- Joined
- Oct 12, 2020
- Messages
- 407
- Climate
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Greetings and salutations!
I’ve learned in the past I have to be careful with forums...I have a bit of an addictive personality.
Anyway, early in COVID-times, we started watching Sunday mass online...we found greater success watching it on YouTube than through the parish’s web site. After the stream was finished, of course, there were the suggested videos to watch. One day a Self Sufficient Me video was suggested and, since my wife and I have always enjoyed gardening, we followed, and eventually came to watch a couple videos every Sunday morning. Now that we are able to attend mass in person most of the time, our regular viewing changed, so we have to make an effort to watch the videos. In one we watched recently, Mark mentioned the web site and forum, so now I find myself here.
I grew up in central Saskatchewan, the son of a grain farmer (he’d been a mixed farmer initially, but got rid of the livestock when we moved to town...we had no running water nor telephone in the farm house where I lived initially, but not for long). He grew up farming in the Great Depression, so the idea of frugality was driven into me. After we got married and had bought a house in Saskatoon, we had a plant room. I spent a summer as a landscape labourer and we turned most of our front yard into a flower garden while most of the back yard became a vegetable plot. We moved to Winnipeg (I’ve heard it’s the major city closest to the centre of the continent) in 1998 where we bought a house in a neighbourhood full of mature trees...unfortunately, the house plants didn’t fare as well. The front yard got changed from all lawn into some lawn with ornamental beds along with some herbs and odds and ends (raspberry, strawberry). We don’t get enough light for all this to be terribly successful, but we’ve always had something. A few years back we did purchase a wooden raised planter which is situated to get decent sun, but doesn’t have sufficient depth for any root crops. Here in Winnipeg, we can usually count on 100+ frost-free days. There are some things we simply can’t grow here as we don’t have sufficient season length and things like fruit is somewhat limited.
In 2008, we purchased a second property, a 7+ acre place with house and shop. About half the property is actually farmed by the landowner who surrounds us...that keeps the weeks down and after harvest is done, if we want to take back some of the land, we just need to mark it out so they don’t seed there. Anyway, as it’s 61 km door to door, we don’t get out quite as often as we’d like, so gardening out there really didn’t work out. However, we did manage to get a small orchard started and over the last couple of years have been harvesting a few apples and semi-sweet cherries from there, as well as currants.
Inspired by Mark and his Birdies (sp?) beds, I found a Canadian company that makes some similar metal raised beds...they arrived a week ago and we’ve been working on setting up Hugelkultur style beds. I’ve been documenting with photos, so hopefully will be able to share that soon. I need to get another load of soil and then we’ll be done.
As usual, I’ve been wordy. It’s a weakness. We’ve enjoyed the videos and hopefully I can contribute to the forums here.
Derek
I’ve learned in the past I have to be careful with forums...I have a bit of an addictive personality.
Anyway, early in COVID-times, we started watching Sunday mass online...we found greater success watching it on YouTube than through the parish’s web site. After the stream was finished, of course, there were the suggested videos to watch. One day a Self Sufficient Me video was suggested and, since my wife and I have always enjoyed gardening, we followed, and eventually came to watch a couple videos every Sunday morning. Now that we are able to attend mass in person most of the time, our regular viewing changed, so we have to make an effort to watch the videos. In one we watched recently, Mark mentioned the web site and forum, so now I find myself here.
I grew up in central Saskatchewan, the son of a grain farmer (he’d been a mixed farmer initially, but got rid of the livestock when we moved to town...we had no running water nor telephone in the farm house where I lived initially, but not for long). He grew up farming in the Great Depression, so the idea of frugality was driven into me. After we got married and had bought a house in Saskatoon, we had a plant room. I spent a summer as a landscape labourer and we turned most of our front yard into a flower garden while most of the back yard became a vegetable plot. We moved to Winnipeg (I’ve heard it’s the major city closest to the centre of the continent) in 1998 where we bought a house in a neighbourhood full of mature trees...unfortunately, the house plants didn’t fare as well. The front yard got changed from all lawn into some lawn with ornamental beds along with some herbs and odds and ends (raspberry, strawberry). We don’t get enough light for all this to be terribly successful, but we’ve always had something. A few years back we did purchase a wooden raised planter which is situated to get decent sun, but doesn’t have sufficient depth for any root crops. Here in Winnipeg, we can usually count on 100+ frost-free days. There are some things we simply can’t grow here as we don’t have sufficient season length and things like fruit is somewhat limited.
In 2008, we purchased a second property, a 7+ acre place with house and shop. About half the property is actually farmed by the landowner who surrounds us...that keeps the weeks down and after harvest is done, if we want to take back some of the land, we just need to mark it out so they don’t seed there. Anyway, as it’s 61 km door to door, we don’t get out quite as often as we’d like, so gardening out there really didn’t work out. However, we did manage to get a small orchard started and over the last couple of years have been harvesting a few apples and semi-sweet cherries from there, as well as currants.
Inspired by Mark and his Birdies (sp?) beds, I found a Canadian company that makes some similar metal raised beds...they arrived a week ago and we’ve been working on setting up Hugelkultur style beds. I’ve been documenting with photos, so hopefully will be able to share that soon. I need to get another load of soil and then we’ll be done.
As usual, I’ve been wordy. It’s a weakness. We’ve enjoyed the videos and hopefully I can contribute to the forums here.
Derek
Are you setting up your raised garden beds at your primary home in Winnipeg or at your 7+ acres? What kind of 'shop' is on the acreage? I have to say, I'd be out at the acreage full time but I like a bit of room to move and not too many people around 
