Month: April 2020

Cat company and good news

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This morning, I had the boys keeping me company as I did my rounds.

They do love that post! :-D It’s one of their favorite things to climb and scratch when they follow me.

Later, I hear meowing from another direction and eventually spotted Butterscotch making her way through the trees.

With some difficulty.

She is still pregnant.

Poor thing! When I came to pick her up, she would not let me near her. I wanted to carry her over the deep snow, but I think she doesn’t want to be picked up right now.

I don’t know how much time we’ve got to clear out the basement. I don’t know about the girls, but I’m hurting quite a bit today and will probably not be able to get to it again. At least nothing too physical. I suppose I could take a break for our 32nd anniversary. ;-)

Not a complete break, though. I whipped up a couple of mats that we will use to create cozy nests that I hope Butterscotch and Beep Beep will be content with to have their babies on.

They already pass the Susan test. Susan, of the still nekkid shaved belly. I can’t believe how long it’s taking for her fur to grow back after getting spayed!

In other areas, we got some good news. Not long ago, a nurse at the long term care facility my almost 100 yr old aunt is in tested positive for the Wuhan virus. The nurse went into isolation, as did 9 residents that had already been displaying signs of respiratory illness. This, in itself, is not unusual for the facility, but they took precautions and tested them, just in case.

Well, today it was announced that the nurse’s test was a false positive. There is no Wuhan virus in the facility at all. With this news, I believe our area is back to zero cases.

After I got the news, I phoned my mom to let her know. She had already heard the news on the radio, so that was good. As we got to chatting, I mentioned the work we’ve been doing in the basement, and that I’d taken 11 batteries to the barn. She flipped out a bit, thinking I was planning to throw them away. I told her no, I was planning to take them to a scrap yard, to sell them by weight. I think she still thought I was talking about the dump and went on about there being people who would buy them. Eventually, she told me that she used to phone someone who would come to the farm and buy old batteries from her. Which is good to know, but it does make me wonder just how many of these there would have been if she hadn’t done that! I don’t think she realizes, however, that if I take them to a scrap yard myself, I’ll get a better price. I also had a hard time explaining to her that I couldn’t get rid of the batteries now, anyhow, because of the lockdown. Just as she expected to be able to go to a restaurant for lunch after her doctor’s appointment, she seemed to think I’d be able to get a scrap dealer to come over and buy old batteries off of me. I’m a bit surprised by that, considering her own building is, literally, locked down and all regular social events are cancelled, and she can’t even go to church. For me, it’s easier to forget, since we are already pretty isolated and not much has changed at home.

Speaking of which, time to pain killer up and get back at it!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: basement progress

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Normally, Sunday is our day of rest. No unnecessary work is done.

Unfortunately, cleaning the basement has crossed over into the “necessary work” category. Part of the challenge is finding a time to do it when the girls and I are all physically up to it. We need to get it safe enough to use as a cat maternity ward, and we may already be too late for Butterscotch. I haven’t seen her all day today.

We got a huge amount of progress done, and there is still much to do. We’re not even doing much sorting. Though there were some things that very obviously needed to go straight to the junk pile, most went to be stored in the barn. Including…

… lots of motors. In the photo is 5 of the 6 small motors we cleared out. There are more, larger motors that still need to be moved. I will be trying to keep them all together in the barn. I have no idea what their state or status is, but my brother might now.

Of course, we also found all sorts of interesting things. Including this blast from the past for me!

Yeah. That’s a “throwing star”. One of my boyfriends in high school made it for me in shop class. It used to be nice and shiny, and boy could that thing sink keep into a wooden door!

We also found a panel of chain mail. I don’t know if it’s a front or back panel, but it was clearly meant for a very small person. I have no idea who in my family would have gotten themselves some chain mail!

Manual hair clippers! This was a cool and unexpected find! They were well protected in their box, thankfully. The massive towing chain and hook it’s leaning on is another unexpected find. :-D

A light bulb for a type of light I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere, yet.

(Thanks, 53Old, for your comments about this. This is a Made in Canada, 3AU6 vacuum pentode tube, most likely from one of the many TVs we acquired when my parents bought some property many years ago. There was an old shed that had at least a dozen old TVs in there, some of which had their solid wood cabinets converted into shelves we are using now.)

We also found some stuff I was really excited about. They are going to be quite useful!

A couple of modern planers, and a clamp. A bit of clean up, and I hope to get good use out of these.

I was more excited to find this.

A small vice with a table clamp. We have a larger vice in the shed we keep our lawn mowers in that I’ve already found useful, but it’s the type that gets affixed permanently to a surface. I was already thinking of seeing if I could find a smaller one with a clamp at one of the local hardware stores, and now I don’t have to!

We found lots of other things, too, that I didn’t get pictures of.

Here is how the basement looked, after we hauled some stuff out and called it a day.

All the rubber boots still in the shelves will need to be thrown out. They’re so old, they’re brittle.

Hmmm… Three table legs got taken to the barn. I wonder if that round table top is the table they belonged to?

At one point, the floor in the foreground was full of stuff that got hauled out. The shopping cart is full of old wood, picture frames and frame glass that needs to be removed with care. The cardboard box partially visible on the bottom right has broken glass in it.

The sheet of pink rigid insulation was brought down for something you’ll see in another photo. Some of this stuff will stay, while others will be hauled to the barn. The broom is leaning in my mother’s old sewing machine. That’s a keeper, for sure!

Quite a lot got cleaned out of the “bar”. Still lots more to get rid of. It’s still cleaner than it has been, in decades! We’ll need to get into it with a vacuum cleaner and crevice tool, to get rid of the very old mouse droppings and bits of broken glass.

There are still a few bottles to move out, but most of them have already been set aside into the old basement.

Eventually, we will go through these. The ones we want to keep, including for future bottle bricks, will be thoroughly cleaned. Unfortunately, a few of the old wine bottles we dug up still have liquid in them. *shudder* The rest will go to the landfill for recycling. There are a few bottles we found that might actually be collector items, too.

The rigid insulation is now covering an opening (formerly a window, I think) into the old basement. The main focus for here was to 1) make sure that opening stays covered and 2) there is no gap any future exploring kittens can fall into in the back.

The bottom cupboards of this shelf has lots of old paint cans in it. From the smell when I looked inside, there is at least one that is leaking.

The shelf itself is in pretty terrible shape, and I’d love to replace it some day.

Some day.

The other old shelf is in slightly better shape. At some point, I want to set up that drill press in an easily accessible location, and test it out.

Hopefully, we didn’t overdo it today, and will be able to continue tomorrow. Once we have it safe, and access to the old basement is blocked to cats, we’ll be able to set up a cozy area for kitties. I’m just hoping that, if Butterscotch has already had a litter, we can find them and bring them inside. It’s way too early for kittens, and their chances of survival are not that good right now. :-(

Lots of work to do before we get to that point, though!

The Re-Farmer

Budding

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My daughter spotted a surprise in our largest aloe vera, Sarlac 2.

It’s starting to send up a flower spike!

This aloe traveled with us during the move. Before the move, we were able to sell quite a few things, including several of Sarlac 1’s transplanted babies. We had intended to bring the Sarlac along with us, but realized it was simply too big to fit in our van, even without all the other stuff we had to jam into there. So when someone came to buy this plant, I asked if they’d be willing to upgrade to the mama plant and we’d keep this one.

Not only did they agree to take the mother aloe, they ended up buying almost all the remaining potted aloes as well!

So that saved us a whole lot of space.

The Sarlac was a massive, toothy aloe we’d had for quite a few years, but it wasn’t until we moved to a larger townhouse in the co-op that it apparently got the amount of sun it was longing for. Shortly after, it threw out a flower spike with three buds on it – then a second spike, soon after! I’d never seen an aloe bloom before. Unfortunately, the spikes tipped the balance of the aloe – literally. The pot fell under the weight. Everything survived just fine, including the pot, but we transplanted to a pot with straight sides, instead of the more decorative pot with a narrower base.

Our umbrella tree is in that pot right now, and this experience is why I’m really wanting to find a larger, straight sided pot for it.

The girls and I will be re-arranging the living room over the next week. My husband has moved his computer set up into his bedroom, closer to his hospital bed, so now there’s this strange empty space. As we move things around, we’ll hopefully find a better arrangement for the plants in the process, including a better spot for the mini-greenhouse until it can go outside.

I did end up stopping at the post office today, where I could also pick up some more deer feed (the post office is in an old style general store, so it’s got a little bit of all kinds of things!) and found my back ordered birdhouse gourd seeds in the mail box. We will be starting these indoors, too. I was more than ready to start the cucamelon and fennel, but even if we were to transplant earlier than the last frost date, it would still be way too early to start them indoors. They can be started closer to the middle of the month, then the rest of the things we want to start indoors, like these gourds, can be started about a week later.

It’s nice to think about budding things when there’s still snow on the ground!

The Re-Farmer

Tracking

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The snow was gone in a lot of places before the storm hit a couple of days ago. I could even see green grass through last year’s thatch. So it was no surprise that we’ve seen virtually no deer. Even in the trail cam facing where they cross the road to our place went from streams of dozens of deer to … nothing. In just a couple of days.

With snow falling pretty much continually for the past two days, all the yards and gardens were covered with a pristine white blanket.

Yesterday evening, we saw three skittish deer making their way to the feeding station. They didn’t really get much to eat, as something spooked them and they ran off. They were the first deer to visit us since before the snow fell.

This is what I found this morning.

Tracks, everywhere!

The area around the feeding station was torn up as they dug through the snow to get at the seeds below (which a couple of cats took advantage of. :-D ). From the heavy trails through the garden and trees on the west side, more came and went from that direction than from along the spruce grove to the east. The east yard was full of tracks as they headed towards the barn as well. Tracks went through the spruce grove as well, and my rounds had be going past where a couple of them jumped the south fence to cross the driveway to the old hay yard.

It should be interesting when I check the trail cam files. That will wait until I come back from town after dropping my daughter off at work.

For now, I have to grab a shovel and clear the plow ridge. The snow was soft enough, we didn’t bother clearing the driveway, but the wall of snow at the road is something else entirely!

The Re-Farmer

Are you staying home?

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So… I did a bit of shoveling when I headed out to do my rounds this morning.

There is no drifting in front of the house, so the depth of snow you’re seeing is what fell. I figure it’s about 6-7 inches. There is still a light snowfall as I write this. We’ve got winds from the north, but nothing like we had overnight.

Between the snow and the stay-at-home conditions right now, I thought I’d share this questionnaire I found. It’s being passed from blog to blog, so I don’t know who to credit for it, but I thought it might be fun. Feel free to leave your own answers in the comments. :-)

Are you staying home from work/school?

Home is my “work”, so… no? Yes? My husband is on disability, so no change for him. One daughter works at a pharmacy, and while her hours may have been cut, she is an essential worker and still has her job. My other daughter has an internet based business. So really, not much change for any of us.

If you’re staying home, who is with you?

My husband and my daughters.

Who would be your ideal quarantine mate?

My husband and my daughters.

Are you a homebody?

YES!!!

An event you were looking forward to that got canceled?

None. We don’t really do stuff like that. Everything is either too far away or too expensive. Or both. The one thing we’d planned that got cancelled at the last minute was a dinner with my brother and his wife. I was really looking forward to that.

What movies have you watched recently?

Hmm. I don’t usually watch movies. I think the last one I watched was Paprika.

What shows are you watching?

Mostly YouTube channels I’ve been discovering. Also stuff on Tubi. It’s free and while some things have commercials, they are short and quiet. I discovered the series, The Edwardian Farm and The Victorian Farm, and now I’m hooked on Peter, Ruth and Alex.

What music are you listening to?

I don’t actually listen to music much anymore. If I’m working in the basement or outside, and not making too much noise in the process, I’ll get a playlist going. I have very eclectic interests. My daughters have found some very interesting artists they’ve introduced me to, as well. My playlist includes Tom Waits, Cosmo Sheldrake, The HU, Tengarr Cavalry, Sam Lee, Wardruna, Twenty One Pilots, Mumford and Sons, Sivu, Eliza Rickman, Garmarna, Unwed Mothers, and songs from the movies Dhoom I, II and III, among many others.

Excuse me while I get some music going while I answer the rest of this! :-D

What are you reading?

If the questions means reading of books, sadly, I don’t read anywhere near as much as I used to. Too many distractions, and my eyes aren’t what they used to be. I’ve been working my way through the Bible again, through a ‘chronological Bible in a year’ daily devotional. Most of the reading I do are articles I find while doing research and blogs I follow.

What are you doing for self-care?

Hhhmm… That’s not something I really think about. It’s just sort of woven into my days. Things like, letting go of situations that are not in my control. Not taking on too many things at once. Doing crochet and other crafts. Learning how to do new things. Researching stuff that interest me. It’s something I had to put a priority on, many years ago. One of the things I discovered about myself is that I have to write. There was a time when circumstances prevented me from sitting down and writing at all, never mind on a regular basis. The girls would have both been under 10 yrs old at the time, I think. After about a year, I found myself in a pretty bad place, stress-wise. It was really awful. Setting aside time to write regularly made a HUGE difference. So I guess my biggest “self-care” activity right now is writing in this blog!

So how about you? How has the Wuhan virus affected you and your household? How are you holding out?

The Re-Farmer

Just a bit …

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… of a spring storm.

I’m not looking forward to clearing the driveway after this.

It’s supposed to continue snowing through most of the day. I was planning to go to the post office, as I’m expecting some packages, but I think I will wait until Monday! My daughter is working on Saturday, which is supposed to still be chilly. There isn’t going to be much of a window to clear the driveway so she can get to work, and I can get the rest of my husband’s prescription refills.

On Sunday, it’s supposed to warm right up again, and stay warmer for the rest of the week, even as we’re supposed to get a bit more snow. Things should melt away fairly quickly.

Which isn’t going to help us get out and about tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Winter is back!

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So are the juncos.

The deer have suddenly stopped coming around, which leaves plenty of seeds for the returning juncos. I haven’t seen these guys in ages!

I’m certainly glad my mother’s appointment had been rescheduled for yesterday and not, say, today. Yesterday was a very pleasant day and the roads were great. If it had been for today, I’d have already called to reschedule by now!

There is, in fact, a large puddle of water over much of the area here. Thankfully, the lower part of my snow boots are waterproof, so as long as I skirted the edges of where I knew the water to be, I would be fine.

Some little critter got wet feet!

The deeper water is still filling with snow. Though it’s -7C (19F) right now, with a wind chill of -15C (5F), the water is not yet freezing. Just filling with snow.

By the time I’d gone to bed last night (past 2am!), it was still raining. The van had been parked by the house so we wouldn’t have to walk through the water and mud between the house and the garage. I looked out the window a few times last night, debating if I should move it to the garage.

I probably should have moved it to the garage, but trying to skirt around the water and mud in the dark to get back to the house just didn’t appeal to me.

With the rainfall earlier, the van doors had started to freeze shut. I brushed only a bit of the snow off, and scraped enough of the windshield to see enough to drive to the garage. In the time it took me to put away the scraper and start the van, the snow was already covering the windshield enough to make it harder to see again!

I am really thankful to have a garage for the van. It may have only a dirt floor and be filled with mystery stuff and junk, but I love having it. Before moving here, we parked outdoors, but at least if something went wrong, it was relatively easy to get it to a mechanic – unlike now, when we have to take it to other towns! With a vehicle like ours, I want to protect and baby it as much as possible. I don’t know how many years we’ve got left in it, and we depend on it so much.

While looking at the long range forecasts a few days ago, I remember thinking about how there is almost always one last blowout in April, usually around our anniversary. Which is in a few days. :-D The forecasts at the time showed nothing but warm and pleasant conditions.

It took a few days for the forecasts to change, but here it is! We’re expected to get 5-10cm (2-4 inches) of snow in our area today, with snow continuing through to tomorrow. To the south of us, especially around the city, they’re predicting 10-15cm (4-6 inches). It’s supposed to warm up for the weekend, then we’ll continue to have more snow off and on over the next week. We’re getting the big stuff now, though, with a huge weather system sweeping up from the US.

I think this is a good day to start prepping our seed trays and maybe starting the cucamelons. They’re the ones that need the most time before transplanting and, for our region, absolutely must be started indoors. That mini greenhouse my daughter bought for me with be great to not only help keep the planting trays warm in this chilly house, but protect them from the cats! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Recommended: Historical Italian Cooking

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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!

One of my life long interests has been human history.

Not the names and dates, wars and politics, conquerors and empires stuff.

No. My interest has always been in, how did ordinary people live? What did they wear? How did they work? What tools did they use? What kind of homes did they have? How and what did they hunt? What foods did they gather or grow? What skills did they develop? How did they do for fun?

Over the years, I found that the best way to learn about a people and their culture is through what they wore, and what they ate. It’s amazing how much everything else revolves around those two things!

In the process, I developed a love of historical cooking.

Recently, I discovered a YouTube cooking channel that has become my favorite. My daughters and I will happily sit and watch them together, one after another.

My recommendation this week is Historical Italian Cooking.

This channel has only been around for a year, but has so much going for it! They focus specifically on the recreation of dishes from ancient Roman, Renaissance and Medieval periods of the region.

It is very different than most cooking channels and, subject matter aside, those differences are why I like it so much. I’ve tried watching other videos dedicated to historical cooking, and often find myself turned off by so many things. I think what I find the most irritating about these other channels is that they try too hard to be “entertaining”. I don’t enjoy the hosts going off on tangents, chattering with the crew, or all those other things that supposedly make them seem more “authentic”.

Just cook the food and tell me about it. That’s all I really want.

This channel, for me, makes perfect cooking videos!

The first thing that makes it stand out is the format.

Most of each video is just the camera filming from above a clean, distraction free, work surface. All you see of the chef is his hands. The various containers, bowls, boards and ingredients are laid out simply and clearly. When they go through the ingredients and fresh herbs are mentioned, it cuts to their garden, and the picking of herbs. Only the chefs arms are seen.

When the actual cooking occurs, you see the fire or oven and the cooking vessels. Again, the only view of the chef is of his hands.

The other thing I love about it is the narration. The speaker has a very calm, rhythmic manner of speaking. Even in the few videos where a woman takes over the narration (because the chef lost his voice), she speaks in the same rhythmic, soothing manner.

They also enunciate their words very clearly. For me, this is extremely important. I have an auditory processing problem. Though my hearing is quite excellent, when it comes to speech, sometimes things don’t translate well between the vibrations picked up by my ear drums, and how my brain turns those signals into words. If there are a lot of distractions, or a person has a particularly strong accent, instead of hearing words, I hear gibberish. Or sometimes, nothing at all. It’s like a blank spot, part way through a sentence. Most of the time, my brain can fill in the missing information, but sometimes, it just doesn’t work. When speaking to someone, I’ll ask them to repeat what they’ve said, but most mistake my request as me not understanding the meaning of what they were saying, so they rephrase what they said, instead of repeating their words. Which doesn’t usually help at all.

The narrator(s) in these videos speak English with very strong Italian accents. If they emoted more, or spoke faster, or were any more chatty, my brain would have endless problems processing their words. Instead, their measured and clearly enunciated speaking mannerisms are exactly right for me to hear every word. And I love it!

Another thing I love about this channel is how informative it is. While the chef is, say, busily grinding things with mortar and pestle, the narration will go on to explain where the recipe came from, the history of certain ingredients, what they had to do to recreate recipes that don’t include things like quantities or cooking times and temperature, or why they chose certain ingredients when the recipe itself didn’t specify anything beyond a general description. For ingredients that are difficult to find, they give modern alternatives. They even talk about the names and words used at times. It’s a fascinating and educational experience.

It’s very clear that the people making these videos have spent a great deal of time researching and testing these recipes before finally making the videos. Their dedication to authenticity shows everywhere. Many of the dishes, bowls, cups and cooking vessels are clearly hand made, using materials that would have been used in the time periods they cover. This includes tools made of wood, terracotta and even horn.

In the process of going through their “about” section on the channel, I found they also have a website, where you can find their recipes in English or Italian.

With our internet data limitations making video watching something I have to ration, I’m happy to find this, because I am really looking forward to trying some of these recipes myself!

The Re-Farmer