Thursday, January 14th
Best wishes to all... and here's my 2010 new year's resolution: write a chronicle!
I know it's been too long since I put something down on these pages, but I have to confess there isn't much to write about. No progress at all on the construction aspect since July. I guess we needed the break, mind you with ALain working 6 days a week, there isn't much time for anything else.
In spite of that, Alexandre brought, on two occasions, groups from the Montreal Permaculture Guild, who helped us get a few things done outdoors. The most urgent task they did, was to complete the insulation and drainage around the pipe into the cistern. They also installed a mesh fence around the orchard and spread compost at the base of the fruit trees. They split and stacked a big pile of firewood and one of them even tydied up the workbench area in the container. They're a really inspiring bunch of people.
And now, the results from the garden, which didn't give us much apart from squashes and lettuces with the lousy summer we had. The disasters: basil, gumbos and ground cherries. None of these grew more then 3-4 leaves and wilted or were eaten by some mistery bug. I tried sowing more gumbo this fall to see if it would grow better indoor, but as soon as there's a couple of leaves, they get a few transparent eggs on the underside and they start going pale and limp. I din't see any insects despite my dilligent observations and have all but given up on growing my favorite vegetable. Radishes and tomatoes gave mediocre yields. The various lettuces loved all the rain and cool weather early in the season, but what I sowed later didn't grow at all because of the dry spell in August.
On the other hand, we got magnificient shiso (Japanese basil from the mint family) and arugula plants. The latter, being frost resistant to -10C, gave us wonderfully pungent leaves into November. From the large shiso bushes, I collected over 200 leaves and lacto-fermented them in a glass jar to bring a bit of greenery into our winter fare. I'm starting to really enjoy this preserving technique that Alexandre got me into a year ago. It's easy and keeps a lot more flavor and vitamins than canning. I'm experimenting with all kinds of vegetables like beans, zucchini and beets... I'll tell you more about those and the mustard making trials next time!
So, this fall, I processed about twice as much food as last year. I canned 80 pounds of tomatoes and 72 pounds of apples, but no berry jam this year, the yields were too small and I only got about 4 liters of frozen berries. I also made sauerkraut and Kim Chee (Korean sauerkraut) in addition to my various experiments described above. I totally rediscovered sauerkraut which I hadn't particularly enjoyed until now. Since I don't pasteurize it, the result doesn't resemble the vinegary mushy commercial product. All the crispiness of the fresh vegetable is there and a faint, pleasant acidic flavour develops with the help of mild onions and a few spices. I'm looking for bigger stoneware crocks to double my production next year to 50 pounds of each type of cabbages.
Indoor, there are 7 lemons ripening slowly. Both my citrus plants have yellow leaves, I had a tendency to water them too much. Since the temperatures often get around 10C in the greenhouse on the first floor, the plants got into a slumber mode. I have a few lettuces, but only a couple of leaves have grown so far... to compensate, I occasionnally sprout various seeds, mostly fenugreek.
Finally, the conversion of the Toyota Land Cruiser is done, we now run on used vegetable oil since early December. HUGE THANKS to Jean-François who helped and guided ALain through the process. We still need to install the "filtration lab", and are currently relying on J-F's setup, thanks again.