Pink Salmon & Dandelions

Our gardens have been tucked in for the winter.


After we harvested the potatoes we turned in the soil with the potato plants and the season's mulch of reeds, grass and cardboard. Aki broadcast rye seed and peas. Let them grow for a month and at about 5" high turned them under with some seasoned chicken manure, raised the bed, skirted the rise with bark and cardboard, planted 2/3 of the garlic crop for next and covered it in a thick blanket of reeds.
The reeds will be pulled back in the spring to let the soil warm. When the plants are up the reeds get distributed throughout the garlic as mulch.

Some yells, some screams.

Some friends gave us some red kuri squash. It looks an awful lot like pumpkin. So we carved it for halloween. We had it lit for a night...then we ate it... Jack's head. We found our halloween tradition.

We have been spending some time in the forest collecting firewood. Always rejuvenating. We are looking forward to the deep dark winter.

The three of us watched a movie a month back set in Afghanistan, "The Kite Runner". It spanned a timeline of 30 years. We're still thinking about it.

Basted in honey and butter. Roasted and eaten.

Served on a moose antler platter.

Pink Salmon, dandelions, artists and farmers all have something in common, and we are still trying to grasp and pin down this thread.

December 21st. We are alone and we've got something all to ourselves.

Deep in thought in the deep, dark winter.
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The Autumn Bush

The nights are still and quiet. Three owls talk over the boreal forest in the crisp autumn air. The tremendous sky of stars sets a relative perception clear... We're looking forward to the winter. Clearing our minds, closer to each other, reaping meaning and understanding from the information of the past year.

I'm thinning our woods of the dead. Letting in light for new growth, bringing in firewood. For what it's worth it's our twelfth winter and we have not cut a living tree to build with or for firewood. The trees are dying so fast here that we haven't had to.











6 cords of firewood a year, fencing and a couple of buildings.

Except for the fuel for the chainsaw, burning firewood is basically carbon neutral.








Our gardens are almost tucked in for the winter. We grow rye grass for cover and mix in rotted wood, compost, reeds, cardboard, ash and egg shell from our chickens. We also mix in sand because our soil is clay based.



Aki planted 109 garlic bulbs worth of garlic for next year, saving 20 or so to plant in the spring between other crops. After the potatoes were harvested at the beginning of September we dug in the potato plants, planted rye and let it grow 6". We then covered the bed with 4" of sand mixed with rotted wood, turned the bed with a fork, planted the garlic toes, watered with manure tea, then covered the bed with reeds. In the spring Aki will pull the cover back and as the garlic comes she'll give it another shot of green manure tea.





We will do the same with some parsnip seed.





This year we were able to save more seed: garlic, parsnip, peas, fava bean, squash, zucchini, spinach, chinese greens, potatoes. Almost had some broccoli seed...next year.

Out there in the world the environment is once again on the back burner, the rich are richer and we are a little poorer.

We've been duped again.


It is hard to see that anybody gives a hoot about children.





Adults are bizarre. To leave the kids our problems because we're too selfish to give up a bit of decadence.


Our food is canned, dried and in the root cellar. Warmth is taken care of.

We have 16 chickens this year, the most we've ever had. All laying - we've discovered pickled eggs... Reinsulating the coop - the mice love it in there.

This year has been a good solar power year. Every day that's sunny we appreciate the power of the sun, and every day that it's not we appreciate it even more.

It will be a good winter.

Our business,

http://www.caribooblades.com/

Harvesting

Our gardens have done well this season. Root vegetables, the brassica family, peas and most greens have thrived here.

Getting ready for the frost in the middle of August. By August 25 we had a frost every night for 1- 1/2 weeks, a break of 2 or 3 nights and then the frost was back. By October there's a hard frost every night.

It was a cool and short growing season this year with a couple of frosts overnight in July. Natural. It lets every plant know ...

Aki has dried our winter supply and she has been canning over the last couple of weeks. I brought in our second load of fire wood. Aki dries broccoli, kale, beet greens, wild mushrooms, rose hips, herbs like basil, oregeno, sage etc.., cauliflower, tomatoes, peppers, cherries and horseradish.

We've been eyeing the rose hips - they're red and ready to pick, just have to get around to it. Perhaps that'll be a job for Kai, who is helping out more and more. We dry rose hips for tea and cooking and our rose hip wine is on the go. This year we'll try rose hip/apple jelly, as we're enjoying the first real crop of apples from our little orchard.

We love this time of year. Cool enough for the cookstove, warm days, no bugs. A good harvest is an added bonus. Things are coming together as we prepare for winter.

Bugs had their way this year but were overcome with a little extra work from ourselves as well as the plants. We've found that cardboard box makes for really good mulch and the worms and toads love it.

An organic farmer told us that rather than worms being good for your soil, they are more importantly a sign, with their presence, that the soil is good.

The cardbord biodegrades over the season. By next spring it is decomposed and the soil is richer for it. We're not worried about what it looks like because of the amazing things it provides for the garden. We have researched whether it will cause any ill effects to the soil and it doesn't. The cardboard is easily biodegradable.

The inks are vegetable based and degrade as well leaving nothing behind but great compost.

This is August

Lunch is fresh.

A fresh lunch becomes challenging

by the middle of October.

Now we are seeding rye grass and peas as a cover crop for the winter. All our kitchen compost is buried directly into the garden. We dig in rotten wood, egg shells, wood ash, composted chicken manure and grass that hasn't seeded. We find that what we prepare now will have a lot to do in determining next years yield in our bushcraft /survival garden.

Please check out the body of work we've done over the summer at, www.caribooblades.com/newknives.html

Gardening with the Tide

Lots of rain, thunder, spectacular lightning and the mosquitoes are to be reckoned with and getting worse.

This is all adding up to a great mushroom season. Morels and boletes . An excellent start for the saskatoon berries. All the seedlings have lots of water.

A great aspect to all the rain is that the range cattle have enough to eat out there and will leave us alone.

Ranchers lease crown land, range, for their beef cattle. We are surrounded by crown land. Some dry years they eat all the grass, flowers and shrubs in the gov't range so they begin busting down our gerden fences.. This is not an enjoyable experience. We end up harvesting early because they won't stop until they've eaten everything. If there is enough rain in May and June the vegetation grows , gets a head start. Fingers crossed, the beef won't bother us.When it comes to beef, we have no rights.

The lodge pole pine is gone but still standing supplying us with easy firewood and building logs.

Looking across the lake at the fringe of trees left in the riparian zone, it appears as though we live on the edge of a cliff, but the open space just beyond is a clearcut. Trees take up water, and when the trees are cut down, the water runs into the lake, and the lake rises. The tide.

The tilled garden plots that are now under water have sprouted cattails. .

Our new crop.

Each spring now we wait to see how much garden space we will have. Raised beds help enormously. We wait, but there is inevitably much mud-slinging in the turning of the soil.

We have everything in now, and the gardens are looking good.

The swallows are building, the air is full of birdsong, new life begins.

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