House One - Hard Frost

Hard frost this morning.  The garden hoses were frozen.  The furnace was working in house two.  Below are two photos that shows the tomato plants and some tomatoes in house one.  Vine were shot. Some of the tomatoes are still good.

Comments and question are welcome.

Cold Day, But Warm Inside

The Gambel Oak acorns are now in the fridge.  I am waiting for the germination.

 I built this drawer for my Kreg tools, screws and clamps.  These tools were not used to build it.  It worked out pretty good, but far from being beautiful.  It is made out of recycled wood and the bottom out of Masonite.

 I bought a bunch of drawer pulls from a hardware company when the went out of business.

 I found this squash bug in greenhouse two which is heated.  No squash vines any where in house two.  I squashed it.

 We dried onions yesterday.  Carol took them out of the dryer this morning.

Planted radishes in the raised bed.

I did some of cleaning in house four. I found some things in there that I forgot that I had them.


Questions and comments welcomed.

Potatoes are Dug, But Midgets

I picked some tomatoes this morning and took them to the post office.  Over half were gone by evening.

I gathered all of the acorns from the Gambel Oak that is growing near the road.  There are over  acorns.  They are scheduled put in a zip bag with some potting soil and then in the fridge until next spring.  I check on them every month.

Carol started to cut up the onions.  I got the dehydrator ready.  We cut enough onions in to small pieces to fill the dehydrator.

We finished digging the potatoes.  We started Monday and finished today.  Most of them are small, but did find a few bigger ones.

When we finished digging the potatoes, the garden looked like this. The whole thing looked like it was spaded.

It has been a long time since I built something in the shop.  Today I made a stool.  It is about fourteen inches square and fifteen inches high.  I will use it in the garage to reach the things on the top shelves. It took me a couple of hours to make it.  I made a few mistakes.  Will do better on the next one.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Trip to Saratoga Springs - A Bust?

This morning Andrew Brown, a furnace repairman, worked and hour on the furnace in house two.  The pilot light went out, and the fans turned on blowing unheated air which was cold.  He tested different systems and replaced the thermo-coupler.  The pilot light was on tonight after we got home.

The rest of the day was most interesting and somewhat frustrating.  We stopped at a couple of stores to get some supplies and a few groceries.

Our family dinner with my brothers and sisters and their spouse was to begin at four.  Carol and I were there about one half hour earlier.  We waited and waited.  Four o'clock came and went and still no one.  The phone rang and it was my brother Paul wondering where we were.  It ended up that we were at the wrong place.  Gary, my brother in law tried to give us directions.  We did our best to follow them and we drove up and down Redwood road.  That would be north and south.  He told us of different landmarks.  Like Walmart, Jiffy Lube, etc.  We finally arrived.  It took us about twenty minutes to reach the Café El Lago which was about a half mile from our first stop.  We had a nice dinner and visit.

After we drove to Robert's new home in Orem.  We were on the right street but it was getting dark and we couldn't see the house number.  I called him and he came out where we saw him.  It is an older home with and upstairs and downstairs with four bedrooms and a few other rooms beside.  he has a fairly good size lot.  We visited awhile.  We stopped for gas on the way home.

Comments and questions are welcomed.

Stll Diging Before Their Frozen In

I was walking on the west side past hen house.  I had let the chicken out earlier this morning.  there was a black cat in the chicken run that looked like Socks.  I could not see a tail.  It then made its way out by going under the fence.  The photo does not show the small hole.

West of house five there has been a pretty flower bed growing all summer.  The frost a couple of nights ago froze the annuals.  At the left of the picture are the perennials.

More Saffron flowers are blooming.  I cut the flowers of and took them into the house and remove the stamens.  My little dish has a bunch of them.

We dug some potatoes this morning and some more this afternoon.  Yukon gold is pictured below.  We dug some of these yesterday and dug the rest today.  The potato vines died and dried up several months ago.  The ground is somewhat dry and it had to dig them with a shovel.  I tried a pitchfork and that wasn't any easier.  I have another shovel that is heavy and I don't use it much.  But it worked well with the potatoes.  the blade more pointed and narrow than the other shovels.  I helped a whole bunch.

 We dug all of the Red Lasoda potatoes today.  They are a potato that stores well and does well in hot dry areas.

We also dug the All Blue potato.  they were not very big and tuber is the same color as the soil making it hard to see them.  I didn't get a picture.


I pulled the stake out of the ground using the shovel to dig a little and then hooking to the corner of the stake and pushing the shovel handle down I levered it up.

I coiled up the hose in a figure eight pattern that was used in the melon garden  to prepare for next year.  I can pull the hose back on the garden without and kinks.

On Monday I planted red beets by droping a seed in each cell.  I my plant was to remove the Styrofoam after the beets were going up through the cell.  I moved the Styrofoam today and the covered the seeds with    ?????             and put the Styrofoam back on top of the seeds.  The seeds will not be washed away.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Dug Potatoes and More Cleaning

Started out this morning picking tomatoes, egg plants, peppers.  The tomatoes and egg plants came from house one.  The peppers came from house six.  and by the way the tomato and pepper plants in house six sustained heavy frost damage.

 There were more peppers than I thought.  There is a bunch left.

There were a whole lot of egg plants in house six.  I used pruners to cut the egg plants free.

I paid some bills.  We drove to Fillmore for a few groceries and made a deposit at the bank and credit union.

We have about ten rows of potatoes.  Actually they are Roberts potatoes.  He planted quite a few different potato varieties.  We started digging a purple skin potato.  They are so small.  We moved over a row and dug the Yukon Gold potatoes.  When we were finished with the row, we had a bucketful.  A fuzzy photo.

There are a lot of Armeian cucumbers in Robert's garden.  I gathered them up.

I cut the roots loose and started to pull them.  I pulled them into the wheelbarrow.

The wheelbarrow was pretty heavy..

The new compost pile with the cucumbers on top.

How it looked after the cleaning.

I finished the day removing the tomato clips from the burpless cucumbers.  The plants need to dry more to remove the vines from the cages.



Comments and questions are welcomed

Colder Weather, Securing the North End of House One.

I drove to the dentist's office to pay a bill.  On the way I saw the pretty yellow flowers.  I had to stop and take a picture, but I thought that I left my phone home.  I went home and Carol went to her DUP meeting.  I walked over and took several pictures.  After closer examination I could see that they were gum weeds.  They looked so pretty because they had been mowed down several times and bloomed on short stems.  Normally they have tall stems and are not landscape plants.

There was a cold breeze blowing below the doors on the north end of house six. The block and pieces of wood covered the space below the doors.

Some pretty aster were growing the upper pad.  We used to grow these, but there were not very impressive in the pot. The one below look really pretty good.

I wanted to plant some red beats.  An idea forced itself into my head.  I could easily space the plants by using a Styrofoam tray.  One tray had 338 cells.  I had to make the raised level.  I used the 2x4 to smooth it off.  It would have been much easier with the help of another person.

I was planting red beats and the seed was to large and got stuck in the Styrofoam cells.  I use a drill and a 5/16 inch bit to make the hole in the bottom of the cell larger.  I tried several other size bits there were either too large or too small.

I was kneeling on the right of the Styrofoam dropping a seed into each cell.  I was hard to lean over and drop the seed.  Idea.  I got a large piece of plywood set it in front of the Styrofoam.  With the chair, I could sit there and lean over and drop in a seed.  I used tweezers. that didn't work.  I used a little spoon and picked up the seed with the spoon and dropped in the seed.  That was to slow.  Finally, I put the seeds in a small container and was able to pick one or two seeds.

I left the Styrofoam in place when I watered them.  I think that the beets will germinated and grow up through the cells.  after the leaves come through I will remove the Styrofoam and the beets will establish them selves.

As I was walking to turn off the water, I walked past the Saffron plants.  They were blooming.  I thought they were through blooming.  I took a closer look and there were a bunch of flowers with the reddish, orange stigmas.   I left some chard boiling on the stove, and hurried back to the house.  I lowered the temperature and went back and cut off the flowers.  When in the house I removed the stigmas as you see in the photo below.  There may be more tomorrow.

Comments and questions are welcome: