Month: July 2018

Power Pole installed: stage one

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Yay!!!

Our new power pole was installed today.

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Here, they are lining up the drill to dig the hole, making sure it’s straight.

I wanted to take pictures and video, but I also didn’t want to be in their way, so I didn’t.

Part way through drilling, it sounded like they hit a rock.  The electrician got down on the ground and I guess he was able to move things out of the way, as the drilling continued soon after.  Then the drill attachment was switched for a bucket, which they used to lift and line up the pole itself into position.  By then, I was inside, because I didn’t want to hover, so I didn’t see how they moved the pole into place.  I only saw them lifting the pole at one end, and using chain to secure it so it could be moved.

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We have a fairly shallow topsoil, then its sand, gravel and clay.  Once the pole was in, they pushed the soil back around it, and you can see that clay heavy soil ended up on top.  The electrician poured a bucket of water over it to help things settle.

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Old and new!

It now needs to sit for at least a few days for the ground to settle.  He will come back, likely at the end of the week, to unhook the wire from the old pole, move it to the new one, and hook up the power.  If he were to do that now, the weight of the wire would cause the pole to tilt.

Only after the wire is transferred can the old pole finally come down.

By next weekend, we should have power hooked up to the garage and the barn again. :-D

The Re-Farmer

An Experiment

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Like so many others right now, we are experiencing a bit of a heat wave.

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It’s the “feels like 41” part that’s the killer.

For those of you in the US, 31C is 87.8F and 41C is 105.8F

Thankfully, my daughter has air conditioning where she works.  Whether or not it will make a difference behind the counter is questionable, though!  I will find out when I pick her up tonight.

So we’re doing very little of anything physical during the hottest parts of the day, right now!

Meanwhile, inspired by a video someone shared on Facebook, I am going to try an experiment.

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After dropping my daughter off at work, I picked up a bag of mixed size balloons.  I used the big enameled container I found in the old kitchen – the one my mother used to mix bread dough in – and gave it a wash (a challenge, since it’s bigger than our sink), then used it to hold the balloons I filled with water.  The package had some teeny tiny balloons, too.  Those, I put in the fridge freezer.  Two batches of these bigger ones are now in the chest freezer.  I’ve got them sitting in reusable grocery bags, so they will be easier to access, later.

When they are frozen, I will put some out for the cats.  The tiny ones will fit in the bowls we have for the indoor cats.  I will start with one big one in one of the water containers for the outside cats and see how it goes over.  I plan to put a smaller one near where the kittens are.  As it melts, it will also water the bush that’s near the entrance to their hiding place.

It should be interesting to see how it works.  For starters, I foresee potential problems with the balloons freezing to each other, due to the condensation on the outside.  As long as I can transport them, that shouldn’t be a problem, since the balloons will be broken and removed before the ice is put out.

I hope the cats like it.

On the topic of animals…

While driving my daughter to work, about half way to town, we saw a small black bear crossing the road!  While I have always known we sometimes have bears around, this is the first time in my life I have actually seen one out here.  Pretty cool!

I imagine the poor thing was really suffering from the heat, though.  :-(

The Re-Farmer

Update:  Wow, that didn’t take long!  After finishing this post, I looked at the weather app again, before closing it down.  It’s already gotten hotter.

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Kittens!

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I did a walk around the yard, picking up the larger twigs and branches that have come down in the wind.  I was about to head into the house when Beep Beep came over.  Normally, she comes right over for pets, but this time, she wouldn’t let me touch her, and went along the front of the house, which has the door we don’t use.  Thinking she might be more comfortable and come over if I didn’t move too much, I sat on the concrete steps while she lounged behind a bush next to them.

Then she disappeared.

I couldn’t figure out where she went, until I heard a little mmmrrr?  behind me.  Getting up I looked around, then saw her peeking at me from between the concrete steps and the basement wall under the door.

I had no idea there was space back there!  Certainly not enough for her to come through on the side I was looking in.  I walked around and sure enough, there’s a larger gap on the other side.

She came out again, but wouldn’t come near me.  Instead, she lay down on the ground behind the bush again, so I sat down.

Then, suddenly, there were kittens with her!

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I dangled my fingers over the edge of the concrete for a bit, and the tabby went for them, then disappeared behind the stairs.  The tuxedo wouldn’t come close, but was curious.

I think there is a fairly large opening under the stairs.  Not hollow, but not completely solid, either.

I saw two kittens, but when Beep Beep was rolling around, giving herself a dust bath, later on, I could see that she had three lactating teats.  So there is probably a third kitten under there!

Now we just need to figure out where Butterscotch took her babies.  I am still thinking they might be in the threshing machine.

We will then have the “onerous” task of socializing them. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Red Sided Garter Snake!

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We saw our first snake of the year!!

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Can you spot it in the greenery?

Thankfully, it moved and stayed in a spot I could get better pictures of it. :-D  (There IS a red stripe along its sides; honest!)

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Garter snakes are awesome to have around, because they eat insects, mice – even leeches. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Manitoba‘s famous Narcisse Snake Dens, either in May, when they first come out of hibernation, or September, when they return to the dens, I would highly recommend it.  There are dens in Saskatchewan and Alberta, too, but none as extensive as in Narcisse.  Sadly, people sometimes destroy the dens, thinking the snakes are some sort of pest, which they most certainly are not!

Judging from the size of this one, it might be a female.  They are quite a bit bigger than the males.

I am so happy to see it, and I hope to see more!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: old kitchen – clearing the stove

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Yesterday, while working on packing stuff in the old kitchen, my focus was on clearing the wood cook stove.  It was completely hidden away by stuff we put there, just to get them out of the way until we could get them to the storage shed or, for our own stuff, create a space for it.

The old kitchen is an add on to the original log house.  I had thought my dad had added it on after buying the farm from a relative, but I’m told the original builders had built it.  Another log building that we used as a chicken coop was the “summer kitchen.”  That’s where a stove was set up and the cooking and canning would happen, to keep the house from getting too hot.  As I understand it, this stove is from the summer kitchen.  Which means this stove hasn’t moved in about 3 generations.  Maybe four.

Until the new part of the house was built in the early 70’s, and we got running water and an electric stove, this was our kitchen.  Even after the new one was built, when the power went out, we would go back to using the old kitchen for cooking and some of the heating (the wood burning furnace needed electricity to operate the fans the blew hot air).

It’s a good thing we have no plans to use the stove.

I’m just going to post a couple of pictures for now; I found a lot of weird stuff on, in and around it!  Here is how things looked after I moved away that big stuff we had leaned in front of it.

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The chair, we’d put in to make room in the dining room, since we didn’t need the 8 or so that were there.  The vehicle bike rack is ours.  We kept it, even after selling off our bikes before a move, because we’d intended to get bikes again.

There’s a vacuum cleaner you can see on the left, with its head in the centre bottom of the photo.  That used to be ours!  And before that, it belonged to my in-laws.  They gave it to us during one of our moves back to the province, and when we left it again, it ended up on the farm.

The fire extinguisher box on top of the warming shelves turns out to have a fire extinguisher in it!  We’ll have to take it out and check its condition.  If it’s good, we’ll just need to recharge it and we’ll have an extra. :-)  We already have another modern one in our kitchen, though I suppose it’s due to be recharged, too.

You can also see just a bit of an umbrella sticking out.  That’s ours, too!  My husband bought it for the girls the second time we moved back to the West coast.  It’s painted silk with scenes of Winnie the Pooh (book style, not Disney style) on it.  There was a second, smaller one, too.  The girls were 3 and 6 at the time.  They are now 22 and 25.  So excited to find that!  I hope we find the second one somewhere, too.

I’ll post pictures of some of the other stuff I found later.  For now, this is what it looked like when I stopped for the day.

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Yeah, I found another vacuum cleaner. :-D

The tin on top of the warming shelves was one of the things I found IN the warming shelves.

It’s full of nails.

The oven door is broken.  I found a piece of hinge on top of the stove, and I think the second hinge is broken inside the oven door frame itself.

I wonder why one corner  of the stove top is leaning down like that?

Amazingly, there are still ashes in the fire and ash boxes.

Eventually, I plan to give it a good cleaning, polish it up and find some way to put the oven door back, though I doubt it can be repaired.  If there is a baking rack for the oven, I haven’t seen it – though I might not even recognize it for what it is, if I did.  I remember my mother baking, but have no memory of a rack in the oven.  The only memory I have of looking inside the oven was when my mom was canning and had jars in a water bath, the container of which pretty much filled the entire oven.

For now, I am done with the oven area.  I will next focus on emptying the shelves in the west side of the room and made some decisions about which, if any, I will keep.  I think I might keep one, just because it’s been handy to stand on to reach the breaker panel.

I am NOT looking forward to working in that nook beside the oven.  It’s going to be a tight fit to get into and move around in there, and it’s quite the disaster. :-(

The Re-Farmer

Feeding time!

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I saw a couple of birds on the platform feeder that were behaving a bit differently, so I decided to start getting some pictures.

They were hopping back and forth quite a bit, but I managed to get a good shot of this little one.

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Then I realized what was going on.

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It was a baby, being shown how to eat at the feeder…

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While also being fed.

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So adorable!

The Re-Farmer

A bit blustery out there!

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First up, here are a couple of bird photos for you to enjoy. :-)

My husband got this purple finch at the feeder not long ago.

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And I finally got a blue jay picture!

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The blue jays have a habit of taking off before I can get to the camera, so these days, it’s a challenge to get any pictures of them at all.

This was another indoor day, for the most part.  There were plenty of storm warnings for the southern province which, for us, translated to rain early in the morning, and now high winds.  I had to go into town to pick up some prescription refills, and made a point of checking the yard out before I left.  There were a few downs branches that were of little concern.  In the areas of the maple grove I haven’t cleaned yet, I found myself looking at some branches and wondering, is that new?  Or what that already there?

About the only good thing right now is the wind direction.  If one of the trees by the house does come down, it’ll be fall away from the roof, instead of on it.  Though, looking out my window at the trees behind the storage house, it’s the opposite.  At least that building is empty and has no power.

Speaking of which…

The second tree care company came by on Monday, and I got the estimate emailed to me last night.  It’s basically the same as the first company; $1500.  Looking over our budget (barring any unexpected expenses), we should be able to get it done in November.  Choosing the company is going to be a bit more difficult; they’re pretty equal in every tangible sense.  One also does yard work and landscaping, which I would want to keep in mind for the future.  The other does trees and nothing else.

So we have some talking to do and a decision to make.  I’m just glad it’s something we can get done before winter, instead of waiting until spring.  Though if we get some sort of cash infusion (like the shares the housing co-op we moved away from still owes us!), it would be good to get it done earlier.

The Re-Farmer

Corn on the cob, cookout

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It’s been some time since we’ve done a cookout.  It’s either been way too hot to sit around a fire, or raining!

Not a complaint, really.

Today, we cooked supper outside, but brought it inside to eat because… flies.  They like our faces.  And hair.  And ears.

So the idea of eating outside wasn’t very attractive. :-D

I recently picked up a campfire grill, and today I picked up some fresh corn on the cob.

A perfect way to break in the grill!

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Before starting the fire, I removed the outer leaves on the husks, as much of the cornsilk as I could, then left them to soak in cold water.  We turned them a few times, flipped them and changed their positions, because the coals were not evenly heating.

Once they’re cooked and cool enough for eating, the husks can be pulled back and used as a holder for the corn, or broken off completely.

We cooked the cheese hoagies in batches.

A lovely summer treat!

The Re-Farmer