LONE WOLF CABIN

I planted my first seeds today in the canoes, chard, kale and romaine.

In the cold frame I planted cucumber, squash and melon, cherry tomatoe, pepper....may still be a bit on the cool side but I have lots of seed so we will see.

This year most of my seeds are from the Veseys seed company, I like their packaging, free shipping and chose most of their favourites.

I started other seeds as well and they are in the glassed in porch.

Today is cool and wet, about 6-11 this week with lows of 4-5 with rain on and off. 
Day lilies are about 3" high...heads of the hyanthanths pushing through...I see we will have some blooming dafs this year.
Ice is 2/3s off Lac Letourneau. The lake at the cabin should be crossable by now, it was almost 2 days ago.

There was a threat of a frost about a week ago so I picked all the tomatoes and they are in the sunroom to finish ripening. The kale and most of the chard is picked and in the freezer. Yesterday I took in a lot of parsley for a tomato parsley salad and drying herbs. 

Another thing we love that I planted a few years back was some invasive mint. Its chocolate mint and we dry it and use if for tea, a great flavour. Next year I will move to better spots to grow wild so we can harvest more.

We had a successful growing year. We had landscaping around the house to do so I was not able to put in all the gardens I wanted so I used little pockets on the side of the hill and filled them with good earth, filled two canoes as raised gardens as well as a small fenced in garden.
The small fenced in garden, about 11 by 5 housed my lovage, 4 prolific rhubarb plants, 24 garlic I planted the fall before, some kale and swiss chard.....all did very well. This fall I planted four different kinds of garlic in it (90 cloves in all) and am moving the lovage and rhubarb. 

In the various pockets of soil on the side of the hill I planted english cucumber, yellow beans, more chard and kale, 3 different kinds of potatoes (which were from a bag from the grocers, pickling cucumber and green and yellow zucchini.

In a 5 by 5' box I grew 9 beefsteak tomatoes.

In one of the canoes I grew my romaine letter, another lettuce, dill, basil, stevia and thyme.

The other canoe was just swiss chard, I like the rainbow coloured one.

In my garden in the back forty in an old manure pill I grew a giant pumpkin to 90lbs

I planted 2 orange cauliflower in a pocket on the side of the hill. It was a success. Will grow again next year. We hand pick the green worms off of it, you have to check on it.

I canned, mustard pickles, pickles, Artic char, lots of different jellies

Another thing I foraged off the property was sumac, I use it as a spice. I have it spread out and when it is dry I will sift it and put it in the food processor and sift again. Will show the finished product when it is done. It is very tart. When I finished taking it off the stalks, my hands were sticky and tasted sour like lemons.

Here we are in October working on the new area for our raised gardens. Dwight is taking down the hill till he hits bedrock and the dirt goes over the bank to create more flat land. We are all forest and hills around here. Im sifting all the soil for the raised gardens.

Wild blackberries. If you are fortunate enough to have wild blackberries on your property you are most fortunate. They are delicious as a juice or jelly but much too seedy for jam or pie.

We have lots growing along the trails, some years being better than others. Blackberries can be picked over a period of over 3 weeks. At the end of the season you really need to look carefully as all the berries are black and sometimes hard to spot hiding under the leaves. Never go picking with short sleeves or shorts as be will find yourself all scratched up.

I start off by making a juice. I use four cups of blackberries to two cups of water and cook this slowing for about 30 minutes, then I strain through a jelly bag, let it cool and then wring out the jelly bag to get as much as I can. I then add 2 cups of sugar and boil down to 210 to jell naturally. To can read all about jelly making on google.

Last week and even now the weather is fantastic, low 20's, not a lot of rain. The water is low in the pond. My birthday is September 30 and September is my favourite month. I love to roam the forest.
Last week I did hunting for ginseng. I did not find ginseng but I did find lots of other stuff.

To your left you will see a high bush cranberry just loaded with berries. I found this and many other on the bank of our south west creek. I picked a bunch of these as well as many pounds of elderberry.

Let me tell you about what I found out. 

High bush cranberry looks beautiful and makes an interesting jelly. It is similar to cranberry but with a not so pretty oder. The oder is much the same as the smell of dirty socks if you can imagine. An acquired taste.

Elderberry is fun to pick. My husband came home and we went picking elderberries. In 30 minutes we each had a grocery bag full. Well the real work is in cleaning the little berries off the stems. You dont want any stems.  We kind of milked/rubbed them off gently and then picked through them. I then filled a large bowl of water and cleaned them. This causes the bad berries and debris to float to the top where they could easily be skimmed off.

Elderberries make for a wonderful coloured juice. I would cook with water and then strain through a jelly bag. Everything looks so delicious. The fact is it is not as good. I made an elderberry crisp but the elderberrys are seedy. Next time I will add half of another fruit and some cinnamon.

The juice has some great health benifits of which you can google, especially for flu and colds.