Cats, cats, everywhere, cats!

May 23, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

With the kittens getting more mobile, it was time to clean up the sun room as much as we could. Moving out the furniture to wash the concrete floor is not in the cards while we are using it as a kitten maternity ward, but I definitely needed to move things around so I could bring the cat cave box to floor level, and get the broken glass out from behind and under the plastic couch.

I decided the best way to accomplish this was to put all the kittens together into a box, but the box into the old kitchen, then open the sun room up. This allowed the moms to finally go outside, while the kittens were safe in the (much cooler!) old kitchen.

Which meant I had to do continue more clean up in the old kitchen. Specifically, the corner beside the wood burning cook stove that the cats keep getting into and mucking about.

I ended up filling 3 garbage bags of some gross stuff, plus a recycling bag that will go for electronic disposal. On top of that is stuff that will need to be put into storage, and stuff that will be kept. I’ll post more about that later; come back tomorrow for a guessing game photo! :-D

But first… kittens!

This is the smaller box nest that we made for Beep Beep to give birth in, but Butterscotch moved her babies into, instead. That pillow and cat bed are just covered in cat fur! *L*

With my daughter’s help, we got the gridwall off the top of the cat cave we created for the winter, and put it back into storage with the others in the old kitchen. Once that was clear, I could start moving things around more easily, and without needing help. The crocheted blankets, floor mat and bath transfer chair went outside to be hosed down.

The floor mat was immediately claimed by a very pregnant Guildenstern (or Rosencrantz?), with Doom Guy keeping her company. I had the doors to the sun room and old kitchen open, and we had cats all over the place, checking things out!

Except Beep Beep and Butterscotch. They eagerly took off. Butterscotch came back rather quickly, but it’s 9 in the evening now, and still no sign of Beep Beep.

When I finished cleaning things up, I brought the kittens back into the sun room, putting all of them into the bigger box nest so I could set up the smaller box again.

Butterscotch ended up nursing all of the babies. Well. Almost. Butterscotch has only 6 teats, so she can’t nurse all 8 of them at once.

After moving the kittens back into the sun room, but before Butterscotch came back, I left the outside doors open, so it wouldn’t get too hot in there, while I put the crocheted blankets on the clothes line to hose them down.

I ended up having to close the door, because they were running around so much, one of them found the open doorway and started going outside!

It was one of Butterscotch’s babies, and she was back by then, so I closed her up inside again. Her babies continued to explore, and one of them discovered the smaller food bowl.

Yes, he started eating! Sort of. He wasn’t figuring out that “chewing” thing and was basically swallowing pieces of kibble, then coughing them back up again. :-( So we took him out of the food.

This was his first solid food!

Later on, after everything we done and poor Butterscotch was being engulfed in kittens, I went looking around for Beep Beep.

I never found her, but someone else found me.

Doom Guy wanted up.

As you can see, he was not messing around with that!

He never made it all the way up, but I now have a new batch of scratches on my leg. :-D

I’m sure Beep Beep will be back soon enough. If nothing else, she’ll be feeling the need to nurse soon.

I’m so glad to finally be able to get the sun room cleaned up as much as I could, even if it wasn’t as much as I wanted to.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow to play the guessing game!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: garden edging

May 23, 2019May 23, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

A bit more progress on the garden today; my daughters used some pieces of the trees that were taken down to edge the area we mulched yesterday.

The North end was left alone, since we won’t be going into there much at all, and the South edges were left open a path between the raspberries and the future garden.

The beauty of using these logs is that they are big enough to made an adequate “wall”, but will be easy to move away again, when that time comes.

One of my daughters tried to use a hoe to level some areas, so the logs wouldn’t be more level. The ground is so hard, it just bounced off the dirt!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: garden prep and bale

May 23, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Yes! It’s finally done!

We’ve broken down and removed the straw bale we got for mulch last year.

It’s amazing just how much material is packed into a round bale.

The girls continued taking wheel barrows of straw to the garden until the core was small enough to tip over and roll away.

There was still plenty left behind, of course.

Despite rolling against the grain, it still left a trail, all the way to the garden. :-D

Note in the above photo, how wide the mulched area in the garden is. We’ve already widened it on one side a bit, since we last worked on it.

Once in place, the core could simply be unrolled, leaving behind a thick enough layer that it only needed to be tamped down in places.

You can really see the difference between what was the bottom of the bale and the top; the part that was touching the ground is still tightly wrapped, and already starting to decompose, while the top is much looser, as it had room to spread while we took layers off to cover the septic tank and mulch the old kitchen garden.

This is where the bale sat all winter. When it was first moved, and my daughter was raking up what was left behind to haul away, she noticed lots of worms. When I was transplanting the raspberries, I noticed plenty of worms, too. This is a good sign!

This area behind the house is very spotty as far as how the grass is going, with the area closest to the house having almost no grass at all. So we’re not too worried about the grass that was under the bale; we’ll need to find some shade hardy grass seed for the area, anyhow.

And here we have the mulched garden area for next year. In the foreground, to the left, is a big gooseberry bush that I hope will actually produce some berries this year. Next to it is a chokecherry, then where the raspberries were transplanted, a crab apple tree, and the compost. Which, I discovered as I tried to turn it, was used for garbage at some point, as I found pieces of food tray foam and the remains of a plastic tray that held transplants. Plus, lots of branches, still. This is where a pile of pruned branches and cut back trees were piled, then moved to the middle of the garden, before we moved here. The plan had been to burn them – yes, even when it was right on the compost pile, under that apple tree! – but we broke it down and moved it manually, last spring. We’ll have fire pit fuel for a long time, just from that one pile!

The next steps for the mulched garden area is to “frame” it with some of those logs we have from getting the trees cleared. The idea is to keep the straw from being dragged around with our feet as we work in it. Other material will be added to it, to build up the layers and improve that rock-hard soil. Covering it all with landscape cloth to prevent the grass and weeds from growing through the mulch would be good, if we can get enough to cover the whole area.

We’re getting a pretty decent sized garden out of this! Obviously, nothing close to what it was before, but we can amend and re-claim sections of it, little by little, over the years, while planning out where we want to put more permanent plantings.

Slowly but surely, we’ll get it done! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Critter(s) of the Day: just passing through

May 23, 2019May 18, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

My daughter spotted Big Jim curled up and taking a nap. While taking photos, who should come by but Not-Slick.

They seem not quite sure what to make of each other. :-D

Clean up: prepping and planting

May 22, 2019May 22, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

We’ve got some decent progress around the yard over the past few days.

The haskap bushes have been transplanted.

Getting them in was not without it’s casualties, however.

Continue reading →

Critter of the Day: got ‘im

May 22, 2019May 18, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Taken in late April; the blue jays have been making it very difficult to get their pictures of late. I swear, they can tell when the camera starts to focus on them, and take off. But I got this one!

Critter of the Day: sweet stuff

May 21, 2019May 18, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

April was when we finally started to see the squirrels again, on a regular basis. As things warm up, some of the trees began leaking fresh sap, and this squirrel is enjoying a sweet treat.

Upside down.