International edible gardening

Hi, Penny - I have been around Ontario, disappointed not to make it to Churchill though. Lovely place.

 

I`m a couple hours north of Toronto, right on Georgian Bay, HUGE tourist area.

 

I am fishing as I type, my wife has really been after me to catch some fish - we even bought battered fish portions last week. Then the neighbor came down to his place and caught fish so I am trying off my dock behind the house. The bayou is totally fresh, but you never know - the neighbor did go down to the bay in his boat where it is more salty, but fish are unpredictable.

And I cannot net any bait in the bayou since it has been so fresh from the massive rains. Wile out a bit ago I stopped at the local school where they have a small pond by the playing fields and one can always net some bait there. I cast twice and got a mix of brim and killy fish so am set.



I have a long pipe that I extend off my dock - it is PVC drain line so with caps on it, it floats and keeps the bait off the bottom, and fights the fish. I just pull it in when it is bending or jiggling and net whatever it is. I do not catch much that way, but I can go off and garden wile it fishes. I also cast out my big rod (30 pound line) from the point at the back where I keep oyster shells as a patio - and that rod has a bell on the tip.

It is that pole floating past the dock. My boat is on my dock, we will launch it in a bit when the crabs show up so we can tend the crab traps. Actually the reason I was out was to photocopy my drivers license and boat registration for my new recreational crab trap license. I mail that in with the fee: $5 and they send a new one. Here best have every thing right or tickets are very expensive for any fishing rule violation - and they have Zero tolerance for any infraction. You can tell by the five dollar fee that it is just for administrative costs - and to give the recreational trappers a share in the allocation of the legal catch. All fishing in Mississippi has to be with a license so sizes, quotas, seasons..... can promote the best fishing. If you are not counted you do not get a share is how resource allocations work. Licenses are excellent at promoting conservation.

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These pictures were just now taken - it is a very nice day out. The last fish I caught were those gar last week and I want to give a fish to someone who has been really friendly and does not have time to fish; she always asks me how the fishing is. She is Chinese and wants the whole fish to make soup from the head and bones; most people want you to give them fillets in a zip lock bag. I must learn to make soup from the head and skeleton - I use them for crab bait or just pitch them into the water.

 

More great pictures, and cute doggy too.

 

Penny, I had an unusual position when a young man, I could chose one of 4 citizenships and had till 25 to decide, I picked USA (I could also take Danish, UK, Canadian - USA then was not allowing dual then as everyone does now) But I have lived in Canada (BC) and been to every province except Nunavut. We drove our school bus from New Brunswick to BC staying in the nigh North and then wintered on Vancouver Island. (We lived in the bus for 6 years)


This is Jasper NP, where as always I did some fishing in the very high streams. It was the time of year when there are few tourists - although the roads are quite scary in the overloaded bus with an automatic transmission - but I have taken vehicles into places one could not think possible. The bus has a Jotul wood burning cook stove in it - which is necessary in the North for the dry heat it produces, and that you can gather wood almost anywhere.

We stayed at Esquimalt for a good wile and kept our zodiac in the bay and most days would boat to Victoria for a bit of shopping or just to look around - here we are paralleling the runway for the sea plane airport in Victoria Bay. Esquimalt is fun because you can eat on the Navy base at the canteen cheaply - Canada has 'Open' Bases so as a civilian you can go onto a base and eat with the troops at a subsidized price. Good fun.



My favorite place in all Canada - Yellow Knife. This is us and on the right a friend who was the French reader for the high North radio broadcasts. A fantastic place. There is one high-rise and we got to stay on the 14th floor and you had an amazing view - below was a small mall sharing the elevator; which allowed dogs so we could always have the loyal dog along.

(edit) I cannot believe the dog is not in this picture, but I have the lead anyway - she is probably in the bus although has been in the sound rooms at the station.




Dogs will always lay in front of a fire or stove in the North - this is the wood stove in our bus - we baked pies and chickens in the oven and cooked on the cook surface on the top.

 

Sorry, the Canada pictures were particularly gratuitous.

Last night I did catch 1 just keepable trout, they have no relation to fresh water trout which are cold water fish, called speckled trout because they resemble proper trout and have to be 13 inches long. They are very good to eat. I will put my long rod out again soon. The otters were here, right off my dock when we got home today, and did not pull apart the crab trap I have out there for a crab for bait. (for sheephead or drum) So I have one to give my friend.

I bought 150 pounds of chicken feed today ($44, adds up fast) 50 of mixed grain, mostly cracked corn and milo, but others too - higher protein than just corn(8.5%). 50 of layer pellets (16%). 50 of Purina natural chick feed (not organic, certainly GM, but no animal products which the high protein feeds mostly do) for raising meat birds (20% protein). They should hatch Sunday.

Industrial birds are fed 24%, and raising meat birds on just free range and corn will make very slow growing, scrawny, tough, birds. They have to grow fast - but not like the industrial Cornish crosses (95% of the meat birds) that only are kept 8 weeks. I do not like industrial meat for many reasons. I use it but think I should raise my own, it is so much more kind and natural.

edit I said layer pellets were 26% whan they are 16%

 

Reading about your time in British Columbia Colne, you probably know the area where my daughter lives, Maple Ridge. Her boyfriend, an electrician, quite often works on Vancouver Island.

 

I do not know Vancouver very well - I mostly stayed in Richmond and would run around downtown a bit. And Tsawwassen. But it was interesting, having watched Richmond become an Asian (Chinese is what Asian means in North America) city, having gone there all my life for visits - as compared to my home in Middlesex where the British 'Asian' have also totally changed the demographics. I know which one would be the better model for planned migration!

 

Everyone always likes Jack - he has very little hair but it is long and crazy and has a really good attitude. I stopped and talked with some tough oil worker for half an hour and he picked Jack up and held him the whole time, he just would not set Jack down. My wife says he looks like a opossum


What amazes me about London is the almost complete lack of dogs. Some being walked in the mornings, and evenings, but no dogs almost. I wanted to bring my parents one last trip - this winter but had a problem with the microchip, it could not be read and was presumed to have been installed incorrectly and fallen out. (It is a big process taking a dog to UK but ones under 8 pounds are much easier)

I wanted to take them this one, the one in the middle. She is very pretty - tiny, weighs 8 pounds, very soft, and loves laying on the sofa more than anything else. She is a rescue dog from a puppy mill and had never been out of a small cage in her earlier life and for a year did not know she could run or jump. She was never abused though. And loves a walk and then wants to go home and lay on the sofa.

A completely happy dog that makes almost no demands yet is pleased to see you.



I know the Londoners would love my dogs. The few dogs I did meet there were pretty aloof, not really people dogs like mine are, like they had not been off the lead much - not so socialized and self confidant. Lexie would love it there because she is not wild about the outdoors and almost never barks unless she needs a door opened or has to go out to pee.

 

Ok, I will try to stick to a gardening topic

More leaf gathering! Three truckloads yesterday. My wife is trying to decide where to put more because the main compost now has enough. I have a 1/2 acre lot on a suburban type street that is grown up in over head tall weeds and brush and I plan on clearing it - then because I will have no use for it I think I may plant fruit trees on it - and make a compost pile, a really big one, but not this year because the leaf season is winding down.

I should be getting one of these May 2 so that will be its first job:



A brush cutter. I want to make side money now I can no longer do carpentry for a living. I need some income and am going to try this niche job of cutting grass and brush that has gotten too deep for a regular mower, but not too big a job for a large machine. So I will cut it back and do something there. The big question is if I will put in a well. That means electricity which is a whole other big issue. The meter alone is $40 a month then electricity (which would be minimal) so would buy a small generator (I have owned several)

The well I could put in for $100 if I could tap into an old meter (there is city water in the street, and was to this place too) but without water to jet in the casing I would have to make a drop hammer and pile drive it so use steel pipe instead of PVC which would add another $100 - plus make the drop hammer frame and hammer (from salvage obviously).

But then it would be a project. Taking a massively overgrown 1/2 acre and putting in a garden. might be fun.

So putting in a well:



This is me putting in my well that does my pond and irrigation, cost $100 and a big days work for two me and a helper. A home installed well is only for about a 45 foot deep aquifer.

Two homeowner methods - hammering in a well - twice as expensive, requires a steel well point (the 3-4 foot long tip of the well pipe (casing) that both drives through the soil and then has slits all along it for the water to enter.) and steel pipe - 1 1/2 to 2 inch diameter. And build a big tripod and drop hammer.

Jetting uses a well point that allows water to flow out the tip and melt the soil, the water then rising up along the outside of the casing carrying the soil to the surface. This means a 3/4 inch water line runs inside the casing and point to carry the jetting water from a pressurized source. (city water or a pump and surface water.) The point has a check valve that closes when the jetting water stops so the point does not fill with dirt over the years.

This picture shows the well casing - 2 inch PVC and the 300 foot of 3/4 inch pvc supply line entering it that; I used it to tap into the city water line. I jetted through 45 foot of clay to hit a sand aquifer. I keep lifting and punching down the well casing, and so the well point - as the supply dissolves the clay and then adding more pipe. Hard work.

We have been up to all kinds of things here, but already TLDR is a problem so will close.

 

The chickens, they spend all days in the woods surrounding - they are needing less bought food as more wild food is coming on:

 

We just got home an hour and a half ago and I put on the rice for tonight and the first chick has hatched. 21 days and 2 hours from the beginning of incubation. (21 is normal) so I picked it up, still wet - they scream out the peeps - even in the other room I heard this one find its voice - and carried it out to the hen in the above video where it went silent as soon as I dropped it on her.

I now have the hen locked in a small dog kennel in the hen house so the chicks cannot fall out of the egg box and she was asleep in the box- it already being dark out. I hope it climbed under her feathers but she made no sound and the chick shut up.

We were out fishing for a couple large mouth bass for the pond. They are needed now the brim are breeding, bass are the top end predator and without them the brim will overpopulate. I stopped at a very small bayou at the upper part where it is fresh and threw a small plastic lure and got two very small ones and a small, but perfect sized one. They are out at the dock being slowly introduced to the pond water. Temperature shock is bad for them, and a big ph change can kill them - so they are in a bucket with a small air pump and I add pond water over a couple hours and then will release them.

A great blue heron was at the pond bank when we got back and I carried the bucket in - I think they hunt my goldfish. Plenty of frogs for them, Southern leopard frogs which would be good for them. The most are gray and green tree frogs, chorus frogs, toads, and a couple bullfrogs off in the distance, frog song is a constant background sound after dark, and before it rains the frogs begin singing - they are sometimes wrong, but mostly are right.

 

The day before yesterday I caught another moccasin, in a rat trap. I keep a trap set on the hen house perimeter so any rodent going around will go through it because they like to stay against a wall - and get caught. Instead I got the snake. We only get a couple a year and in the time here only one has gotten away, I always manage to get them with a shovel or stick, and a couple who just sat where they were sunning as I ran back and got a gun. I like snakes - we have quite a few, different kinds, most harmless and beautiful. The venomous ones I have to act on because my dogs.

By the way a snake bite really hurts dogs and if taken right to the vet (only one veterinarian in this area keeps anti-venom) you would expect $1200 and up and no certainty of survival and full recovery. They can get by without sometimes - and then only 1/2 of venomous snake bites actually inject venom - the snake does not shoot it in if he feels not too bothered, or has used his supply.

A human bite costs about $30,000 if hospitalization is involved so best have insurance, and still the co-payments with insurance will be a lot. Fortunately this rarely happens. Snakes do not look for trouble.

The copperhead is also here and two of them have gotten caught in my nets and unfortunately they also had to go.

 

Doing video is getting easy - and here is my front garden in a minor flood yesterday, the road in front of the cottage was almost a foot deep as it is very low there. (that cottage was something I did a couple years ago over a two year period - I had 40 foot marine pilings driven in 20 foot into the ground on the filled bit (3 foot fill dirt) and put this cottage on top. The floor of the actual cottage is 23 foot above the ground.)

I put asparagus in the bed because that is salt water and it does not mind salt. The high portion has a muscadine grape as an experiment.




And I am off to plant stuff - I made up 8 two gallon pots, each with one dwarf ornamental pepper in the back and alyssum in the rest in front. I will use them for a border if they do well but am not sure of alyssum and our heat - the peppers love it. Pots just full of compost, and leaves I have gathered and pots found on side of the road.

 

If anyone is interested in how the incubator went it was not very good. Of the 25 eggs 9 hatched and are healthy. They are little balls of fluff under the hen from the video previously, some yellow, black, brown, gray - some 3/4 banti to 3/4 orphington in a random mix.

I think the thermostat was too inaccurate, 2- 3 degree temp swings being regular, also I do not trust the thermometer - it is just a red liquid filled bulb kind held to a calibrated card with two staples. It even says one should use another reliable thermometer to check it! But it is most likely accurate, things like that usually are.

Bad hatching can be from many things, I suspect temperature, so will try to work on that.

Still, from what I have seen of the chicks, they are mostly under the hen who is totally devoted to them, they are fine. And 9 out of 25 - not a horrible outcome, cost nothing but the $39.99 incubator which should last for years.