Erin's land journal

It's been a lovely couple days. Aside from Friday morning, when I had to catch some piglets, it's been largely gardening with some pottery and some socialization, plus organization-without-having-to-lead-things, cat snuggling during much-needed rain, and more gardening.

Thursday was supposed to be pottery day. We were going to be learning the kiln but the teacher cancelled on us and one of the volunteers also cancelled, so three of us opened the kiln (stuff looked good) and then one went home and the other organized the studio some while I (tried to) throw some pots. I was definitely off my game, which I've been expecting -- I've only thrown a couple times since 2014 and there's a strong curve from "first time or two back are good" through "lost everything and keep failing" and then back into "solid skill and also solid muscles" with almost everything I do. So I'm going to need to do a lot of throwing for the next bit to actually build my skills back to be able to do what I did the first couple times.

Anyhow, the other volunteer left and I got some time alone with the wheel and some music just to play, which was lovely. Oh, and my seed potatoes arrived.

When I got home I had a bunch of tidying to do and I was tired and slow, so I ended up doing animal chores at midnight. Amazingly for May there was a warm wind and the moon was full and very very bright. I didn't need a flashlight.

I had Friday off. I got a sunburn while catching piglets, and got the tiniest warning nip from Hooligan. It's the first time I've been touched with teeth by a pig, and we were closing the catch on a crate with a screaming baby in it, so I don't blame her at all. She also just barely touched, but the message was clear. She let me settle her with some scritches after so she doesn't hold it against me. It was a hot day, hotter than some of our summers have managed to achieve, made hotter by the fact that not a single leaf is on the trees yet. Weird spring indeed.

Friday afternoon was planting willows at the arts building. We'd planned to put in a basketry willow hedge in rainbow order: some willows are purple, some red, some yellow, some green, some almost grey. The plan was to line them up in coherent order to block off an area of path where people tend to walk, to make something pretty, and also to give us willows for making basketry in the future. Beyond that there didn't seem to be anyone particular planning it exactly: someone got the district workers to take the sod off the area, someone else got a grant and got the willow cuttings and irrigation line and then went on vacation, and someone else took over planting within the necessary window. I'm not sure anyone who was involved had planted into lawns before and of course I am a pro at it, having done it nearly every move in Vancouver. Luckily I noticed that it was just rock-hard subsoil the day before and we got a tiller sorted out, then some rebar to make holes beyond the depth we could till. Roughly 350 willows were planted, 19 types. I ended up with the extra cuttings, which I need to plant basically right now.

While we were working - I think 7 different people showed up to help by the end - there was a lovely lightning/thunderstorm with warm sprinkling rain so erratic that it would be raining on one person and not on the next five feet away.

Today was Saturday it had rained overnight. I spent the morning picking away at the raspberries and trimming dead out of them in the morning. After awhile doing that I raked the main garden so I could till, dug some extra raspberries, and then it started raining so I took a break. The garlic is finally coming up; I planted many different kinds last fall and somehow everyone else's garlic was up but mine wasn't, so I thought it had died. Actually, nearly overnight everything sort of started: alder catkins are falling everywhere, the haskaps somehow into leaf without ever swelling their buds, my plum tree flower buds swelling, grass everywhere, the clover seeded into my lawn showing cotyledons, willow blossoms everywhere.

With it overcast all day and not too windy this was the first day my tomatoes were outside all day.

The afternoon was cleanup and evening was going in to get the expired grocery store feed for the pigs, but I had time to catalogue the willows this evening.

Tomorrow is supposed to rain. I really want to get this lower garden tilled but I don't want to harm the soil by tilling in the rain. So my menu is:

Till the lower garden in order to:
-plant favas
-plant onions
-plant kale
-plant lettuce
-plant other garlic

Plant elderberry cuttings
Plant willow cuttings
Plant seed potatoes
Start hardening off TPS potatoes
Figure out 3rd incubator
Feed out loop/grocery store food
Start raking/tidying upper garden
Load truck with garbage
Separate doubled tomatoes and put some in the aerogardens
Move some stuff into the storage container
Plant raspberries outside the fence by the electric poles
Cut back the spruce hedge
Cut back the cedars
Cardboard the south hillside
Manure the asparagus
Set up nests for geese

Prepping for the trip still in odd moments at work. It's going to take a bunch of prepping.

o Talked to the abattoir, I can pick up either around 5pm the day of (fresh) or 2-3pm the day after (frozen). Neither of those really allows me to drive home across full daylight. Processing what I'll do.

o Keeping an eye on the weather. Snow is supposed to hit afternoon/evening of "the day after" (so maybe I should load the fresh birds up in coolers with ice and try driving straight home? But it's a 4 hour drive, and I'll have done the 4 hour drive in at 5am that morning, but I'll maybe avoid snow?)

o Updated BCAA/roadside auto insurance, just in case

o Got grain last night, need to offload a bunch of it still, which means...

o Need to cut and power wash a couple more grain barrels (and need to powerwash carriers and coolers)

o Still researching possible places to stay, there's a nice place (The Creamery Inn) in a small town nearby, but that isn't close to restaurants. There's also a treehouse place in that small town that would be fun if Tucker was coming along. Hotels in the bigger town are an option. Keeping an eye on budget, of course, this will cost me a couple hundred in gas and more than that in butchers' fees.

o Got snow tires put on.

o Slowly acclimatizing the ducks to eating in the goose shed, so I can put them in there Wed night, close the door, and get them in the carriers on Thurs so I can leave at 5am Friday.

o It would be great to get the mat off the truck bed and wash under it.

o I definitely need to put the top on the truck, which I haven't done singlehandedly before. It's several hundred pounds and very awkward, I think I have a system that involves scootching it along 2x4s. I should probably find someone who can be a safety check-in after I do that. I guess that'll happen Wed evening, since I need to unload tires and grain tonight.

o I need to choose which geese are going, I have three selected but need to select the other couple.

o Also need to pull my breeder ducks.

o Need to get lumber and other odds and ends under cover suddenly, since it's supposed to snow and if it sticks then everything is there forever/until May or June.

o Really should cover straw.

o Need to pack, including birth control pills and pads since this of course will be happening over my period.

o Need to make sure the truck has emergency supplies if I need to sleep in it, patch a tire, etc.

o Need to figure out how to get both full carriers and coolers into the truck, this is a lot of items that take up space. Tetrisy.

o Need to load the animals up on food/water on Thurs night.

o I'm tired.

D Order shampoo
1/2 Order spring bulbs and garlic
O Map new circle planting
O Plant last roses
O Make soap
O Render lard
O Freeze and remove soap from molds
O Till south slope by house and plant fall grains & put on row cover
O Pickle squash/beans
1/2 Pick apples
1/2 Sauce apples (caramel?)
O Juice apples (?)
O Apple jam (lime, cardamom, or vanilla?)
O Lots of water bath canning the above
O Cook a duck
O Can pork from freezer
O Pork belly into salt pork
D Rearrange storage
O Wash floors
O Make biscuits
D Clean sheets
D Clean quail house for roosters
O Feed old eggs to pigs
O Build feed storage shed on aspens?
O Empty big trailer
O Remove sides on small trailer
O Get straw
O Sort locations for large straw balls
O Empty gooseshed bedding to prep for small straw
O Sort pig straw storage
D Walk through garden
O Sort pork chops for Monday
D Cardboard on south slope
D Prep A-frame for winter
O Bonfire pile

So regardless of what happens I enjoy the problem. Er, problem I meant in the sense of something to solve but I don't like that word to refer to a land relationship. I like the process anyways.

So here we have a property.

Cool, wet, zone 8ish in terms of freeze but with:
1500 base 5C degree days historically, moving towards 1800 in the next 20 years at a conservative estimate (all this is based on Canadian gov data, including Canadian gov climate change models, I have used the most conservative in all cases)
600 base 10C degree days historically, moving towards 800
100 base 15C degree days historically, moving towards 200
Frost-free season 200 degrees historically, moving to 240
200 days with rain per year, anticipated not to change
Mean maximum August temperature moving from 20C to 22C
Mean minimum winter temperature moving from 0.6C to 0.8C
Mean winter temp moving from 2C to 3.2C
Mean summer temp moving roughly from 15C to 16C

Mean annual temperature (which is an ultra weird measurement, but sure) moving from 8C to 9.4C

More usefully,
70 days with some time below zero (frost days) historically, moving to 42
9 days where it doesn't rise above zero at all during the day, moving 6 days
0.4 days below -15C, moving to 0.2 (obviously a notional concept, but it means it should hit that every so many years)

0.7 days with some time above 30C, moving to 2 days
8 days above 25C, moving to 18 days
There are zero expected nights above 20C in near future
Highest temperature of the year is anticipated to be right above 30C

As you can see, it's not warm very often, but there's also not a lot of freeze. Sunlight is an issue in winter with the level of overcast.

There is plenty of moisture, though I haven't figured out the actual precipitation I'm expecting it to be relatively high, and to follow the mediterranean pattern of the west coast: lots in winter, sometimes a bit of "drought" (many days in a row without rain) in summer. Humidity is around 80%. This means that growing without irrigation is definitely possible with correct breeding and varieties BUT there's hella disease. I know of my own knowledge that powdery mildew is a big problem in the area: the general humidity keeps spores around and the drought stress of summer makes the plants susceptible.

The soil is listed in the BC soils survey as silty clay loam for much of the property, but that's a pretty high level survey.

The property is on a slope, with the main garden area in probably a 100-to-500-year floodplain for the Salmon River as far as I can tell from maps. The garden is at the base of a slope (there's a waterfall on the property coming off the slope) so it's water-and-nutrient receiving from the slope flow.

Just listing off this information you can see this is a leafy green veg paradise. Lettuce, kale, carrots, parsnips, all will overwinter here easily without cover unless there's a rare -15C cold snap, and even then it might just bite back the lettuce a bit. There isn't a ton of heat in summer -- that's the base 10C and base 15C growing degree days -- so squash and tomatoes will have the same trouble ripening that they do here up north and their prime growing temperatures coincide with the least amount of moisture and that powdery mildew issue. Crops that need to dry down in the field (beans, corn, small grains) need to be carefully-timed so they ripen within that dry window or they, too, will mold.

Perennials, including woody perennials like trees, need to be able to survive freezing. They also need to be able to ripen fruit in cool weather, if they are fruiting trees, and most importantly their microsites need to be assessed for drainage and/or have high moisture tolerance in winter. I think quince rootstock is good for this, for pears and quince?

With no snow cover in winter and little freeze, a clay-leaning soil will be sensitive to damage through overworking. This isn't a place to cultivate heavily. It is a place where annual and perennial weeds won't get easily knocked back by frost, so keeping the soil covered/weeded is a year-round project to avoid banking weed seeds and root propagules. Up north it's ok to let the soil be bare under snow and in spring before ploughing; down there I'm not so sure.

Therefore my first instinct is, when the land is cleared, to seed any bare soil with two things: a mix of desireable leafy greens (kale, lettuce, miner's lettuce, corn salad, spinach, chard, chicories) immediately in cool weather and then, when summer begins to heat up a little, planting squash, potatoes, corn, and other smothering warmer-weather crops through the greens mix to keep continuous cover as the earlier greens go to seed. Hoe out the first 30-50% of the greens to throw up flower shoots, then let them flower and seed to contribute to a seed bed of desireable greens as the squash etc is growing.

The first goal is to maintain a fall/winter/spring in-ground seedbank of harvestable greens (a yield even the first year of both seed and food) that both don't need to be planted and serve as a smothering mulch for other weeds. Yearly maintenance on the genetics of this greens mix is required: just remove anything that bolts before it produces tasty leaves. If that maintenance isn't followed then earlier, bolting genetics will take over and the usefulness of the greens seedbed will be lost. These greens can easily be ploughed into the soil in later years once the seedbed is established, but some good (non-bolting) specimens should be left to seed most years to maintain the soil seedbank. Further genetics work is as easy as eating leaves rather than cutting the whole plant, and leaving the tasty ones to seed while hoeing out the less tasty ones (or whatever the desired traits are). This might just mean carrying a couple wire flags when harvesting and putting them next to the best plants.

The second goal is to keep the soil covered with potatoes, corn, etc while getting off a crop for animal feed/winter storage. When the greens crop goes to seed the annuals like spinach and lettuce will die and/or reduce to stalks rather than ground-covering rosettes. The squash/corn/potatoes are all crops that don't require well-tilled seedbeds and can be popped in through existing greens. They also don't require much maintenance so in the first year of the project can happily produce some yield and cover the ground without a lot of intervention; it's to be expected that crops with the least person-energy requirements will do best in the first year when setting up everything else will keep people busy.

During this time assessment of water tables, soil fertility, microclimates, microtopograpy, local genetic resources, etc can occur in preparation for putting in perennial crops. Having known crops in place over the cleared area will also allow rough assessment of soil capability: nutrient or oxygen deficiencies will show up in a recogniseable way which should allow remediation before perennials are put in.

Anyhow, this is what I do for fun but I do think I want a cup of tea now.

Last year I grew several varieties of corn, and the ones that gave any sort of yield were Gaspe (flint) and Magic Mana / Magic Mana starburst (flour). The latter was pretty late-yielding but I suspect the seeds will sprout ok?

Lavender mandan parching corn did not do well. Cascade Ruby-Gold did not do well but it was in a bed that had a ton of aspen root which may have drunk all the water.

There's some daylength interference in corn, but for the most part I have a benchmark now. Gaspe is more-or-less the earliest known corn in the world. Something called Morden (of course: there was a Morden research station that turned out a tom of short season varieties) is maybe almost as quick as Gaspe but is basically impossible to find (it used to be maybe offered through Sherck seeds, which closed down last year). Saskatoon White (not to be confused with Saskatchewan White) is probably one of the next on the list, I should be able to get that from Adaptive Seeds. Other contenders may be Pima 60 days (ki:kam hu:n) from Native Seed Search, Alberta Clipper which may be available from Oikos when they reopen for the year, maaaaaaaybe unlikely Darwin John flint from Oikos as well, maaaaaaybe Baxter's Yellow from Sandhill, there's apparently a tiny blue early corn sold in a natural history museum(?) gift shop in the states that I might be able to track down, and I'd like to get a more robust gene pool for my Gaspe from Great Lakes Seeds.

I also have to figure out where things go. This will be contingent on which aspens I cut down to keep shade off the fields.

But, in the meantime, a sleuthing exercise to find all this stuff (and whatever I've currently missed).