Hey there! Kathee here...it's been soooo long since I've 'blogged'. Mostly because I've been busy or on the go somewhere (and also a little afraid I forgot my password and wouldn't be ABLE to get on)...but voila! With the cold weather fast approaching we are scrambling to finish up the outdoor get-ready-for-winter jobs (stacking firewood in the wood shed, clearing out the gardens, putting outdoor stuff away...). As well, we have decided that this year we are going to to cut some of our own trees out of our woods, for next year's firewood. Sounds simple enough, but this is a multi-step job....a tune up on the chain saw was the first step (that poor ol' guy owes us nothing...we bought it used 17 years ago and cleared all the trees on our property to build our house, and have used it often over the years...) So with the trees cut down in the spring, we (me, hubby, and man-ly son) headed into the woods this past Saturday, to buck up the trees into stove length pieces and stack them. Loading them onto the trailer that hooks to our little tractor would have been our first choice, but it would go against the odds that both the chainsaw AND the tractor would be working at the same time...so the hauling out of the woods and the splitting of it will be another days' adventure. And along with all of that, we still had to eat, so after a run back to the house for some sandwiches, tortillia chips, fruit and more water, we stopped for a lovely picnic break. We have one tree left to buck up and then we want to get somemore cut down and keep working at it over the next couple of months. It's a good feeling planning the trees that need to come down which will allow smaller, younger trees to do better, and at the same time, be able to heat our home with those trees.

Another very pressing job is the garlic. We try to plant it by the middle of October, but we're consistently late, usually by a week or two. Saturday (when we were working in the bush) or Sunday (when we took man-ly son to a fencing tournament) would have been lovely days to plant, (you might know more about that Lee...!) but honestly, almost every year, the day we plan on planting the garlic tends to be a nasty one. Today was garlic planting day, and although it was cool and not sunny, it wasn't raining (or snowing, as we have had in past years' planting) and I bundled up with hoodie and gloves and it went well. We decided to plant a couple less beds this year since last year's harvest was not-so-good...a lot of rotted bulbs from all the rain and a lot of smaller bulbs. So after tilling the beds up and adding LOTS of compost, we've prepared the beds for hopefully a good year. And I'm happy with the amount we planted this year; not too overwhelming, but still enough to sell some and have lots for us.

This is some of the Rocombole variety, ready for planting. I also planted some F3, a variety we got from the Fish Lake garlic man (look that guy up, he's REALLY into garlic!), some Music, and my favourite, Czeckoslovakian Broadleaf. So the total this year, was 1200 and a bit, (down from 1600 last year, but I'm hoping for better quality this year)

This is a shot of a couple of the beds, already planted and ready to be covered over and tamped down.

There's Buddy, supervising...

Well, that's my adventure for the day...seems like a good time for a tea break.