New Year's Eve at the Valaitis's

Not many pictures but at least the few I have are good ones. A good time was had by all.

Easter 2012 in Windsor

I'm told that I'm a very good photographer. I actually believe I'm average at best and the following pictures demonstrate my 'lack' of ability. It was a sunny day so there are many shadows on people's faced. My lighting is horrific. There is a lesson here. Many competent photographers say you should use your flash about 90 percent of the time, even outdoors. If I had used my flash the shadows would have disappeared and every picture would have been much better. Lesson learned.

Making my Garden at the Homestead

 This is a picture of my garden when I started. There was a dog run between the coach house and the garden which I took out so it is now one big space. As you can see it is overrun with weeds. Making it worse is that the ground is full of roots a lot of them from Rasberry bushes which make it difficult to rototill.

I'm putting in a rainbarrel system at the back. There is no water to the coach house so rather than haul a hose out everytime I want to water I'm hooking up four rainbarrels which will be filled from the downspout of the eavestrough I'm going to install.

After taking out the weeds with my brush cutter I rototilled the soil. It was so hard that I had to make five separate passes over it lowering my tiller by one inch at a time. I dumped 16 big 3 cubic feet bags of peatmoss onto the original soil which you can see from this picture and some below. And then I tilled the peatmoss into the original soil.

After tilling in the peat moss I bought 25 yards of triple mix top soil. I have a small trailer behind my riding lawn mower and it took 75 loads of this soil to top dress the garden. Each load is about 50 shovel fulls of earth. I went through about half of this soil. The rest will get used around the yard ... trust me.

View of the garden with the dog run gone.

The following pictures show the peat moss after it was tilled into the soil.

Once the peat was tilled into the original soil I added about 6 inches of triple mix on top of the soil and man o man it was a lot of work. It took about 75 loads in my small trailer. I'm getting lots of use of the equipment I bought.

 
This is the finished garden after I rototilled in the top soil. I used the big rototiller first and then I used my small tiller to clean up the rows. Looks neat and tidy at this point.

Iris's ... NOT in my vegetable garden but pretty so I took some pics.

The planting begins. I went way overboard on plants. I must have over 50 tomato plants alone. I thought the garden was huge but I'm already running out of room. Some of these tomotoes might go. Too many to eat.

I divided the garden into four foot wide sections and found some old rubber mats to put in between the rows to walk on. They have holes in them so it will allow water to flows through and they are light so I can just pick them up and move them if necessary or when the garden is finished this fall.

I got five of the seven sections planted up. I actually am running out of room so may have to re-think some things. Definitely fewer tomotoes plants next year. I marked most of them so we can determine which are tastiest and stick to half as many next year.

Life is good ... ENJOY

Dennis

DesRosiers Homestead in April

I visited the DesRosiers Homestead last week and it was actually the first time I've seen the place without snow on the ground. While walking around I'm thinking, "My god what have I gotten myself into?". This is the fourth summer that little has been done to the place and man-o-man does it show it. I've got my work cut out for me. Indeed four acres of work.

Some pleasant surprises though. The two trees you see in the picture above are actually black walnut trees and apparantly have a very abundant harvest. I'm already searching the internet for a machine to extract the oil from the nuts. The pond in the back 40 is on wet lands and could be dug out to make it a little bigger and if I did this then it likely would be able to support growing some trout. It has goldfish in it now and they are coming out asap. There are a million Trillium alongside the road way coming into the property. Quite nice. The garden is a lot bigger than what I thought. There is a good picture below as well. You will see it is overrun with weeds but I'm buying a machine for cutting under-brush which will make quick work of the weeds and a roto-tiller will make quick work of the digging. It will be about 800 square feet in size when completed so about 40 ft. by 20 ft. Can't wait to plant our garden.

I didn't take a lot of pictures and most are not very inviting but following are a few of the better ones. The house is scheduled to close on May 8'th and hopefully there will be no problems. Once I get it I'll bring down my tripod and take some really good photos.

Our Garden ... somewhat overrun with weeds after three summers of zero maintenance.

The fenced in area is our garden. It is actually bigger than this in that at the back there is a tall fence which was put up to create a dog run about 6 feet wide. I'm taking this down and the whole area will be garden.

Taken from out in the farmers field ... same with the next few.

We are surrounded by farmers fields on three sides of the property. They are not planted yet and they usually put in soya beans so in a few months they should be all green instead of brown. I'm thinking of planting sunflowers all around the edge of the property to provide a visual block and to add some colour. And if I get a machine to extract the oil from the walnuts I will also be able to extract the oil from the sunflowers.

A little tighter shot of the house. The sunroom windows are still all shuttered up. We will be opening these very early in our stay.

Three pictures of the pond ... also in very bad shape but I found out it is about 20 feet deep so it should be able to support some trout. I might dig it out some more and make it a little bigger. And, of couse, add a fountain. The shack on the left is the pump house for the well.

There are about 3 additional acres of property surrounding the pond which I didn't try to capture with pictures.

A stake marking the back corner of the property. Our land goes back further into the woodlot than what I had thought. Following also are some pictures of the back of the property heading into the woodlot.

You will see the road coming into the property on the left side of the above picture. Following are some more pictures of this road. Boring but I wanted to give a sense of just how far off the highway we are located. What I did was walk it each way and took some pictures coming and going.

A clump of Trillium and the picture below shows just how many are dotting the side of the road coming into the property. It is looking in the woodlot at the back of the property.

This is a pear tree that is apparantly more than a hundred years old.  I tried to wrap my arms around it and my fingers would not touch so it is quite huge at the base.

Inside the coach house coming into the property. It is 20 ft by 40 ft so quite large inside. It was built by the mennonites and is all cedar. Also notice the clutter I have to deal with. Everyone keeps asking if this could be converted into a bunky ... at this point no and indeed all decisions like this will take months if not years to figure out. For now we are just going to get the old house livable again and spend the summer restoring the gardens outside. Major renovations will have to wait and hopefully we will get lots of opinions from family and friends.

Three pictures of the entry way into the property. Again I'm trying to catch just how far off the road we are located. Far enough that you can't even see the end of the road. The woodlot straddles this road and extends off far into the left of this picture. It is about 200 acres and has a stream flowing through it so I shouldn't have any issue with having enough water for our well. It is actually quite wet at the end of the property. The pond used to be an old watering hole for the local cattle so it is spring fed.