It is still too wet for a fall tilling, but it is predicted to remain dry for the next few days, so hopefully it will get done. It helps keep the slugs down by killing the eggs among other things. More greenhouse cleaning done today and the water tank in the big greenhouse has been drained. I did a door modification that I have been dreading all summer, actually for a few years. A big, heavy door on one side of my tractor (and other equipment) shed moved during the 2018 earthquake, so the doors didn't cleanly close. I had to trim about 1/4 inch from one side of the door to allow it to cleanly close. I did it today and it wasn't as bad as I feared. I have found over the years that jobs I start out thinking are going to be a piece of cake and soon find out otherwise, especially plumbing. This job came off just as I planned, so that was good for a change. Our first moose sighting in the yard for the fall season today--a cow and calf. I suspect they were forced out of the higher elevations by the increasing snow. I still have cabbage in one garden, but it is defended by an electric fence so hopefully they will not get in there. The compost pile, however, has a lot of stuff cleaned out of the garden, so they may help themselves to that. No snow down here yet, but the temps are predicted to drop next week, so who knows. I think we will soon be below freezing every night, but I hope we will still have a few weeks where the day temps will be above freezing.
I harvested the last of our kale and finally got the tiller onto the tractor. I got the gardens tilled in one afternoon. I am sooo glad to get that out of the way. It has been wet for so long that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get that job done. I cut more firewood yesterday, but it isn't all stacked where I want it. I have more spruce down, but I don't know when I will get to it. There are at least two more birch trees I want to cut down before winter. We'll see. Rain is supposed to start again tomorrow and I contacted a person to gain hose manure but haven't heard back yet. Horse manure has to be thoroughly composted for months if turned regularly since it contains so many weed seeds. There is a big company in Anchorage that run horse-drawn carriage tours with Percherons and they really make a lot of poop to dispose of, but I really don't want to drive that far if I can get manure locally. There is a cattle rancher that I got manure form in the spring and it was already well-composted. I also have some of my own poultry manure too, but it, too, needs to be composted to cool the nitrogen down before use.
We got back from visiting my brother in Pennsylvania last Thursday. Even though we didn't really communicate much after we left home, as we got older me started making more effort to visit at least once a year. We were scheduled to visit him 2 years ago in October, but that was when his wife of almost 50 years passed away from lung cancer so he asked us not to come. He visited here in late May (our busiest time) and we visited him and went to Gettysburg-a life-long desire of my wife--in October (our slowest time). He is now something of a hermit, as he doesn't seem to know what to do without his life partner, but he promised he would get out more often after we left. We both feel we are kinda on borrowed time, so we never know when each visit will be our last. As winter approaches. I was out cleaning up a few things since it was above freezing for the first time since we got back from PA. Three birthdays to celebrate in October, so that is happening on the weekends, a Halloween party for the grandkids in Alaska at our place this Sunday. We finished stacking some of the firewood that I previously cut and split, and I set up a bonfire that will be set alight for the party if the weather isn't terrible, or wife and I will enjoy it some time on our own.
Our leaf blower is not yet repaired but the shop said they had ordered one of two of the parts that were still available for it. Funny, they don't make the parts anymore. Not sure which is older, Hubby or blower. But in the woods it is sort of an important piece of machinery to save the lawn. Hubby said it is OK because the last leaf is not down yet. Last year, he used a plug in leaf blower and I think it took a couple of days to do. Did he send the mower in then to get it fixed? Nope. Waited 11 months. That is kind of how we roll here. I had a neighbor who could not die. He said he still had too much to do. Good reason.
Our initial 12" snowfall has compacted to about 10" now but it is snowing again. The roads are slippery and on my trip to Wasilla for a medical appointment, I saw several cars in the ditch. I think the roads are worse now that when we had the foot of snow, or maybe people were more cautious then...or just stayed home. Alaskans seem to forget how to drive on snowy, icy roads from one season to the next and then, of course, there are those who believe that pickups and SUVS in 4-wheel drive with studded tires are not subject to the laws of gravity and inertia, i.e., if one can drive at 65 mph in July on dry roads, you can do the same on snowy, icy roads. I got the driveway pretty well plowed, but will have to do it again tomorrow and then I will put the snowblower on for the remainder of the winter. I dug through the snow in the implement area to the blower, so I should be able to get it on tomorrow. Maybe I should build a shelter for it...naw, I can deal with it in the snow once a year. I am tired of snow already and it is still October. Happy Halloween!!
I think everyone forgets about how to drive in snow the first of the season, no matter the state. I tend to stop too short for the first skid. My anti lock brakes chattering away. And I have ended up in the ditch not realizing black ice is a real thing, once or twice.
I spent much of yesterday on tractor blowing snow. I had to dig a place to off load the backblade, then I had to dig out the snowblower since everything there was buried in the snow that had fallen over the past few days. Once I got the blower on the tractor, I pulled it into thee heat of the garage (evicted the wife's car for the moment) so I could more easily connect the PTO and lube the zerks on the blower and the tractor itself. I widened the driveway and cleared paths to the burn area and the patio since people want to go there in winter sometimes without going through the house. The greenhouses and most of the wood piles will have to be reached over the snow however. Clearing snow used to be a much bigger deal when we had livestock to feed and carry water to. Election day is lining up to be a very busy day, since wife had church and it is Senior shopping day in town at several stores as well. There is also a meeting to line up quilts to send to the hurricane victims in North Carolina since, contrary to the beliefs of some, it does get chilly in the winter in the mountains of North Carolina and East Tennessee. One of the local quilt shops are gathering them from local quilters and sending them as one package to save shipping costs. Wife will drop hers off early since Tuesday will be so busy. Daughter-in-Law is getting ready to go to Arizona for surgery in early December. She has several life-threatening conditions that the surgery may correct, but there are only three places in the country where the needed surgery is performed, and Mayo Clinic in Phoenix is the one with the most experience. She has been on a waiting list since summer. They have a type 1 diabetic son who is 14, and my wife will now also be part of the network monitoring his blood sugar while our son accompanies his wife to Arizona, then escorts her back post-op. He won't be able to remain there for the entire period of several weeks, but she has an aunt and uncle in the area who will watch out for her. Trials and tribulations....
Weather has warmed, but they expect temps to drop perhaps 20 degrees F. as the week progresses. Still several inches of snow on the ground though. We were sorting old pictures yesterday and discovered that identifying our identical twins after 40 years is not easy. Some of you may remember that we had two sets of identical twins 19 months apart--one set of girls and one set of boys. I could always tell them apart when they lived with us, and the girls became increasingly easy to identify as they got older, since they made an effort to be different; they dressed differently, fixed their hair differently, etc. The boys, however, never cared whether people could tell them apart. During the times they were in daycare, my wife always dressed the boys differently so the workers could differentiate them. Once the guys discovered the workers were keying on their clothing, they would go into the bathroom and swap clothes just to confuse everyone. Anyway, after all the years, when we were sorting the pictures and found that sometimes we couldn't tell which boy was which. A very frustrating thing for us. I think I had an easier time than my wife did, though. We have placed our first seed orders of the new season, but they were relatively small ones. We may start lettuce and such soon, but our big planting won't begin until February. Ordering seeds helps lift the "going into winter blues" that come every November.
This cracks me up. And it's the ultimate blow for freedom and individuality, sprouting at an early age. How are you finding price & availability to be, Don? My friend who owns the greenhouse says that one of the long-standing well-known classic seed lines no longer exists because the owners died and the downtown Baltimore property is worth more than the business could ever generate...so the heirs sold the property and walked away from the business. Tack that onto the results of the scamdemic and I hear that things have gotten scarce.
Seed prices have gone up since Covid when so many new people started gardening, but I try to order in the fall to get last year's prices. Ordering from established seed houses is always more expensive than getting seeds from box store racks, but I get better results for most things. Simple stuff like leaf lettuce and radishes don't seem to make much difference, but peppers, tomatoes, squash, and the cole crops seem to do better with better seeds.
Have you tried ordering from ebay, @Don Alaska ? A lot of small farmers save and sell seeds, and quite a few of those people are also veterans, just getting by living in the country. I like knowing that I am getting fresh seeds and also helping out one of our veterans, and even when it is not a veteran, it is a person trying to make a life and live in the country. They often offer discounts for ordering more than one kind of seeds, too.
In the past and presently I have ordered lots of seeds from eBay. I was very happy with price and quantity. Mine came in a small ziplock bag, with an identifying label. The germination was very good, however I did overseed each pot or tray just in case. Extra seedling I just transplanted with plant hormone, gave me a high success rate. I miss this, especially trying new seeds, plants I've never grown. I Remember a friend of mine's Uncle brought seeds back from a vacation to Italy. It was an heirloom type, so every year I saved the seed, we called it banana tomato. It was delicious and meaty. Years later a nursery had a display of seeds from Italy, one of the packs looked like it.