Hail!!!!

I was educated yesterday, regarding severe weather in Southern Alberta. A couple of days ago a person was killed at the Big Valley Jamboree when a massive wind gust blew down the concert stage. The wind that caused the damage was called a "plough" wind, and preceeds a thunderstorm. It's basically a powerful downdraft wind that spreads out in all directions like water pouring from the faucet when it strikes the sink. It can reach speeds of 100kph, which is almost hurricane velocity, and 1/3 tornado velocity. The same downdraft blew through downtown Calgary, and tossed plywood sheets off of construction towers onto the streets. A 3 year old girl was killed when she was struck on the head by a piece of metal flying off a building!
A friend of mine was on the Bow River when the downdraft hit, and Calgary Fire Rescue pulled him and his family to safety. So, these downdrafts can be deadly, even though they don't last very long.

We experienced this twice over several days. No major damage occurred from the winds, but the thunderstorm last night brought hail, which basically pulverized my vegetables. Some of them look like they might make it through, which is encouraging, but all of them sustained pretty severe damage, except the tomatoes, which were getting out of control anyway.

I have come to the conclusion that I need a permanent system to deal with hail, which is a constant presence out here on the flat prairies. We very much need a shelterbelt around our house area, which of course takes time to establish. I also plan to build a metal framed mesh around my garden tires, made of bent 5 foot rebar with chicken wire stretched over it. The chicken wire should deflect most of the hailstones and reduce the damage significantly. It's also inexpensive, and lasts a very long time. The rebar will be bent in a curve or two bends (whichever works best), and tied to the chicken wire. I could also stretch plastic over this and make a very decent mini-greenhouse in the spring, perhaps starting the seedlings a week or two early.

I really pray that my plants will recuperate from the hail, which will surely knock them back in growth by a week or two.

The workshop/shed/barn project is progressing well, with tommorow being the excavation day. I staked out the 42 x 24 foot area and cut all the vegetation down to make it easier to see. I purchased some thick cable for the electrical circuit, and ran it out to the edge from the house. I want to be able to just dig the trench, bury the wire, and rebury it right away. I only have the machine for 1 day, so I have to be completely prepared!

Look for pictures as I complete the digging.

Gardening is the mother of all therapies

I would like to suggest to anyone with a lot of stress in your life...take up gardening. Yes, you can't really do it during the winter (maybe herbs in pots), but during the stressful, busy summer months, a garden is a panacea of positivity in a world drowning in disaster. It reminds us that God still sends rain in due season, peas still come in a pod, radishes still grow like crazy, and tomatoes love the sun!
Many people may be unaware, or perhaps only vaguely aware, but a food crisis is developing, slowly but surely. As the West gradually falls into Depression (yes, no recession here), our ability to grow enough food to meet our needs is falling further behinds. We are mining the goodness right out of the soil, and I only have to look out my window to see the results...genetically modified crops, a desperate attempt to avoid nature's loathing of monoculture. Nature (which is to say God Himself) prefers a huge variety of plants, which feed each other in healthy competition. Add some animals, and we have a harvest for ourselves, and the land does not starve. God never intended for 10,000 genetically modified canola plants to exist in the same 1 acre of land!
I love my garden, small as it is this year. I have about 14 broccoli plants, which are doing quite well, about 10 cucumber plants, which got off to a late start, thanks to frost kill of the first batch...live and learn. We just pulled a whole schwack of radishes, and some beans are climbing up. I purchased some tomato plants, which are now flowering and attracting bees. My daughter planted sunflowers, which grew (without much watering at all, I might add), and are now more than 1 foot tall! Everything is growing fast, and strong. Weeds have been beaten, and the tiny ones sprouting at this stage are nothing. Only the carrots did not germinate well, but the seeds are old, so, I suppose a new batch is in order...next year.
We are well on track to bringing our friends out here to live, the bank will loan the money, and we will have a barn with plenty of water for winter (and a root cellar!)
None of this happened without generous blessing from God, and lots of agonizing, praying, sweating, and selling things I didn't really need to get the things I wanted.

Here are some photos for those who like the visuals:
Blueberry bushes! We now have 21 bushes in total, all about 2 years old (I think), about 1.5 feets tall. They were on sale for about $2.50 each, and in very good condition, so how could I resist? I just love blueberries, and so does the rest of the family.Broccoli, peas, and tiny asperagus plants growing in tires filled with soil and manure. The asperagus are in a circle around the broccoli, and I'm going to move them somewhere else soon.
Radishes and beans in the same tire. The radishes will be harvested long before the beans ever get going, so I can use the same space twice. Companion planting!
Not pictured: Tomatoes and pickling cukes in several tires, getting VERY big!

Hot weather...sort of

Well, it's the middle of the hottest part of summer, yet we have not used either an air conditioner, nor a fan at night or even during the day! I'm sitting in our house right now, and it's 29 degrees C outside, but inside it's only 23, and very comfortable. I'm pretty sure that I can thank our lack of windows on the south side of the house. All of our big windows are on the north side. It does affect our heat gain in the winter, however ie, we get almost no heat from the sun at all!

Although it's now more than halfway through the growing season, I came across some blueberry plants at a local supermarket for a bit over $2 each, which is waaaay cheaper than they normally are! So, I crammed as many as I could fit into my car, and I'll be going back for more, if there are any. I got 15 this time, and I just planted them. Eventually, I'd like to have an acre or more of berries, maybe several acres and I'll make a U-pick farm out of it all.

I also got a gas-powered weed whacker for $50, although it didn't have some of the parts (it was a demo model). I found a new spool for it, and it works great! So much more powerful than the electric variety, and I don't have to drag around the stupid cord. I use it to keep the weeds away from my trees and shrubs, and I've also declared war on thistles. I've pulled more than a hundred just around the house. I'm not pretending I can beat them entirely, but I don't want them to go to seed, so I whack the big ones.

I booked a digging machine for me to fill in some big holes, and make some new ones. I didn't book it for a week like I originally thought to, just 24 hours. I figure I can probably sit in the thing for 16 hours straight, and just get it all done in one day. Saves me a bit of money, and if I don't get it all done, I can always rent it for another day later. I'll have to anyway, to backfill the trenches and holes in, once the cistern is in place. For the cistern, I purchased a plaster sprayer for a couple hundred $, but it should save me many, many hours of handtroweling, and slopping the plaster one bit at a time, when this thing just blasts it at the wall in a few seconds.

That's it for now, remember, winter is coming!

Springtime during summer?

We've been getting some strange weather lately...it's been raining quite frequently, and it's almost the middle of July! I thought that this was normally the dry, hot season, but it's already rained more in the first 10 days of July than in all of June! Not that I'm complaining about the rain, it's good for my trees, but it's just odd.

I also sold my motorcycle today, for a couple thousand dollars, which is terrific, because now I can rent a very expensive machine, and start digging all of the many different projects that I've got planned for the summer and fall! I didn't get as much as I would have liked for the bike, but I got a quick sale, which I'm glad for. It was difficult to sell, because we don't live in the city anymore, and I had to come in to let people test drive and such.

I've come up with more new ideas, and I've also got a few decisions to make, just some small ones really. I can't decide whether to put the jet pump for our water in the barn, or keep it inside the house. I can see good points to doing either one, but I've got to make a decision one way or the other.

This year, I'm planning ahead for winter big time. I've already started cutting firewood, and I've got almost a cord cut already from a giant schwack of packing pallets that I picked up for free. I use a chainsaw to slice the flat parts out, then a mitre saw cuts the rest into manageable pieces. It didn't take more than 2 hours, which is good. I've kind of perfected the woodcutting process, I can strip a pallet down in about 10 minutes or less. In extremely cold weather, a good size pallet is about a day's worth of wood, so the further ahead I can get in this chore, the easier my winter will be!

I've also been planning a small car shelter for the end of our house, which could probably for the basis for a small garage when I get around to it. I need somewhere to keep a vehicle out of the cold, something that could be heated with a propane heater (supervised of course) and I'd like to store some of the firewood there as well, because it tends to get quite piled up with heavy snowfall, and it would be easier on my wife if it were sheltered. I plan on cutting and storing most of the wood in the barn, but I'll bring a weeks worth at a time to the shelter for easy access. I may use the skeletal remains of the canvas shed that I bought last year, which died an early death from wind. This time she'll be bolted together at every joint, and the walls will be OSB or some sort of stronger material. A canvas roof would be fine, it's just a temporary structure for shelter after all!

I just noticed I tend to start all my paragraphs with "I've". Is that egocentric of me? Well, "I've" got to go now, thanks to the couple of people who read this. I know I'm long winded, and I'm working on it. Maybe. With limited success.

Waterfight!

Today, for the first time we took advantage of a local provincial park, only 20 minutes away! It's a gigantic campground, with a huge irrigation reservoir in the middle. Lots of mature trees, swimming area, a small sandy beach. There's a concession stand too, but the guy said it wasn't open, someone broke into it! He actually did let us buy some ice cream though, super nice guy : )

It's officially summer, and it's hot enough to prove it too. Although for us in Alberta, hot isn't really that hot. We just feel hot, and complain a lot, but it's really quite nice. We've had some rain, not a lot, but enough to keep the trees alive for a few more days. For some reason quite a few of my poplars are dying, while other ones are doing quite well. All of the dead ones are in a certain area, so I should probably test that area's soil and see what's wrong. I'll replant them next year, once I've amended the soil or whatever.

I've been brainstorming on behalf of our best friends, who have said that they would like to move out here with us. I really want to see them succeed in that, but I also don't know exactly how serious or dedicated they are. We haven't talked about it for months, and it's the middle of the year. Winter will be upon us in a heartbeat, if we're not careful! Once August rolls around, I should have enough money to build the barn, and hopefully, we'll have enough time as well. It's a huge project, and I'll need lots of help, and I really like to have some extra hands out here for that sort of thing!
The idea that I had, was to build the barn, and put a large 5th wheel trailer right next to it, connected by a temporary "hallway" to the door. We'd have to insulate the crap out the the trailer, since they aren't strictly designed for winter, per se. Have an insulated and frost protected water hose from the barn, into the trailer, and build some temporary bedrooms in the barn (which will have a dirt floor, and a woodstove for heat), for the kids. We can all use the water out of the large tank, and if it's not terribly expensive, I plan to put a well out here, for all of our use. I'm hoping $5000 or less will take care of that. We'll see.
If this works, they could move out here as early as the end of July or August, and we could then put our muscle into the barn-building project! The only cost that they would have to pay for is the trailer itself, and maybe a generator, but I've got a plan for that too. A large diesel genny could run two houses at once, and use waaaaay less fuel as well. We won't need too much in the way of extra electricity, if we can get another turbine set up, and maybe a few solar panels. Just a boost charge here and there will keep us afloat...

GalaxyFest (aka NerdiCon 2009)

So this weekend is the famous "Star Trek" festival in the county we live in, and the town puts on a big fair, not unlike the summer fair in thousands of small towns across N America, except this one has a "Star Trek" theme. Why? The name of the town happens to be the name of a famous "planet" in the Star Trek universe, and the county wants to capitalize on that, and bring in tourism. Good idea, I suppose, but really, really, really nerdy! We did see the parade this morning, which, thankfully was mostly just average hillbilly floats, the Shriners cars, and a pipe band. There were more floats than I expected, and I did get some pics, which I will upload a few of next post.
We got some ice cream, filled up the water tank, and came home.

My wife is in another town at the moment, she went to visit a friend, so as soon as she returns, were going for a free swim!

Oh, I planted a few more tires, I now have about 25 tires sitting out here, and about 4 of them filled with dirt (but they're the biggest ones!) I soaked a pile of broccoli and asparagus seeds in water for about 36 hours, then I put them right on top of the soil, and covered them with straw. Hopefully the seedlings will punch through the straw layer, and start growing soon!
We have had almost no moisture in the last 6 days, and none predicted for the next 6, and June is supposed to be the wettest month!!!! I have been watering the trees faithfully, but I'm starting to wonder if this isn't going to be the harshest summer we've ever had, both in terms of late frosts, and lack of moisture.
Lord, please send rain!

Some garden pics

I can't remember if I mentioned it last post, but whatever. I'm going to be doing most of my gardening in old rubber tires, from here on. That is to say, I'm going to experiment with several different methods, and whatever works the best will be my primary method. I gotta say, this gardening in old tires concept has already got me hooked though!
1. Tires are practically indestructable. Our great-great-great-great grandchildren are going to be swimming in them if we don't find a better disposal method.
2. You can get them for free. Just ask (be prepared to load them yourself)
3. They come in many sizes. From wheelbarrow tires to the big tractor sized ones, with benefits to each size.
4. They allow you to heat the soil faster. Black rubber absorbs heat, and could allow you to start your plants a bit sooner, especially if you put some kind of plastic or something over it. I plan to stack two or three to get a earlier start on some seedlings!
5. They exclude weeds and pests. You can place a barrier below them if you want, but you won't get the beneficial worms if you do that.
6. They are MUCH less work to fill and plant, than digging down below the compacted prairie soil, which has to be well worked to get a good bed. No rototilling for these suckers!
7. The side of the tire makes a good place to sit while you weed, seed, or whatever.
8. You will get fewer pests stealing your garden, and fewer animals will rampage through your delicate plants. Especially with the larger tires, something actually would have to climb up on top to wreak havoc, and it's less likely, especially with larger "animals" (children).
9. You can paint them, but I like them black myself.
10. Did I mention free?

The above picture is a few "normal" sized tires awaiting some dirt, but I really don't know what I want to put in them. The place I got these from did not have many normal tires, but for the average gardener, these are the easiest to work with. The large ones, even the semi-truck ones, are really heavy.

Here are four of the semi-truck tires, partially filled with topsoil. I scraped this soil off last year to put the mobile on, and it's composted down to some excellent stuff! These are heavy, and will not fit in a car. You should have a buddy if you're getting these, to help get them in the truck.

We have two of these monsters on our property. I dragged this one about 500 meters with the truck. My daughter thought that was just awesome, and talked about it all day! This one took a lot of dirt to even partially fill, and I planted carrots in it. I mulched the top to conserve precious moisture.

This is a non-tired spot where I'm trying to grow potatoes in straw. I've got a bunch of these, and they've already done ok despite the very late frosts we had. The straw protects them from cold, and holds in moisture. I bought a small bag of seed potatoes on sale, and only used half of them! I tried to use more, but I don't have more tilled spots, and besides, we don't use enough potatoes to make it worth planting more. I doubt we can eat what I've seeded now. Perhaps I can sell some!

Any how, I've got the next three days off work, and I'm grateful for it. I just worked 7 days straight, and I'm tired to say the least.

Another small project that I attempted (and needs more work, or better design or something) is a rainwater collection system, using black drainpipe. Unfortunately, the pipe, which is flexible, just allows the water to pool in one spot, which eventually spills all over the ground. I need more supports for the pipe, seal up some joints that leak, and add the first-flush diverter. Once all of that is in place, I should be able to collect at least some of the rainwater from the gutters. Water is expensive for us, and has to be hauled from town in my truck. It costs about $11 to haul 350 gal, including the truck gas (which comprises half of the total cost). I might work on this tommorow, if it's not too hot out. I'm a bit of a pansy in the heat, but I can work like a dog in the cold, even in -20 Celcius, which is about -10 F (I think).

Some of my trees are showing good growth, which I'm thankful for. I need some fruit trees though!