It is already turning out to be a very warm day today. We’re supposed to hit a high of 15C/59F this afternoon!
While doing my rounds this morning, I had a Potato demanding cuddles the whole time. :-)
It was warm enough that I went to try and move the saw horses by the storage shed. The ground was thawed enough that I got one of them loose, but the other turned out to be in worse condition than I expected. Instead of breaking loose from the ground, it just broke. !!
Of course, I checked on the babies before heading out this morning.
Beep Beep and her brood are easier to check. They are even right in a sun spot, in the morning. :-)
Butterscotch’s babies are harder to check on, since she tends to block the opening with her own head. I’ve been using the camera on my phone to try and see the babies.
Which is the only reason I was able to see a problem this morning.
In the photo, I could see one of her babies was pushed off to the side. I’d noticed this same kitten had been pushed off to the side yesterday, and had brought it closer to mom, but when I saw it this morning, I knew it was gone. Judging from the state of its hind end, something had gone wrong with it. My guess is, Butterscotch sensed it was not doing well and had been pushing it away from her healthy babies. It may well have been weak from the start.
My daughter and I have been talking about how we can set Butterscotch and her remaining babies up in a new nest, and block the inside of the old radio off completely. It’s just too difficult to see them in there. It’s unlikely it would have made a difference, to be honest, but at least we’d be able to check on them more easily.
I finally got to get outside and start doing some dedicated clean up around the house.
But first, I must share this adorableness.
Two Face is getting all of the love from her siblings as she recovers from her visit to the vet.
Speaking of visits to the vet, we discovered our inside mama cat has been throwing up, so we are stopping the pain killers the vet gave us to try with her.
Dang.
My goal for outside had originally been to go around with a wheelbarrow and pick up all the little branches scattered all over the yard over the winter. Once out there, however, I changed tack completely. Instead, I removed all of the rigid insulation we put around the bottom of the house for the winter, removed the straw from over the septic tank area, and cleaned things up around the house.
When our septic failed earlier in the year, and we had to get the tank emptied, I had moved the straw covering the lid over to the side, on top of snow and other straw. As I cleaned away the straw, I uncovered a snow drift! :-D
That’s okay. The straw got moved over to the old kitchen garden, and the straw that was stuck in clumps of snow and ice will just add moisture to the garden. Plus, some of it was already starting to decompose quite nicely. Bonus! :-)
This is all just the straw that was covering the septic tank area. Later, I plan to cover the rest of this little garden with more straw from the bale we still have in the old big garden area.
The sheets of insulation around this side of the house were held in place with whatever was handy. Bricks, chimney inserts that will never be used (now that is an electric furnace) and little benches we found while cleaning up in the maple grove. They all fit quite nicely together to make a little seating area. :-)
In the future, we plan to make a path along the house, and a small garden of shade tolerant plants in this area.
On the topic of planting things, I was able to cover a future planting area with black tarp this morning.
The ground here is soft enough that I could actually use tent pegs to secure the corners. Unlike pretty much everywhere else, which is still frozen hard.
One of the things I want to do in this area as soon as the ground is thawed enough, is dig through it a bit more to make sure I’ve cleared out as many roots as I can. There were so many cherry roots running through there, it’s very likely we’ll end up with some trying to grow through our plantings, if I’ve missed any! Of course, we’ll have to be on the look out for any rusted nails and whatever else may have been missed when we cleaned this area out.
Also, the Potato Beetle decided to be part of my “found object” display. :-D
Him and his filthy, filthy nose! :-D
My other goal of the day was to start some seeds, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. It’s time for me to pain killer up again and take it easy, so that I’m not too wiped out to continue tomorrow.
Ah, the things you need to think about when you’re broken. :-D
Welcome to my “Recommended” series of posts. These will be weekly – for now – posts about resources I have found over the past while that I found so excellent, I want to share them with you, my dear readers. 🙂 Whether or not I continue to post these, and how often they are posted, will depend on feedback. Please feel free to comment below, and if you have a favorite resource of your own, do share, and I will review them for possible future posts.
I hope you find these recommendations as useful and enjoyable as I have!
When I was a kid, I was pretty indifferent to cheese. For commercial cheese, we got your basic cheddar, processed cheese slices, and I even remember the odd block of Velveeta (yeah, I know…). I honestly don’t think there was much else available. Some Mozzarella, cream cheese, marble cheese and grated Parmesan in a shaker. The odd triangle of expensive blue cheese. Our choices were limited.
Even as an adult, there really wasn’t a lot of variety available. I liked cheese, certainly, but it wasn’t really a thing for me. The one major discovery for me was commercial cottage cheese. My mother made cottage cheese, and I really didn’t like it. I recently asked her how she made it, since I only remembered bits and pieces, and it was far more convoluted than I expected. It took two days, and included the addition of baking soda, but no cream.
The end product was very, very dry.
It was, of course, used as a filling in pierogi. I loved my mother’s potato pierogi, but never liked the ones with cottage cheese or sauerkraut stuffings. So very un-Polish of me. :-D
Then one day, I tried commercial cottage cheese and realized that yeah, that stuff is actually good!
Over the years, I regularly bought cheddar, but every now and then I’d get adventurous and try some Havarty or Montery Jack. Discovering Brie was an eye opening experience for me. I’d never had anything like it before, and it’s still one of my favourite cheeses.
Then, a few years back, one of our local grocery stores added a new cheese section.
You know you’re getting old when something like that is exciting. :-D
Suddenly, there was the wild and crazy selection of cheeses available, at pretty much every major grocery store. Then we found a local chain that specialized in European imports, baked their own bread in wood fired ovens, and had a deli consistently rated as the best in the city, year after year. It was thanks to this store that I discovered charcuterie platters, which became a much enjoyed treat, any time we could. We began to try new cheeses every time we could squeeze it into the budget.
I’ve long been interested in making as many things myself as I could, including making yogurt and yogurtcheese.
I definitely was interested in making other cheeses, and never really thought I could do more than make something like mozzarella or ricotta – cheeses that don’t require any aging. Then we moved provinces, and I discovered that apparently, cheeses just aren’t as popular out here. The specialty cheese sections in grocery stores don’t have anywhere near the variety, even in the city, that we’d become used to. But, what are we to do? It’s not like we could make any of these, ourselves, right? I mean, it’s not like we had access to raw milk in the first place, never mind the equipment, space, access to cultures and so on. I knew people who did make cheeses like Gouda at home, but they were farmers with cows or goats they were milking.
Then I stumbled upon The Curd Nerd, Gavin Webber, and his YouTube channel.
Talk about inspiring!!
Gavin Webber is an Australian who has been doing cheese making tutorials and “Ask the Cheesemaker” live streams and podcasts since late 2009. You’ll find videos on the making of MANY different types of cheese, followed up later with taste tests. He talks about what equipment is needed (much less than I expected), how to sanitize them, how to age cheese in a fridge, how to wax cheeses, and more. All done in his own home.
He even talks about the failures.
There are even videos on how to clean your cheese cloth, and other topics, like making mead, and the construction of his cob oven.
It was these next two videos – especially the taste testing one – that won me over.
We need to start making our own cheese.
I just love how enthusiastic and excited he gets about cheese!!! Oh, how I want to be tasting those cheeses with him!
Inspiring indeed!
I now feel we actually can start making a wide variety of cheeses at home. We are looking to convert the old root cellar into a cheese cave, but even if it turns out to not have the conditions needed, I now know we can work around that and still be able to make our own ages cheeses – in varieties that are not available locally, or well beyond our budget to indulge in.
I was talking to my daughter a little while ago when she happened to mention the current indoor cat count we have right now.
Eighteen.
I … really hadn’t thought about that. We’ve now got 8 cats upstairs, plus the 2 mamas and their 8 babies in the basement.
That is insane.
Two Face has changed noticeably after her surgery. She is so much more cuddly now. Lately, this is what I’ve been waking up to.
She now likes to lean hard against me while I’m sleep. Cheddar also likes to do that, so I woke up book ended in cats.
Then there are the boys outside. I think they’re lonely! All the ladies, except Rosencrantz (who didn’t make an appearance this morning) are now indoors.
Potato Beetle was funny this morning.
He wanted SO much attention!
One of the things I started to do this morning is dismantle the shelter we made with the old dog houses, so I can use the black tarp to help warm up the soil in one of the areas we want to plant.
There was a bit of a hang up.
The snow had accumulated in one area, enough for the cloth to touch the ground. Of course, that created a puddle when the snow melted.
Freezing the tarp to the ground.
I used a metal bar that was one of the weights keeping the tarp from blowing away to bash apart the ice, then left it to weigh down the tarp. The ice should melt away faster now.
But not today.
We’re barely above freezing temperatures today. Starting tomorrow, and for the next 14 days, according to the long range forecasts, we will finally hit double digit temperatures.
The dog houses were well used over the winter, I was happy to see.
I could see tamped down paths in the straw around them, the insides were flattened, and there was a hole leading under one of them. I even found a flattened spot on top of one of the dog house roofs, where something had curled up and made a nest in the straw, directly under the tarp.
The straw will be left here for now, though wind might be a problem.
In some places, it already is.
It’s been quite windy for the past couple of days. This tarp is being torn to shreds!
I would love to have someplace I could properly store this old post pounder, but the one shed that I could pull it into has a roof full of holes and is starting to fall apart. Like way too many other things around here! :-( If I could clear enough space in a section of the barn, we might be able to store it in there, though at this point, I don’t even know how we would pull it. The hitch damaged, and both tires are flat.
We’ll figure something out.
I am really looking forward to the warmer temperatures. I’m just itching to get to work around the yard! Tomorrow, though, I have the rest of the seeds I have waiting to get started indoors.
Then I have to start scavenging around the various sheds and the barn, to see what’s available to build trellises out of.
This afternoon, one of my daughters and I brought our inside mama cat to the vet for a check up. She has been acting very ornery and out of sorts, and my daughter, sweetheart that she is, wanted to get her checked out.
They did some blood tests and even a quick ultrasound to make sure she wasn’t pregnant (ha!), and everything checked out okay. As she is an estimated 10 years old (we’re guessing she was about a year old when she first found us), it is most likely she is in pain from arthritis. My daughter got 2 weeks of pain killers, one every 24 hours, to try her out on and see if she improves.
They’re supposed to taste like cat treats, but she did not want to take it! Normally, I’m able to get the cats to take pills fairly easily (we just gave all of them worm pills, not long ago), but she was pretty upset and fought us off. We gave her more time, then tried giving her the pill in with a piece of meat.
She ate it right away.
Hopefully, this will make a difference. We were instructed to stop giving them to her immediately, if she starts to throw up. I don’t know how long it’ll be before we should be noticing a change, if any. After these are gone, we will know whether or not this is something to continue.
Thankfully, the bill wasn’t as high as we feared it would be. The vet recommended getting her fixed, even at her age, as apparently females that aren’t have a higher risk of urinary tract infections. With my daughter’s reduced hours at work, it’s going to be a while before she can afford to do that.
I really, really appreciate that she’s doing this, because we sure as heck can’t. :-(
Later in the day, my daughter and I disturbed the kitties. I wanted to give them clean bedding, which meant we had to take the babies out of their nests, then persuade the mamas to follow. We had a crate with one of the cat mats I’d crocheted at the bottom to put them in, which meant I could get a good photo of both litters in the process.
Butterscotch babies!
Here are Butterscotch’s babies. We now have a soft bed in the old radio she’s made a nest in that is large enough to cover the entire floor, plus go up the sides a bit. The babies will have softness and warmth around them, even when they start getting more squirmy and moving around in there.
Getting them out was a challenge. Two of them were attached, and did not want to let go of the nip! Butterscotch, at least, was fairly easy to lure out after the kittens were taken out.
Beep Beep, on the other hand, needed more persuasion! After taking her babies out, she stayed in the box her next is in and would not come out. The box is under a chair, and I ended up having to take the chair away, then we had to upend the box to get her out. I moved the box aside, as even the floor under it was damp, but as soon as I put it on the floor, she was right back in it!
Beep Beep babies!
We don’t have another box the same size, so we flipped it so the damp cardboard is now at the top and able to dry out, put a new clean bed inside, then shifted which chair it was under, so it was on dry floor.
The good thing about concrete floors; we’ll be able to clean and sanitize any messes much more easily!
As soon as the box was set up again, Beep Beep was right in there, and happy to get her babies back.
I think they were all glad to have new bedding, too!
I had to dig one of them out from behind Beep Beep’s head. :-D
Butterscotch’s kittens are much harder to get pictures of.
I finally just stuck my phone in and used voice activation to take some photos, hoping it was angled right.
I got one shot that managed to include all the babies. :-D
We want to move the kittens and mamas out of their nests so we can put down fresh, clean cat beds, but don’t want to disturb them so soon after birth.
In other areas…
I took a closer look at one of our surviving blue spruces, of a group of three that had been planted way two close together, some years ago.
Most of the remaining branches have cold damage like this at the tips. It should be okay, but might take a while to recover from having its newest growth killed off.
Yesterday, I posted a photo of one area we will need to address, when the time comes for us to plant the fruit and nut trees we are planning to do in the future. Here is another area we’ll have to figure out.
Among the trees I hope we will be able to plant are Korean pine. This is a tree that needs to have a “shade shelter” for the first couple of years, and this location naturally provides that for most of the day. However, as you can see, this is also where water pools in the spring. That shade also means the snow takes a lot longer to melt away, and the ground stays frozen longer.
What we eventually want to do is get this package of hardy nut trees. It will be some time before we can afford that. In the shorter term, I hope to slowly acquire a good variety of fruit trees and bushes from this site, that can survive in our growing zone. They even have a variety of apricot that can grow in a zone 3!
This is one of the reasons I want to expand the inner yard to include the outer yard. I see no point in replacing the old and broken fences around the inner yard. If we just get rid of those (the chain link fence is still sturdy, and can at least be used as a trellis), we’ll have easier access to areas we can plant food trees and bushes.
We just have to make sure the fence around the outer yard doesn’t have any gaps or weak spots the renter’s cows can break through, if his electric fence gives out again. :-)
We still need to finish clearing and cleaning the inner yard, but if all goes well, I hope to get started on the outer yard this summer, too. Especially if we want to start salvaging some things we’re finding to use for gardening and so one. I can foresee a time when we’ll even have greenhouses in the outer yard area. But first, we need to do a lot of clean up out there – including cleaning up a collapsing log building, and figuring out how to salvage the log building that we used to use as a chicken coop, when I was a kid. That one still looks solid.
So… I’m a suck. Especially when it comes to the cats.
But if you have been following this blog for a while, you knew that already. ;-)
While our basement maternity ward is certainly warmer than outside, when I checked on the mamas and babies earlier today, I noticed that the babies felt a bit chilly.
Therefore, on the principle of “put on a sweater, Mom is cold”, I decided to borrow and set up the upstairs heater at the end of the basement where the newborns are. Then, I had to stay in the basement, since it’s not supposed to be left on unattended.
Which gave me the opportunity to finish the hanging rig I’d whipped together when making cheese.
I had already done some basic sanding, as well as a bit of damage repair, a couple of days ago. Having picked up some more sandpaper yesterday, I could now finish the job.
The piece with the crack I’d glued was rough enough that I actually used a rasp we found while cleaning the basement, to get the roughest parts a bit smoother. I then spent the next couple of hours working my way through sandpaper grades until all the pieces were silky smooth.
The basement got nice and warm while I was doing that. The mamas and kitties seemed to be quite content with this. :-)
Then, because I had some, I rubbed the wood with mineral oil.
If I hadn’t had any, I would have eventually picked up some type of varnish, or maybe paint, to finish it with later.
In my rush to make the rig, I’d drilled a pilot hole in the cross piece a bit off. I was going to drill a new hole, lined up with the other side, but when I measured it, the new hole would have been just too close to the existing one. So I left it. I’ll just have one leg a bit off from the other.
The final step was to reassemble it, using wood glue at the ends of the side pieces to stabilize it.
Here are the before and after pictures.
It really doesn’t look a lot different, but trust me. It is! No possibility of getting splinters anymore, for starters. :-D I’m glad I happened to have the mineral oil to treat the wood. Once the glue has cured, it will be nice and solid, too.
We’re now all set for any future preserving we do that requires hanging a bag to drain. Plus, if we had to, we could even add a couple more cup hooks to hang up to three jelly bags or something, if needed.
My morning routine now includes checking on the mamas in the basement. I wanted to see how Butterscotch and her babies were doing inside the old radio she decided to give birth in.
Unfortunately, we never thought we’d need to clean the inside of it.
I’m glad one of the cat beds I crocheted fit in there, because the rest of it is really dirty and gross.
Also, this old radio also has a record player in it. I didn’t realize that until I noticed a piece of it sticking out like a drawer. Turns out there is a pullout turntable. Gutted, of course, but the drawer is still there.
While I was checking out Butterscotch, Beep Beep was in the cardboard box we’d made a cat cave out of that fits under a chair. She was curled up in the back, but I could still reach to pet her. Both of them were purring furiously, too. Then, since I was taking pictures of Butterscotch, I decided to take a picture of Beep Beep, too.
It wasn’t until I saw something odd in the picture preview that I realized, she was not alone!
Two little wormy babies!
I’m pretty sure she wasn’t done, either. I expect to find a couple more, the next time I head down to check on them. :-)
While doing my rounds outside, I have been making a point of checking various areas we haven’t been able to get to throughout the winter and assessing things.
The Potato Beetle assisted me in checking out the deer damage on one of the birch trees.
This huge lake of a puddle still had a sheet of ice on the surface. We’re supposed to reach 9C this afternoon; the warmest we’re expected to get for the next week or so. I expect this is going to either get bigger, or finally start to be absorbed into the ground. When it comes time for us to plant the fruit and nut trees we are planning on, we will have to take into account areas like this that flood every spring. This area may puddle in the spring, but in the summer, all of this area gets very dry. The north-east corner is the area that is the worst. Even grass and weeds have a hard time growing in that corner.
I also took the opportunity to extend my rounds into the outer yard. If we were to do a burn, this would be the perfect time for it, as the ground is still quite wet. It would be really good to get rid of the years of dried grass built up, as it becomes a major fire hazard by summer.
With future plans becoming more solidified, I have been looking at the stuff lying about with a new eye for salvage or other usefulness. There are, for example, two really good saw horses outside the storage shed. The ones I have currently in the garage are in much worse shape, so I want to bring these ones over to the house.
Once they are no longer frozen to the ground.
There are some other things, like metal… balcony rails? … that could be set up as temporary fencing around some garden areas. There are a lot of things that have been shoved under the storage shed itself that I’ll want to take a closer look at.
Inside the shed itself, there are things that we could definitely find uses for. If we can get at it. As we cleared out my parents’ stuff from the house, we’ve shoved so many things into here, it’s going to be hard to get at things. We will have to get into there and re-arrange things, though. Some of the stacks of boxes are collapsing, as bottom boxes have given out. This shed was my late brother’s workshop, and I’m sure there are all kinds of useful things hidden away in there. I’d love to be able to reclaim it as a workshop some day, but what do we do with all my parents’ stuff? My mother is adamant that we keep it all, though she has said I could sell some of it off, if I want. She keeps suggesting holding a garage sale, which I have no interest in doing. I’ve done these in the city with little success. What good is having a garage sale this far off the beaten path? I might try using eBay or something, but am in no position to sort through things and take pictures right now.
It would be a good way to try and raise money for a new roof, though. We’ve got to come up with some way to raise the money, because we sure as heck won’t be able to save up for it with our current fixed income. Not with so many other things making demands on every spare penny. I most definitely am not complaining; that fact that we have spare any pennies at all is something I am grateful for. The reality of it is, if we’re going to keep this place up just in the basics of maintenance and repair, we’re going to have to come up with other solutions.
Before heading into town, I paused to say hello to the mamas. Butterscotch was content to stay in her cave and just stick her head out every now and then to accept scritches, purring away. The opening is not that big, and it’s dark in that old radio, so I tried the technological method.
Sticking my phone in the opening and taking a picture.
Butterscotch was not too keen on that whole “flash” thing! :-D
I did, however, manage to get a picture of the kitties!
Unless there are others hidden somewhere, it looks like she’s had 4 kittens again; three orange tabbies and one grey and white tabby.
They. Are. So. Cute!!!
Judging from how active Beep Beep is, she might not be due for another week or two. :-D But who knows? We might have more kittens sooner than that.
I’m glad we have the mamas inside. Today has been an odd day, weather wise. When I did my rounds, it was rather pleasant. After dropping my daughter off at work, it was a combination of rain and snow. By the time I got to the dump, it was snowing, then when I got home, it was raining one moment, snowing the next. Well. More snow than rain.
This turned out to be not very pleasant for my daughter at work. They’ve had to close down the staff lunch room, because it’s too small to maintain physical distancing. For most of the staff, that didn’t matter. They live close enough that they could just go home for lunch. My daughter picked up lunch at a nearby grocery store, then ate outside. Which meant she was sitting on a concrete sidewalk in the cold for almost an hour, because there is no indoor public place anyone can sit and eat anymore. :-( Thankfully, she’s one of those people with a built in furnace and isn’t as bothered by the cold.
Also, it’s a good thing we still have my husband’s disability income to live on during the current lock down, because she’s down to just one shift a week. Her employer is actually adding a bonus to people’s wages to make up for some of the loss of hours, but of course, it isn’t much. Who knows how long any of this can be sustained.
I headed into town very early, because as far as I knew, the hardware store closed at 4. As I was approaching the doors, I saw a staff member putting away the outside displays already, so I made sure to look for the hours. I found the sign saying they closed at 3. It was 2:55! I commented to the guy, apologetically, about how they were about to close and was about to leave. He stopped me and asked me to go ahead in, assuring me I they wouldn’t lock the doors on me! :-D Thankfully, I knew exactly where I needed to go to find the sandpaper I was looking for. Normally, I would have looked around for anything else I might need, but not today.
As I was paying for it, more people were coming into the store, and no one was telling them the store was about to close. Normally, this would be one of those times you’d read about in Not Always Right, and the rude customers forcing staff to stay long before their shifts have ended because they came in after closing. I did not get that impression today. I got the sense they would love to have stayed open longer, and wanted all the customers they can get right now! Even a large, national franchise like this one can only take so much loss. :-(
The grocery store nearby, however, had no such time restrictions. Happily, I was able to find a large box of cat litter (the last one, hidden way in the back of the shelf) and a large bag of cat food. If we’re careful (and keep the kibble bin in the house, instead of the sun room for the skunks to get into), we should be okay for the rest of the month.
So we are well stocked and, aside from a trip to the vet with another cat on Monday, and my daughter’s 1 shift a week, we can be homebodies for the rest of the month. If the weather co-operates, I hope that means I can start cleaning up all the fallen branches in the yard, now that the snow is almost all gone, and get some black plastic over some of the areas we are planning to garden in this year, to help the soil warm up faster. :-)
There is certainly no shortage of things that need to be done. :-)
The Re-Farmer 