I was able to get a bit more progress in the old part basement yesterday, and it’s the sort of progress that actually feels like things are finally moving forward!
Stuff got put back for a change!
Okay, so it’s really all temporary, but still…
The first thing I wanted to work on was getting the now dry shelves back against the wall. My plan was to put both on one side of the centre pillar, instead of one on each side, like it was before.
It didn’t quite work out that way.
Continue readingI just have to share this photo of Creamsicle first!
What a silly kitty!
Continue readingToday, I was finally able to continue working on cleaning up the old part basement.
For those who are new to visiting this blog (Welcome! Thanks for popping by!), click here to read about what happened, and you can see the clean up progress here, here, here and here. (All links will open new tabs, so you won’t lose your place! :-) )
I’ve really been kinda dreading what I need to work on next, which is to start putting back some of the things I had to move out during cleanup, and try and figure out what to keep, what to store elsewhere, and what needs to be disposed of. Hopefully, I won’t be finding any more hidden “poison for tree” containers hidden somewhere!
The first thing I did today was move the blower fan to a different area, so I could do a bit more clean up in the last section I had worked on.
The photo on the left is how it looked when I last worked in this section. There was still a lot of dust and dirt in the area, but trying to sweep it did more to kick the dust into the air than get rid of it.
In the process, I discovered a light fixture hidden between two furnace ducts! I had to have seen it before, but simply forgot it existed. It’s very well hidden! (As an aside, I had my phone on one of the ducts near where I was working, held in place by the magnetic case, playing music. I later found out the girls could hear my music on the second floor, through the vents!)
There are so many odd little lights around this old basement. This half of the basement alone has one of two lights that turn on with the switch at the top of the stairs, one that has its own switch at the side closer to the new part basement, and one above the septic pump that has no switch. It is screwed in and out to turn it on and off. Now I find the light with the pull chain between the ducts, so that’s 4 lights on this side of the stairs. On the other side of the stairs is the other light that’s turned on by the switch at the top of the stairs, a light with a pull chain above the sump and well pumps, and another with its own light switch closer to the furnaces.
That’s a total of 7 lights in one little basement!
Anyhow. Where was I? Oh, yes. Cleaning.
I was even able to wash this section of wall a bit. The other walls were too crumbly, and the best I could do was sweep them gently, but this wall is solid. Since this wall is part of the original basement, but became an internal wall after the new part was added, it tells me that the crumbing of the exterior basement walls is probably due to all sorts of moisture from the soil around it.
Waterproof sealants probably didn’t exist when this basement was built.
As for the clean up today, this time I didn’t even try to use the mop bucket, and just set up in the laundry sink. That water got so black! Even after changing the water several time and rinsing the floor several times, it was still really filthy.
We’re not going to be able to use this mop anywhere else in the house anymore. :-D No amount of washing and rinsing of the mop will get it clean enough!
Once the floor was washed and rinsed as best I could, I set up the blower, then turned my attention to the two shelves we will be able to reuse.
I started by washing and scrubbing the shorter one.
I gave it a good scrubbing – after first removing the nails that were used to attach it to the pillar it was next to, originally – then flipped it upside down to do the bottoms of the shelves. You can see the water damage on the “legs” of the shelf, even though it was raised off the floor by bricks.
When this shelf was scrubbed and rinsed (and I took advantage of all that soapy water to mop that section of floor again), I dragged out the taller shelf.
It needed some nails removed before I could start cleaning it, too.
This one has less water damage on its bottom, but was a lot dirtier. The section of wall it was next to is crumbling a lot more than where the shorter shelf was set up. At least this shelf is a lot sturdier, which made it easier to scrub.
Once they were done, I set them up where the blower is aimed, on bricks to keep the air circulating.
Though we will be using these shelves, because we need to, it will be temporary. When we are able to, we’ll pick up some plastic utility shelves to use instead. No wood. No metal. Not for this area!
Once we figure out what goes where of the stuff that got moved out of the shelves, we plan to use them to store bottles. We’ve got a stack of bottles from hard apple cider that we’ve been accumulating over the past two years that will be used as bottle bricks when we do our cordwood practise building. There are also lots of other bottles and jars all over the place, and as we clean those up, we will set aside the one we want to use at bottle bricks as well, so we’ll have other colours as well as ones with no colour at all. The outdoor bathroom we’re planning to make as our first practice building is not going to have any windows in it. Bottle bricks will be used, instead, so all light while maintaining privacy. Whichever wall ends up facing south the most, will have the most bottle bricks with no colour in them for maximum sunlight.
Storing these in the old basement will also mean we’ll have access to water, and the old laundry sink that has turned out to be so very handy. The bottles and jars will need to be cleaned and sterilized before they can be made into bricks.
Little by little, it’s getting organized!
All of this took only about an hour, and it feels like I should have done more, but everything needs to dry before I can continue. Hopefully, I’ll get a bit more progress in tomorrow.
Now, before I forget again, I’m going to go back into the basement and get the dehumidifier that’s down there running.
The Re-Farmer
As usual, I had furry company while I did my rounds this morning. Including Two-Face.
She found a patch of ground some critter had been digging in, against a tree root, leaving a softer pile of dirt. She hunkered down on the warmer patch it created and wouldn’t move! :-D
Continue readingIt’s taken us a couple of years, but we feel we are at a point where we can start doing some actual gardening.
Last might, the girls and I went over our Vesey’s catalog and placed our order.
We really had to exercise restraint in the process! There are so many things we’d like to plant, but we’re just not ready for them.
When selecting what we’d like to get, we had several considerations to take into account.
First, we mostly limited ourselves to growing things that will be eaten. With limited areas we can plant in, we want to get the most out of that space. Over the years, we will plan out areas for things like bee and butterfly flower gardens, as well as utilizing flowers that deter deer. For now, however, we’ll stick to food.
With the spaces we have right now, we decided to not get any fruit trees or berry bushes, either. We’ve got the haskap we planted last year, but it looks like one of them died in the fall. If so, we’ll replace that one, but that’s the extent of our perennial food plants for this year. We’ll continue to work with what is already here, though we are aiming to eventually plant many of these sorts of things.
As we went through the selections, we also asked ourselves things like, will we actually eat this enough to make it worth growing ourselves? Will they grow in the spaces we have? Will they need to be started indoors? How long is their growing season? According to the notation with our address on the catalog, they rate us at Zone 2a, but looking at the zone map on the Vesey website, we’re actually firmly in a 3b zone, so that does open up our choices a bit. Still, there are many things we’d like to grow that we’ll have to wait until we can create micro-climate zones, or acquire a greenhouse.
So this is what we finally settled on.
A Coloured Carrot Collection. Regular carrots are cheap and easy to find, so if we’re going to plant carrots, it may as well be varieties we can’t find in the grocery store! This collection includes Deep Purple, Rainbow (a range of yellows and oranges) and White Satin. That’s a lot of carrots, but we use them in a lot of things, and if we have enough for winter storage, that’ll be good, too! Winter storage is not a major goal for this year, though.
Cucamelon. This is one of our “try something new” things. We’ve never actually seen any, other than in photos! I know someone who has grown them, they did really well for him, and he quite enjoyed them. They are supposed to be very productive and disease resistant, too. I’m really looking forward to seeing what these taste like!
Summer Surprise Mix Squash. Unlike most of the collections they have, this one has a “surprise” mix of 5 different types of zucchini. At least it looks like 5 different types in their photo, though the description lists only 4; “dark green, light green, yellow and striped zucchini“. Young zucchini is something we enjoy eating, but the ones from the store tend to be expensive, and go squishy way too fast. The challenge is going to be keeping the plants under control! :-D I’m aiming to build a trellis for them, and limit the number of plants. Hopefully, we’ll be able to tell the seeds apart enough to try to get one of each, at least.
Sunburst Squash. This is something we’ve tried to grow on our balcony in the past, with limited success. We don’t see them often in the grocery stores, and when we do, they’re awfully expensive, so it’ll be good to have our own supply.
Sunflowers: Early Russian and Giganteus. We chose these two varieties for very specific reasons. One, they grow really, really huge. Two, they can withstand high winds, and are recommended as wind breaks. They will be planted along the north and east sides of the old garden area, where there is less tree coverage to block winds and provide privacy from road traffic. And finally, three: both varieties are good for bird seed. The heads can be harvested and left to dry as they are, and we will be able to hang them up for the birds throughout the winter, as needed. We’ll just have to figure out how to store them! :-)
Fennel: Orion Fennel is one of those things we’d love to buy more often, but either the budget is too tight, or they’re simply not available.
Yukon Gem Potatoes. This is another one where the produce is so easy to find and relatively cheap (though the cost of potatoes has certainly gone up, lately!) that, if we’re going to grow them, we may as well grow a variety we can’t find in the stores. We quite enjoy yellow flesh potatoes, and this variety is more disease resistant. In the future, we plan to try out other interesting varieties as well. We probably won’t get these with the rest of our order, as they get shipped after all danger of frost is past, so they can be planted right away. We are also looking to inter-plant them with marigolds, which deter the Colorado Potato Beetle. For the marigolds, we’ll just buy transplants from a garden centre.
Coloured Beet Collection. This collection includes the varieties Merlin (a dark red), Boldor (golden yellow), and Chioggia (alternating rings of purple and white). Beets are one of those things we don’t actually eat a lot of, but would like to. I keep looking at them in the grocery store, but can’t usually justify getting them, when there are other things I need more. So these are basically a treat vegetable! :-)
Parsley: Starlette. I don’t use fresh herbs as often as I’d like, mostly because what we buy at the store just doesn’t keep well. I’ve picked up fresh herbs for a specific recipe, only to find them covered in mold by the next morning! Eventually, we plan to have many herbs, but for now, we will start with parsley. We chose this specific variety because it’s supposed to handle adverse weather conditions well, and have a longer shelf life after harvesting.
Bird House Gourds. This one was an extra I chose for myself, as I plan to make things with them. It’s a long term project, as the gourds need to sit for something like a year after they’ve been harvested, then have to be cleaned and scoured before they can be used for projects. I have a number of projects in mind for them, so I hope it works out. I’ve never grown gourds, before!
Lawn Mower Blade and Tool Sharpener. Okay, I did have to get at least one non-seed item! I saw the state of the blade on our push mower, and it’s pretty horrific. A lot of other yard and garden tools around here could use a good sharpening, too. This is a drill attachment, with a reversible wheel, and should last long enough for 10 lawnmower blade sharpenings. Since I’m sure the blades of the riding mower need sharpening, too, this will come in very handy!
So that’s it. This is what we are planning to grow this year. We’ve managed a mix of the familiar and the novel, the tried and true and the experimental. This is on top of a few things that we already have here, such as onions, chives, horseradish and grapes.
Hmm. I do hope the grapes survived the winter! I guess will find out, soon enough.
After two years of hacking and slashing things as we clean up the mess around the yard, it’ll feel really good to start planting and growing!
The Re-Farmer
We did things a bit differently this month, with our bulk shopping.
Usually, we do one big trip at the end of the month, with the bulk of the shopping done at Costco. As we’ve gotten to know different stores that we now go to regularly, that monthly shopping day has expanded to include going to at least 3 different major stores to stock up. Sometimes more.
The van gets very full and heavy. Especially with the weight of cat litter and giant bags of kibble that we have to pack everything else around.
So at the end of February, we decided to split the trip into two. The first trip focused more on stocking up for us humans, and a second trip would be to top up anything we needed, but mostly pick up the bulky bags of kibble and boxes of litter.
Today was our top up day.
Our timing to try this could have been better…
Continue readingI had some company while I was doing my rounds this morning.
I thought it was just adorable, how they loafed themselves against the wind, while keeping their toes out of the snow. :-D
I would love to have been able to do that same, this morning!
Continue readingHello, and welcome to my first “Recommended” post! I plan to do these every week for now. Whether I do it more or less often, or drop it completely, will be up to you and your feedback, dear reader! So do feel free to leave a comment below. If you have your own favorite resources to recommend, leave information in the comments and I’ll check it out for possible future posts.
I hope you find these recommendations as useful and enjoyable as I have!
My first recommendation just has to be the first YouTube channel I found that completely enchanted me! Until recently, I hardly ever watched YouTube videos, and only followed people I actually knew in person. I can’t even remember how I came across this channel, but once I did, I kept coming back, eventually working my way through 2 years of videos – and wanting more!
The Liziqi channel has been around since 2017, and is one of several similar channels from China I now follow (the others will have their own Recommended posts!).
While many of the videos are centered around food and cooking, there are also videos on making a warm, woolen cape, building furniture out of bamboo, traditional silk embroidery, and building a cob oven. Quite a range! Liziqi’s very first video was about making a dress – but first using grape skins to dye the fabric!
There are many things about these videos that are appealing.
One of the first things that stands out is the entire atmosphere of the videos. Just watching them leaves you with a feeling of peace. Even if you never want to actually do the things featured in the videos, they are a pleasure to watch. There is no narration. With a couple of exceptions in topic, no one speaking to the camera. Just LiZiqi doing her thing – and doing it beautifully!
Another thing that blows me away about these videos are the tools she uses. Her main tool in many videos is a massive cleaver that gets used to bash things flat or chop through bones one moment, then finely shave food into the most delicate of pieces the next. Many of the tools she uses have clearly been used for many years, if not generations. In fact, it’s almost a surprise when she brings out modern tools, like a cordless drill, or takes things in and out of a refrigerator.
I think one of the things that I find wonderful about these videos, is how they often run from the very beginning of something, through to the final product. And by “very beginning” I give you the following video as an example: How to Make Salted Duck Egg Yolk Sauce.
First, acquire fertilized duck eggs, and get a chicken to brood them…
See what I mean?
Watching these videos leaves me incredibly inspired. It’s not just about the things she makes, but the entire process. That perfection in the smallest of details. The videos are so beautifully filmed and edited, it makes the simple act of cleaning out a wok or picking produce from the garden look gorgeous.
Also, Grandma is adorable.
I definitely recommend checking out the Liziqi YouTube channel. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself wanting to go through all the videos!
The Re-Farmer
In the last little while, I’ve been discovering some really excellent resources online, for making and doing “stuff.”
When I find a great resource, I love to share! So I am going to try something new.
Once a week (at least for now; I might change it later), I will put up a “Recommended” post. Each post will feature some resource that I found excellent, and I will give a brief review of why I found this resource particularly worthy of recommendation.
The focus for most of these will be somehow related to our own situation – being back on the family farm and having to start over again in so many ways – but also simply following our interests. So there will be resources (mostly YouTube channels) for specific skills, like brewing or building, to cooking and gardening, to people using historical skills. Basically, a lot of “homesteading” type stuff, I guess, but I think they will still appeal to, or be helpful for, people anywhere.
I will start by posting these on Wednesdays, beginning tomorrow, and see where it goes from there. Feedback will definitely be appreciated, and if anyone has their own resources they’d like to share, please to leave information in the comments, and I’ll review them for possible future posts.
I hope you enjoy these!
The Re-Farmer
We had several deer show up at the feeding station, yesterday evening. We could see more out the back window!
There ended up being 7 in total, with one last deer popping out from behind the garden shed near the end. :-)
The Re-Farmer 