January & February
Even though I had gone to great lengths to build Dawg a custom doghouse from an old cardboard box, he felt it necessary to add a window. I'm guessing he wishes he hadn't because a couple of days later we had a really big snow. Dawg didn't seem to mind however.
The snow was really pretty however it's a pain in the butt to get off the solar panels to watch TV. The colder weather prompted my normal response in this circumstance and that was to go cut more fire wood as soon as things dried out a bit.
It also prompted us to cook hearty soups and stews. This one we cooked on the wood stove to conserve some propane. Speaking of cooking we have decided to eliminate the middleman in our composting efforts. So now save our kitchen scraps in a big bucket until it is full and then we take it to the garden and bury it directly where we will be planting our spring crops. This works out really well and has the additional benefit of providing volunteer plants - especially onions. On the subject of crops we finally got around to planting some fruit trees. We planted three apple trees and one pear tree right in the backyard so they will be convenient to the kitchen. If you look closely, you can see the white trunk wrap near the ground. This is to keep gnawing critters like squirrels from chewing the bark off in winter.
The sides that I first built for the dump trailer were made out of salvaged 2x6 lumber. This proved to be exceedingly heavy especially when I needed to remove them. So I took it apart and ran the 2x6s through the sawmill to turn them into 1x6s. I then reassembled a new set of sides. Much lighter now.
March – May
At one point during the winter I started feeling sorry for Dawg so I built him a new cardboard doghouse with insulated walls and an old towel for a door. When he started to rip them apart I thought it was time to build Dawg a proper doghouse complete with insulation and a heater. One made out of plywood so the could not tear it up. I have it tucked under the back porch in a location and orientation that blocks wind and rain. So far, so good.
Around the middle of April we start to see strawberries pop out in our strawberry bed. And of course we had been eating fresh asparagus out of our garden for a couple of weeks. The red current that we planted the previous fall started growing little berries. The strawberries just kept producing more and more berries. It seems like every few days there would be several pints to pick. We ate them on everything! We froze them and we gave them away to neighbors. Maybe next year I'll try my hand at strawberry jam.
As everyone knows the month of May is the month of flowers. Here we see some Dutch iris and one of my father's award-winning iris cultivar that he named Coca-Cola.
In May we traveled to Glasgow to visit my daughter Sara and after about a week we went with her to Denmark to meet her friend Andreas. It was a very nice trip. The weather was perfect and the company was grand. Not to mention all the wonderful sights and fabulous meals.
June, July, and August
This summer we got many good things to eat out of our garden. We canned a great deal of green beans and peas and also a lot of tomatoes and tomato sauce. We made umpteen jars of pickled cucumber and a dozen or so jars of fig preserves (thank you, Allison!) and grape jelly. We had enough grapes left over to make several pints of grape vinegar.
By August it was clear that one of the trees next to the fire ring was dead and had to be taken down. Of course I will cut this up and warm my house with it next winter.
September – December
The harvest continues in September as I dig up the tubers from my six sweet potato plants. Can't wait to cook something up with these. Also, the harvest includes harvesting wood for heating my home and I spent quite a bit of time doing that during this period. I only cut dead trees - preferrably ones that have been dead for a year or more. This allows me to burn them right away as they are already seasoned.
This is also the time of year that we make our traditional trip to Virginia to visit Carolyn's family. Here she and her mother are doing their nails. A fun mother-daughter activity at any age even at 103 years old!
When we got back from our Thanksgiving trip I continued some work replacing rotten logs in the garden with stacked stone wall. And of course we got ourselves a Christmas tree out of the woods and decorate it in Carolyn's new art studio.
My final constructive act of 2022 was to build two new seat brackets for my old tractor. One of them had broken a couple of years ago and I had it welded back together. Then I lost one and hastily prepared a replacement out of some rusty scrap. Then the one I had welded broke again! I decided it was time to buy some good material and start from scratch with two brand-new brackets.
That's all for this year I'm looking forward to a year without COVID fears. Happy New Year to all of you.
