So, today wasn’t a very productive day. I managed to get some watering and weeding, but just didn’t have the spoons left to do more outside.
In an attempt to get at least something done today, I decided to continue practice carving on the spoon blank that came with my carving kit. After my husband was able to sharpen the curved blade of the sloyd knife, I had been able to test it out a bit, but not much more.
Today, I actually got some real progress today.
My husband came down with me and kept the kittens busy as much as he could, before he had to leave. The kittens, however, were much more interested in what I was doing.
Especially Leyendecker.
Then Saffron.
Okay, not so much interested in what I was doing, as they were in getting onto the front of me. In between trying to eat my hair and wrestling with each other on my shoulder.
Eventually, the forced their way into my arms, and that was it. No more carving.
They absolutely exhausted themselves, climbing all over me, it turns out. Here, Leyendecker is using Saffron as a pillow, while Big Rig was busily licking the inside of my ear. !!!
That really, really tickles.
And it’s really, really exhausting for kittens, too, it seems…
Big Rig slithered her way onto the pile and eventually settled under Saffron.
It wasn’t long before Turmeric joined them, and I had four kittens in my arms.
Turmeric’s head is actually visible in the above photo. It’s just hard to see it against Saffron’s belly.
Nicco came to check things out, but she was more interesting in Beep Beep, who was in aggressive grooming mode.
Then Beep Beep jumped onto the pile, and lay down.
Right on top of them.
Before I knew it, I had this…
Yup. They squirmed out from under her, and started nursing.
In my arms.
It was all I could do to keep my arms held in angles to keep them from sliding right off.
Thankfully, I already had my phone in my hand to take pictures, so I was able to use voice to text and message the girls to come rescue me.
Beep Beep heard them coming, so she jumped down, but the babies stayed.
My daughter was able to get a few photos, and that is the only reason why I have any pictures at all of the carving progress! LOL You can see the underside of the spoon on the table. The bowl has been carved out and now I am shaping it. The handle is intended to be a swoopy stem for the mushroom at the end.
With the girls’ help, I was de-kittened, the sharp stuff got put away, and I was able to escape. :-D
The kittens were too active to get good photos this morning.
Plants, on the other hand, are much more co-operative.
The first potato leaves have made their way through the mulch!
Yay!
Sadly, we are also down another sunflower. We found another one with just a stem, the leaflets gone. Total count is one less than yesterday.
We’ll still have a decent “wall” of sunflowers, but it will definitely have large gaps. If we do this again next year, we’ll know to get at least twice the number of seeds to start, and maybe even start them indoors, first. The sunflowers that have developed their true leaves seem to be left alone.
Basically, I’d managed to clear around an old tree stump, and not much else, before being driven indoors by the heat.
This time, I brought out the reciprocating saw to take down some of the larger things, including cutting the stumps of what I’d cleared before, to ground level.
One of the issues we have with using the outside plug is, even the weight of the cord itself tends to pulled it out enough to kill the power.
Today, I tried a solution that worked out just fine.
This pole used to have a bird feeder on it. I took the feeder off to repair it, but with the lilac growing over it, I don’t see use putting it back in this location again. At some point, we’ll pull it out, but for now, it’s coming in handy! :-D
Here is how the area I worked on looks now.
The branches in front, on top of a stump, are for the chipping/burn pile. I cleared as far back as the next stump.
This turned out to be a very finicky job. I kept having to pull things out by hand, like crab grass and small saplings growing out the roots of things I’d cut away last year, then raking out debris, just to get at the larger things I needed to cut down.
In the process, I uncovered a bunch of flowers. I don’t know what they’re called, but I’m finding them kind of all over the place.
I also uncovered these.
There are quite a lot of these very delicate little wildflowers! I tried not to pull any up as I cleared debris from around them.
Further in is where more cherry trees are. None of which have bloomed, that I ever saw. You can see on the right of this photo, the cherry trees that were killed off last spring, when we had a sudden drop in temperatures after they started blooming. They got fresh growth from their bases. I think I have identified one or two in this area that look like they are strong and healthy enough to keep. The rest will be taken out.
Meanwhile, covering the left half of the photo, berries are starting to form on what I believe are chokecherries!
These are pieces of cherry wood that I will be keeping for future projects.
This is the pile of debris I cleared away from that small area!
We’ve started a pile behind the old outhouse, of what is turning out to be a tree debris compost pile. Stuff that we don’t want to add to the chipping/burning piles, but that don’t belong in the compost pile, either.
When we get to the point where we will be building accessible raised bed gardens, debris like this will be used on the bottoms of the beds to help fill them.
It’s remarkable how much stuff came out of such a small area!
When next I work on this area, I want to start on the other side of where we want to put the cordwood outhouse, clearing more towards the junk/wood pile. There’s at least one old tree stump in there, plus fallen trees that need to be cleared out.
Those might end up being part of the walls of the outhouse! :-)
I’d like to be able to access the junk pile better, so we can go through it and see what wood in there can be salvaged, what needs to be added to the debris pile, and what needs to go into the junk pile that will be hauled to the dump.
There are two Saskatoons and an elm growing on that side. We’ll have to decide which, if any or all, of these will be kept.
There’s also a mound of… soil? beside it. I’d like to get rid of it, but it’s got a layer of grasses growing on it right now, so I can’t tell what it’s actually made up of. The other mystery pile out by the barn turned out to be a pile of insulation. I’m kind hoping this one is something like gravel, or even just dirt.
The goal at this point, though, it just to clear access to the junk pile, then get back to clearing the space the outhouse will be built on, and start clearing out the sod.
I’m happy to have gotten at least a little bit or progress in there today!
My daughters and I headed out towards the barn last night, and noticed the dogwood growing at the shed with the roof my brother and I patched is now blooming very enthusiastically!
It is such a strong, healthy bush! I’m hoping I can get away with leaving it alone, even though it’s growing right up against the shed. Unlike the maples growing along the side, I don’t think dogwood will grow in a way that will actively damage the shed.
While doing my rounds this morning, I noticed the Saskatoon bushes by the south fence have once again become infested. :-(
This is some sort of insect damage, and almost all the Saskatoon bushes along this area show some signs of it. Last year, there were very few Saskatoon berries, partly because the bushes were just not very healthy, and I believe this infestation is the reason. It doesn’t seem to be on any other type of tree around there, so whatever insect is doing this, they seem to have a preference for Saskatoons.
For the first time since noticing that something has been killing off sunflower seedlings, I found one where the leaves were still there. All the others, there was just a stub of a stem sticking out, and the leaflets were completely gone.
With a few other areas, I don’t expect any seedlings to break ground. The spots they were planted in appear to have been dug into by some critter. It may even have been skunks digging in the only soft soil in the area, looking for grubs, though the holes don’t look like the divots they usually leave in the yard.
My mother’s white lilacs, meanwhile, are at the peak of their blooming period!
Meanwhile, we had covered the squashes and cantaloupes last night, as the temperatures were expected to drop close to freezing. There was no frost warning, but it would still have been cold enough to hurt the squash and cantaloupes. They all looked just fine, when I uncovered them this morning. I’m glad we covered them. It got cold enough last night, that the furnace actually turned on!
After this, we aren’t expected to have temperatures that low again as far as the long range forecasts go. Hopefully, that will be the end of that!
Today started off very well, so I’ll start with that, too!
I’m happy to say that the new bed has made a huge difference. There must be something about no longer being so close to the floor, because I slept like a rock – for almost 11 hours!
Which meant I got a late start to doing my morning routine.
The kittens were in fine form this morning!
They found perfectly kitten sized places to hang out, about it all!
These little nooks exist only because the area under the entryway was walled off to make the root cellar. The ceiling there is slightly lower than the rest of the basement, so the top ledge there is actually level with the entryway floor, while below is the root cellar wall.
The upstairs cats wanted to play, too.
In the one photo, you can see David’s nose – and the glowing eye of another cat!
I’m going to have to delay doing the kitten stuff until there are others available to come down at the same time. Saffron and Turmeric got upstairs before I could close the door, while David, Cheddar and Two Face made it downstairs. While wrestling her kittens downstairs, Beep Beep went up and stayed there. I only saw three kittens, though, so I started looking around for Leyendecker and Big Rig. I realized Leyendecker had also snuck upstairs, when I saw tiny little black and white paws going past – right about where you can see David’s nose in the above photos. :-D So I got him down, but I still couldn’t find Big Rig. I feared she may have gotten into the old part basement, but after some searching, my daughter found her curled up asleep, under the bed frame. The box my husband’s computer came in had a cardboard divided that fits under there perfectly, and they use it to sleep in. I’d pulled it out, but apparently not enough, and never saw her. I felt no weight, and didn’t think to pull it out all the way! It was a relief to find her. Once we managed to get the adult cats out, we were able to treat the babies with some wet cat food, then persuade Beep Beep to come down again.
Once outside, I was joined by Creamsicle and Butterscotch.
Lots of things are blooming now.
More wild roses are blooming now.
I also checked on, and counted, the sunflowers.
I counted 30 this morning, with some having just broken ground. We also lost more; in one spot where I was sure there was a seedling growing, I checked more closely, and found the remains of a stem. :-(
I was very happy to find this. Last year, I spotted two little bunches of red berries on this bush. Using the magic of the internet, it turns out to be a cranberry bush.
It was not planted there deliberately.
This is another of the things that are getting more light, after I cleared away trees from the fence line. Last year, that resulted in this bush having just a few berries. This year, it is covered with clusters like this! I am thrilled to see them!
These are tiny wild strawberries growing at the base of a dead tree in the maple grove. We need to be weeded with great care, as the other growth is so close, it’s hard to pull them up, without also pulling up the strawberries.
This will require a lot of time set aside (after being liberally covered in bug spray) for delicate weeding. At some point, I’d like to transplant them to a better location, but transplant wild strawberries is another delicate thing!
I don’t know what these flowers are, but I really like them! Near them are some lilies that are full of buds.
The hawthorn my mother planted as a “living fence” bloomed so fast, I missed it! Berries are starting to form now.
I’ve read that hawthorn berries are edible. We might try something with them, one of these days.
My mother’s white roses and double lilacs planted near the old kitchen and sun room as looking good. The lilacs are almost done their blooming time, but the roses are just covered with buds!
After making sure it was okay with my mother first, checking to make sure there was nothing she wanted saved, I completely covered and mulched the old kitchen garden, two years ago. You can see what it was like when we started here (back when I thought the ornamental apple trees were cherry trees, because that’s where the original cherry tree had been planted, years before). As I cleaned up, you can see in this post, just how much the above flower had spread all over. I got it to the point where I could lay down a layer of cardboard, and finally cover it all in mulch. The idea was to basically kill off what was already growing there (especially the invasive vines we were finding all over the place!), and eventually use the space to grow vegetables and herbs that we use most.
After I finished all that, my mother suddenly started talking about some blue flowers that were there that she wanted me to keep, because they reminded her of flower that grew in Poland, when she was a child. I reminded her that she’d given me the okay to get rid of everything! Still, some things have worked their way through the mulch, including her little blue flowers, so she was happy to see them and asked me to save some. Which I can do. :-)
After I’d finished my rounds, I called my mother, then went to help her do a grocery shopping trip. That went quite well, and I was happy to be able to help her stock up on the bigger items she would normally have to pay to get delivered.
It was when I got home that things started to go wrong.
I had just driven through the gate and stopped the van so I could close it again, when I saw someone in my rear view mirror.
It was our vandal.
He’d seen me go by and came over.
He then proceeded to yell verbal abuse at me – all while recording me closing and locking the gate – from where he stood. I just ignored him while taking care of the gate, and he eventually just walked away, but he was yelling loud enough that the girls came out to see what was going on.
Based on past experience, from long before we moved out here, I knew I had to sit down and write down exactly what happened to record it. While I was in the middle of that, I got a call from my brother. It seems our vandal went straight from hurling verbal abuse at me, to calling my brother – who was at work – and verbally abusing him. There were things he said to both of us, though, that got us wondering about a triggering event. Once I had the chance, I called my mother.
Sure enough, it went back to her. He had left another abusive message on her answering machine, and she made the mistake of calling him back. She’d left a message, basically asking what he wanted from her, and they ended up speaking in person. He told her that he wanted to sell the farm and split up the money, part of which he believes he is entitled to. The farm, however, is supposed to stay in the family name, and that’s why she transferred the ownership to my brother. We had been trying to keep that quiet, but it’s public knowledge now. We have the same arrangement with my brother that we had with my mother. We are taking care of the place for him. So now we know, by his own words, that our vandal was pressuring my parents to change their wills for years, just so he could sell the farm to line his pockets.
This revelation explains why he started showing up recently on the trail cams, giving us the finger. He thinks something has been taken from him. I’m still a target, since we live here, and he believes the things that are here belong to him. Of course, he’s got his own place, so there is no reason anything of his should be here. He’s also the reason so many things disappeared over the years, and especially while the place was empty for 2 years.
Now that he knows about the transfer of ownership, it’s hard to say how he will continue his harassment. At least when it came to ownership of the farm, there was some predictability. Now that he knows the farm belongs to my brother, not my mother, he’s going to be coming up with something new. The only thing we can be sure of, is that he won’t stop. He’s become obsessed with this place, and my family living here.
*sigh*
Ah, well. It’s still better than what we left behind by moving here. We just have to worry about one crazy person, now. :-/
While doing my rounds this morning, I had some company.
Butterscotch looks downright malevolent! :-D
While checking things during my rounds, I found we have fewer sunflowers today, compared to yesterday. It’s possible I missed a couple, but it seems that something has been eating them. One or two at a time.
I visited the kittens again, after my rounds.
They really love that box of wood bits!
…
So, my morning posting got interrupted today. I am not continuing this almost 12 hours later!
My daughter happened to ask me about a bed frame I was looking to get. When we were prepping to move out here, one of the things we discovered was that the two twin sized box springs under our king size mattress were broken. No idea when that happened. We figured we could get new ones after the move.
Well, the move being the fiasco that it was, that didn’t happen. Instead, my husband and I had the mattress directly on the floor.
Which is not good for someone with a back injury. It was, however, the best of our mattresses. Also, the other mattresses were all twin sized.
When my husband ended up needing a hospital bed, we had to set the king size mattress aside and I used the spare twin. The king size ended up stuck behind the couch in the living room. It was just too big to put anywhere else. The cats, of course, discovered they could climb it and take naps up by the ceiling.
Which would have been fine, until they started using it as a scratching post.
Nothing we did would stop them. Of course, when we were asleep, we weren’t there to stop them. They were slowly destroying it. The only way to stop the destruction was to start using the mattress.
On the one hand, that was great. The twin mattress was a cheapy, and painful to sleep on, so the better quality mattress was much better on my body. On the other hand, my knees, feet and hips are pretty shot. Getting up and down from so low to the ground was taking its toll.
Eventually, we found the frame I wanted at Ikea; one that did not need box springs, and with 6 drawers underneath. We just had to save up for it.
Of course, other things kept popping up that was priority on the budget. Like repairing vehicles. This year, however, we finally got some decent tax returns, and were able to set some aside.
Just in time for Ikea to have a sale on the bed frame I wanted.
Which was out of stock.
Also, Ikea was closed because of the pandemic, and only doing online purchases. We would have an arranged time to pick up. So after a few days, when I tried again and saw 1 frame in stock, I tried to buy it.
Before I could finish going through the checkout process, it was gone.
So I signed up to be notified by email when it was in stock again.
Today was the last day of the sale, and when my daughter asked about it, I told her I hadn’t received an email saying they restocked. I decided, however, to check again. Just in case.
There was 2 in stock! They never contacted me.
I tried to buy it online, so we could pick it up later.
The website was having technical difficulties. When I tried to check out, it told me it was out of stock, but when I looked at the item directly, it still said there were two.
Their customer service web chat wasn’t working and when I tried phoning, there was no answer. Not even an automated one.
I did notice, however, that the store is now open to customers.
I decided to go for it. One of my daughters and I headed out within minutes. We couldn’t be sure there were any in stock – with a 2 hour drive to get to the location, at the far end of the city, even if they were in stock, that didn’t mean they still would be when we got there. We figured it was still worth it, and we could use the trip to go elsewhere, while we were at it.
I had the item number so when we finally got there, we made our way straight to the pick up area, but there was no aisle number. After asking around, we ended up at an information kiosk. The woman looked it up for me and…
Yes, there was indeed two left in stock.
We would never have found it in the pick up area, though. It turned out that the king size version of this bed frame was only available through their loading/pick up area. She called it in, gave me a print out with the bar code and order number so I could pay for it, and instructions on where to go to have it brought to us.
It was a bit confusing and frustrating, but it finally got done. Not only did I finally get a bed frame, but I was able to get it while it was still on sale.
Yay!
We took advantage of being in the city and made a couple more stops, then when we got home, the girls spent the next couple of hours assembling it.
I helped.
A little.
:-D
Once it was done, of course we all splayed out on it.
I love having a king size!
Then, I did something amazing.
I got up.
Then I sat down.
Then I got up and sat down and got up again.
Because I can do that now! Effortlessly!
The unplanned trip blew away any plans we had for today, but it was so worth it!!
This is going to be so much better on my knees!!!
I’m so excited! :-D
Yes, it’s the little things that make me happy. :-D
Welcome to my “Recommended” series of posts. These will be weekly – for now – posts about resources and sites 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!
This week, I would like to recommend a really excellent and interesting YouTube channel. How to Cook That, with Anne Reardon. Along with the YouTube channel, there is a website, and various other social media, Patreon, etc. sites, linked on the About page.
This channel has been putting up videos for 9 years, and the videos cover a LOT of ground! The primary focus is on dessert how-to’s, like this one from 2012.
Reardon – with the assistance of her incredibly brave husband! – also recreates some historical recipes.
That one is rather terrifying! :-D
They also put out “Clever or Never” videos, where they test out various kitchen gadgets.
We used to have the French Fry cutter they tested out here! Ours worked a lot more easily. I think the one they tested may have started to get pretty dull. :-D
Then there are her mind boggling Teeny Weeny Challenge videos.
I just can’t imagine working in that scale! Talk about going all the way, with that miniature kitchen, too!
The thing that first brought me to this channel, however is on a very serious note. Anne Reardon is a food scientist, and she has put out some very important videos. If you’re on Facebook at all, you’ve probably seen the cooking “hack” videos go by, which show several quick clips of “how to” make or do various things food related. Some of them simply don’t work. Others are actually dangerous.
With so much current pandemic misinformation around, she also did a video on some of that, too.
There is just so much great stuff here, in such a variety of food related topics. I highly recommend subscribing to the channel and spending some quality time checking out the videos!
Today, I finally made it down to the basement to do some practice carving, using the spoon blank that came with the carving kit.
While talking to one of my daughters about my mother’s request to carve her a mushroom, she had a brilliant suggestion.
Make a spoon with a mushroom at the end of the handle.
Well, that sounds like a great way to get my practice carving in!
The first problem was, kittens.
All of the kittens. :-D
Plus Beep Beep, of course.
It took several minutes just to open the storage box, and probably another 15 or 20 before I de-catted myself enough to get started.
The first thing to do was mark off the spoon blank.
Pretty basic.
It’s typically recommended to carve out the inside of the bowl, first, which meant I could finally break out the curved sloyd knife.
While fighting off kittens.
That… didn’t quite work out.
I realize I got a cheap kit, but I was quite happy with the other two knives when I first tested those out. The sloyd knife, however, seemed to be completely dull.
At one point, I figured maybe it was because I was using a different wood. My previous practice carving was on lilac, which I’ve read is really great to carve. So I tested one of the other knives on the handle.
It cut beautifully. You can see where I made a few quick cuts to start removing excess material on the handle. What little I got out of the bowl took a surprising amount of effort. Mostly, the curved blade wanted to just slide across the surface.
The kit came with a leather strop, suede on one side, smooth on the other, and a polishing compound. Which doesn’t work too well on a curved blade, at all, and certainly isn’t enough to create an edge, when there barely is one.
I have since brought it to my husband, and his significant collection of sharpening tools. He did some research on how to sharpen a sloyd knife, and while he was able to get an edge on it, it would be a lot easier to make sharpening tools out of dowel.
After I gave up trying to carve with a dull knife, I let the kittens go wild. The basement is nice and cool, but I think the kittens were enjoying the warmth of a human to crawl all over and snuggle into.
Until, that is, there was a mom available…
And what a good mom she is! Here she is, loving on Nicco.
As you can see, Leyendecker decided to get in on it, as I was taking the above photo!
He had ulterior motives, though. Nicco was blocking access to Leyendecker’s nip! LOL
Big Rig joined in, too!
While all that was going on, Saffron and Turmeric were crawling all over my shoulders and attacking my hair.
David had come downstairs with me and had jumped to the top of some shelves to get to one of the windows.
Then he fell into the giant plant pot I’ve got waiting for our umbrella tree.
I’m pretty sure his getting in was an accident, but he seemed to like it in there!
Even when I took the pot down so he could jump out, he wouldn’t! I had to tip him out. :-D
So, anyhow. That was my attempt at using the curved knife to practice carve a spoon. Hopefully my next attempt will go much better!
The Re-Farmer 