The weather this week has been overcast and mildly cold, hovering in the 20s. The ground is hard frozen and the lake is frozen over (finally!), even where the beavers and muskrats tried to keep it open with frantic brush hauling activity. It is very unusual for there to be so little snow. On my facebook profile, many memories from when the kids were little popped up around Halloween and they all had a background of snow. Not this year. I got a lot done with the extra month of mild weather though it was work that should have been done during the summer season. But it still brings on a general uneasiness that our weather patterns have changed so much in the 17 years I have lived here. While our summer was hot and dry with an intense sun, this fall and early winter has been primarily overcast. With our daylight losing ground rapidly, to have those few hours cast in cloud shadow is mildly depressing. We take our vitamins d and b complex and try to be as motivated as during the manic summer hours. But with the deciduous leaves compacting on the ground, a cloudy sky and no snow to brighten our landscape, it has felt a little dreary around here.

My son and I took advantage of the snow free woods to cut up some downed trees for next years firewood. It was a little weird to drive the 4 wheeler around the woods this time of year but we spent a whole day at work and collected 4 trees.

We gathered all the branches from the downed trees and burned a brush pile so that I could also burn the four large bags of diseased and pest riddled plant debris from fall clean up.

The temperature, while not getting seriously cold, has been steadily dropping and so has the temperature under the house which is currently at 37°. My unfinished “root cellar” is still full of food for a few reasons: 1. I grew way too much thinking this was the year we would finish it 2. the 15 cubic foot freezer we ordered from Lowes must be on the slowest barge ever as it is still not here (6 weeks and counting) 3. we obviously are not eating enough (though we are trying!).

I have been trying to use lots and lots of vegetables in every meal.

On Monday I butchered the two turkeys. They had such fun personalities that it was hard to say goodbye. I will miss being greeted with such enthusiasm. We are now down to 15 pullets which feels so much more manageable after our high of 63 fowl this summer.

And then all of a sudden it was finally in the forecast to snow. With the long fall we had done a pretty good job putting everything away in preparation but I still had stacks of pots waiting to be cleaned and sterilized. I often skip this step but with the slug egg issues this year I do not want my cherished 15 gallon pots to pass along any pests or disease. So I dirtied up our bathtub for a couple of days.

I very rarely use bleach for anything but when I have encountered a pest or unmanageable disease, I will make an exception.

And then we waited for the snowstorm…

But sadly after all the excitement of a winter weather advisory for the Copper River Basin, in our valley we just got a small dusting. It was pretty sad to wake up this morning to a mere inch of snow. But one upside was that I was able to see the success of the 2″ chicken wire my son and I strung around the vegetable garden this fall.

There are a gazillion tracks around the outside of the garden fence but none inside! Finally the raspberry and currant plants are safe from rodent teeth.

And even just this little bit of snow has brightened up the landscape a lot. And we are hoping for more snow!

Till next week 🙂

I have never been a diamonds and lace kind of girl. I am more of carhartt and mud boot, horsehair on the coat and soil under the fingernails kind of girl. But I do love presents and this week I got one I have been wanting for over a decade. I am beyond ecstatic with the delivery of an 8 foot by 20 foot steel shipping container. As it is my early Christmas and birthday present this joy will have to extend for many months! Used by the shipping industry to move items around the world, the retired containers are bear proof and waterproof (though not condensation proof). It is instant storage in a lifestyle where storage is always lacking. And on Halloween this year, one was delivered to the driveway for my new (to me!) garden shed. 

It happened sort of by accident. My husband has been looking for a 40 foot conex to replace our decaying shop tent. Our tools are pretty unorganized and spread out through a few shabby outbuildings/car canopy. A 40 foot conex would allow for tool organization and a fireproof place for a welding area. You can also cut a stove pipe hole in the metal and install a wood stove which would allow for a heated space to work on projects during the cold season. The trouble is not so much in finding one to buy as figuring out how to get it home after you purchase it. A 40 foot steel box needs a semi truck. But while we were probing around for local hauling options, our friends told us about a 20 foot conex for sale in Kenny Lake.  Exactly what I wanted for the garden! At the same time, Tom Lambert was busy hauling a stockpile of gravel from the Copper River to our Strelna community to sell next year and he agreed to bring it down to us (for a great price) since he was coming out every day anyway. And a week later:

It felt a little like a miracle because we had a few weeks where everything was breaking and we were spending an inordinate amount of time spinning our wheels. Sometimes during those phases in life when everything is going wrong, it is hard to remember that it will not last forever.

November 1st we situated the conex in its forever home using the backhoe to turn it around and drag it into place.

I spent the next several days dragging items from my garden pile and putting them into the conex. I have spent years stacking up my garden stuff on wooden pallets and tarping them for the winter in different places and trying to keep it organized. It is a losing battle. Even the years where I made myself a map of where items were, in the spring, it was always the same old story: digging off snow, cursing when I hit and broke something in the cold, and frustrated that the item I needed was frozen to the ground. Sixteen years of that and you can understand why covered storage is something to get excited about! 

Not only did I move all the items piled next to the driveway into the container but all the shovels and rakes leaning against the chicken coop, my tools in Tim’s shop tent, various totes and various storage cans at the greenhouse. Since snow could happen at any time (it being late this year) I just put everything in without organizing it perfectly. But I have been thinking a lot about the KonMarie organizing method of getting all the like things together and discarding items that are not useful and do not bring you joy. I had a lot of fun putting like items together and seeing how many I had! This part will be a work in progress. I need to make shelves and figure out how to use the high space. I need to make space to store grain next summer. But for now to have all my things under a covered space is pretty spectacular.

I got on a roll with this project. Items around the homestead were collected and brought to the conex and the yard was looking pretty tidy. It was clear and cold (in the 20s) and the ground was frozen. With no snow I was a little worried about my neglected perennials. The trailer full of leaves the kids and I collected in August had been moved out of the way of the conex project and into my way by the chicken coop. I aired up the flat tire and brought it down to the perennial garden and mulched in the beds and and then put the empty trailer away for winter.

With the trailer out of the way, I was able to hook onto the broiler chicken house and slide it over the frozen ground to where I will use it next spring to raise some more meat chickens.

It was not too cold to fire up the backhoe, so I scraped up all the chicken bedding and moved it to this years compost pile. Still all fired up with organizing, I decided to move last years compost pile next to the garden gate for easy wheelbarrowing into the beds next spring. There was also a pile of composted pig manure and bedding on the other side of the garden and I spent Monday consolidating those piles and then covering it for the winter.

While moving the compost pile, I unearthed the unfrozen center of the pile and an idea started to grow. I filled several totes of compost and with the help of my son heaved them into the house along with the very frozen garden cart full of soil. This is one of the things I love about my house. If necessary, I can fill the back room with a garden cart and totes of soil and compost and no one blinks an eye. Once they warmed up overnight, I screened them into freshly washed totes (on the to do list and next to the greenhouse).

Yesterday I pulled out all my already frozen ingredients at the conex: peat, lime, perlite, blood meal, greensand, and soft rock phosphate. I hooked the cement mixer (which is only used for mixing soil) up to a generator and started mixing these items with the compost and soil brought down from the house to make seed starting soil for soil blocks. I was not sure when I added the thawed and house temperature soil and compost if the mixture would freeze instantly and clump up or not but I wanted to try. Somehow after weeks of projects not working out, I felt like I had an opportunity to make up for the fact that this very important soil for starting all my spring plants had not been made over the summer. And it worked!

The peat and perlite was so dry that the lime and organic amendments mixed right in. And so did the soil and compost.

I mixed 8 batches of seed starting soil until I ran out of a couple of ingedients. I did the last batch by headlamp with freezing rain coming down. It truly was a last chance project! I have enough to get through to May when it will be warm enough to make more. What a relief to know that I do not have to purchase subpar commercial soil and haul it 250 miles home this spring.

After a frustrating few weeks, this past week was amazing. So much progress in such a short time. I can hardly believe it. My GMC is back from the shop and working well (just need to put the winter tires on) and the new on demand hot water heater is installed and working beautifully (125°F water at the tap even though our water is coming out of the tank at 33°). Life is really good!

Till next week!