The garlic harvest is finally done, we took 2 weeks to get it finished and all hung up.

i left a few out in the field to fully develop as bulbils.  These ones are Russian Reds.  Will plant the little bulbils in the fall with the other garlic.

With Ken’s system we have gotten 5000 garlic hung in this small shed. AND it is drying quite nicely…  a week of very hot weather followed by a day of strong winds seems to have been perfect.  top side…

view from underneath.

and here is Tucker out standing in his field.

I also learned how to clean the Artichokes and freeze them.  Years ago when we lived in Bandon, I decided to make an artichoke dish and looked up instructions for how to clean them.  I followed the instructions ….cut away this, scoop out this,,, and had nothing left at the end ????     I am getting better now that I am an artichoke grower.  We use a LOT of artichokes, I put artichokes in Pesto instead of olive oil. I put them in everything.

I guess there ARE  some perks to being a doctors kid……but HOW COOL it would be to be a plumbers kid. Dylan created this very cool water device for running through in hot weather. It attaches a hose at each end,

then he drilled random holes into it,

then just added kids…..

Talon was a bit more cautious.

Moving on to more things plumbing……Dylan, with the help of Ken and Pete put down all the piping for the infloor heating system, last week.  

The huge roll that holds all of this piping….. so they can just pull the piping anywhere in the house…again a Dylan invention.. He claims one could purchase something similar.

We spent all day, last Saturday, (in our living room) figuring out the details for the kitchen cupboards. Very comfortable living room/kitchen etc. even on lawn chairs.  And Ken and Sarah you will see that your “?TV trays” have come in handy.

I should go back a little to explain that our house is going to have concrete flooring. I am sure I have said somewhere else that this IS the 4th house we have built.  On our second house, in Bandon, we had infloor heating as well. However, I did not think of a concrete floor until the day they came to pour the concrete over the piping, and I was told it was too late to make that call then.  On our next house in Scotch Creek BC, I had wanted concrete flooring, but the builder talked me out of it, saying that they all crack. Subsequent to that, I have seen floors with cracks and thought…. what’s the big deal?

So this time we have (our builder has) ….. taken many precautions to try to prevent cracking. He has put an extra wall in the basement (a temporary wall)  that runs along the centre of the living room area, to support the concrete floor when it is at its heaviest…IE when it is wet.  He has also installed angle iron metal pieces in each doorway to attempt to separate the rooms.  We are in the middle of a heat wave, which apparently is NOT a great time to put in a concrete floor, and so keeping the concrete wet for several days is also an attempt to keep it from cracking.

Also it has been a bit hectic, for the past weeks, making sure that everything that is needing to go through the concrete is placed… such as the plumbing, and the venting. We also got the electrician to put in two floor plugs prior to the pour.

So let the fun begin.

 

So at the end of the day, it is water water water.  The pieces of wood in the floor are where we will put the cut rocks. We will lift out the wood and there will be a space there.

We apparently need to water floor 10x a day for a week.

Bye for now, much love from Janet, Ken and Tucker (an outstanding dog)