The Winds Of Change

In opening up this blog post, sincerest apologies for the length of time it has taken me to get this done. Wow, I just realized when I posted last, and perhaps I need to schedule it into my monthly calendar, or at a minimum quarterly. We have had a lot happening here so let’s get started!!!!

It has been a very LONG while since I have written a post. Just been busy with things, with life, with work, with…..Mother Nature! OH she has not been nice this year at all.

We came out of the past winter somewhat unscathed, but the winter never wanted to end. Everything thawed out and then on came another snowstorm. I think we had about 4 rotations of full thawing temperatures and then snow again before it ended. The snow fall on the property was a record for us in the time we have been here. I ran out of places to put it all, lol.

I know, I can hear you saying right now, “but Colin, you have 10 acres….”. Ahh yes, but not all of that can be used for the snow plowing. Plans are in motion for snow removal during the next winter. A little extra work at the beginning of the season but should be more than adequate to accommodate the snow. (on a side note, we are now selling lift tickets for our 2026-2027 ski season on the property; buy one, get a free night stay; only $500/ticket)

Lisa returned to her seasonal position at Sandy Beach Regional Park which saw changes as she is now more administration. She handles all product and supply purchasing along with some event aspects of the park. Basically, I think everything goes across her desk at some point including some amazing ice cream she buys from time to time and brings home as a treat. MMMMM, membership has its privileges for sure.

The weather this year has made her job a little more challenging with the schedule. With the increase in prolonged thunderstorms and lots of lightning, the park has taken a hit on golfing and event traffic. So, some weeks her schedule has been a little wonky. All good though. The best thing is still how close it is to home. Just about 5-7 minutes depending on Moose, Deer and Coyote crossings.

For myself, I am still working from home doing web development with a few extra personal projects. One of them many are aware of, the Hen House Project. Now with websites in 60 cities in 5 countries. The sites are coming along and starting to see more traffic each month. (https://henhouseproject.com)

Gardeners Corner…..

This past spring, Lisa and I decided to plant seedlings and grow them in our dining room with the anticipation of spring. Well, we had a ton of seedlings, hundreds in fact, and a ton of growth, but Mother Nature had different ideas. With the prolonged winter, the seedlings could not get outside when they needed to.

It did not make for a great start to the growing season. Everything fell behind a little and I started doing Voodoo dances in my office to bring along the power of growth! (It is working)

As each year comes and goes, we are finding better ways to navigate the weather and garden. Next year the garden will see a few major changes when it comes to starting the garden season and our layout.

What are we growing this year? Well let’s see what we have.

3 types of bush beans – yellow, green, purple (Lisa is probably going to spice them up in jars). Snow peas, Sugar Snap Peas, Nantes Carrots, Purple Dragon Carrots, Rainbow Mix Carrots, Red Leaf Lettuce, Green Onions, Basil, Cherry Tomatoes, Pickle Cucumbers, Marzano Tomatoes (sauce), On the Vine Tomatoes, Roma Tomatoes (sauce), TONS of Potatoes, Rhubarb, Corn, Zucchini, Golden Griller Squash, Beets, and Strawberries.

We are also growing some hot pepper plants including Jalapeno, Ghost Chili, Carolina Reapers, Trinidad Maruga Scorpion and Scotch Bonnets. Lisa is going to make her killer hot sauce this year depending on the crop we get. We planted most of the peppers in pails after such a crappy start to the growing season. This way we can bring them in and out depending on weather. Also, we have not had the heat we need so it looks like a grow light will be called upon in the Fall most likely if we have fruit growing. The pails also allow us the opportunity to grow them through the winter, fingers crossed they keep growing.

Tomatoes
Like many in Alberta, our tomatoes are taking a hit with the cooler and wetter weather. They need the warmth and dryer days. One can hope, fingers crossed, that we can get more sun than rain until the end of September. We do have fruit on our Roma and Marzano plants, but they need some warm temps to grow and ripen. Big growth spurt the past week when it was hot and dry. The Cherry Toms have fruit, but again, need extended periods of hot and dryer weather.

Pickle Cucumbers
The pickle cucumbers are producing nicely and are amazing. The plants are massive producing plenty of little pickle sized cukes!

Red Leaf Lettuce
OUT OF CONTROL! Lol, planted 2 rows, have grown amazingly, and we have been enjoying fresh salads!

Peas & Beans
Tons of the green and yellow beans as well as the snap and snow peas. The purple beans grew, but were a little disappointing. They did not reach the same size as the green and yellow. Both are done for the season however and were pulled out yesterday!

Green Onions
These have done well and continue to grow. Nice as a topper for the fresh salad.

Zucchini & Squash
The zuchs are doing very well, growing massively. Lisa is going to be making her zucchini loaf and muffins. The griller squash has a ton of fruit on the plants, but wow, slow grow. At this rate, not sure if they will be big enough to pick, but fingers crossed they have a growth spurt.

Beets and Potatoes
Beets have done extremely well thus far and next year we will be expanding the beets in the garden. The potatoes are still growing and not ready to be picked yet. Several weeks before we get to that point.

Carrots
The normal orange carrots look like they will be mini carrots but the purple dragon and rainbow mix look to be growing nice and large. We will see.

Basil
Absolutely the nicest basil plant we have ever had. Amazing! We are actually going to be clipping it right now this week and harvest all the basil we can. It is a massive plant and super healthy.

Raspberries, Strawberries, Rhubarb, and Apples
At the beginning of spring, we found two Raspberry plants growing in our large, raised bed and decided to transplant them into one of the other gardens. Well, they died when transplanted, but then 2 weeks later, came back and look awesome! Crazy! (it is the dancing in the office)

The funny thing about the raspberry plants is we actually bought some 2 yrs ago and they did not make it through the winter the first year, even with tons of protection. These ones, and there are two, just sprouted after winter in a garden that they had never been and are now growing strong. Won’t produce anything this year, but now they have a new home in our garden so we will baby them big time. LOTS of straw for the garden in the fall for sure. The one is already being tied up for support which is an amazing sign for them.

We also planted some new strawberries and rhubarb. The strawberry plants are confused by the weather and keep producing the odd strawberry this year, which is nice. The rhubarb won’t produce until next year so we are looking forward to the little variety of raspberries, strawberries and rhubarb in 2027.

In the back yard, we have a few crab apple trees, and a few plum trees that we are hoping to have a nice crop from. One of the crab apple trees I cut back last year to see if I could spark some new growth and it is doing better than ever expected. We just picked two big pails of apples. There are hundreds of little apples right now on the tree and with all the rain we have had, they are getting all the water they may need to grow. The other crab apple trees are also ready to be picked now. Those will be split between Lisa and the pigs most likely.  (I want to see who will win that battle, don’t you?)

We changed the front garden a little and it is going to be getting some more changes. We put in a little rock garden, but we are not done yet. WHEN the flowers grow in, they will fill in the soil areas, and it will look very nice. We have some more to do, but there is actually a drainage pipe underneath that rock that allows for the garden to drain properly. We installed it so our front garden would not flood, and it is working well.

Expanding on the flowers, looking at the pictures, you can see we have tons of marigolds and the bees love them. We also planted impatiens, geraniums, sunflowers, zinnias, bee balm and wildflowers. Our Lilies did not bloom in the spring like they normally would with the weather we had, but they opened just inside summer and have now since gone until next year.

Our sunflower and wildflower bed is hilarious. The sunflowers are red velvet sunflowers and the seeds are 2-3 years old. I thought we may get 50% germination at best, but, looks more like 100%. There is not enough space for them all to grow, let alone all the wildflowers around them. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens and what grows to full size. So far it is a race to the sun for a lot of them as some have reached 9’ tall now.

The wildflowers are specific to bee, hummingbird, and butterfly attraction. They are all at the top of the spectrum on attracting the most bees, which we of course need.

We just had a week of temperatures between 25c to 35c, today it is supposed to be 22c. IF we can get some decent temps until the end of September, we may see more quality ripening.

Our Fuzzy, Furry and Feathered Friends!

We have just 3 pigs now, Prudence, Petunia and Wilbur. Hamlet passed on last year as a result of an unfortunate coyote attack so we just have the 3 but are looking for a 4^th potentially to level things out. A fixed male companion for when Wilbur is secluded from the girls.

We just picked up our hay for the winter so the pigs will be good when winter rolls in. I have rebuilt a paddock completely and it definitely finished nicely. The barn got a good cleaning including the pigs winter shelter so things are looking pretty good.

With 2 fewer dogs, the backyard seems a lot bigger for them, but we are working on reinforcing one of our larger paddocks for the dogs (and pigs) to hang out in most of the time. The backyard has been completely reinforced with a secondary layer of pallets as we have some repairs to do. 5 large dogs did do some damage to the pallet fence, but, no biggie! 3 years it has stood the test of time. Right now it is very convenient for us and them as the weather has been a real pain in the butt with rolling storms daily.

It looks like a local fox had a litter of little pups as I saw one trotting across our driveway the other morning. We don’t have chickens, yet, so the foxes are definitely our friends. They keep a lot of rodent life at a minimum.

Our magpies had moved on before the summer hit after having their little ones in the newest 2026 nest addition to our backyard trees. I have not seen them in a couple of months, but they did leave last year at the same time and then were back in the Fall. Who knows….they are just brilliant amazing birds.

We did not get a solid return of Barn Swallows this year which would have been very beneficial if we had. They eat mosquitos by the thousands, and this year with all the moisture, we have a huge mosquito problem. Working on a big trap for them right now. I do have to build some bird boxes for the swallows to nest which I will do but it may not be until the winter months that I get that done this year. We will see.

The pair that took up residence this year in the current nest outside the front door had 5 little ones and they are all very active. The assumption is that the weather we were having was throwing a bit of a wrench in their migratory timeline. The adult swallows just had more little ones in a new nest they built….yay, more barn swallows!!!!!

Our Crazy Weather That Has Made National Headlines!

OH, our weather. Well, from tornado warnings to tornados, to prolonged thunder and lightning storms. When a thunderstorm lasts for more than 90 minutes, yeah, it is bad. The picture to the right is of a massive thunderstorm that eventually generated a couple of tornadoes in Saskatchewan. To say the least, there are just 3 things that seem to like this weather a lot. Our peas, potatoes and the grass on the property. All 3 are growing out of control….it is insane weather.

Cities and Towns across Alberta and Saskatchewan are realizing that their drainage sucks as homes and businesses are flooded out. We have 3 sump pumps in our basement and they have been working constantly 24/7. Our property has pretty good drainage but I have had to throw down some larger sand gravel to dry out some spaces we need to walk…the pig paddock for one.

If you are wondering, yes, we have a safe place to hunker down in the worst-case scenario. We have an old cistern in the basement, and the core of our house is from the 1920’s so the utilities room in the basement is a solid structure. All safe….  we just can’t get the pigs down there unfortunately.

Most of the property this year is overgrown and many spaces we talked about clearing out just could not get done due to weather. Many parts of the property have been constantly soggy, not good for cutting down the grass etc. However, we are working through a few paddocks with the brush cutting trimmers and the pigs are starting to pick up some of the slack. lol

The Home – Family!

Lisa and I are now empty nesters. Ashley is no longer living here with us and our dog population has decreased by 2 as she took Chewie with her, which was her dog, and Leia also but that was so Chewie would have a familiar companion. Lisa and I have Luke, Solo, and Rey who at this moment while I write this, are sleeping on my office floor because it is raining pretty good outside. The room is most certainly cozy!

Things are getting done and our chore schedules have been all over the place because we are juggling everything Mother Nature is constantly throwing at us. However, it has been quiet around here which we are both very much enjoying and a lot of things are getting done.

We have some inside winter projects planned and are already prepping for them.

For now, life here is buzzing with plenty to do and Lisa, myself, Luke, Solo, Rey, Prudence, Petunia, Wilbur and of course the senior of the house SAM the crazy kitty (who will be 19 this year) are doing well!

Newsflash Update!

On August 23 we had a 2.5 hour thunder and lightning storm that rocked the area with 20-30mm of rain and wind gusting up to 70km/hr. Usually you get a little lightning with the thunder, but we had over 2.5 solid hours of consistent lightning. Here is a little footage from one of our property cameras.

Image Gallery!

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