Winter? What winter?

It has been a strange winter here in Ontario.  For the second year in a row we have not had to shovel our driveway even once.   Yes, we have cleared our walkways of a couple of inches here and there but for the most part the few snow accumulations have been quickly followed by a warm spell with rain and the snow is melted away.  A friend shared this table from Environment Canada.

News Release

Ontario Weather Review

January 2012 

In January 2012, balmy temperatures continued to reign across the province.  Mean temperatures approached, but somewhat surprisingly did not surpass, the values of 2006 when most recent records were set in Ontario. This January, mean temperatures were above normal values by as much as 7.8 degrees Celsius, which was the case in Dryden!

Unusual mean temperature readings (in °C), ranked by variation from normal:

Location         MeanTemp  Normal   Difference   Warmest since

Dryden                 -9.7             -17.5            7.8             2006

Kenora                 11.4            -17.3             5.9            2006

Sioux Lookout     -12.8            -18.6            5.8            2006

Red Lake            -14.0            -19.6             5.6            2006

Thunder Bay         -9.9             -14.8             4.9           2006

Wawa                   -9.9             -14.8            4.9            2006

Peterborough        -4.2              -8.9              4.7            2006

Kapuskasing        -14.0            -18.7              4.7           2010

Toronto Pears       -1.7              -6.3               4.6           2006

Elliot Lake            -7.3            -11.8               4.5            2006

Geraldton             -14.7           -19.2              4.5            2006

Chapleau              -11.7           -16.0               4.3           2006

Trenton                 -3.2              -7.5                4.3           2006

Pickle Lake          -16.3            -20.5               4.2           2007

Sault Ste. Marie      -6.4            -10.5              4.1            2006

Earlton                  -12.3            -16.4             4.1             2010

Kitchener-Waterloo -3.2              -7.1             3.9            2006

Sudbury                   -9.8            -13.6             3.8            2008

Timmins                 -13.7            -17.5              3.8            2010

Sarnia                      -1.8            -5.4                3.6            2006

Windsor                   -0.9             -4.5               3.6            2006

Moosonee              -17.1            -20.7              3.6            2010

Kingston                  -3.6             -7.1                3.5            2006

London                    -2.8             -6.3                3.5            2008

Toronto                   -0.8             -4.2                3.4             2006

North Bay               -9.6           -13.0               3.4               2008

Wiarton                   -3.4             -6.8               3.4               2008

Muskoka                 -7.1           -10.4                3.3             2008

Petawawa              -10.1           -12.9                 2.8            2010

Notice that the warmest years have been over the last 6 years.   Whether you debate climate change as man-made or just cyclical there seems to be little doubt that we are currently warming.

  In the past our spinach has overwintered in our cold-frames and we eat it until December.  This year we harvested some in January and it is still growing well in February.

  The Eastern bluebirds that nest with us every year overwintered this year in the back yard, the first time we have noticed this.

Since the weather was a balmy 32 F we went for a walk into the woods across the field.  What prompted the walk was the arrival of a herd of 31 deer.  They all came running over a period of 5-10 minutes through the field after crossing the road and ended up streaming through our back yard and the field behind us before all hopping the fence and disappearing into the woods.  I wanted to follow their trail.

  The woods are actually a landlocked conservation area that was man-made – picture perfect rows of pine after pine.  Around the exterior the native trees have taken a stand and there is a mixed wood with maple, black walnut, oak, and hickory but once you venture in a bit it is all pine.  The lack of snow made it fairly easy to walk through at this time of year and as we walked we found these depressions in the snow where deer must have been sleeping in the night.  There were 5-6 of these spots melted in the snow a few feet apart.

In the middle of the woods is a large pond.

A massive oak near the pond.  Local kids use it for a swing.

                          Yes!  Buds!  spring is on the way...

There will be pros and cons to the warming weather, and if it continues there will be changes to what we are able to grow, and like nature we will have to adapt.  

Freedom 55 Here We Come!

Happy New Year!  Guess what my resolution is?  To blog more often.  I have set a goal of at least one a month and I am putting it in writing so it is here for all to see.  Feel free to send me reminders if I miss my goal.

What better way to start of the New Year than a fascinating blog about...fiscal responsibility! Did you think I was going to say weight loss?  Part of living sustainably is living within your financial means and Jerry and I are about to embark on that journey big time.  He officially starts his retirement pension in May of this year when we will have to live on about a third of our past income but till then we are without a pay check!  Yes, it is rice and beans for us for the next 5 months! We knew that this day was coming and we have saved money to cover our expenses over the next months but still it is pushing us out of the very comfortable zone we have been in for the last 35 years of getting a very decent wage deposited to our bank account every two weeks.

There is now a notebook on the desk to write down every penny we spend over the next couple of months to track where our money is going.  We sat down a few months ago and made up a new “retirement” budget based on our current expenses.  All that is missing is the glass jars that Gail Vaz-Oxlade suggests on her wonderful show “Till Debt do us Part” (http://www.gailvazoxlade.com/).  In fact we used the budget under her resources.  I often watch that show and am always shocked at the lack of financial knowledge the couples have.  Note to parents: the most important lesson to teach your children is fiscal responsibility!

For Jerry and I this exercise is really reverting back to the way things were when we were first married 33 years ago – we had a budget, we had envelopes instead of jars (why did I not see the potential then to be a guru to the masses?), the cash went in the envelopes and when it was gone we did not spend anymore.  We were very careful with credit cards always paying off the balance and used credit sparingly.  We only ever lived on Jerry’s salary and my salary went first for a down payment, then to pay the mortgage off on the house and the occasional trip – and we lived very well.   We always saved at least 10%-30% of our income and that allowed us to invest in rental properties and mutual funds.  Ultimately, this system gave us the opportunity to build our eco home and to allow Jerry his “Freedom 55”.

Choosing to live sustainably saves you money in a myriad of ways.  While our house cost more to build upfront our monthly costs will only be 15% of our income where most people have housing costs upwards of the 35% suggested by Gail.  Owning a Prius and making trips multifunctional keeps our transportation costs at about 7% of our income rather than the standard of 15%.  Using vinegar and baking soda for most cleaning saves on the grocery bills as does a vegetarian diet – beans and lentils are much cheaper than meat.

Making choices about what is really necessary for day to day living also saves you money - I am probably the only cell phone customer left that pays $10/month and not under a contract, we choose not to stop for coffee and tea every time we get in our car, we rarely eat in a fast food restaurant, and we borrow books from the library or buy them at Value Village.

Doing a budget again after many years gave us a chance to review what was important for us to spend our money on.  We still have an amount for charities that we hold dear to our hearts, there is still a monthly massage that I swear is a need not a want, there is money set aside for a yearly vacation and there is money for an emergency fund – another must from Gail’s suggestions.

To be honest, after years of hearing Jerry complain about my spending habits (which I swear were not horrible anyway) I am looking forward to the challenge of living within a budget and finding ways to stretch our dollars.  Our “Freedom 55” will not look like the TV ads, luxury vacations, golf courses and yachts but it will be a totally awesome, fulfilling life starting with the peace of mind that only a budget that balances can bring.  Oh, and tonight for dinner?  Lentil soup!

Fire!

Every year when October arrives we start the discussion about when to start using the wood stove meaning, when do we start heating our home.  This discussion usually takes place while we are stacking the firewood on the back porch.   Jerry always says, “No fire until November 1”.   I usually start whining about the first week in October and every time the temperature dips to 19C inside.   In the four years we have lived here we have not made it to November 1 without a fire but this year we came pretty close.  Thanks to a warm October we only had the wood stove on about 6 times through the month and most of those times were for short periods – a morning fire on a chilly rainy day and a few chilly evenings to help dry the laundry.

Even half way through November we still have not had to have the wood stove working 24/7 thanks to the solar passive feature of our home.  On a partly sunny/cloudy day like today it is 20C at 10:00 a.m. and will likely stay at that temperature without any heat at all.  The fire will be on in the evening to help maintain temperature and we will likely wake tomorrow to the house still at 19C.

On a sunny day in January and February when the sun reaches 20-30 feet into the house the temperature can often be a very balmy 24 -25C without any additional heat.  Our favourite spot in the winter is the window seat on sunny days where we can soak up the heat while reading and taking in the frozen land outside.  

On cloudy days the super air-tight, energy-efficient Pacific Energy wood stove is on all day and we use the radiant floor heat to come on in the middle of the night when the fire dies down.  The floor will feel warm in the morning and will help maintain the temperature at 18-19C throughout the night.

The solar passive feature works so well I am dumbfounded that builders and the general population never seem to consider this when building homes.  Time and time again you see major windows on the north sides of homes, garages facing south or homes with lots of windows facing south but no overhang to keep it from overheating in the summer.   It really should be the first consideration in the layout of surveys and in custom building if we are serious about becoming more energy efficient. 

The best part is that the sun does double duty – while it is heating our home it is also hitting the solar panels and creating our electricity – and all for free - what could be better?

The result of that free sun? Our monthly energy costs are a $30 hydro bill and propane costs of $75 a month.  Our wood is free as Jerry has a deal to clear out dead wood from a property close by but if we had to buy it we would use approximately $500 worth a year so our total energy costs would be $145 a month instead of the current $105.

                                                              

                                                                     Thank you Sun!

Sweet Potato Bonanza!

Our friends Cam and Michelle (Cam Mather is author of “The All You Can Eat Gardening Handbook”, the best gardening book of all time!), have grown sweet potatoes for the last couple of years and we have been insanely jealous of this ability.  I whined and begged and Cam finally relented to share his secrets last year – he gave me some vines from his plants to keep in the house through the winter and gave me the name of the Sweet Potato Bible – “Sweet Potatoes for the Home Garden with Special Techniques for Northern Growers” by Ken Allan.  Thank you Cam and thank you Ken!

Slips planted in plastic in June 2010

Sweet potatoes require a fair bit of planning to grow in the North here in Ontario – the soil must be warmed with plastic sheeting starting in April and the potatoes do not grow from tubers the way regular potatoes grow.  They only grow from slips which come from keeping vines through the winter or letting slips grow from the tubers from last years’ harvest and cutting and rooting them in the spring. 

Despite the work involved to get them into the ground, once they are in there is little work involved.  They are a tropical plant so love the heat and we had plenty of that this summer.  The vines spread over a large area and the vine produces a very pretty lavender/purple flower.  This is the same bed  - 6 plants in September before harvest.

So, the results?  We could not wait any longer and dug up four plants last Thursday.  What a huge crop!  One of the largest ones was 14” in diameter!  Unfortunately, a mouse had been nibbling on it for probably an extended time so only half of it was left.  But we got at least 7-8 sweet potatoes from each plant and filled our huge harvest basket with them and we still had another 8-10 plants to dig up. 

Today we dug up another 6 plants and found even bigger potatoes - 15" diameter width and 19" diameter length wise and about 4 pounds.  We have probably dug up about 50 pounds from the 10 plants.

The Big One

It is a bit like an archeology dig because the sweet potatoes are not always right under the plant - in fact we found many right outside the beds and many feet from the the original plant.  You also do not want to scratch them up too much so it is best to use hands where possible.

A grouping of sweet potatoes around a plant

Once you dig up sweet potatoes they need to be cured if you want to store them and again this is a bit of work – they need to be kept at 85-90F with 80-90% humidity for 5-7 days.  Not easy to figure that out in September in Ontario.  We have converted a large appliance box with a small space heater inserted into the side into our curing shack.  By adding a jug of water and keeping the sweet potatoes in paper bags we hope to retain the humidity required to cure them for storage through the winter.

The second harvest

Sweet potatoes, by the way, are a super food and should be incorporated into everyone’s diet as often as possible.  We love them in Sweet Potato Salsa and one of the easiest ways to enjoy them is to make mashed potatoes half with regular and half with sweet – they end up to be a gorgeous golden colour.  Perfect for the Thanksgiving table.

We are in Harrowsmith!

Shortly after we moved into our home our friends Glenn and Libby gave our name to the editor of Harrowsmith Country Life magazine as a potential feature.  Their straw-bale house had been recently featured in the magazine. Our house was still pretty rough those first years with no landscaping so we put off having them come out.  Finally, last year we felt the house was "finished' enough. The pics you see in the article were taken last August and some in September as it was rainy the day of the first shoot.  I am amazed at how much the plants have grown in the last year! It was exciting doing the photo shoot and lots of fun doing the interview with Tom Cruikshank.  Look for the August issue on newsstands this week. One of the features of our house that always gets a lot of attention did not make it into the pics in Harrowsmith - our tire weavings that grace the front and side of our garage.  The weavings are done with 40 ATV and bike tires taken from the landfill and assembled by Carolyn Butts of Bon Eco Designs in Tamworth, Ontario.  

Her website is www.bon-eco.com.

Our Baskets are Overflowing!

It has been a great summer for growing veggies in Ontario.  Lots of heat with pretty consistent rain.  We have had dry spells and have certainly been watering more than last year but all in all the food yields have never been better.  It is a full time job keeping up with watering, weeding and harvesting.  Not a lot of time left for blogging! Here is the list of what we grew and are growing this year:

Asparagus
Lettuce - 4 varieties
Spinach - 2 varieties
Peas
Tomatoes - cherry, plum, regular
Green Peppers - jalepeno, green
Broccoli
Eggplant
Onions - red, cooking (200), green
Leeks
Carrots
Green Beans
Bok Choi
Beets
Cucumbers
Butternut Squash
Spaghetti Squash
Zucchini
Potatoes (200 lbs)
Garlic (300 heads)
Sweet Potatoes




Whew!  No wonder I have no time for blogging!  We also have raspberries, black berries, grapes, strawberries, currants, gooseberries, blueberries, and rhubarb.  Oh and 8 fruit trees - we had our first peaches this year - 6 of them - very delicious.

Square-foot Greens

For the last three years we have been trying to grow quite a bit of our food.  We use a mix of traditional style row planting for some things and the Square-foot gardening technique for others.  Spring is a busy time - this year we started many of our seedlings from seeds using two cute plastic green houses to keep them warm in the house and protected from our cats who like to munch on certain greens.  One of them is now out on our porch starting the hardening-off process.  On the top shelf of the greenhouse you can see our sweet potato slips that we are trying to grow for the first time this year.  Sweet potatoes require 100 day growing season and here in Ontario we have about 139 days if we are lucky so it is a bit of a challenge. I overwintered the vines from cuttings from a friend and then re-cut the vine a few weeks ago so that they will start to root.  Each root should produce a few sweet potatoes.
Remember those sprouts back in March in the cold frames?  We have been enjoying lettuce and spinach from the cold frames for the last month.  In a few weeks I'll pick all the lettuce that remains and add new soil to the boxes and plant them with tomatoes and peppers.  We have struggled to grow peppers in the last couple of years with chilly weather so this year they are going up against the house on the south side to give them as much heat as possible.

Jerry tends to take care of the veggies in the traditional beds - the garlic, potatoes, vines, strawberries, asparagus.  I look after the Square-foot beds.  We have 11 4x4' boxes and 4 1x4" beds for vines.  I don't follow the Square foot method completely - I trucked in good garden soil to start with and we add manure and compost to it each year.  We constructed the boxes from leftover timber from  the building of our home - many pieces are falling apart this year and so we will need to come up with something more permanent.  I use string to divide the boxes - it takes up less real estate and the more space you have the more plants you can grow.  When I plant the seeds I use vermiculite in the holes, then the seeds, then more vermiculite as per the original Square Foot book.  It makes it easy to see where the seeds should come up and the Virgo in me loves the tidy, neat look of the gardens - at least for the first few weeks.