Preparing

There are always tasks to be completed when your're gardening in a temperate climate.  We don't have down time during the winter here on the British Columbia coast - not like I was used to growing up in Ontario.  The apples need picking, the garlic and shallots have gone into the ground, and we've finally managed to sort out our pantry after months of moving boxes from room to room as we've been settling into the house.  We are still waiting for news on a source for firewood, as the dry summer months resulted in a ban on entry to the woods for firewood providers to get in to gather their already-downed trees.  Perhaps in the coming years we will get a permit ourselves and take the truck and our chainsaw out to gather fuel for the winter, but this year we've already had enough on our plates.
 

The 'pantry' when we arrived at the new place - beautiful fake wood panelling, OSB ceiling pieced together with dark brown millwork, tons of cracks, crevices, and holes that seemed to invite our new-found friends the carpenter ants to use the walls as a highway.....

Part way through 5 coats of primer and paint, steel wool, caulk, poly filler and sweat during a week of 30+ degree weather....

Things that needed to 'fit' into our pantry area, which had been gathered in hallways, closets, and other rooms awaiting our attention.

Our wonderful, finished pantry - now home to many plastic bins since we have discovered our mouse problem. We've only seen one silverfish, so I'm not escalating that to problem status yet! I'm thrilled to have everything to hand right across from the kitchen (a stripping and painting project itself, for this winter). We will be building a work island in the kitchen from an antique table, where we can chop vegetables and pull up a stool to prepare meals, but this space allows room for us to slow cook, dehydrate, mix and measure without having to clutter up the kitchen proper.  I'm looking forward to baking apple crisps and continuing to dehydrate our remaining Cox and King apples for winter with all of the tools immediately available.  Unblemished apples can store in our pantry fridge, and we will be filling the freezers with more meals as we harvest fall vegetables from the garden and butcher our final 2 litters of rabbits for the season.  We're home!

Fall is Coming

Now that things have settled down a bit, and we're definitely heading into fall with cooler nights and the apples ripening on the trees, we've been lucky to have some friends visiting while we prepare for a visit from our parents.  One of our wonderful houseguests installed a new fan in the living room to help the woodstove heat the house more efficiently, and we played boardgames until long past my bedtime. We fed them from the bounty of the property - greens, bush beans, carrots, and peach cobbler for dessert.

Our original, 40 inch fan, with a broken switch to turn the light on or off - the owners had simply removed the bulb, so there was no light in the room...

and our new, 52 inch, 5-blade fan with remote control.  Bring on the wood heating season!

The bunnies are on their fourth week, and are bothering their moms constantly. We will be separating them back to their own quarters this weekend, as the kits are quite content to eat pellets, grass, and greens.  Because we were unable to reunite our last pair of sisters due to territorial instinct, we tried to get these sisters back together earlier last weekend, after only 3 weeks of separation.  I mistakenly thought that they might enjoy some time without the kids.  After a few moments in the run together, on fresh grass, they began to fight and one had been gashed before we were able to lean over and separate them. Hydrogen peroxide and Polysporin have cleaned up the wound, but I am sad that they won't be keeping each other company through the boredom of winter.

We had an arborist come out to view the fruit trees on the property, and the review was largely positive, though we all agreed that the forest blocks out more light than is ideal.  We may eventually be thinning some of our surrounding evergreens.  As the trees go dormant this year, we will be doing some selective pruning and shaping, removing grass at the base of the trees to be replaced with cardboard, manure, and mulch, and then underplanting into those new beds with berries, flowers, and herbs to create a more diverse system, and to encourage pollinators and beneficial insects to visit our trees.

I've been walking the property, trying to assess vegetation, and where the light falls at this time of year so that I can plan ahead, but really, we have a lot of unknowns still affecting those decisions.  We need to get a cistern installed and a new well pump, which will affect where the future fencing goes, which will affect where any outbuildings and garden beds go, and the list goes on from there.  I very much want to get fencing in place, as there is evidence that people are trespassing and breaking into our sad, moldy trailer. We've put up No Trespassing signs, and left an inquiry at the District as to our responsibilities should someone hurt themselves or start a fire, but have not heard back.

The firewood is still on hold, as the dry weather has prevented access to the logs waiting to be hauled out of the woods.  I have leads on two wood providers, and am trying to be patient waiting for their confirmation of delivery.  We had a very interesting visit with our chimney sweep, who told us we had her 'second favorite' stove, (a good model with the perk of an integrated ash-catcher), and we learned some of the finer points of fire management.  Our chimney received a clean bill of health, and we'll have her back in the spring to assess how well we burned our wood during our first winter.

A weekend trip to a pancake breakfast/swap meet resulted in a potential connection for chickens next spring.  We still need to set up an enclosure and bang together a coop, but we have a line on Naked Neck Turkens to start a small flock in memory of our funny bird, Nugget.