Garlic Planting Begins

While I spent last week making food with all the tomatoes, etc and canning and freezing, Orrin was preparing new garden beds in what will be the main garden area (a separate area from the greenhouse location). Today we began planting garlic. We planted 7 different types of garlic, for a total of about 120 cloves planted, as well as some bulbils (those will be ready in 2 years). We still have 5 more types to plant. It feels good to start getting those into the ground for next year, as we can never have too much garlic!

  

Moving Companies are Ridiculous

We finally got our furniture delivered to us at the end of September. It was bittersweet, as we were very happy to see all our worldly possessions after 2 ½ months apart, but also felt pretty abused by the moving companies that we had to deal with (Two Small Men with Big Hearts who took our stuff from Salt Spring to Victoria, BC, and AMS who took our stuff from Victoria to our new home in Nova Scotia). Customer service from both places was non-existent, and both companies tried to scam us. In one case, we called them on it, but in two other cases, we got the short end of the stick. In particular, we had to pay more than what we'd agreed to or else we would not have received our stuff at all. Pretty crummy. We have filed a claim for some damaged furniture (which they will probably not pay, but thought we'd go through the exercise anyway), but plan to file with the Better Business Bureau once we're done having to deal with them. All I can say is – if you are moving across the country, DO NOT use these companies. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone having a good experience with a mover, so you may be better off renting a uhaul and driving yourself, but I know there are con's with that too.  

A Bountiful Harvest, Thanks to a Friend

We have become friends with a woman who came from away specifically to farm on the south shore this season. She leased some land, and has been selling her produce at a couple markets a week. She just left town to go home this past weekend, and needed help pulling all her plants before she left, to leave the garden area in good shape for the owners. On Friday, a week and a half ago, we went over and spent an afternoon helping her out, in exchange for any plants that we wanted to take home and transplant, as well as any veggies that she hadn't sold. It was a fun afternoon with her that didn't feel like work at all, until I got into the car to head home and realized how tired I was. We took home a bounty of plants and produce, of which I am so thankful to her for. We brought home about 100 different types of kale and chard that we transplanted into the greenhouse area that we've been preparing, about 12 basil plants (not transplanted, just pulled), several hot pepper plants (matchbox, cayenne, jalapeno and habanero), lots of tomatillos, and an incredible amount of tomatoes. I couldn't even estimate just how many pounds of tomatoes we brought home, I can only tell you what we've done with it so far – filled a 9-tray dehydrator 4 times, made 4 batches of pasta sauce, and made 12 pints of salsa. And that's only about half of them, the rest are ripening as I write this!

When we decided to move to Nova Scotia in early spring, one of the hardest parts of the decision was recognizing that we were not going to be able to have a garden. All the food that we brought home that day more than made up for that loss.