Tag Archives: nature

by df | September 22, 2012 · 6:51 pm

Mist in the valley

Some evenings are just special, and you have to be up for what they have to offer to appreciate them. We were just finishing up installing netting over the top of our chicken run last evening, when I noticed that a heavy mist was settling in the valley below our house.

Not only was it settling in the valley, it was also slowly but steadily climbing up the hill. With our dog Reggie still in an energetic mood, and feeling game for a late evening walk in the mist, three of us headed down into the valley.

We’d hardly made it down the hill when the light dropped noticeably; it’s always amazing to me how fast the light disappears once the sun sets. Our first stop was the treehouse, looking almost eerie in the shifting mist.

I couldn’t resist another shot with the dog peering back from the platform outside the treehouse.

As the sky became inkier and darkened, we made our way over to the pond, and noticed the moon poking through the clouds above. The last leg of the walk home was in near darkness, through our orchard.

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Tagged as life, nature, photographs, photos

by df | September 6, 2012 · 8:26 pm

Small creatures

A little selection of some of the very tiniest creatures we have met where we live this summer.

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Tagged as bees, frogs, nature, photographs, photos

by df | August 28, 2012 · 9:20 pm

Life’s little surprises

When my nine-year old returned from walking the dog this morning (a gift in itself as I’m normally on duty for the first walk of the day), he casually asked if I could guess what he had brought back for me. The sweetie pie had stopped off at the greenhouse, tethered the dog, and picked some ripe tomatoes and kale for me.

I’d left the small basket, empty, on a chair outside the greenhouse entrance late last night, having finished picking a much larger basket of tomatoes with that same son in near darkness. This boy loves harvest time and knows what makes his mum happy too.

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Filed under Cooking and baking, Growing food, Raising children

Tagged as family, food, gardening, nature, parenting, photos

by df | August 27, 2012 · 9:26 pm

Homemade treehouse reboot

One of our big family projects last year was the construction of a treehouse made largely out of recycled materials, including old french doors (for the lateral windows), an old window picked up at a local antiques shop, and wood left over from our house construction and other projects. We had even inherited scrap metal and some old roof tiles when we took over our land, and these made it into the mix. The treehouse was about 90% complete and very usable by the end of the season.

For a small structure, it’s surprisingly useable, and it has been a regular destination on our land through four seasons, giving us a place to go and shelter for casual picnics, book reading, daydreaming and suchlike.

Thanks to having stairs, rather than the more typical ladder, it’s been highly accessible for our puppy, Reggie, who loves trotting up and down the steps and will spend hours lounging on the small deck outside. I never knew that a dog could love the sensation of being off the ground so much.

Whether the visits are longer and planned, or short and impromptu in nature, we find ourselves at the treehouse a lot.

Earlier this summer our older son and a friend started scouting around for somewhere on our land to site a zipline and it didn’t take too long to realize that integrating one with the treehouse would make it even more of a natural destination for the kids. The land to the west of the treehouse is on a gentle slope that is actually pretty ideal for a zipline, and there are trees a good distance away, providing a stopping point.

After finding and ordering a really great looking zipline kit online, we went back to the treehouse to consider how best to add a platform for the starting end of the line. We spent an evening trimming branches back and looking at how to place the platform at the north-western corner of the treehouse.

Before long, my husband – the big thinker and planner of projects in our family – observed that we could use the introduction of the zipline as a chance to upgrade the treehouse more generally, expanding the deck area outside the treehouse proper and resiting the stairs for improved traffic flow (now that ascending the stairs would have two purposes – visiting the treehouse itself, or making a beeline for the zipline launch zone).

So, we’re back into fairly serious construction mode with the treehouse again, including finding and hauling yet another dead tree trunk from elsewhere on our land to use as a fourth support (the original structure uses two living trees, and one reclaimed tree trunk for a tripod formation), framing an expanded wrap-around deck, and resiting the stairs.

And, I must say, that apart from the occasional disagreements or head-butting that can come when you work with ~~teenagers~~ your children on big projects, it’s very satisfying and often a lot of fun. Even Reggie gets to take part, as he adores hanging around at the treehouse, regardless of what’s happening.

Our picnic frequency at the treehouse has naturally jumped, as we need regular snacks and meals to keep everyone fueled and happy. Tonight I made my way down the hill with a tray bearing all the fixings for sticky toffee pudding (the cake for which was baked in our new egg-shaped barbecue earlier in the evening), and then the youngest returned to the house to make a batch of lemonade for everyone. Reggie dined on bits of cheddar as he’s going through some serious teething.

Enthusiasm for the project is high, and my husband is now suggesting that we beautify the exterior, which seems unnecessary to me. I’d just like it to be insulated for the winter, as I have designs on it for a writing retreat at some point in the future! All joking aside, I think the commitment is there to keep adding to and improving the treehouse as a destination for everyone in the family. I love the life that it has taken on and the fact that it is becoming a special long term project for all of us.

Just looking at the pictures from last year’s early construction makes me nostalgic for a time when our oldest was still shorter than us.

When the above photo was taken he was about five foot five inches. As of this summer, he stands at five foot ten inches and wears a size 12 shoe. Oh, and he calls me ‘Shorty’ every chance he gets. Maybe I’ll just move out to the treehouse in protest!

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Filed under Family, Farm life, Raising children, The joy of recycling

Tagged as family, home, homemade, nature, parenting, pets, treehouse

by df | August 23, 2012 · 8:52 pm

Late August Thundercloud

Fencing Manouevres, Part 2

Recycling on a former farm is often extremely easy. Earlier this season we spent a lot of time dismantling pagewire fencing that enclosed a huge field that just didn’t make any sense in our current context. It blocked the flow of natural pathways across our land, and defined an area with no obvious use.

We’ve chosen a much smaller area within that larger field to enclose than we were even originally considering: the north-east corner of the original field is now home to our greenhouse and a growing series of rows of 20-foot beds. Both the ground and the fence are still a work in progress and we’ve staggered our milestones throughout the growing season. The fencing, including a working gate and improvements to the height of the original fencing, should be done some time in the next few weeks, while we continue to tend our existing beds – both inside the greenhouse and out – and plan the final layout to accommodate yet more beds. Those should be dug and prepared by the end of the fall.

Removing the old fencing was a task that, for the most part, went very quickly. Only the extraction of deeply installed corner posts was time consuming and frustrating at times (this past weekend I could be heard making loud guttural sounds as I strained to lift a post that seemed to fight me every inch of the way out of the ground, but I succeeded in the end!). A crow bar, a good set of pliers, and a set of wire cutters with a good bite is almost all you need. We were pleasantly surprised by how quickly the new fencing went into place, but as always I think that was also down to the fact that my husband had been thinking about and planning this bit of work for many weeks (months, really).

Fencing work has been – in case you wondered – quite a good fit with our new dog Reggie. He just explores the fields and stays nearby as we get on with things. Even better, in this shot, he’s on the right side of the fence – away from the vegetables that he’s prone to trampling on otherwise.

A repurposed post with scars from the side where the fencing used to be attached.

The corner posts are where we’ve got extra height to work with for height enhancements once we’ve got the main fencing work done. The deer are never far away and we know they are crafty devils who can jump silly heights. I love spotting them in the distance (this year we’ve got a mother and fawn who’ve been regularly wandering around close to the greenhouse), but just don’t want them in my veggie patch.

Re-using existing fencing has made this an incredibly inexpensive project to implement. The only purchases this season were a manual fence post driver (wow, what an effective tool) and a bag of five-inch nails for a grand total of less than forty dollars. We already had a reel of about a mile’s worth of electrical fencing wire on hand, had previously purchased a manual post hole digger worth its weight in gold, and absolutely everything else was recycled on site. The project was also very environmentally friendly overall thanks to the amount of recycling we did and the heavy focus on doing things by hand; we only drove our mini tractor a short distance to help with hauling some of the posts. My nine-year old drove solo for the first time this weekend, though not while hauling posts!

Joining in the spirit of things, this pooch was happy repurposing a sawn-off bit of fence post for a chew toy.

Until we did it, I had no idea just how satisfying fencing work could be. Next year we’d like to turn our attention to our upper pasture, a good sized field ringed by old fashioned wood fencing. Now there are some good sized posts.

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Filed under Farm life, Growing food

Tagged as farming, fencing, food, gardening, homesteading, nature

by df | July 19, 2012 · 7:27 am

Modern campfire

Like many others in North America at the moment we’re in the midst of a drought and in the countryside this also means fire bans. We’ve had a fire ban in our area for at least a couple of weeks and after a brief, punishing downpour (the wrong kind for vegetable gardens) the other day, we’re back into the status quo: long, hot days with no rain.

Not to be cheated out of a campfire, we recently used our little Trangia stove for roasting marshmallows on our back deck and making s’mores. The boys thought this was pretty swell.

I’m missing this boy, who is due back from a Scouting jamboree early next week.

We could not find graham crackers anywhere when this whim took us, so we used a sort of digestive biscuit instead. Nobody complained!

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Filed under Family, Farm life, Modern life, Parenting

Tagged as campfire, children, food, nature, parenting, s'mores

by df | July 15, 2012 · 9:14 pm

At the end of a July weekend

It’s the middle of July. How did that happen? Our oldest son is in the middle of a two-week Scouting jamboree on the other side of our province and we’re all missing him, but hoping he’s having a grand time. Our youngest son has enjoyed three weeks of very little routine, apart from morning swimming lessons, weekly soccer games and a lot of time at home. He has taken to his responsibilities with our new dog like a fish to water. For an anxious, at times difficult personality, he has come into his own with Reggie. I guess it’s not hard when you have a dog who will follow you to your treehouse for a bit of reading up in the leaves and then a sprint home through the long grasses.

Regular games and favourite past-times have expanded to include building a diorama of a road out of plasticine and k’nex for overhead telephone poles and wires. His big brother is big on dioramas (usually of tanks from battles in WWII), but now he has shown that he can create his own. I have been told to acquire more plasticine (especially in green).

He achieved a pinnacle of helpfulness this weekend, putting away dishes and setting tables, undertaking Reggie-duties, helping me to change table linens on the dining table on our porch, and spending a long time in the garden harvesting beans and carrots. He was disappointed that there wasn’t more to bring in, while I was grateful as my kitchen and personal energy levels were at capacity (more on this below). He was so proud of the work he did on harvesting (and looks like a market seller here, in our mud room, as we’re in the midst of furniture moving to accommodate the dog and his crate – you can see our nine, yes 9!, budgies in the background here):

He and his dad also found some time to hit a few golf balls in the backyard (into our valley), with a new 50-cent golf club found at a local second-hand shop. Our land is littered with golf balls, most of them hit originally by someone who lives across the highway from us (or so we’ve been told). Would you look at that parched, dead grass? Everything here is dry and brittle and desperately craving a drink. Thunderstorms were predicted for tonight, but they ain’t happening.

Yesterday it was so damn hot that the only cooking I did involved a quick round of crepes on the stove-top in the evening as we settled in to watch the first half of Lawrence of Arabia (on VHS, as we’re such committed recyclers!). The strawberry jam I made a few weeks ago served as a perfect ready-made topping. All other meals were stone-cold, thank you very much (I know lots of you have been doing the same).

This morning it was cool enough to plan a bacon and egg breakfast, although my husband took most of the heat generation outside by cooking these up on a grill pan on our deck. I toasted English muffins and made coffee and hot chocolates in the kitchen, and that was it. Getting ready to set the table for breakfast, my son demanded clean table linens. I’ve been using a single-bed sized quilt as a tablecloth recently, and was chuffed to find it had a very fresh pattern on the other side when we flipped it over (it’s ‘main side’ is quite dark and full of colourful patterns). The quilt was a two-dollar second-hand find at a local charity shop and served as a bedroom door for my older son when we were living temporarily at a cottage while our house was being finished. I think youngest son may have a future in home decor as he also refreshed the whole look of the table by flipping over our leaf-motif table mats to their plain side!

With the weather just that bit more bearable today, my youngest and I spent a good couple of hours in the garden in the afternoon, as mentioned earlier, and then my husband and I got to work in the kitchen dealing with our harvest. With a half dozen mature turnips, a small harvest of young carrots, a couple of baskets of green beans, and even a couple of new potatoes from our lower field, as well as some lovely beets from our farmer’s market (picked up yesterday on our bikes), there was a bit to do. The beets were boiled and refrigerated for salads and snacking this week. Most of the green beans were blanched, shocked and put into freezer bags. Most of the turnips were boiled and mashed (my husband’s favourite treatment of this root vegetable). All of the carrots, along with some green beans, a couple of the turnips and a few new potatoes were tossed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a bit of honey and three kind of fresh herbs, as well as salt and pepper, and roasted. Yum. (My favourite treatment of them all.)

The kitchen got hot and steamy from all this activity, as you might expect, but we kept it short and sweet. Another movie evening after a very busy day, followed by some sprints out on our trails with Reggie (who loves languishing about on cool tile floors in the heat, but who also seems to have endless reserves for running when push comes to shove), and then bedtime.

That’s me done.

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Filed under Cooking and baking, Family, Farm life, Raising children, The joy of recycling

Tagged as children, family, food, gardening, nature, parenting, pets, photographs, photos, recipes

by df | July 5, 2012 · 9:39 pm

Kale: a healthy obsession

My intense feelings for kale only started a few short years ago; towards the end of our time as city dwellers we started our first garden and kale was something that I picked mostly because it sounded lovely and hardy. Red Russian Kale just sounded so alluring, for that was the variety I planted. We enjoyed some delicious kale dishes and my two or three plants produced enough of those lovely green, thick, fibrous leaves to share with family and friends on a couple of occasions.

The first year that we owned our new patch of land, before a house ever stood here, we cheerfully planted a couple of tiny vegetable beds out in the middle of a field that had once been tilled. It was miles to walk to it with our garden implements, and we almost never watered it, and it mostly was a failure, except for some random squashes and a bit of dogged kale.

Our first proper growing season here – just last year! – we planted some proper beds, mostly around our new house, and enjoyed kale alongside some new finds, chard and spinach. I had a bit of a fling with chard last year, and felt a bit disloyal to my kale, but in the end I’ve come back to kale (I won’t give up my love for chard however, as its delicacy is something quite special compared to tough old kale).

Here I am with an armful of the curly kale from two plants that have been growing prolifically, almost stupidly so, in a back corner of our greenhouse. (You’ve got to appreciate that this photo was taken, along with a few others, quite naturally by my 14-year old son. You might expect your average teen to raise an eyebrow or poke fun, but he took me quite seriously when I walked into the kitchen and said ‘grab the camera’. I think he’s perhaps been a little too exposed to my passion for kale.)

I started these two plants inside the house in the dead of winter, just to see how they would grow. It wasn’t the pre-spring seedling preparation that we do each year, but rather just an experiment to see the rate of growth in winter. I now know from my reading that kale won’t produce new leaves in the winter months, but it will grow slowly and sturdily, preparing itself for the main growing season. Transferring those two small plants to the greenhouse was a bit of a lark, as kale is a northern plant that does just fine out in the elements and doesn’t need babying. It’s not a tomato or a melon for goodness sake.

But, oh my gosh. Well, I’ve said it before and I have to say it again, those two plants have gone bonkers, and just keep cranking out huge frilly leaves ready for picking. The harvest shown above removed about a third of what was growing on those two plants this evening, and I’ve already harvested loads from those plants for our own household as well as to give away. Those two plants are dwarfing the – not at all shabby – production of my eight or nine kale plants in my front (northern-facing) garden, up at the house. Which, as you can see here, is quite respectable.

Yes, that’s the bed that made me write about being awash in kale and rhubarb a little while ago. I love that bed, whose existence is owed to my husband, a maverick willing to try different things. It’s a quiet and sheltered little haven for a small selection of very happy plants, including lettuces and other greens, some beans and a bit of chard. And it’s now been joined by a small herb garden across the path. I love being able to step out the front door and just grab something to incorporate in a dish or meal.

So, what is so great about kale anyway?

1. It’s beautiful, a true ornamental in the vegetable world.

2. It’s damn good for you, being a great cancer-fighter, high in Vitamins K, A and C, rich in calcium, and a great anti-inflammatory. But there’s more, as you can read here about the Top 10 Health Benefits of Eating Kale.

3. It’s easy to grow, easy to care for.

4. It’s incredibly versatile, cooking up on its own in a saute with garlic, adding goodness and flavour to pasta dishes, risottos, traditional dishes like Colcannon (where cabbage is the usual suspect instead of kale), potato and lentil-based soups, and much more. It even makes great chips and can be added to smoothies for a big boost (I must confess, the latter is not something that I tend to do, but I salute those who have, like Big Sis over at My Sister’s Pantry!).

5. It’s beyond easy to wash, cut up and bag for the freezer, creating a wonderfully healthy stash to draw upon in the non-growing months. Kale lasts a good few months in the freezer (I’ve stretched it as far as six or seven) and comes out of the whole affair unscathed. Grabbing a handful of frozen kale from a freezer bag is easy and brilliant.

Enjoying kale in the prime growing season is special, though. Just look at those flamboyant fronds, holding court on the kitchen island. It’s quite a sight.

I shared a recipe for a delicious kale frittata recently, which combines little flavour bursts from dried currants and cranberries with the nuttiness of parmesan cheese (although feta would be a nice contrast too).

I’m planning to share more this season, including my take on Colcannon, my favourite spicy Caldo Verde soup (with chorizo sausage!) and a recipe for that orzo with kale dish featured in my weekend photos.

Do you have a favourite kale recipe? I’d love to know about it.

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Filed under Cooking and baking, Farm life, Growing food

Tagged as food, gardening, homesteading, kale, nature, photographs, photos, recipes