June 21, 2009

The Greenhouse is up!  

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The basic skeleton of the greenhouse was completed today. I am very happy with how smoothly things went and how straight it all looks (not bad for the first time). Many, many thanks to Jeff for helping to do the layout and measure the foundation, Frank and Mike for the very grueling work of pounding the steaks into the ground, Amber and Sandra for their help with the finer points of erecting the greenhouse and Eric for his expertise and strength. Also a big thank you to Tom for stopping by with the champagne when it was all said and done.

There's a few more days of work to be done on the greenhouse and I hope to finish it all this week so that I can begin growing sprouts and wheat grass. The garden is starting to show signs of growing. A couple of days ago I planted about 20 varieties of Lettuce for our Salad mixes and today I noticed that many of them are sprouting. Last week we finished transplanting the plants from the small greenhouse to the garden. I forgot about the very important rule of hardening the plants off prior to planting outdoors so most of the plants went into shock. After a few days of stunted growth and a few rows of lost plants there is evidence of new growth and recovery.

Many thanks again to all the volunteers/friends that have come up to help, all this work would not have been done without you!

Lots of Love!

Tamas.

May 31, 2009

New Tractor and Greenhouse Tear Down  

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Hello Everyone,

My apologies for the alignment of the photos, its one of the draw backs of Blogger (or at least my proficiency level with it). I find I have to trick it into aligning things properly, but I don't have half an hour to put into that at the moment.

There's been a lot going on internally and externally since the last time I have written. The greenhouse came down (intentionally) a few weeks ago. Special thanks to Michael, Eric, Jeff, Brian, Harry and Caelian for their help. I've been spending 4-5 days a week on the land trying to get it ready for plowing, tilling and planting. There have been many obstacles these past few weeks: Getting stopped on the highway hauling a trailer that needs work and being detained for a couple of hours while I found a tow truck driver, to pay $20 dollars to, for a missing bolt that he proceeded to take off of his own wheel in order to sell to me, is one. The present tenant in the house refusing to leave and slowing the process down is another. I am finding myself in the middle of a war between the tenant and the landlord in which the bailiff has been called in to physically evict the present tenant, though this might not happen until the middle of July. I have to keep putting my attention on the long term benefit of what we are doing and keep enjoying myself regardless of these external circumstances. I tend to want things to happen quickly and when other people are not involved its easy but in this case there are may circumstances out of my control so cultivating patience is sometimes all I can do (except maybe spiral into a negative state but I choose not to)... The plants in the small greenhouse are beyond ready to plant outdoors! They are outgrowing their containers and the roots are getting pot bound, but the land is not ready to receive them yet. I have been relying on my landlord for the use of his tractor and a neighbor who said he would get the land tilled for me...more than a month later its still not done so yesterday I went out and got a tractor with implements to begin doing it myself, with all the rain we have had it will be at least a few more days before I can begin. I have been patient with the landlord and the tenant but its time to push things along, the season is going by very quickly, its scary really. On the upside, much work has been achieved on the property, its only a few days away from tilling. Tuesday I pick up the tractor and if the ground is dry enough there is an acre I can begin tilling right away. Special thanks to Jamie and Jean-Paul as well for their dedication to helping me a dozen times or so in the somewhat grueling work of clearing the land. The website is far from complete but the backbone of it is done and has a lot of potential. I haven't had the chance to upload content to the website in the past few weeks and to be honest I though that there would be more done by Switch Marketing and less by me but that's how it goes. Anyway here's a few photos of the tractor and the greenhouse being taken down.


Here's some of the things we will be doing this week: moving the greenhouse over to the property and bringing some free shelving for the greenhouse from Loblaws in Toronto. We will be continuing the seemingly never ending task of clearing the land and delivering the tractor and implements. If the weather is dry we may finaly begin some planting.

Thanks for reading & stay tuned for more...
Lots of Love!
Tamas.