This morning, I opened up the large aquarium greenhouse to refill the water tray over the heat mat, and give everything a spritz. This involves moving mini fan off, setting one light fixture on top of the other and pushing them back, then removing the wire mesh covers to access inside.
Once the covers were off, I took the opportunity to take a picture of the sprouts.
Here, you can see that the Sophie’s Choice tomatoes are now sprouting in all three pots, and the Cup of Moldova growing bigger every day. The eggplant is still slower, but the ones that have sprouted are definitely looking bigger.
But wait… What’s that?
Over on the right, near the back corner.
Is that…???
Yes!!! Yes it is!
A luffa has sprouted!
I went back to look again, and I still could not see it from standing next to the tank. I could only see it in the photo taken from above.
I am so thrilled!!!
Last year, it took ages for the various types of squash and gourds to germinate. The luffa did germinate earlier than others – and some never germinated at all – but I absolutely did NOT expect any gourds to germinated this early.
I am crediting the heat mat for most of this. For the luffa, the scarification and pre-soaking probably helped, too.
So, before we discovered issues where happening with the sump pump, our morning was pretty routine! :-D
The piebald deer was back again. Later on, I saw our usual pair coming by, and I think a singleton that’s starting to come by more often.
While puttering around the kitchen and heating up water for the outside cats, I spotted this camouflaged at, watching me through the window!
Inside cats, watching outside cat! :-D
I count fourteen in this photo.
I’m seeing Potato Beetle regularly again, and that wound on his head is looking like it really doesn’t like the cold! He won’t let me look to closely, though. :-(
With Butterscotch and Nosencrantz transitioning indoors, I’ll be able to leave the sun room doors open behind me while doing the morning rounds, again. Agnoos and Tuxedo Mask miss going into there! :-D
In the 4 summers we have been here, I think our sump pump turned on only a couple of times, in the first two years. Conditions had bee so dry the next two years, the reservoir was pretty much empty. The only times it turned on was when we had to empty the hot water tank completely, to replace it. We partially drain it to shock it hydrogen peroxide every now and then, but not enough drains out to trigger the float.
So when I heard a pump running while in the bathroom during the night – we could hear it nowhere else – I didn’t even recognize it for what it was. When the noise was still going the next time I was in the bathroom, I was flummoxed. At first I thought the sound was actually coming from the space heaters our daughters use upstairs. Sound carries strangely in the house. I thought nothing of it, and went out to do the morning rounds.
Later, I tried to use the hot water in the kitchen, and had issues. I didn’t know my daughter had shocked the tank last night, after I’d gone to bed, so I went to check in the basement.
Which is when I found this.
This is our sump pump set up, which is directly under the bathroom. The pump was running, but there was enough seepage to create that puddle on the floor. The water was not draining out of the reservoir. Thankfully, it wasn’t getting any higher, either, but the pump just kept running.
So back outside I went. The first thing I had to do was dig out the end of the drain hose, which runs into the old kitchen garden.
It was under a drift, of course.
There was no sign water had drained out the end, and it was completely unclogged.
Then I dug out the area in front of where the drain pipe comes through the basement wall. Once that was free, I could pull the hose from where it ran along the side of the house and the sun room, all the way out, then run it down the access path to to the wall.
From the flexibility of the house, I could determine that the first couple of feet from the wall had ice in it. The rest seemed pretty clear. Yes, I could hear the crunching of ice in places, but no blockages. I didn’t want to bend it too much, though, so as not to crack the frozen plastic.
The next thing to do was set up an extension cord and a hair drier.
Since I was going to have a cord running through the doors, this meant Butterscotch and Nosencrantz couldn’t stay in the sun room. I was able to get Nosencrantz into the old kitchen, but one of my daughters had to catch Butterscotch and get her into the old kitchen.
Well, we were talking about bringing them in earlier. My daughter had through Saffron and Turmeric would be going to the vet yesterday, not next week. So we talked about bringing them in tonight.
Nosencrantz is currently isolated with me in my bedroom/office right now. Butterscotch is still hiding somewhere in the old kitchen.
I had to unplug the power bar for the heated water bowl and ceramic heater bulb in the sun room, then run the cord across the outside wall.
The next while was spent warming up the hose, pausing to try and break things up inside very now and then (using the snow shovel to keep the hair dryer off the snow!). Meanwhile, a daughter was in the basement with one of the space heaters, trying to warm up the hose where it came through the wall, as it seemed to be blocked straight through.
Things did start to drip. Which should have melted ice from the inside, so that the water could finally get pumped through, but it never got more than a drip.
After doing as much as I could outside, I joined my daughter in the basement and simply used a bucket to drain the reservoir. It’s not all that deep, but deep enough that I ended up having to attach wire to the handle of the bucket, then used the handle of a broom to push it down and fill it with water until I could pull it up with the wire. Then I could drain it into the old laundry sink. My daughter, meanwhile, was stuck standing there, holding a space heater and aiming it at the pipe.
Once we could be sure the pump wouldn’t turn back on again, we stopped. That the water didn’t drain at all in this time has be concerned that the blockage might not be ice, but some sort of crud. Which shouldn’t happen. The foot of the sump pump has a filter to keep stuff out.
I think the only way to know for sure would be to take the hose off the pipe on the outside and actually look. There should not have ever been water in there to freeze. Not only because the pump hasn’t turned on in ages, but even if it had, water should have drained away from that section of pipe, not sat there to freeze.
It’s not something we can do now. I don’t want to risk cracking hoses or pipes or fittings in this cold. We’ll just have to keep an eye on the reservoir and make sure this doesn’t happen again. The hose end, meanwhile, now runs into the main path, and we can see it from the kitchen window.
Meanwhile, we are now working on Nosencrantz and Butterscotch. Butterscotch could not be lured out even with cat nip, though I have at least seen her skulking around under shelves and whatnot in there.
Nosencrantz, on the other hand, is quite happy in her new surroundings. The girls came in while I was writing this to give her some attention, and she was just luxuriating on the bed, reveling in skritches. We will slowly let other cats in, one or two at a time, to introduce them. Right now, Cheddar is in here, as one of the more laid back cats. Nosencrantz did hiss at him a bit, even though he was just sitting there, looking at her.
I was really hoping to not be making another post on the topic. At least not unless it was a positive one.
Yet, here it is.
Something I predicted years ago, given our Prime Dictator’s openly displayed love of… well… dictatorships… that he would do whatever he could to keep power, including doing what his daddy did, when PET was in the big chair: invoke the War Measures Act.
Well, he just did it. He has declared war on all Canadians.
Happy Valentine’s Day, from our federal government. :-/
The Act now has a different name – the Emergency Measures Act – but it’s basically the same Act, and it is be invoked only under the most extreme circumstances.
Let us be very clear, here.
There is no emergency.
The protests are legal. They are peaceful. The media and our Prime Dictator like to describe the protests as an “occupation”, filled with hatred and violence and certain objectionable flags. They’ve been described as a cult, and accused of desecrating war memorials, blocking hospitals, harassing people, and so on.
None of it is true.
The most recent ones have been stories of truckers ramming police cars, which there is zero evidence to show has happened, and that a cache of weapons had been found among the truckers; an incident had had nothing to do with the protesters.
What violence there has been, has typically been done by counter protesters, or even the police. Specifically, the RCMP.
Yeah. First they requested the excavators, parked on private land with the owner’s permission, get moved out of sight of the highway, and then the RCMP “disable” them. The damage done to these machines is incredibly excessive, and will cost a great deal to repair.
I’ve said a few times that, unlike the protests, the restrictions and mandates are illegal, because they are unconstitutional. You don’t have to take my word for it. Canada has had its own constitution for a very short time, and one of the people who helped write the thing is still alive.
And suing the government.
Now, his suit is specifically about travel, however a lot of people invoke paragraph one (pdf link) to justify the restrictions. It doesn’t, and Peckford has made it very clear that, when it was written, the conditions that needed to be met could only be met by extreme circumstances, such as war. None of our mandates and restrictions met those three conditions specifies.
Neither does T2’s invoking the Emergency/War Measures Act today. Even when T1 invoked the Act, there was an actual terrorist organization that kidnapped and murdered a politician.
Nothing like that is happening right now.
Peckford has already addressed this in a press conference.
Gotta love that last throw in, antagonistic question – one that had already been answered by the RCMP, before this press conference.
Okay. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a bit, and provide some links.
‘The blockades are harming our economy and endangering public safety,’ Trudeau told a news conference. ‘We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.’
What was that quote? About repeating lies? Oh, right…
Under the Emergencies Act, Freeland said that the government is ordering financial institutions to cease providing financial services to anyone supporting the blockades, ‘where the institution suspects an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations.’
They’re equating the fundraising efforts with money laundering and funding terrorism. For real.
Previously known as the War Measures Act, the Emergencies Act grants the head of Canada unprecedented powers that should be reserved for a genuine crisis — whether civil war or a food crisis. Put simply, the Act exists as Canada’s last resort to deal with an existential threat to the wellbeing of Canadians, not as a last resort to deal with a threat to an incumbent officials’ power.
As Canada’s state-run media puts it, “The law empowers Ottawa to do just about anything it thinks is necessary to cope with a crisis.”
The twisting and turning the media has been doing of late has been quite the thing to see. Now they’re trying to convince us that the word “freedom” is a bad thing.
As for the protesters, they’ve already had a vote on how to respond.
There is only one way to respond to tyranny, and that is to stand up to it.
Our Prime Dictator could have ended this, long ago. The illegal mandates and restrictions (which cross both federal and provincial lines) need to end. He could have done that right from the start. Instead, he chose to exacerbate things, while refusing to even have any sort of communication with them. Which is completely the opposite of how he has responded to protests in the past, including ones that actually were illegal and violent.
Even non-Canadians are pointing out the obvious.
Here it is, from the horse’s mouth.
An interesting point is made in this next one.
There is so much more out there, and things are popping up constantly, so I’ll leave you with just one more.
This whole thing is so much bigger than the little dictator in Ottawa.
There needs to be a vote of non-confidence in Parliament. This is just insane.
But I am not actually surprised. In fact, I’m only surprised he hadn’t found a reason to do this years ago.
Checking our seed starts this morning brought as a cheerful surprise!
The Cup of Moldova tomatoes are enthusiastically sprouting in all three pots. My daughter had tried to plant only 4 or 5 seeds in each pot, but some of them were stuck together. Now that they’re sprouting, a lot more are coming up than she expected!
I didn’t try to take off the cover to get photos, so this is my trying to get pictures through the narrow gap between the cat proof covers, and the top of the tank. :-D
Now, we even have Sophie’s Choice tomatoes coming up! Considering they weren’t there last night, they grew with incredible speed in less than 12 hours!
With one type of tomato already starting, I was kind of expecting the second type to sprout soon, but we had one more surprise waiting for us.
There are now Little Finger eggplants starting to show!
I notice that all the first sprouts are coming up in the middle row of pots in this tray. I have no doubt that the warming mat under the tray is making a big difference in helping seeds to germinate. I suspect that the inner cups are also slightly warmer than the cups that are closer to the glass. Even with the insulation against the back, there is going to be a temperature difference. It may only be a degree or two, but that would be enough to affect which seeds germinate fastest.
From the looks of things so far, we also have a very excellent germination rate.
I am curious to see what the germination rate will be for the luffa and canteen gourds. The luffa are seeds from last year, and each pot got only 2 seeds. They were scarified and pre-soaked, so that should help, but they are much slower and more temperature dependant than the tomatoes, eggplants and peppers.
This is the usual pair of deer that come by every day, sometimes several times a day. Yesterday, they were coming close, even as they could see me shoveling snow. This morning, the little one was comfortable enough to actually lie down!
Unfortunately, I ran out of feed. Hopefully, my mom’s car handled the cold snap all right, and I can use it to run some errands today.
Hopefully, we’ll also get word on the status of our van!
I just had to try and get a picture of Beep Beep, who jammed herself in between her babies, Layendecker and Big Rig. She moved while I was talking the picture, so it’s not as clear, but Layendecker is at least double her size!! He’s more than double her weight. Hard to believe she grew this boy. :-D
The outside cats were out in full force this morning!
I count 15 in the picture. There was one more that ran out of camera view. With the two in the sun room, that’s 18. Rozencrantz and Ghost Baby are not in sight, which means all are accounted for. Even The Distinguished Guest, whom I was able to pet, while putting the food out. :-)
Tomorrow is supposed to get even warmer than today’s high, but we’re also supposed to get another 5-10cm of snow, so if we’re going to get any errands done, today is the day!
With all the heavy stuff going on around, I wanted to bring things back to what this blog is supposed to be about for a while. So here is a food post for you to enjoy!
There’s nothing quite like a hearty bowl of thicksome soup on a cold winter’s day! Most of our cooking falls half way between “this is how you make a thing” and, “let’s use whatever’s in the fridge or cupboards at right now and wing it.” So here is the approximate recipe for this soup. Quantities are pretty flexible. This is one of those soups that taste better the next day, so I made a huge pot of it this time.
Bacon, cut into small pieces – I used half a package of sliced bacon Onions, 2 medium, finely diced Garlic, several cloves, chopped fine. I like to use lots of garlic, but use however much you fancy carrots, peeled and finely diced. Three largish carrots was what was used this time. Feel free to include other vegetables, like celery, broccoli, etc. For a large quantity of soup like this one, shoot for a total of 2 – 2 1/2 cups of finely chopped or diced vegetables. (In this soup, I also added about half a cup of our frozen tiny tomatoes. It is not something we normally use in this soup, because tomatoes and I don’t get along. :-D ) potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/4 – 1/2 inch cubes. For this soup, I like to include different sizes of potato cubes, because I want the smaller cubes to overcook and basically dissolve into the soup, to make it thicker. For this batch, I used about 6 large-ish yellow potatoes. egg noodles, or other pasta in shapes of a similar size cooked chicken; we used canned chicken, drained, but this would be a good way to use any leftover roasted chicken or turkey. cream, about 2 cups. We use whipping cream, because that’s pretty much the only cream we buy, but a lighter cream would work, too shredded cheese – sharp cheddar is always good, but any strong flavoured, shred-able cheese will be wonderful bay leaf dry mustard powder, about half a teaspoon, or to taste. A prepared Dijon type mustard can be used, too. herbs of choice, to taste (we almost always use a combination of ground thyme, sage, paprika and parsley. If we aren’t using fresh garlic, we’ll use garlic granules with the herbs) salt and pepper to taste chicken stock, water, or water with bouillon cubes/powder. I usually use bouillon cubes, and less than recommended for the amount of water used, because herbs, salt and pepper are also used. You can always add more seasoning, but you can’t take it out! optional garnish: sour cream and shredded cheese
Start by cooking the bacon pieces in a large stock pot. If they seemed to be cooking unevenly, add a bit of water, which will help render out the fat more evenly, and deglaze the bottom so it doesn’t burn. Cook to desired doneness. I like it on the crispier side.
Next, add the chopped onions and cook until the onions are softening and starting to become translucent.
Add the carrots and garlic. Stir and cook until the carrots are about half done. If using other vegetables as well, add the longer cooking vegetables in first.
Next, add the potatoes, bay leaf, herbs, salt and pepper.
Add enough water or stock to cover everything. Since I was using bouillon cubes, I added them at this point, too. I like to chop them up a bit, so that they dissolve faster.
Stir well, then bring to a boil.
Once the liquid has been brought to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for the time needed to cook the potatoes, minus the time needed to cook the egg noodles or pasta. So if the size of potato cubes you cut need 20 minutes, and you’re using pasta that needs 8 minutes to cook, simmer for 12 minutes.
Because I wanted to deliberately overcook the potatoes, I simmered mine for 15 minutes.
Stir in the egg noodles. This was an entire small package of egg noodles. I don’t remember the weight on it.
Add more water as needed. To keep it from cooling down too much, boil some water in advance and use that while it’s still hot.
Stir in the canned or cooked chicken.
The tiny frozen tomatoes were added at this point, then the soup was brought to a boil again.
These are the super tiny Spoon tomatoes, and some cherry tomatoes, we grew last year. Their tiny size allowed them to be added at this stage, but if we were to use regular sized tomatoes, they would have been added with the carrots, much earlier on.
Bring to a boil, then simmer until the noodles are done. Remove the bay leaf.
Stir in the cream and mustard powder. Bring the heat back up and simmer just long enough to heat the cream through, stirring continually. Turn off the heat.
Taste and adjust seasonings.
This is the soup after the cream and mustard powder has been incorporated. You could skip the next step, if you like a thinner, chunkier soup.
Or, you can partially blend it. I have an immersion blender, which makes easy work of it, but if you have a countertop blender or food processor, use it to blend about half of the soup, then return the blended soup to the rest in the pot. Stir and, if necessary, reheat until it’s hot enough to melt cheese, then remove from heat.
Add in a good handful or two of shredded cheese and stir until thoroughly melted and incorporated.
Serve topped with a dollop of sour cream and a bit of shredded cheese, if desired.
This soup always goes over really well, even with my lactose intolerant family! It’s thick and hearty enough to be the main course, with maybe some buttered bread to go with it. If you like an even thicker soup, use more potatoes, and blend it more at the end.
Wow! I was just checking something in my WordPress dashboard, and realized that this post is number 3,500 for this blog! What a chatterbox I am. ;-)
This morning, I opened up the large aquarium greenhouse, to spray the pots and add more water to the tray on the heat mat.
There were more sprrrooots!
It is still only the Cup of Moldova tomatoes that are showing, and they are growing remarkably fast!
The aquarium greenhouse set up is working quite well. Even the little one is working out. The cats had repeatedly knocked the screen window being used as a cover off the top, by jumping on the overhang. A couple of days ago, I discovered where the cats had been getting into the space in the basement that was supposed to be a dry bar, but never got finished. We’ve got all kinds of breakable things stored in there. Somehow, a cat managed to create an opening in the blocked off rafters above. While picking things back up again, I noticed a smaller screen window. It turned out to be exactly as long as the small tank, though a bit wider, so there it still an overhang. Just not much of one. It hasn’t been knocked off since.
The larger tank has my daughter’s remaining orchids in it, and they are really liking the space!
One of them is blooming with the strongest looking flowers I’ve ever seen on it!
Since I was spritzing the seed starting trays, I sprayed the orchids, too.
The second orchid is a lot smaller, and my daughter is not quite sure how it’s doing. It was an unexpected surprise to find that hanging them in front of the living room window, while safe from the cats, turned out to be too cold for them once winter hit. If I remember correctly, she lost one while it was still at the window, and another died shortly after they were transferred into the tank. These are the only two left.
I think I might get her another orchid for her birthday this spring. :-)
While on the subject of seedlings and growing things, I made an unplanned order last night. It was through someone on a hardy fruit and nut tree group that I’m on.
I got tree seeds.
The person I got them from is in Ontario. Most of his seeds are zone 4 and above, and he was sharing about his paw paw seeds, which are a zone 4 tree, though some places rate it as a zone 6. I talked to him for a bit about growing them in zone 3. Previously, I did find one tree nursery that advertised having zone 3 paw paws, but when I asked people on the group about the company, I got an overwhelmingly negative response. One of those negative responses is that they get their zones all wrong (and also had a habit of shipping dead trees!). So while it would be time saving to buy saplings from a nursery, we were going to wait on that. However, we might have better luck growing them from seed, ourselves.
The other seeds I got were tulip trees. They are another zone 4 tree, but that might just mean they grow more slowly in our zone 3, like with black walnut. I looked them up, and tulip trees can get quite huge.
The seeds we get will already be cold stratified, so when they arrive, we can go straight to germinating them. Both will be grown in containers for the first year or two, and we can overwinter them in the sun room or the old kitchen, until they are ready to be transplanted permanently.
Because of their large size at maturity – potentially 70-130 ft/21-40m tall (for comparison, the spruces in the grove near our house are about 65ft/20m tall), with 30-60 ft/9-18m wide canopy – if we get any surviving tulip trees, they can be planted either along the north property line, or well to the south of the outer yard, to be part of our shelter belt. These would be a tree for the pollinators and wildlife and, potentially, for a valuable wood.
The paw paws are a much smaller tree, and I can see these being planted in the old garden area, further from the house, where we are planning to plant berry bushes, fruit and nut trees already. They can reach 15-25 ft/4-7m in height, and 15ft/4m wide. Growing from seed, we’re looking at about 6 years, before we can expect any fruit.
Buying trees as saplings may shorten the time, but buying the seeds are a lot cheaper. We’ll be getting a dozen paw paw seeds and twenty tulip tree seeds, all for less than $20 – and that includes shipping. Even if we have an only 50% germination rate, that’s potentially 16 trees. The only thing I’d want to buy special is extra deep pots to start them in, to have room for their tap root. I already have the instructions for how to get them started, care for them in their containers, and transplant them.
As for growing in our zone, the person I’m buying them from can only guarantee them to zone 4. He’s never had anyone try the tulip tree in zone 3, however he’s had someone successfully grow their paw paws in zone 2b, getting hit with temperatures as low as -40C/-40F without extra protection, and surviving. Even in the group, when I’d asked in the comments about zone 3 for the paw paws, I had someone share that they’re growing them successfully in zone 3, though their seedlings are still too young to be producing fruit, yet.
I do hope this works out. If not, however, we’ll only be about a few bucks for a total of 32 tree seeds. Unlike the mulberry tree we got, which cost over $60 for the one sapling, got killed by an unusual, out of season, cold night, then even the remaining stem got eaten by deer.
I figure it’s worth taking the chance.
And if we’re going to be growing food trees, with how long they take before they mature enough to produce, we need to be starting as soon as we can.
We have not had an update on Cabbages recently, which means she has been doing well. The last news we had was posted here.
If you would like to contribute to our fundraiser to reimburse the cat lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, click on the button below, or click here. If you would like to read more about it, click here.
The cold temperatures are hanging in there, but the outside cats seem to be doing quite well.
I often see them running around on the security camera live feed. I do wonder, though, about the times when I see half a dozen of them, all running back and forth on the driveway at the same time! :-D
Nosencrantz and Butterscotch remain in the sun room. Technically, we can let them out now, but with these temperatures and their shaved bellies, that wouldn’t happen, even if we weren’t considering bringing them indoors permanently. With Nosencrantz up for adoption, it would be just easier that way. Butterscotch… we’ll give it a try again. She came out when I set fresh food out for them, but didn’t really want attention, and kept moving away when I came near. Unlike Nosencrantz, who will happily accept being picked up and cuddled!
We’ve talked about bringing them in and have decided to wait until after the spice girls, Saffron and Turmeric, go. They are booked for their surgeries on Feb. 23. We drop them off in the morning, then the cat lady will pick them up in the afternoon, where they will be delivered to the fosters that are ready and waiting for them, to recover then be adopted out. With Cabbages unexpectedly leaving when she did, we now have 15 cats in the house. It’s probably not a good idea to make it 17, when two more are leaving in such a short time. I’m sure Nosencrantz will handle the transition just fine. Not so sure about Butterscotch.
It does mean we will be visiting them in the sun room as often as we can, and providing them with more toys to keep them happy.
Beep Beep looks like such a kitten in this photo!! Hard to believe she’s a minimum of 7 years old. It’s also hard to believe that such a tiny cat made such big babies. Cheddar and Layendecker, who are a couple of years apart in age, didn’t start big, but both grew into such hefty boys. They totally dwarf her. Even Big Rig is bigger than she is, though they are so much alike, I often get them mixed up. Only Saffron remains smaller, while Turmeric is almost caught up in size.
Beep Beep and Fenrir have recovered so well from surgery, I forget they even had it, until Beep Beep starts rolling and I see her belly.
Fenrir doesn’t roll like that. Ever. Checking her belly is a two person job.
I wonder how well Beep Beep and Butterscotch will remember each other, when we try bringing Butterscotch indoors? For all we know, Butterscotch is her mother. They’ve shared the parenting of litters every year we’ve been here, with Butterscotch more than happy to leave her babies with Beep Beep as much as she could. I’m sure they’ll remember each other at least a little bit, even if they haven’t seen each other in almost 2 years. Whether that means they’ll be friendly with each other or not, is anyone’s guess! :-D
We got them done! All the paths have been cleared.
I just had to stop, half way to the compost pile, take a glove off and get a photo. It’s hard to tell with my puffy parka, but the snow is now just below waist high on me. The path had been filled in completely at this spot, and was level with the rest of the yard.
The piles of snow from shoveling, on either side, are almost shoulder high on me in places.
The path to the feeding station was also dug out, clearing the steps to the dining room door along the way. We don’t use that door, but it’s one of our emergency exits, so the steps need to be kept clear.
While I was working on the path to the compost pile, the two deer that regularly visit came by! One came all the way to the feeding station, but my being in the path and shoveling ended up being too much for them, and they both ran off. I’m just tickled that they were willing to come as close to me as they did!
We got a burn done as well, so the burn barrel needed to be cleared, with space to move around it. Even with the wide area where we put the bag down, it’s a bit tight to stand next to a fire! I wanted to make sure there was enough fuel for the barrel to keep smoldering, so that it would slowly dry, then burn, the sawdust from the cat litter, so a path was dug until we hit branches from the pile that needs to be chipped. Just far enough to be able to dig some out, or break pieces free. Hopefully, this time it will continue to smolder and burn away the sawdust litter. Last time we did a burn, the sawdust froze before the heat of the fire could dry it and catch.
The path to the electricity meter had to be dug out too, of course, then I checked the path to the pump shack door. I just had to laugh! Our angel with the front end loader wasn’t able to push the snow further back, so it was dumped in front, completely obliterating the path to the door.
It took a lot of breaking things up with the ice chipper to be able to reopen a path!
Ah, the things we do for the yard cats. ;-)
And now I sit with a huge mug of tea, and some freshly baked shortbread cookies, to warm up!
The Re-Farmer 