how tiny the seeds are. Which means, unless you have much greater dexterity and better eyesight than I do, a lot of thinning. With the right mindset this can be meditative, but it more usually feels like very fiddly torture. So when I saw seeds being offered with an organic pelleting I decided to give them a try. It's kind of like a candy coating on each seed, which makes them easier to space when you're seeding them in the garden. The seeds cost a bit more, but there's much less wastage. I'm sold on them, and will continue to buy them.

Thought #4: We live in a forest. We better get used to it. You can probably tell from this photo that our vegetable garden is in a clearing carved out from the surrounding forest. Which means it gets pretty good light, but not great light - which limits the kinds of things we can successfully grow. I've figured out we can grow pretty much anything, but not necessarily really well. Eggplant and peppers turn out puny, and winter squash seems to be a hit-or-miss proposition. So I've decided I need to be more strategic in my garden planning, and factor in the amount of sunlight each bed gets when I am figuring out crop rotations.

One crop that needs to be abandoned is grapes. There are three mature vines along one side of the vegetable garden, and we have yet to get anything resembling a harvest. There's just not enough sunlight. And they're grapes for making wine, not for eating, and neither of us is interested in wine making. To top it off, they contribute to the lack of sunlight for the vegetables. Verdict: they're coming down.

Thought #5: Berries are way easier to grow than fruit trees. When we moved to Mucky Boots we inherited a small orchard with three venerable apple trees (Pink Lady, Cox Orange Pippin and a crabapple) and a number of younger trees (cherry, Asian pear, peach and plum). We added a whole bunch more: pear, fig, more apples and plums. And we quickly learned that there is a disease and a bug for every season for every one of those fruit trees. It's hard to grow fruit!

Berries, on the other hand, seem to practically grow themselves. We have all kinds here - strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, gooseberries and red currants - and they all do well. Every year some types do better than others, but we've never had a bad year. Plus the investment of time before they begin to produce is much shorter. So we're going to replace the casualties in our orchard (between diseases and bears we have had a few) with more berries, not with more fruit trees. We're going with the flow on this one.

Five thoughts in one day. I better quit while I'm ahead.

Jam, jam, jam

The windows are a bit steamy these days thanks to all the canning that has been going on, starting with a wheelbarrow full of Cox Orange Pippin apples and 20 pounds of crab apples from the trees here at Mucky Boots.

And then there were those 45 pounds of Italian plums courtesy of my dad's plum tree.



Yes, you read that right: 45 pounds. Last week we spent an afternoon picking them and then two days making plum butter and a couple of kinds of plum jam. Kim, bless her heart, split and pitted somewhere between 850 and 900 plums, and together we cooked and mashed and stirred and processed, and now we have 50 half-pints of plummy sweetness filling the shelves in our cold storage room.



The crab apples have been made into juice, which has been canned until either I have time to make it into jelly or we drink it (which, since it is unsweetened, should send the Tart Meter into the red zone).

We have only just begun on the apples: one big bucket-full has given us almost two-dozen jars of dark, spicy apple butter, and there is an awful lot left to process. The rest will go to apple sauce or will be dried. And even though we'll have plenty for ourselves and to give away, we're feeling a little sad that this year's harvest is less than half that of previous years, because our beloved grand dame Pink Lady tree has succumbed to the massive damage done when a bear climbed it last fall to get the two apples we hadn't been able to reach at the top. As Harry, our master-pruner friend said the other week when he had a look, the tree had been living with a minor case of blight which speedily took over the tree once it was damaged, and now even the few limbs that survived the bear are dead or dying. The tree needs to come down, and that will be a sad, sad day at Mucky Boots.

As if to compensate, our other distinguished old tree, the Cox Orange Pippin, presented us with a bountiful barrow-full of big, fat apples. They are a more utilitarian apple than the Pink Ladies: they are naturally much drier, and consequently good for dehydrating and storing. They don't have the sweet, juicy flesh and amazing flavour of the Pink Ladies, but we're grateful for them nonetheless.



And so the pantry is filling up again with jars and jars of jam, jam, jam - far more than we could ever eat. But half the fun is giving them away.

Can you say "Christmas presents?"

Apples

There are a few ways I know fall has arrived. The hostas in the perennial beds are turning yellow. The nights are cool enough that with our windows open, a fluffy warm duvet makes the bed feel like heaven. My little tutoring business has started up again. And the apple harvest has begun in earnest.

Last year, with very different weather, the Pink Ladies were ready in mid-August, giving us time to pick bushels and bushels for drying and applesauce making, before the Cox Orange Pippins ripened in late September. This year, probably because of the crappy summer and the early autumn, it's all happening at once. It's probably fortunate for us that the trees are not as loaded with apples as they were last year, but we're still having trouble keeping up. The dehydrator is being kept busy, and since there's no room in the freezer for apple pies and crumbles (what with all those chicken breasts...) we'll have to get cracking on the applesauce and apple butter.

But before they all get peeled and sliced and cooked and processed, just look at that gorgeous Pink Lady atop a pile of Cox Orange Pippins. What with bugs and scabs and all the other things that mark up the fruit, most of our apples are a bit homely looking. But that Pink Lady - that's one perfect apple.

*&$%!! deer

This is what greeted us yesterday morning when we went out to the orchard. Our newly deer-proof-fenced orchard.

This freshly planted Lapin cherry tree probably doesn't have enough leaves left to photosynthesize sufficient food for the tree to live until next spring. We'll pamper it and care for it and do our best to see it through, but it doesn't look good.

A few of the other trees were munched as well, but none this badly. We are stunned.

Once we got over our immediate shock we made a circuit of the fence line, trying to figure out how a deer could have got in. Our neighbour Nick didn't have any new damage to his trees, so we don't think a deer got in over the fence we share with him. There is one spot at the back where the existing fence sags a bit, leaving a gap between the top of it and the lowest of the three wires we strung. It would take an athletically-gifted jumping deer to thread itself through that gap, but maybe it's possible. So we strung an extra line of wire there and in a few other places we can't imagine a deer getting in, but we were desperate to try everything.

Maybe 7 1/2 feet high just isn't enough?

What I can't figure out is why a deer would go to so much trouble to get into our orchard. After all, we live in the middle of a forest, with lots of tender green things for a deer to eat. And judging from the number of leaves bitten off but lying whole on the ground, the deer didn't even like the taste of our tree that much.

Our neighbour Nick, the source of much helpful farming wisdom, encouraged us to not get too riled up about it. His idea is that you do the best you can, but count on losing things every year, to deer or rabbits or insects or diseases - it's all part of the life. Instead of focusing on the 20% you lose, revel in the 80% you successfully grow.

We're working on it.

Orchard Gate

Is that not a beautiful gate? Behold the manifestation of Kim's idea for a homespun twiggy gate to counteract the detention centre vibe of the new deer fence protecting the orchard. It's not quite finished - we're going to paint a sign that says "The Cloister" and hang it between the two overhead branches - but doesn't it look fine? Those twiggy bits are the branches we saved when we trimmed the ornamental cherry near the pond, and I think they were perfect for the job: straight enough to do the job but with enough individual quirks to make them interesting. We're thinking of the gate as a work in progress - for example, if we can get our hands on some more flexible, thinner branches, we might try weaving them into the spaces between the cherry branches.

Making the gate in two parts, saloon-swinging-door style, made it a bit tricky to mount - a task made more complicated by the fact the two fence posts are farther apart at the top than they are at the bottom. It was something of a challenge to make sure each gate was level in all three dimensions, plus level to its partner along the top. As a consequence we had to fiddle with the hinges a fair bit, but we kept our cool and it worked out pretty well.

Our neighbour liked the gate so much he hired Kim to build him one, too, which she whipped off quickly and hung yesterday. That's my sweetie!

Varmints epilogue

If you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know I have struggled this year with mice in the garden, especially when it comes to my peas. I planted a whole bed full of peas one day, only to find the next morning a whole bed full of little holes where the peas had briefly been.

Well, we have been finding those peas everywhere. I assume the mice must have eaten some of them, but they also dropped a number that have since sprouted in the potato bed, the blueberry bed, and the pot full of catmint. The best were the sprouts Kim found the other day, growing out of a knothole in one of the raised beds. It's almost endearing enough to make me reconsider my feelings about mice. Almost.

We have also had some issues with the local deer, which in the past have shown a preference for the tender young growth in the orchard. So we had a deer fence built along one side of the orchard, and then on the weekend we raised to deer-proof height the existing fence on the other three sides. That was easy enough to do: we screwed cedar boards into the fence posts and strung three strands of wire to a height of about 7 feet.

We were warned by experts that the wire alone could prove a hazard to deer - they might not see it, and could injure themselves trying to jump the fence and getting hung up on the wire. The remedy is to tie flagging tape to the wire at regular intervals, preferably white since it's most visible at night when deer are most active.

With all that white tape fluttering in the breeze it looks like a wedding in the orchard.

Apple blossom heaven

Our orchard is full of young sprigs of trees: Asian pear, cherry, pear, plum, peach, apricot. But anchoring the fruity family are three venerable apple trees. The crab apple and the Cox Orange Pippin are looking pretty fine these days - leafy and blossomy and bursting with spring. But the Pink Lady is in another category altogether - that tree is nothing short of magnificent. It's stately, and shapely, and absolutely loaded with creamy pink blossoms. Today Kim and I were finishing the deer fencing around the orchard (Kim working one-armed to save her sore elbow) and I had to keep putting my tools down to take yet another picture of that amazing tree. Here are just a few of the pictures I took today.

Experts

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know how much pride Kim and I have taken in doing as many things ourselves as we can: bathroom renovations, flooring installations, workshop siding, new garden beds, hauling rocks from the quarry. Well, there are some times when it's just more sensible to stand back and let the experts do what they do best.

Yesterday we had a new fence put in to help us protect our growing orchard from deer. We tried caging each tree, but the cages are so cumbersome when it comes to mowing and weeding and mulching and fertilizing, and we questioned their ability to really protect the young trees from a determined deer. So we decided a while ago to put in a new line of fencing. The orchard is already fenced on three sides; two of those sides would have to be heightened by a couple of feet, but that's a job we could manage ourselves. All we needed was an 88 foot straight run of deer fencing. We had a very brief conversation with our friends at Cowichan Rental about renting an auger to dig the holes for the posts, but they very kindly and quickly talked us out of it: some tools are really meant for experts.

So we called around a bit, and everyone referred us to Gordie, who is a retired logger and heads a crew with three other retired guys. They work ten long days in a row, go fishing or camping for six days, then come back to start up all over again.

They arrived yesterday morning just after 8, and although we somehow thought they'd be around for most of the day, they were gone by 10. And man, were they a smoothly functioning crew. They got right to work, every man with a job to do. And did they ever have some cool tools! The best was a gizmo that attached to the front of their tractor, that pounded in the fence posts with 30,000 pounds of pressure. Our rocky Glenora soil was no match for this mean machine.

Runner-up in the cool tool contest was the metal bar they used to stretch the fencing material across the posts for nailing. It looked like a medieval torture device, but it sure did the job: the fencing was locked in with metal spikes, then the bar was hoisted to a vertical position and attached to the tractor with a big chain. They backed up the tractor, pulling the fencing taut, and then all the guys got out their hammers and started pounding in staples to attach the fencing to the posts. Lickety-split.

Now that it's done we're having a few second thoughts, mostly because it makes the fruit trees in look like they're in some kind of orchard prison. But Kim has some ideas for a homespun twiggy gate that we hope will tone down the penitentiary aesthetic.

History

I've always had a thing for history. But beyond knowing a little about the two other sets of owners our house has had in its 16 year history, we don't know much about this piece of land. A little glimpse of that missing history found the light of day yesterday.

Our orchard is at the back of the property, where the fruit trees fight for sunlight with much bigger maples, red cedars, firs, alders and hemlocks. Last spring we had some trees limbed and one taken down in an attempt to get more light into critical parts of the garden. The hardest decision concerned two hemlock trees that were growing out of the stump of a big old growth cedar - they put a few of the trees in the orchard in shade all through the morning. Eventually we decided just to top them as a compromise, but it became apparent as the growing year progressed and we added more trees to the orchard that the hemlocks had to go.

So yesterday Bud came with his crew and took them down. We were sad to see them go, but very happy about the new light that flooded into the orchard as they came down. And when they were gone we had a chance to really appreciate the old growth cedar stump they were growing out of. There's a slice of history! You can see the notches the lumberjacks cut for the boards they stood on as they cut the tree down. Some of those notches are 8 or 10 feet off the ground, which must have required something of a balancing act. We wonder how many years ago that was, and whether they had gas saws by then or were still doing all the cutting by hand. It's fun to imagine what the property looked like then: no people, no fences, no garden beds, no buildings. no property lines.

On a side note, the young fellow in Bud's crew who actually climbed the trees to cut them down is a recent immigrant from the south of England, where he learned his trade. Somehow that doesn't quite make sense to us, but he certainly seemed to know what he was doing. And he was thrilled about the cedar stump, and being so close to its history.

Varmints continued

Our problems with mice and deer continue. You may remember that I had a bit of trouble with mice eating the peas I had planted, and nibbling my seedlings in the greenhouse. You may also remember I dealt with the pea issue by covering the bed with a floating row cover. Ha.

I should thank all of you who might have laughed at me, and refrained, hearing this great plan. Why on earth would I think a floating row cover, even one securely anchored around its perimeter, would keep out a determined and hungry mouse? The very next day I lifted the cover the find the same neatly drilled holes in the soil where the peas had once been. Little buggers.

And there was worse news in the greenhouse. Sure, my chard seedlings had been nibbled to the ground, but chard is easy and quick to grow and I didn't feel so bad having to plant some more. But my pepper seedlings! My carefully pampered and prospering pepper seedlings - now that hurt. The mice didn't even fully enjoy them - they just chewed them off and left the decapitated bits on top of the soil.

Well, I got a bit heated under the collar. Things got even more heated a few days later when Kim went back to the garden and discovered that deer had nibbled the tender leaves of the freshly planted Asian pear tree and the ends of a few of her new blueberry bushes. We should have expected it, but our problems with deer have been sporadic. We had planned to put a wire cage around the tree, and netting over the blueberries - we just hadn't got to it.

I had to figure out how far I wanted to go in the mouse-deterrence battle. Those of you who refrained from laughing at my floating row cover idea may have to turn away for a moment, because my next strategies were to sprinkle cayenne pepper all over the seedlings in the greenhouse, and plug in an electronic rodent deterrer. You can guess how well those worked. So now, for the first time in my life, I am baiting mouse traps with peanut butter every evening, and first thing every morning I make the circuit of all the traps and dispose of the dead mice I find.

I cried with the first one. Only its nose had been caught in the trap, and I wondered how long it had lived, and how much it had suffered. I hated myself. I don't kill things - I grow things. What was I doing?

It got a bit easier after that, mostly because all the mice I have found since then ( and there haven't been that many) have had definitively crushed heads. I could see that their deaths would have been quick. But it still doesn't sit easily with me.

Dealing with the deer problem was easier. No life and death issues there, just some wire fencing around the pear tree and some nylon bird netting for the blueberries. We used netting last year to keep the birds from the strawberries and the deer from the blueberries, gooseberries and blackberries planted along the fence, but we weren't totally happy with the system we had worked out, mostly because the netting kept get tangled in the lawn mower, and it proved to be a pain to keep out of the way when harvesting all those berries we had protected so well.

So this year Kim got serious and came up with a great way of managing it. She screwed stakes to the outside of each raised bed, pulled netting taut over the stakes, and then used more screws at the bottom to hook the bottom edge of the netting, providing good coverage without having netting dragging on the ground waiting for the power mower. When we want to get into the bed we just unhook the bottom edge of the netting and drape it up over the top, easy as pie. Blueberry pie.

These little hooks from Lee Valley have proved very useful. We used the net-to-wire hooks to easily fasten the netting to the existing fence, and the net-to-net hooks to tie back the excess netting at the corners. And they're cheap!

Blueberries

You may remember that this new bed (and its sister in the background) was built in an attempt to satisfy Kim's appetite for potatoes. Well, she has decided that even she can be satisfied with the two beds we have set aside for potatoes in the fenced-in portion of the vegetable garden, and so these beds have been dedicated to blueberries instead, Kim's second favourite thing.

She worked really hard getting the beds filled and the soil to the right pH (blueberries need acid soil), but today she finally put plants in the first bed. Once the other bed gets planted, which should happen tomorrow, we will have roughly doubled our blueberry bush count to a total of 35 plants of seven different varieties: Bluecrop, Hardy Blue, Chandler, Brigitta, Spartan, Northland and North Country.

She was disappointed with the plants we bought from a nursery on the Saanich Peninsula last weekend. They came in big gallon pots, but when she loosened each pot to ease out the plant, out came a tiny, very root bound plug. And that from a reputable nursery that specializes in blueberries. We took pictures, and will call them tomorrow to let them know of our concerns. It will be interesting to see what they say.

But right now the newly planted bed looks lovely. Kim stapled the tags to wooden stakes that she planted in the bed along with the blueberries: not as lovely as Paula's copper tags, but it makes us feel like we're official somehow.

Here was the best moment of the day. First, for those of you who aren't Canadian, Tim Horton's is a coffee chain that figures prominently in many Canadian's sense of national identity. Kim had been telling me that she'd heard that Tim's adds something to their coffee to make people happy when they drink it. So later in the day when I was going out to run an errand I asked her if she'd like me to pick her up a happy coffee, and she said "No thanks. I'm happy enough already."

Job hazard

For those of you still digging out from under the last dump of snow, no this is not what our gooseberries look like - we still have a few months to go! This picture was taken early last June, when I was enchanted by how fresh and juicy these berries looked. I had a vague memory of eating gooseberry jam once, and had visions of afternoon tea on the lawn with homemade scones to go along with the jam. What a lovely place Mucky Boots Farm was going to be, I thought!

The problem was knowing when to pick them. They looked so lovely when they were green we ate a couple and spit them out, they tasted so sour. So we waited, and waited, and finally towards the end of the summer they turned red. How exciting, we thought, and ate some more. They were just as awful - bitter, as well as sour. Our gooseberry adventure sputtered to a halt, with bushes full of nasty tasting red berries we finally turned over to the birds, wondering when, exactly, goosberries are supposed to be picked.

I thought we would sort that out this year, and was content to wait until then. Maybe gooseberries are like rhubarb - it's really all the sugar that makes them taste good. But this week, as we have continued our weeding and pruning marathon, I had to weed under and around the gooseberry bushes, and came face to face (literally) with this.

Yikes! This is only one of a dozen branches on each of our four gooseberry bushes. Now I'm thinking no amount of tasty gooseberry jam is worth me skewering an eye on a thorn. The future of these bushes is looking uncertain...

Pruning boot camp

Life at Mucky Boots this spring is different in lots of ways than last spring. We aren't commuting 60-75 minutes over the Malahat to get to work every morning, for one thing. Last spring most things were on a keeping-our-heads-above-water basis, and as a consequence lots of jobs just didn't get done.

Like pruning, for example. We have a small orchard with 3 apple, 3 crab apple, 2 pear, 1 Asian pear, 4 peach, 3 plum and 3 cherry trees. In addition, we have about two dozen blueberry bushes, a 20 foot row of raspberry canes, and a couple of blackberry plants. All of which require pruning.

Last year we did a bare-bones job of pruning the two biggest oldest apple trees, some when it was supposed to get done (i.e. late winter) and some later, when we could get to it. The trees seemed to have forgiven us for not knowing what we were doing, because we got bumper crops from both trees.

This year, we are determined to do it right. What do two former teachers do when they have to learn something new? Read books, of course. So we assembled all the books in our library that had something to tell us about pruning fruit trees and berry bushes, and set to work.

It quickly became clear that pruning is complicated enough to merit a graduate degree. Pruning can be done to create or maintain a basic shape, to promote or inhibit growth, or to increase fruit yield or quality. There is winter pruning. There is summer pruning. Does the tree need a central leader or do better with an open, vase shape? It wasn't long before we felt a little overwhelmed. Normally when a job needs doing one of us or the other takes it on, but this time we decided two heads were better than one, and we'd do it together.

We decided to tackle it a fruit at a time, starting with the apple trees. We started with damaged and diseased branches. Off they went. Then we looked for branches crossing other branches. Off they went. Every time we made a cut we dunked the loppers in bleach water, to make sure no bug or disease was passed from one branch to another. And every time we flung a pruned branch away, Frankie leapt for it and wrestled it to the ground for a good chewing. He had a great time - he thought the whole exercise was for his benefit.

Once the big pruning was done, we turned our attention to the new growth from last year. All the cuts we made had to be planned so that the resulting lateral growth would be in the right direction - i.e. outwards and up, not inwards or down. With this in mind, we trimmed all the laterals and leaders back to between 3 and 6 buds and we were done.

We read somewhere that since the ideal shape for an apple tree is open in the middle, if you can throw your hat through the centre of the tree, you're in business. When we were finished we tried it with Kim's favourite straw hat, which Frankie then pounced on and demolished. So much for that trick.

The raspberries were much easier. Raspberries bear fruit on canes in their second year of growth, which means any canes that are older, and have already borne fruit, can be cut out. The same holds true for blackberry canes. Blueberries are similar - they bear on two or three year old wood, so older wood needs to be cut out to encourage new shoots to come up from the base.

So we're getting there. There's still a lot to do, and the weather has turned cool and rainy again after a wonderful week of sun and warmth, so it's not quite as much fun to be working outside. But we're feeling a bit more confident that we have a handle on at least the basics of pruning. And if there's one thing this new life is teaching me, it's that I shouldn't wait to feel entirely comfortable before I try something new. Some times you just have to trust that you have the general idea, jump in, and know that you'll get older and wiser as you go.

Cox Orange Pippins

We have two old apple trees, one a Pink Lady and the other a Cox Orange Pippin. Of course we wondered where the names came from. The Pink Lady apples ripened early, and when I peeled some for my first bowl of apple cereal and saw all the pink in the bowl, I figured that one out. The Cox Orange Pippins were a bit more of a puzzle, but only because we needed to wait until just this week. All of a sudden the previously green and mottled brown apples took on a beautiful red hue that added the last colour needed to produce a distinctly orange blend overall. Question answered.

Raining and Pouring

There's rain, and then there's rain. It's the second kind we've been having. Enough rain that our summer-dry pond filled up entirely in 24 hours. Enough rain to make working outside, which we have been doing, a bit of a challenge. Enough rain to make our boots and everything else mucky!

We have been putting fences around our youngest fruit trees, in a closing-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-is-gone attempt to protect them from the deer who have been visiting. Between his scent and his barking, Frankie was giving us some protection. But as we have found out, all it takes is one visit by one deer to really wreck your trees. So, armed with wire fencing, wooden stakes, a sledgehammer and a staple gun, we launched our defensive manoeuvres in the middle of a very rainy afternoon. Pretty quickly our hats were wet, our coats were wet, our pants were soaked and our dog was bedraggled. Our fruit trees were happy, though.

Probably because it has been about a year since Kim and I took possession of the farm, I've been thinking a lot about how different things feel from this time last year. The real test will be next June, which will mark the anniversary of when we left our jobs. But it's still interesting to look back to see what's changed, and what we've accomplished.

I think we have a more realistic idea, now, of the scope of the project we have taken on, and the work involved. When it comes to the garden (orchard, veggies and perennials) I think we've found it manageable - at least as long as all we're trying to do is feed ourselves, rather than growing for a market garden. When it comes to the house renovations, we're both feeling overwhelmed by all that is left to do. I keep reminding myself that we have accomplished a lot. We managed a difficult move in the midst of the snowiest winter for a long, long time. We painted. We learned how to lay slate tile and install baseboard. We managed a kitchen renovation. We have put on three new roofs - pumphouse, garden shed and wood shed - and built new raised beds for the vegetable garden. We had a great growing season, planted new fruit trees, and learned how to can tomatoes. That's pretty good, I think. We should try to remember that when what's left to do keeps us awake at 2:00 a.m.

Duck news

Before I started blogging about our adventures here at Mucky Boots, I was sending "Farm Updates" to family and friends via email. Here is one of them, from May 2009.

Hello everyone!

It's been a busy time at the farm - too busy to sit down and write an update! So here's some catch-up.

Happy and sad news on Mama Duck and her nest. A few weeks ago Kim called me out to the verandah on a Saturday morning, and there, swimming on the pond, was Mama and 14 wee fuzzy ducklings, all clustered around her tail end as if they were ball bearings and Mama was magnetic. (So sorry for the poor quality of the photo, but I didn't want to risk getting any closer!). That's the happy part. The sad part is that that was the last we saw of them. We don't know if once the ducklings were hatched she decided to take her wee ones away from Frankie and his barking, or if something terrible happened to them that night. Our worst fear is that somehow Petunia got them.

We feel horrible. But Mother Nature may have forgiven us, because we now have a nest full of very vocal baby birds (swallows, we think) in the ceiling of the verandah - there's a ventilation hole that should be screened, but isn't. We'll repair the screen when the babies are grown and flown, but for now it's quite fun to watch the parents flying in and out with snacks for the babies, and to hear the incredibly loud chirping of the brood.

The garden is changing every day. In the perennial beds tulips of a dozen different varieties have come and gone, and the day of the iris, the cornflower, columbines and phlox has arrived. Most showy of all are the poppies - cheerfully modest orange ones, and blowsily luxuriant Oriental red ones.

In the vegetable garden we are learning lots of lessons about how important nitrogen is in the production of leaves and roots (we almost lost some squash plants), and about the benefits of succession planting (planting the same seeds over a few weeks, rather than all at once, so you don't end up with a mountain of spinach all bolting at the same time). We are continuing to eat wonderful salads from the garden, with romaine, Swiss chard, kale, spinach and mizuna. The peas are now about 4 feet tall and flowering. The raspberry bushes sound like some kind of machine, there are so many bees buzzing among the flowers.

Kim has taken charge of the orchard. We are learning there are a million things that can go wrong with fruit trees, but so far we haven't actually killed anything... With some new additions to the orchard we now have 3 apple trees (one is an espaliered tree with grafts of 6 different varieties!), 2 crabapple trees, 3 plum trees, 3 pear trees, 3 cherry trees, and 4 peach trees. We also have some loaded gooseberry bushes, and the blueberry bushes are already loaded with baby berries.

With the new trees in the orchard, and new tools, and new watering wands, we have spent an awful lot... But our favourite purchase by far is our new garden ornament, bought with Dad in mind.

Much love to you all!

Mir