It's never too late to catch up with old friends... unless you owe them money...

When you start doing a blog it's not uncommon to psych yourself up to be a Hemingway of sorts. You anticipate that your poetic ramblings will be quickly adored by thousands and it will be nothing at all to rip off poignant thought rivers daily. The fact of the matter is unless you put tons of time into pumping your blog, very few read it and the daily thing is a pipe dream for anyone over 25 with any kind of life. I will do my best and appreciate your patience. Not sure who that is directed to but if you read it, than it's you...

It's been a few days since the last post, my longest hiatus I think. If you were going through withdrawal I apologize but I'm sure it will be fine, this post may be a long one.

The garlic patch is in and growing. Things didn't really turn out like I had planned but hopefully it all works out. I borrowed my uncles dump truck and he gave me a few cubic yards of quality top soil to drop off at my place. I had wanted this "Max-gro" stuff from a local topsoil provider but ended up with one a step down (in my ignorant opinion). However it was much cheaper and I added a bunch of quality compost etc. so hopefully it works out. We'll know next fall if you can hang in there. Oh, I also planted a couple dozen bulbils but I'm not expecting much. If the whole thing craps out I won't be surprised. It's a first shot and I will be working right next to the garlic plot over the next couple weeks prepping Montego for next spring. 

Good to have great neighbours

Big side note bonus, when I pulled in with the dump truck, my neighbour, the old guy with all the tools, was in my yard mowing down my 5 foot hayfield of weeds in Montego. The whole thing was laid out flat from his industrial mower. It was a such a great lift, even D gasped when she saw it all cleared. In a way it took a mountain and made it a large annoying hill you'd hate to have to climb but can... oh he also had a bucket on the mower and dropped all my soil right into the garlic hole. Saving me about 3 hours of lugging a lame wheelbarrow back n forth. Country neighbours, so far, are great. Another neighbour, a young silver spooned kid a few doors south came over to say hi and offered a barter of some of our trees for some excavation work via his company. We do have too many trees which I will have to get rid of for planting but if we can sell some or at least trade them off for man hours/items than all the better. We still haven't sold our condo yet so money is tighter than (insert hillbilly one liner here)

The puppy, although cute as hell and full of life, has been a handful. In hindsight not sure it was the best idea to get him this quickly but I may say that at anytime. Once he's house trained and a loyal companion I'm sure it will be all great. He already knows how to sit and comes when his name is called. When he can use an abacus I'll call the media. By the way for those of you out there betting, we named the puppy Cooper. 

Future Greenhouse

All in all we love it so far. The property is huge which makes it all the better. We're still finding out new things about the house, hidden passageways and perks here and there. Something not so nice is the cost of everything. Things we need to buy for the farm business, things we need to buy to maintain/fix the house and everything in between. Most importantly D is happy and always has a little pep in her step regardless of what's going on. It's nice that we can be getting into our groove so quickly. I am however getting a little worried about pulling this whole things off. Just the small amount of work involved in getting the garlic patch going was a little tough. What am I going to do with a 60 x 80 plot, or even 4 acres. Hopefully by then aliens will have sold us slave robots that run off carbon monoxide or Twinkies... 
   
Life Lesson #17: To master your 9 X multiplication table hold up both hands palms up, fingers fanned out. Always starting with the number 9 in your head, try 9 x 3. The 3 being the 3rd finger on your left hand, put it down. The number represented by your fingers still up is the answer to 9 x 3  (2 and 7) 27. Try it with 9 x 5, the 5 being your pinkie finger on your left hand. Once you roll that down, the 4 fingers remaining on your left hand and the 5 on your right is the answer. 9 x 5 = (4 and 5) 45   
    

Call it what you wish, it's still home...

Week 1 of the move is now complete and we have started work on the first planting bed for next season. An advantage of the fall move is plenty of prep time for the growing season. On the other hand its a full winter of busy work which may or may not become a Shining situation. We have no red rum in the house at the moment.

We have decided to name our planting locations based on different places we have been to, or would like to visit. So far we only have two,

1. Montego: Name significance: First place we ever met while on vacation. Farm Significance: the initial planting location for next years first crops. It's a 60 ft-ish by 80 ft-ish plot of land right on the front corner of our overall garden lot, closest to the house and the only spot without a forest of trees and stumps.  
2. Eden: Name significance: The place everyone would want to live. Farm Significance: the back 2.5ish or so acres of our property separated from the front section by a creek and some trees. Ultimately it will be where we plant an orchard of various fruit trees. Probably 2+ each of apples, cherries, plums, apricots, peaches etc etc. Anything we can get our hands on will be grown and tested there. Most likely also the beehive hangout...

 Why name them you may be wondering?

• A just for fun 
• B for easy reference when discussing any given location
• C in case one has to look for the other it would be an easy find 

After 1 hr with a shovel? really...?

Anyway, we will have a heck of a struggle trying to get Montego ready for food planting. As mentioned before we were happy that the previous owner ran a landscaping company. Now we're seeing a negative side effect of that, tons of debris and stones mixed into the soil. After an hour of plain shovel digging I found way too much garbage to be optimistic about the whole ordeal. So for the time being we are focusing on the garlic patch. We have about 180+ cloves consisting of 8 different strains and a handful of garlic bulbils as a test. The bulbils won't pay off for about 3 years but economically it much better than plain bulbs.

Semi Interesting Factoid: Bulbils are small garlic seeds that grow in the flower of a mature garlic scape. A scape can have 60 to 400 bulbils, the average garlic bulb has 6-8 cloves.    

 

Garlic slave at work

On to the planting. The old owners still have some items left here he has yet to clean up. We're being patient with them for various reasons. So after my hour long wrestling match with their garbage in Montego, I flagged down one of the workers he has cleaning up the mess. Following a quick chat, I picked a spot at the NW corner of the Montego plot and he drove his bobcat over and cleared me a 6 inch deep plot 5ft wide and about 15 ft long. Just enough space for the garlic patch. It's got full sun and it's enough out of the way I can prep the rest of the plot over the next couple weeks for next year. As you can see from the pic on the right, it's all a nightmare of weeds, but the potential is there. Main priority is getting the garlic in the ground and once I have the 3 yards of special soil dropped tomorrow, Sunday becomes planting day. And not a moment too soon. Good thing D got me the farmer overalls with leather knees...

Life Lesson # 104: Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will
look 85.

Oh we get puppy tomorrow too... can't wait. Overheard a helpful clerk at the TSC Store saying for a puppy you need a ticking clock and hot water bottle in their bed to help with mommy separation. Got one for puppy and for myself. I'll let you know how it goes. 

Be careful with your actions, you never know when you're creating a memory...

Tomorrow is the day it all begins. We did our final inspection today to make sure the farm wasn't burned down or rented out to hippies with a grow-op. The place itself was still standing but the homeowner has not lived up to her agreement to get a list of issues taken care of. Let this be a lesson to anyone buying a house from a bitter old curmudgeon. Get the price to where you want it regardless of the issues with the idea you're fixing it. When it comes time to sign and get the keys, if things aren't done, you're pretty much out of luck unless you want to cancel the deal and sue in court for a year or two.

Well, even with a grow-op we'd be taking the farm but the hassles we are now faced with have just added a few more posts in the future blog file. Including but ot restricted to a new AC unit, oil tank replacement and garbage removal from 10 years of bad landscaping jobs. All in all, it's better to have us do it, at least it will be done right. This will be a constant theme in the future. You want something done right, do it yourself or at least watch the person doing it and figure it out for next time, unless of course it's a root canal or colonoscopy.   

We drop off the cats tomorrow and await the pods we filled a few weeks ago. Everything will be on site for Saturday so when the movers show up we can have it done ASAP. At $150/hr we'll do anything we can to speed things up including oil up the driveway with PAM. We ended up finding a good moving company on the website www.homestars.com , it's the same place we found our home inspector and that worked out great for us so I'll let you know how this one goes.

Rules change after 30...

"Don't you have friends to help you move?" you're asking?

Of course we do, however we are trying to live by a new rule of thumb. Once you ask someone to help you move, you're on the hook to help them. So let's say you ask 4 buddies to help you move once. You now have to help 4 people move, and if your friends are like some of mine, they drift around like plastic in the ocean, it could be every year or so. Not to mention, you shouldn't ask people to help you move after you're 30. Add that to the list of things to not do after 30, including using "party" as a verb and men having piercings.



Life Lesson #888: People will forget what you said and what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel, so be kind.

If you've never been in over your head, how do you know how tall you are...

With only 4 days left before we move into our farm and start our adventure, we happened to catch a documentary this morning on the CBC. Sometimes coincidence has a way to give you a little nudge in the right direction or at least to give your head a shake to reality. If you ever get a chance to, see the film To Make a Farm

Basically it follows 3 sets of young farmers in Canada who have chosen to grow and sell their own food. Each at a different stage and financial support situation, the film was not only moving but inspirational, scary and in many ways enlightening. Horticultural classes are now on the horizon, style of greenhouse and seed starting has been altered and even the way in which we'll offer our products has been improved. You have to be able to adapt to survive and an expert I am not, so if I can stand on the shoulders of genius before me, I can see that much better.

I have to be honest, the film scared me a little. Not so much the workload, that I can handle. I worked carpentry outdoors in January so I'm no stranger to pain, it's more the unpredictability of nature. It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that no matter what you do to prepare for any circumstance, nature can at anytime drop and say, "na, I don't think you have enough heartache" then blamo, rain, pest, drought, sickness etc. If not for the fact D is going to keep working while we get this off the ground, I'm not sure going from 0 to 100 would be a smart move. Only time will tell, and it starts in 4 days...

Oh and Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family... not that anyone is reading this... ;o)

Life Lesson #761:  Life is not fair -- get used to it...