Summer Fun & Festivities

[No, we still haven't replaced our digital camera - this photo's from last year, but Joe and Noah still look exactly the same!]

This week has been a busy one!

On Sunday, we attended It's Your Festival at Gage Park - the oldest and biggest Canada Day festival in the country! We hung out at the park's splash pad and playground for a while, then had a relaxed picnic dinner while we enjoyed live performances by The Spoons and April Wine.

[Cool fact: the Spoons' keyboardist, Scott MacDonald, happens to be my across-the-street neighbour's brother, and was visiting from China, where he's lived for a few years now. Scott's son was playing in my backyard the afternoon of the show!!]

Tuesday was Canada Day, and therefore two traditional activities were required: strawberry picking (at Lindley's Farm in Ancaster), and fireworks (at Bayfront Park). Joe and I managed to squeeze in solo bike rides as well - I rode 25 km and Joe squeezed out 45!

The Canada Day weather was perfect; sunny and mid-twenties (that's Celsius!) with very little humidity (nearly a miracle in July in southern Ontario). We picked 18 quarts of strawberries in about an hour. The kids got bored of picking after a while, so Noah started investigating the environment a bit more closely and noticed the irrigation pipes. He asked what they were, and we ended up having a rather interesting discussion on farm irrigation systems (we pointed out the farm's irrigation pond on the way back out). Nathan entertained us by making up a story of King Berry and his plot to take over the world (yep, the kid's watched a lot of Pinky and the Brain, LOL!)

We all rode our bikes along the Waterfront Trail to the fireworks display. I was in the lead keeping up with Nathan the speedster. Joe and Noah were quite a distance behind us, and were lucky enough to see one of our local beavers swimming in the Desjardins Canal!

Much of the rest of this week has been spent either wrestling with strawberries or loafing at the community pool (a mere 5 minute walk from our house). I now have 1 1/2 dozen jars of strawberry jam - with any luck these will last us until next year; I only had to buy 1 jar of storebought this year to get us through to the new season! I still have 6 quarts left to hull and freeze, which I should probably be doing right now instead of blogging....

This afternoon, the whole family went for a ride down to Pier 4 Park - we brought a couple of the boys' friends along for the ride, too! We were lucky enough to catch the end of the Dragon Boat Races as we'd been meaning to attend but the event had slipped my mind. The boys played at the splash pad and playground while Joe and I took a stroll around to soak up the Harbourfront atmosphere and relaxed on a bench by the water with our books.

And now, I believe it is time for me to go deal with those strawberries!

Rushing to Beat the First Frost

Yesterday I was scrambling around in the garden like a madwoman for most of the afternoon. A check of the weather forecast earlier that day revealed that we were supposed to get a day of rain today, followed by frost both Saturday and Sunday night. Since I have been neglecting my garden for most of October, this meant I had to hustle to get around to doing everything that needed to be done before the frost arrived!!

I got a basket full of tomatoes (mostly green, but there are a few ripe ones hiding at the bottom!), about half a dozen small green peppers, a few jalapenos, a tub full of chard, another tub full of parsley and oregano, and two very full tubs of peppermint! Those are all 4 litre ice cream tubs in case you're wondering - I try to always keep a few around as I find them useful in a variety of situations. The brownish-yellow dried out looking things in the basket with the peppers are pods from my scarlet runner beans.

I'm also trying a little experiment this year, and bringing a few of my veggie plants inside to see if I can keep them producing. I dug up one of my tomato plants, a sweet pepper and a jalapeno pepper plant, and my rosemary and potted them all. It was a bit of an adventure wrestling the tomato plant into my largest terra cotta pot! I stationed them all at the back of my dining room, where I have a large south facing window. I just have to remember to water them!

Now I have to get all those herbs dried and stored away safely, and harvest and store the seeds from the bean pods. The chard is already tucked away in the fridge and will be part of this week's dinner menu. I'll use the tomatoes up gradually as they ripen. I think I'm going to freeze some of the peppers, although I might just make a big batch of stuffed peppers!

Oh, and in case you're wondering what on earth I'm going to do with all that peppermint? I am a big fan of peppermint tea, so that will be how I use most of it. I'm also planning to use some of it for some Christmas projects - more on that in future posts!

An Afternoon at the Farm

The Community Shared Agriculture farm we belong to (Plan B Organic Farm) has an annual "Farm Day" near the end of the season every year. Today was the day!! We had fabulous, warm sunny weather and enjoyed a menu of local organic foods: Sausages or burgers, salads (from farm produce of course!) and organic ice cream to die for (seriously, the best ice cream I've ever eaten - Mapleton's Organic).

The only bummer was that I forgot my camera. Waahh!! I missed some seriously good photo ops. The kids (and there were a lot of them!) piled bales of hay into various configurations - a fort, an "igloo", and eventually a tallish tower-like structure. This led to jumping off said tower into a loose pile of hay below. The kids were all just in heaven - literally radiating joy from their pores as they soared through the air into the hay pile below. The parents were all being totally cool and relaxed and just letting the kids revel in the whole farm experience.

We also got to take a tour of the farm, meet all the farm dogs (there were several - and yes, Noah was in his glory!), chase chickens and roosters, play with the farm cat, and pick a pumpkin to bring home. It's really amazing to have such a close connection with the people who are growing your food. I was walking by a field of salad greens, and realized I would be eating some of those very greens in a couple of weeks.

All in all, the perfect way to spend a fall afternoon.

Fall Fun, Featuring Noah the Horse-Headed Boy!

We went on another jaunt to a local apple farm yesterday and I snapped this hilarious pic - the horse put his head right in front of Noah just as I snapped it! We were laughing so hard at the resulting photo that another family asked to take a look at our camera to see what was so funny.

Okay, so we are easily amused but this has all the makings of a classic McLaughlin family photo.





Joe also got a good photo of both boys (with their own heads!) hanging out with the bunnies at the farm. As you can see, Noah's already getting geared up for Halloween (Halloween runs a very close second to Christmas in holiday importance around here).









And oh, yes, I remembered to get a pic of this sign that I missed out on last time as we were sans camera.

Love it! I think I should make one to hang outside my house.

McLaughlin "Urban Farm" Gets Ready for Winter

Wow, it's been a month since I last posted here! That's probably because life has been very, very full in the last few weeks. I hosted a baby shower for a friend of mine on September 24th, then the next weekend we had two birthday parties to celebrate Nathan turning seven (one friends, one family) and last weekend was Thanksgiving here in Canada!

In amidst the flurry of all those activities, I've been busy harvesting, preserving and preparing my garden for winter. We had our first frost this week, so I got everything done none too soon.
Now I have green tomatoes ripening in a basket on my countertop, a fridge full of peppers and celery, and a variety of dried herbs stashed in my spice drawer. I also transplanted a bit of my oregano, parsley, and basil into small pots for my kitchen windowsill so hopefully they will thrive and I will have some fresh herbs throughout the winter.

Another project I've been working on in the garden is putting together a couple of cold frames to grow spinach and lettuce. This is the first time I've ever tried this, so we'll see how it goes. After looking at a few different cold frame constructions, I settled on a less-traditional but hopefully effective design. This is build with three layers of brick (it's a lot deeper than it seems from the photo). The white cloth at the side is agricultural cloth, which will cover the top to keep in the heat (held down snugly with more bricks). Nathan helped me lay some of the bricks for these. I chose this setup rather than the wooden frame with an old window type of design, because I have both limited storage space and garden space and I can totally disassemble these in the spring when I'm done using them for the season (I put the bricks and agricultural cloth to different uses throughout the course of the growing season).

I've also brought in two of my pepper plants to see if I can keep them going through the winter indoors; I've read of others having success with this and I have a large southern facing window so I figured I'd give it a shot. New peppers are still forming on the plants, so things look good so far.

Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the first season of my biointensive gardening experiment. The biggest success was definitely the bush beans (green and yellow) - they were amazingly productive and delicious to boot! The greens (lettuce and spinach) and the peppers also did very well. The hanging tomatoes were reasonably productive; I'm hoping to have some nice planters to plant some on the deck next year as well. My raspberry canes seemed to be thriving and produced a few handfuls of berries (not bad since I just planted them this year). We'll have to wait for next year to see how the blueberries do! I had a few failures too - the pumpkins, watermelon, and cucumbers all died off without producing. Next year I am hoping to add a dwarf pear tree to my mix of fruit; I've read they can be grown in large planters (such as a 1/2 barrel). What with my indoor gardening experiments, tending to my cold frame veggies, and planning for next spring's garden, I should be plenty busy all winter!

Veggin' Out!

After basically ignoring my garden for the past couple of weeks (except for not-frequent-enough watering), I spent the bulk of this afternoon out frolicking in my "cabbage patch".

Here's a photo of the main raised bed; as you can see it's quite a jungle in there! This side of the bed has spinach, bush beans, onions, carrots, and assorted herbs (you can see the mint in the bottom left corner).




Here's the view from the other side of the the bed; zucchini, pattypan squash, cabbage, and some more bush beans (also some lettuce that has majorly bolted!) Oh yes, at the very back you can see the pumpkin starting to climb up towards the deck. I'm so excited- the plants are starting to flower, and if we actually get some pumpkins to grow the kids are going to be ecstatic.










The green beans have arrived! I spent about an hour picking them this afternoon, and there are more on the way.








I've gotten into playing around with the camera and taking some artsy kinda shots of the veggies. Call me crazy, but I really think they are just gorgeous (the veggies, that is, not my pics!) I am pleased with how some of the photos came out, but my digicam is not that sophisticated and I can't get the closeup shots I would really like. These will do for a start; I particularly like this cabbage one.







Here's a pattypan squash just starting, with the blossom still attached










Today's backyard garden harvest! I cannot believe how many green beans I picked (there's got to be at least a couple pounds there) as well as a bunch of spinach and what I could salvage of the lettuce. There are a couple of wee onions too that had gotten mostly uprooted in yesterday's storms. We had some of the green beans for dinner - I cooked them to perfection and they tasted incredible!




I think I'm going to have to brew up a batch of Lettuce Soup to use up all my lettuce before it spoils. No, I'm not joking, I really do make a soup with lettuce, and it's actually quite tasty. Most importantly, it uses 16 cups of lettuce to make a normal-sized batch of soup!

The other really cool thing I did this afternoon (when I wasn't out communing with the cabbage) was teach Nathan how to knit! He was watching me work on my knitting, and asked if I could teach him how. You should have seen his face light up when I told him I would teach him right then.


This is as far as we got, but Nathan did a couple of stitches of cast on, plus most of a row of knitting, with me sitting behind him and doing a bit of hand-over-hand with him. Oh yes, and he specifically requested blue yarn to learn with (his favourite colour). He wants to work on it more tomorrow. He says he's going to knit Marley a sweater - gotta love that kid!

Vegetables and Treehouses and Chickenpox, OH MY!

I know I promised I was going to post at least 1-2 times a week on this blog - and it's now closing in on a month since my last post! What can I say, things have been *very* busy around here :)

The vegetable garden is coming along nicely, thanks to daily TLC from me.



Here's what things looked like right after my big past-the-frost-free-date planting (a three day long gardening extravaganza that left me with *very* sore knees, wrists and shoulders!)












Here's the way it's shaping up now - this was taken 3 or 4 days ago. We had our first salad with spinach and lettuce from our garden this week (it tastes so much better when you've grown it yourself!)





So what's growing in there? In the main raised bed in the photos, there's spinach, lettuce, pumpkins, watermelon (!!!), broccoli, cabbage (green and red), zucchini, patty pan squash, scarlet runner beans, bush beans (green and yellow), onions (white and red), carrots, garlic, thyme (regular and golden), garlic chives, peppermint, basil (green and purple), lavendar, oregano, and a few nasturtiums thrown in for good measure! In the side beds, there are some of the same things, plus strawberries, a blueberry bush, raspberry canes, potatoes, canteloupe (well, technically musk melon), pickling cucumbers, and dill. If all goes well, we should have enough to feed the whole street.



The other big project around here in the last few weeks has been construction of the boy's "treehouse". There's no actual tree involved, but it is up off the ground in typical treehouse fashion.

Here's day 2 of construction (day 1 involved wrestling the corner posts into correct position)










Here we are about 2/3rds of the way through the project (of course all the neighbourhood kids have been to check it out, plus most of the parents too!)










Ahh, what a beautiful site! The completed treehouse. Now I can get Joe to start working on the fence that needs to go across the back of our property (on second thought, our bank account needs to recover from the outlay for the treehouse first!)





Amidst all this flurry of activity, both Nathan and Noah came down with the chickenpox (just to add a bit more excitement to our life). Thank goodness they're on the mend and will be mostly recovered (just a few residual spots but no longer contagious) for our camping trip next week - we leave Tuesday morning!