Month: April 2021

We finally got it

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Today, after being delayed for … two months? … more? … I was able to pick up the replacement hot water tank.

The current hot water tank is still working. There is no longer a puddle under it, though there is a scale build up along the seam of the bottom cap. It must be a small enough leak that leaving the panel off is allowing for evaporation to keep it from actually puddling anymore.

I went to a different town to get it; one we don’t normally go to. In fact, I’d forgotten the franchise the tank is from even had a location there. The location we’d picked up the last tank from has gone full mask nazi and doesn’t even allow the Mingle Mask or shields. I’d heard this town has been more sane. I phoned first, to make sure they had one in stock available for a warranty replacement. It took a while; I got the impression they don’t get warranty replacements very often! :-D

Once that was all figured out and I said I could be there this afternoon, I mentioned that I am medically exempt from wearing a mask. The guy I was talking to said that would be no problem, and that there were quite a few people in town that were also exempt, adding that it wasn’t their job to police people over it. That was very reassuring. When I got there, I walked in, everyone else was masked up, but no one said a thing. It was so nice to not be given a hard time or have to justify myself!

Once the paperwork was done, I drove over to one of their buildings in the back to pick it up. I got to chat with a really nice and interesting young man who loaded it into the van for me. He’d had me back right into the building, so when I got out, I found myself surrounded by stacks of plywood, which reminded me we need a couple of sheets to make a floor for the trailer frame my brother found tires for. I asked how much a sheet of 3/4″ plywood cost, and he got someone on the radio to find a price for me. It turned out to be about $145 for a single sheet! That’s just for the rough stuff. He told me the type that are smooth on both sides is actually a bit cheaper. !! My husband and price checked in the city, at a different franchise, and they were about $85 a sheet.

When my daughters worked for that particular franchise, before we moved, a sheet cost about $35.

Not only have prices gone through the roof, but supply is really low. He told me of people driving across three provinces to get the supplies they needed, because nothing was available closer!

It makes me wonder just how much more it would cost to replace our roof at this point. When we got the estimates, they were both just under $9000. Assuming that they would find damage under certain areas, for which both companies charged by the square foot to repair, we figured $10,000 was a reasonable expectation for the final amount. Of course, we don’t have that, and with so many unexpected bills over the past couple of years, saving up for it has been pretty much impossible. I hope that, by the time we do find the money, the supply issues will be resolved and prices will become more reasonable!

During the drive to and from this town, I noticed something interesting. This town is about a half hour’s drive north of us. Not that far. Yet, I could still see quite a few patches of snow that haven’t melted yet and – most encouraging of all – water! There were several ponds that were almost full, and even standing water in some ditches. It was nice to see that not everywhere is quite as dry as we are!

But I digress.

We have the new tank, and it awaits installation. After having the same thing happen to two new tanks, we’re tempted to keep using the leaking tank for a bit longer. Even if it’s just for the summer. I wouldn’t want to lose hot water in the winter again!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 Garden: progress and next batch started

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While tending the seedlings last night, I finally remembered to take one of the tomato pots out, so I could actually get a picture.

These are the Spoon tomatoes (from Baker Creek). I planted three seeds in each of four cups, and so far there is one that has not shown any growth at all, while all the seeds have sprouted in the others, for a 75% germination rate – though it’s still possible something might show up in the fourth cup. The Mosaic Medley seeds (a mix of cherry and grape tomatoes from Veseys) were also planted with three seeds in each cup. Three of them all sprouted at close to the same time as the Spoon tomatoes, and all look pretty much identical in size and health. In the last cup, two finally did sprout, though they are looking much weaker than any of the others.

I would be happy with only 3 plants from each seed pack, since only half of us actually like tomatoes. We’ll see how they look when it’s time to transplant. In the future, we plan to grow varieties suitable for making tomato paste or maybe for drying, but not so much for fresh eating or even canning. A lot of gardeners in groups or channels I follow get so excited about growing massive amounts of tomatoes. I don’t see us ever going that far with tomatoes! We hardly even use them as an ingredient.

Last night, we broke out the rest of the gourd seeds.

We had seven of the Jiffy pots left, and four types of gourds. We decided we will do the Tennessee Dancing Gourd in just one cup (each cup will get three seeds). Someone on the Baker Creek website had left a review stating that their one plant had at least 250 tiny gourds on it. If they’re that prolific, I think we’re good with fewer plants! :-D

We’ll be planting two cups of three seeds of the other varieties. I had to do some searches to find the maturity information for them, as there’s nothing on the seed packets (they’re all from Baker Creek). It’s different with the Thai Bottle Gourd, as they are meant to be eaten like zucchini, while very young, though some will be left to fully mature. I’m sure the other varieties could be eaten while very young, too, but those are all intended to be dried out and used for crafting purposes.

The peat was saturated with water already, and added to the Jiffy pots at the same time as we set the seeds to soak, so the pots themselves would absorb excess water. After finding how much the cardboard egg cartons sucked the moisture out of the growing medium with our bunching onions and shallots, we don’t want any chance of that repeating, and I want to make sure these pots are in trays or containers to allow watering from below. We’ll be wanting to keep those pots damp.

So these will be planted later today. Until then, they are inside an under-bed storage container with a lid, to protect them from cats.

Meanwhile…

… when the girls went out for a walk last night, they managed to extricate this old wooden ladder from where it was sitting by the storage shed. It was a bit difficult to get to, and it’s been there for so long, I was sure it would fall apart if we tried to move it. It turns out to be surprisingly not-rotten!

It’s interesting to see how each step is supported by steel wire!

The girls are thinking it could be used as a trellis. I’d like to find some way to preserve it, if we can, so it doesn’t degrade too much. At the very least, find a way to protect where it will be coming in contact with soil. I’m sure the only reason this thing didn’t rot away is because it was sitting on top of other things, well above the ground.

I think the girls are pretty excited about gardening this year. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Ginger: mighty hunter!

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It’s a lot hard to get pictures of Ginger, now that he’s joined the inside clan!

I was able to get this one, last night.

The other cats had been lured away, leaving Ginger and his new mouse on my very, very hairy bed.

He loves that mouse! I didn’t realize when I bought it, that it has a pull string to make it vibrate. :-D

Once again, we kept the other cats closed out overnight, to avoid any potential hassles while we were asleep.

Ginger has discovered the comfort of those things the crazy humans sleep on. :-D Several times, I woke in the night to find him cuddled up against me. He can jump up onto the bed himself, which is good. Later this morning, I found him going to explore in the basement, so stairs aren’t a problem for him, either.

I almost got to pet his brother and aunt this morning, but they were much more interested in the kibble!

His other brother photo bombed me, while I was trying to get a picture of his cousin! I am so tickled that I caught him while airborne! :-D

I’m happy to say that all the kitties seem to be doing quite well. :-)

The Re-Farmer

So many deer!

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The deer are out in full force!

We’re actually seeing a lot more than usual, for this time of year. Particularly at our main gate. With how dry this winter had been, I suspect they are hunting for water sources.

These ones were caught on the trail cam a couple of evenings ago.

Can you spot all six of them?

There was a seventh one, but it jumped the fence on the far side of the gate before the last three reached the road. They won’t jump the gate, though they are clearly curious about it. They much prefer going through, or over, the barbed wire fence.

This next image was captured just this morning.

The arrow points out the second deer going through the ditch. In the video file, taken after this still shot, a third deer is seen in the trees in the background, jumping the fence from inside the old hay yard. Not far from there is where there is an old dugout that would normally have water in it, this time of year. Which is why I think we’re seeing more deer because they’re searching for water. There isn’t even mud there right now. :-( There is an old dugout on my brother’s property, across the road, not far from his gate. I suspect there isn’t much water there, either.

An interesting thing I’m noticing about the new trail camera. The camera’s internal temperature readings can be very different from the ambient temperature. For example, in the second photo, it reads -8C/18F Our overnight temperatures did not get that low last night.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 Garden: first luffa, and sun room is ready

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It was very exciting last night! We spotted our very first luffa seedling!

I am not surprised that it is closest to the light we’ve got in there for its heat!

There was just one this morning, but when I turned the tray so the others would get a bit more direct warmth, just before starting this post, I found a second one, in a different pot, had broken ground!

Tomorrow, I will start planting other gourd seeds.

Today, a daughter and I headed into the city for our monthly shop (except some things we needed were out of stock, so we’re going to have to make another trip). I made sure to pick up a shelf for the sun room. It’s time to transfer the tray of bulb onions to the sun room, to make room for more seed starts in the aquarium greenhouses. The tomatoes and the new batch of bunching onions to replace the ones that failed will stay in the aquarium a bit longer.

When we got home, we quickly unloaded the van, then I headed out again to the post office, where I could also pick up more deer feed and bird seed. My new monitor arrived in the mail, and I’m using it now. What a difference! Unfortunately, there are still some pages that do the weird colour thing that is why the monitor was replaced. It’s better, but not gone. Which means the monitor was only part of the problem.

I must say, though, I’m glad to have it. It’s quite a bit bigger than my old one! Meanwhile, my husband tested my old monitor, and it worked just fine while hooked up to his computer. My younger daughter has been wanting to have a second monitor for a while, so she’ll be able to use it.

Which all means it was a while before I could set up a corner of the sun room in preparation for our seedlings.

While Ginger was in isolation in here, we used the frame of the mini-greenhouse to hold the terrarium heater bulb above the bed we set up for him, since it still got pretty chilly in the sun room overnight. I didn’t realize until I put the plastic cover back on that the cats had torn it at the back. It will still work, though.

Some seed trays will be moved here after being started under the lights of the aquarium greenhouses, but later in the season, less delicate things can be started in the sun room. This room gets long hours of sunlight, so while I will probably have to rotate trays, I shouldn’t need to add supplementary light. The lights we have are designed to fit over fish tanks. I might be able to rig them up, if necessary, but it would hardly be ideal.

As for temperatures, the thermometer in the sun room has been reaching as high as 30C/86F during the day. Granted, the thermometer is hanging at the top of a pair of windows, so it would be hotter there than head height, but it’s still quite roasty toasty in there. If for some reason we feel the overnight temperatures would be a bit too low for the seedlings, we do have the ability to warm things up at least a little bit.

So the luffas are started already, which I now know should have been started back in January (we’ll see how those turn out!), which leaves the remaining gourds to start. I know they’re supposed to be started “late April”, but gourds have such long growing seasons, and our frost dates can be so early, I’m going to take the chance and start them a bit early.

Starting the summer and winter squash should be interesting. With the gourds, we’ll be planting just a few seeds of each, but with the squash, we intend to plant most, if not all, the seeds in their packages. We have two packages of the patty pan squash, which we enjoyed so much last year, and intend to plant all the seeds! :-D

If all goes well, we’re going to have squash coming out of our ears. ;-)

By late May, if all goes well, we’ll have our garden soil in and will be able to direct sow those things that can be planted before our last frost date.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how the gardening goes this year! Right now, as we start things indoors, we’re also praying for some rain! Fire bans are already in effect (and likely were in effect before the grass fire that started near our place last week), and not a lot of farms were able to do controlled burns.

We are such a tinder box right now!

The Re-Farmer

There’s Ginger spice in the house!

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Ginger has had his first day in the house, and it’s been interesting!

The first thing he did was claim the cat bed on the bottom of my closet. It’s a favorite spot for quite a few cats, but it’s now all his!

Which seems to work out, since the other cats are far more interested in his box nest than him!

For the night, we closed him up with me and kept the other cats out. Which meant being awakened several times during the night, by cats scratching at my door! Usually, I’ve got at least half a dozen on the bed with me. ;-)

Ginger has been boldly curious about the rest of the house, though definitely cautious around other cats. Being a yard cat, this translated to him being the aggressive one, growling at the other cats if they come too close. Which could be on the other side of the room, at times! Since he has only one front leg to defend himself, he’s taken to flinging himself onto the ground rolling onto his back, and using his one front leg to bat vaguely at any cat in reach. The other cats, meanwhile, are just curious and want to sniff him. So far, there hasn’t been any aggression from them, though some are certainly more laid back about him than others. I suspect it won’t be long before he joins the daily cat pile on my bed. :-D

I’m happy to see him already trying to explore the house. We’ve transitioned other yard cats that too far longer to get to that point! He was able to take the two steps between the old and new parts of the house without any problem. He has yet to discover the stairs to the second level or the basement, yet.

When he isn’t curled up in his new favorite corner, he is remarkably active and agile.

And yes, we did get him his own catnip mouse today. Which he did play with enthusiastically, until his sister, Cabbages, stole it from him! :-D

The loss of the leg is hardly slowing him down at all!

The Re-Farmer

Gardening beyond the inner yard: potential location changes, and fence plans

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A while back, I wrote about two areas we were considering building a permanent, accessible raised bed garden outside the inner yard, and asked for feedback. You can read about that here.

While walking with my daughter this evening, it occurred to me, we could start in a very different location.

I hadn’t considered this area before, because I had something else in might for it.

This is the space.

This is the area in front of the garage, where I’ve been able to keep up with the mowing. As you can see by the tire tracks in the foreground, there is traffic here. The red lines mark where we tend to drive, either as part of our turning radius to get in and out of the garage, or in the access lane to the barn, and the “gate” in the fence beside it. The opening has a chain across it, as well as the renter’s electric fence. I found the remains of the barbed wire gate that used to be there, buried in the tall grass. :-/

This is actually where I was thinking we’d want to build a new fire pit/outdoor cooking area. Our current fire pit is too near trees and a collapsing log building. A wide open space like this would be much safer for a fire pit. With the winds we get, we were thinking of building a sheltering wall of around the fire pit, as well as making sure the ground around the pit was fire proofed with bricks, stone, gravel, sand or even just bare soil. I’d also like to build an outdoor clay oven, and a shelter of some kind, and turn the whole arrangement into an outdoor kitchen. The practical purpose is to have somewhere we can cook if power is lost.

These plans, however, won’t come into fruition for some years yet, and can either be moved, or be integrated into any garden layouts we end up doing. I’ll go further into that in a bit.

The most obvious advantage of this location is that it’s flat and dry. There are also no buried pipes we need to work around, no rough soil to level, and now low spots that gather water in wet years. While the one shed, with the wide open front, is not worth salvaging, it can still be sort of used until it finally collapses, or we take it down. The other shed is worth salvaging, and we can use it for storing garden tools and equipment.

There is that pile that needs to be dealt with. While it has branches on top, those branches are on top of what I was told is a pile of insulation. !! I believe my late brother salvaged it from a demolition job or something, and had plans for it that never came to fruition. We need to clear it out. However, there is enough space that we could probably build a few raised beds around it, even taking into account the dimensions needed for accessibility, until we can figure out what to do with it.

Getting water to it will be a bit harder than the area to the west that I was thinking off, but not as difficult as the area even further west that we were considering. Plus, it’s an area we can see from the house.

We will still need to figure out how to deal with deer, of course. In fact, as I started writing this post, I saw some movement on the security camera, flashing through this area. A look out the door, and I could see two deer standing by the pile. The deer cut through the old hay yard at the fence between the two shacks, as well as going through here to reach the “gate” by the barn. That’s one downside to this space. It’s a higher traffic area, both for humans and animals!

We have broader plans for this part of the outer yard, as we work towards getting rid of most of the fencing around the inner yard, making the inner and outer yards are one, large, usable space.

This is the other area we want to work on, in the short term.

In these photos, I am at the North end of the old hay yard. In fact, we never had hay stacked this far from the barn, and it was used as pasture. When hay wasn’t being store here, this area was used as a corral and/or pasture area. The orange lines in the above photos mark the fence around the area that is functional. The black lines mark a collapsed fence line. I believe this second fence line was added after some trees were planted, to keep the cows away from them. Here and there, I can see the dead remains of trees that look like they were planted in a row, rather than self-sown.

I want to get rid of the fence marked in orange, but that can’t be done until we have something to replace it. In the short term, I want to put temporary fencing where the fallen fence marked in black currently is. It needs to be strong enough to hold back the renter’s cows, but it will eventually be removed, too.

This is an area I want to get worked on.

The blue is a low area that used to be a dugout, and should be filled with water right now. It’s so dry this spring, there isn’t even mud in there. One of these years, I want to hire someone with an excavator to dig it deep enough to be a pond in all but the driest of years. It’ll be a nice water feature, and the intention is to allow bull rushes (aka: cattails) and other aquatic plants to grow, and hopefully have a little haven for other creatures.

Trees would be planted along the property line in the background for privacy from the road, to keep out road dust from vehicles driving by, and as part of a shelter belt from those wicked south and south-easterly winds. The trees that are there now just aren’t enough to shelter from those winds!

The black lines in these photos mark more or less where a permanent fence would go.

As you can see, some clean up needs to be done behind the shed. What the shed hides is the space in front of the barn, where the fence surrounding the outer yard ends, and where there is a collapsing ramp for loading cattle onto a truck.

Shelter belt trees would also be planted along or near these lines, though not all the way to the barn. There would likely be a gate of some kind, there, too. We may shift the whole line so that it lines up with the corner of the barn, instead of lining up with the shed. That decision can be made when we are in a position to start building the fence, which will be a few years from now.

So if we build the permanent fence here, there will be plenty of room to build the outdoor kitchen/fire pit area, if we wanted it to be closer to the future pond site. Or, as mentioned before, we could integrate it in with the garden beds, which I think it more likely to happen.

So, what do you think? Is this a better idea than what was written about here?

Ooh… I just had an idea. That old shed that’s starting to fall apart will eventually need to be cleared out. It could some day be replaced with a greenhouse! Again, no need to level or raise the ground. It’s already flat and dry.

Hmmm. Something to think about!

The Re-Farmer

Situational blindness?

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My older daughter just finished a whole bunch of quick commissions, and after sitting at the computer for so many hours, she really needed to get out and walk!

So we headed out together, and wandered around beyond the outer yard, cutting through the old hay yard.

I just had to share this photo of a floating tree.

This tree is a bit of a mystery. It is one of several trees that had not fallen on their own, but were cut down and just left in the hay yard. Perhaps the intent was to clean them up, but it just never happened. Who knows?

This tree, however, has a piece missing.

Unlike the others that were lying near their stumps, there is what I estimate to be about 8 feet of trunk missing. The nearby stump is much wider than the cut end of this tree’s floating remains. There is no sign of the missing piece, anywhere! I find myself curious as to why someone would remove a section completely like that, and what it was used for!

While we were walking around, my daughter asked her if I’d seen the old outhouse.

…

Which old outhouse? I had to ask, since several came to mind.

Apparently, there was an old outhouse my daughters found in the bushes.

So of course, I had to see it!

You know how you can walk past something time after time, yet not “see” it, until something calls your attention to it? And then you wonder, when did that get there? Or, is this new?

I had to have had this sort of situational blindness, because I’ve gone through this area several times, and yet I can’t remember seeing this. It’s in the bushes, between the car graveyard and old gravel pit, and most definitely has been there a long time!

Truly an odd place for an outhouse. It’s not like this was a place people spent so much time, they’d need an outhouse!

The use of wood shingles for siding like that is another curious thing. Very unusual.

It’s possible I missed seeing it because I’d gone through here at a time of year when the bushes were in full leaf.

At this angle, you can see the hinged door at the bottom, for access to emptying the… contents.

There does not seem to be a pit under it.

I wonder if it was brought in from somewhere else, and just dumped here, like so many other things were, over the years?

The roof is gone and it’s collapsing into itself to the point the door cannot be opened, though it is somewhat ajar.

I was able to stick my phone into a gap and get a photo of the inside.

I’m guessing that little blue shelf was hanging on the nails under the coat hook.

What a curious thing to have somehow not seen while going through here! Or perhaps I did see it, but just dismissed it. There have been so many odd finds since we’ve moved here, they aren’t really odd anymore! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 Garden: the garlic beds

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My older daughter and I headed out for a walk, and we decided to go ahead and remove the plastic covering our garlic beds.

When looking up how to plant winter garlic, all the resources said to cover the garlic with a heavy layer of mulch.

What none of them did was mention when to take off the mulch in the spring. I knew the mulch was removed, because all the videos and photos I saw that were taken later in the growing season showed the garlic growing out of bare soil. No mulch in sight. It took some dedicated searching, but I finally found resources that said to remove the mulch after overnight temperatures were consistently above -6C/21F. Looking at our long range forecasts, we seem to be at that point, as overnight temperatures are generally supposed to stay above freezing. We’ve started by just removing the plastic for now, though. We’re supposed to get some much needed rain tomorrow, and have decided to leave the mulch a bit longer. Right now, it’s keeping the beds from drying out, like everything else has done this spring. With so little snow over the winter, and very little precipitation so far this spring, every little bit of moisture is precious.

When I dug these beds out, I moved the soil to one side, put the contents of our compost heap on the bottom, added straw on top, then put the soil back, including the soil that was in what are now paths. I dug those areas down to the gravel, using it to raise the garlic beds higher, then filled the space with scrap wood to create the paths.

I won’t be adding another path on the other side of the third bed, which means I’ll only have what soil I take off the top. I’ll be emptying out our compost heap into the bottom, then add in the mulch from the garlic beds, before putting the soil back. I don’t think it’ll be as high as the other beds, but hopefully we’ll have our loads of garden soil delivered soon, so I’ll be able to top it off with that. The mulch will probably be removed before then, and I’ll just move it onto the paths at first.

We’ve had quite a few warm days. I think I’ll call the company up in the next day or two and see if their soil is thawed out enough to load into their trucks or not.

I might be just a little bit excited about getting that soil! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Ginger update: stitches are out!

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Ginger had his trip to the vet to have the sutures removed. My daughter ended up holding him in her arms so the vet could do it, as he did NOT want to get out of the carrier!

He didn’t want to get out at home, either. :-D

It was not easy to get pictures of him!

The stitch removal went well, though the vet lamented that she’d tied them so tight, making it harder to take them out! :-D There was only one slightly raw spot that got a dab of Polysporin on it. Aside from that one spot, the redness that can be seen in the picture is from the stitch removal. He is recovering very well.

We brought him into the house, and into my bedroom/office/craft room.

It’s a big room, and has a door that closes, so we were able to move in his litter box, food and water bowls, and even his box nest, along with the warming pad.

The other cats were quite curious and milling about, so it was quite understandable that Ginger wanted to stay in the carrier! The cats were actually more curious about the other stuff brought in. Like the food bowl. You’d think they were starving and didn’t have food anywhere else in the house! They were circling the food bowl like hungry sharks, pushing each other aside to eat. Silly kitties!

After a while, we shooed them out of the room, leaving Ginger with my younger daughter to watch over him for a while. We’ve since allowed the other cats in. Ginger found the laundry basket converted to a cat bed I have in my closet, and that’s where he’s hanging out.

We’ll shut the other cats out again for the night and give him more time to get used to his new surroundings, a little at a time. We’ll keep food and water for him in here for a while. For the other cats, that’s all set up in the basement, but I think it will be a while before Ginger can navigate stairs!

So far, none have been aggressive towards him. The only hissing has been from cats that sometimes hiss at other cats, too, so it’s not a new thing.

It should be interesting to see how he adapts to his new surroundings, and his extended feline family! Cabbages is his litter mate, brought in before she could go into heat and get pregnant, while Nicco is his big sister and only survivor from Butterscotch’s litter born indoors, earlier that year.

I think he’ll do just fine. :-)

The Re-Farmer