sorrento

The end of our market gardeners year.

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

I guess it is hard to know whether it is the beginning of the year or the end. We are starting to plant garlic for next year and we had our last market yesterday. The market is a little bit later than usual, in fact last year this time we were in England doing the Hadrians wall hike. The garlic is a little bit early … we usually plant around the average first frost time, and I do not expect a frost for at least 2 weeks.(I find that the average first frost should be set back a few week from the first of October until the middle) We are leaving in a few weeks for Portugal to do another of the various Camino’s.

This year we saved a lot of bulbils, not necessarily intentionally ….Most of our garlic is hardneck garlic and hardneck garlic sends up a scape in late May, June that forms into an umbrel as shown above with hundreds of little bulbils. The little bulbils are actually clones of the garlic rather than seeds as there is no pollination that take place. We try to cut off most of the scapes when they are about 6 inches long, the one in this picture has already formed 2 loops.

If you leave these on the plant too long they form into the umbrels shown above. The reason to cut them off at about 6 inches or so, allows the plant to put more energy into growing the Garlic bulb, and we certainly found this to be true this year, as all of the plants that we allowed the umbrels to mature turned out to be smaller garlic than its neighbours .

I have decided to use these bulbils that we have SOOO many of this year… to expand our crop somewhat. Trying to have enough garlic to plant 5000, takes a lot of garlic to begin with, and it cuts into last years harvest substantially. I usually end up buying more garlic to plant in the fall to end up with the amount of garlic I want. To grow from bulbils takes a few years to get actual proper garlic.

The box in the middle shows the actual bulbils fresh off of the umbrels (at the bottom). The rounds shown in the other boxes are essentially the bulbils from last year. That is what they grow into. Then when you plant the rounds, you end up with a proper garlic head. This is a bit of an oversimplification as the bulbils do not all grow into a round, some just grow into very small garlic heads. (it also gives me something to keep me busy in June, sorting through the rounds, preparing them for planting)

This year we have opted to grow our entire upper garden bed in the bulbils and rounds. I find that some of the rounds grow into our largest garlic of the year. Last week we planted all of the bulbils. This week we are planting our regular garlic stock.

This is our main garden…

THIS is our upper field, essentially a 300 ft by 6 foot garden we built with wood chips compost and soil.

As far as the rest of the market gardening, I would say that everything but the garlic we sell at the farmers market are just the things we grow way to much of to eat ourselves. (and our rocks and toques I make). I have never been very good at knowing just how much to plant just for ourselves. Many of the things I grow are more experimental than anything.. just growing to see if I can. For instance, this year I finally successfully grew watermelon, huge in fact. … only to realize.. what the heck are we going to do with all these huge watermelons? Perhaps they might be a big item in our booth next year.

We find that Lavender grows like a weed here and have been taking the new baby plants and put them in the back garden and dig up a few before each market and then put them back in the garden if they do not sell.

In the past I have tended to grow tomato plants and sell the plants in the spring and then the tomatoes as they ripened. I have always ended up with a lot of tomato plants because….. well the packets had a lot of seeds… Then I started saving seeds. and well…. ended up with even more seeds. I have been trying to grow less tomatoes because I end up planting 100 plants each year and then selling as many as I can and then giving many away, but always ending up throwing some away. Last year I found out that tomato plants could be an item for the food bank and gave them many of them. This year with my plans to grow less, I ended up not growing nearly as many plants as usual, as it was a very cold spring and many of the ones I planted died and I had to replace.

They ask each year exactly WHAT I am going to sell at the market and to be honest, I am never sure, just whatever grows to a point that we have more than we need. I guess we are hodge podge market growers.

We have a freezer full of strawberries, raspberries and black berries and so started selling them at the market. We have found that they are a great item, and always selling in the first 15 minutes. They take hours the day before to pick, but this year I have decided that I love picking berries (except strawberries which I have to bend over to pick, hard on back)

We even ended up with a lot of apples this year, this being the 5th year we have been here on this property, so hard to believe. Of course we try to make them all into something and have lots of help to peel them. (and we have lots of help. :))

One of the crops we grow lots of but do NOT sell, are the dry beans. Since beans, tofu and nuts are our main form of protein we do go through a lot, and they taste so much better grown from scratch and then cooked in instant pot …than canned or the dried versions in the stores. SO few versions in the stores anyways. The yellow/white ones in this picture are Hutterite beans which we have found to be quite delicious. The black and white ones are calypso, and the black ones are a variety of “black” beans.

I guess one might ask, why bother? It is all a lot of work but I guess we make enough with our “farming” to pay for a trip in the fall, and so that is one reason. I guess the other reason is that we enjoy it, and what else will we be doing. It seems that you have to have a “thing” when you are retired and I guess this is it, for us, at least for this part of the year.

Stay tuned for travels in Portugal

Much love, Janet, Ken and Tucker

the fire….

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

I thought I would write about our recent adventures with “the fire”. Friday night I was in Victoria for a “life celebration” for an uncle of mine, and Ken was at home with Tucker. The Lower East Adams fire was across the lake from us and we had offered our house as a place for friends from Lee Creek (across the lake) to stay. One couple had arrived and were just setting up their RV, and our other friends had found a place elsewhere when I got a call in Victoria from our neighbours below us to say that there was a fire up on the mountain behind us and that they were packing to go. This blog will not have pictures from our place, as we have none. So I will put in a picture from before the fire🤔 This is the view that will be changed forever, because everything in this picture has burned. (well except the 2 houses shown as of now)

SOOO… they did get ahold of Ken and so did I, he had the motorhome in place and the jeep behind it, and threw in a few coats, a few beer and a few guitars. THATS ALL. So he headed down the hill and turned on the highway below left towards Kamloops.(where our sons live) Turns out the fire was crossing the highway there and so everyone was being turned around. Ken said that the vehicle at the front of the line was a double tanker truck (?gasoline) Each truck had to drive into a turn on the left and then back out and then head east. Ken was worried because with the jeep behind and the hitch, he cannot back up. Our neighbour was ahead of Ken with a 5th wheel. Ken and I were chatting while he was waiting and I was quite worried knowing that the fire there was VERY aggressive, and I felt very badly not being there….. (in which case we likely would have unhooked the jeep and the turn around would have been much easier, and I would drive the jeep). Decisions at times like this are very important, especially if the fire turns quickly. He did get turned around by doing a U turn, and got the tire in the ditch but in the end got it turned. On the map below …. the black blob is where our house is and the line at the bottom is where the bridge crosses Little River and that is where the fire crossed.

I should explain that this fire actually started over a month ago after a lightening storm. It was on the east side of Adams Lake which is the lake in the top left corner of this picture. As you can imagine it has been its worst when the wind blows from the north west. A few weeks ago the fire aggressively bore down on the cabins along the lake in the top left marked in red. This area can only be accessed by a small car ferry which holds about 10 cars. The fire dept were able to save all of this homes at that time. This is a picture of that area. I have a sister who has a cottage there.

The fire then moved slowly towards Lee Creek, which is a small community between Scotch Creek and the black bridge line I have marked on the map. On Thursday morning this fire was still several kilometres away from Lee Creek, however it was becoming much more aggressive and the smoke was very bad. The fire department had Lee Creek on alert, and they felt very certain that they would be issuing an order soon, so some of my friends left on Thursday. This map below shows where the fire was on Thursday. The yellow is the fire and the blue is where they did a planned large scale ignition to attempt to protect homes in Scotch Creek. This is done, I believe with gasoline and they attempt to burn an area, so that when the fire gets to that spot …. there is no fuel left.

“We are still anticipating that at around 11 p.m., midnightish, winds will start to become pretty erratic and variable and then eventually switch over to come from the north,” said Tower, noting the burn was successful in scorching fuel north of the Scotch Creek area.

“When those winds switch, the fire now tries to come south, but it’s already burned all that fuel.”

This is what the media said on Thursday night. At this time they had not done an evacuation order for the north side of the Shuswap. You cannot see it on this map, but just below where it says Lee Creek, there is a bridge that is the only way out for all of the communities on the North Shuswap. (There is a small logging road that leads from the northern most part of the Shuswap Lake over to Malakwa) a many hours trip that only certain vehicles could take.

SOOOO this is a picture from a place in Scotch Creek on Friday afternoon.

SO while all of this was happening on the other side of the lake on Friday afternoon, Ken and I were thinking of offering our place to people from the other side of the lake on Facebook. GOOD thing we did not do that.

So back to Ken’s story. He was then driving east, the only way he could go, and the friend I was staying with in Victoria called her brother and sister in law in Armstrong who are also friends of ours and arranged for him to go there. THEY were at the Salmon arm roots and blues festival which had just started at this point. They called back a few minutes later to say that the power had gone out there and the festival was ended.

Ken got over to Armstrong and spent 2 night there and then he brought the motorhome to Kamloops yesterday and I drove here yesterday as well. So we are together again. This is the only picture we have of where our house is and it was taken at the beginning of the fire on Friday night. I believe our house would be to the right and below where this fire is. We currently have fire protection up there, and I will write more when I find out more. Our house is still standing but not sure about anything around it

This video is taken by a person driving from Celista to highway 1 while road was still open.

Much love to all, and especially to the friends who have lost their homes in the past few days. I also have a close friend in Ventura that while I was texting about our situation, texted me back to say that they had just had an earthquake. So much tragedy around.

Janet, Ken and Tucker.

Christmas travel…….

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 3 Comments

Ken and Tucker and I are officially on the road again. Although it HAS taken days of deliberation to finally take “the plunge” Plunge, that is, the trip down the hill from our house over snowy roads with our motorhome. We have been watching the weather reports, the road reports, and playing that all into our Christmas family plans and getting more stressed each day.

Although it is not clear from this, we have had about 3 feet of snow so far and Ken has been out plowing every few days to keep our “WAY OUT” open.

Ken has gone over the drive of the motorhome down the hill from our house, IN HIS HEAD, many many times. He was so relieved yesterday that he made it down the hill, and it went perfectly.

I have put a little house in to show where our house is 😊 It is not our REAL house, it is pretending house.

I drove the jeep down and we got almost to the main highway and he stopped and took off the chains.

Stepping out of motorhome into 3 feet of snow.

So even though there were warnings about snow, we decided to leave because there is a very cold front on the way, starting on Christmas Day (today) Forecast was for -24 Celsius / -11 Fahrenheit, and we were deciding which was worse, the snow, or the cold. Now, when it is very cold, the road conditions are actually better usually because the very cold pavement becomes more sticky for your tires. However we were just not sure how we can keep the motorhome warm at those temperatures. Once all your stuff is packed, you are more or less committed to keeping the rig above freezing for the trip.( or all of your liquids will freeze, your electronics will freeze and your musical instruments (well you can imagine)). So once you are packed up, you ARE committed. We ALSO decided that once we were down the hill we were committed, NO TURNING BACK. Quite uncertain if we could get back up that hill with the motorhome. So we left yesterday and got as far as Kelowna.

We have gotten a lot done on our house since our last trip. We have started to fill in the holes we left in the floor, …….with …rocks. So here is the hole in the floor that has had plywood over it for the past year.

So Ken put a layer of concrete down to (fill in) the base of the opening.

I started applying mortar to the backs of the rocks and cementing them to 1/4 inch cement board. As you can see, our cutlery comes in handy.. we DO wash them before we eat with them 🤔

….. then we put the cement board (with the rocks attached) down into the hole. Once we had cemented the cement board down we grouted. We WILL need a sign upon entering our house…NO Stilettos!!!

We decided that the pattern needed a break and so inserted some left over tiles in the centre and continued on to the other end.

The green spotted rocks we collected from the Olympic peninsula because they JUST SO HAPPENED to match my kitchen cupboards. (well sort of)🐚🐚

Other projects we have done,…… I tiled the area to the right of the stairs with some cool blue tiles we found at Habitat for humanity (and agates) and ammonites.

So as we work on these projects a massive home is coming up in front of our house. We CAN still see the lake, but had never dreamed that someone would do this. We have never lived any where near such a massive home, let alone one in front of us……..We SHALL be planting a hedge…..

With covid and all of the shipping issues…. our kitchen lights have taken 8-9 months to arrive, but they were certainly worth the wait. ( I wonder if we had ordered them and NOT liked them, would we have had any options 🤔) WE DO LOVE THEM.

We HAD started these windows last year, but got lazy over the summer… just cement board on either side of the windows.

Then….. with tiles we found at Habitat for humanity (Restore) we placed them around the lead glass window

We liked them so much we ordered more of them and put them around all of the lead glass windows.

So we are feeling QUITE accomplished about our house, although my pictures are designed to ONLY show the good stuff. We have plenty more jobs to get going on to really finish. But it was time to get moving. We tend to miss seeing the ground. Perhaps too many winters spent in places that did not get snow. We have both had 3 vaccines for covid, and have loaded up the motorhome with the fruits of our summer labours and hope to not spend a lot of time around other people. At least not a LOT of people. I am quite confident that this new variant of covid mutated to become much more infectious, but much less virulent. Maybe it will become the beginning of the end of covid. We can hope.🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉

Merry christmas from Ken and Tucker and me. MUCH LOVE. Thanks for reading.