Since transplanting the Korean Pine in the outer yard – and promptly losing one that got dug up by a critter – I’ve been wanting to find a more secure way to protect them, but also to make them more visible. With the possibility of cows being allowed into the outer yard, that become more of a priority.
This is what I put together while doing my evening rounds.
I used chicken wire salvaged from the garden row covers we made last year. We’ve got some square buckets, and I used one to work out where to cut the wire. After the cut wire was made into a ring, I used the bucket as a sort of form to square off one end, then fold the edge inwards to make a sort of top with an opening in the middle.
We’ve got some high visibility paint that I use to mark rocks in the yard, so I can see them through the tall grass when mowing. Just the thing to make the chicken wire visible – on its own, it pretty much disappears against the grass!
They will dry overnight, and in the morning the girls will place them around the Korean pine. Along with the one that got dug up by a critter, another on just up and died for some reason, so we are down to 4 of the 6 we planted. I’d like to not loose any more of them, if possible! Hopefully, these cages will help protect them from critters, at least. Tomorrow morning, the girls will take them out and put them over the saplings, in place of the plastic cloche they used this morning, when the calves got into the outer yard. Some ground staples to hold them in place and, hopefully, they should work out.
This afternoon, I got the fermentation bucket from our wine making kit sanitized and set up to make more crab apple cider vinegar. I brought two of the three bins of crab apples in from the old kitchen. The apples got cut in half, de-stemmed and any damage I found was cut off. Since I picked the apples by shaking the tree, then picking them up off the ground, there was bound to be bruising to get rid of. All the pieces went into the giant enameled bowl that was ready with water and lemon juice, to keep them from browning.
Each bin held the equivalent of a 5 gallon bucket, full to overflowing. Once the apples were cut and trimmed, however, they took a lot less space. The line that you can see in the bucket is the 5 gallon mark, which is what I was shooting for. The basic instructions for making ACV in jars was to fill them 3/4 full with apple pieces, so that’s what I what I did with the bucket. After finishing off a bin and transfering the pieces from the water to the bucket, so I could see how much more I needed to cut up, I added sugar and commercial ACV with “mother” as a starter, using the same ratios that were used when we did them in 1 gallon jars. Then I cut more apples from the second bin until I reached about 3/4 full.
We buy filtered drinking water in refillable 5 gallon jugs, as our well water has developed a taste to it. I used one of those to fill the bucket to the 5 gallon line, which used up about 3 gallons from the water jug. It all got a gentle stir to dissolve the sugar and mix in the ACV mother.
The apple pieces now needed to be weighted down.
I just happen to have a large serving dish I found in a Goodwill store, years before we moved out here. It was the perfect size, and heavy enough that no other weight was need once the air pocket under the (sanitized) dish was removed.
Finally, the whole thing was covered with cheese cloth that was snuggly tied in place. Then, because we have cats, the lid was put loosely on top. It now sits next to the carboy of fermenting hard apple cider.
This now needs to ferment for 3 weeks before it gets strained off, then left to ferment another 3 weeks.
The down side of fermenting crab apples is, it attracts fruit flies. It turns out they love apple cider vinegar! So I made a couple of fruit fly traps using some of the commercial ACV in small jars topped with plastic wrap with holes pokes in them. One went into the big aquarium, where the three 1 gallon jars of ACV are fermenting. The other is now in between the fermentation bucket and the carboy.
Even after removing a small bucket of apples for my mother, we still have about a bin and a half of apples! We need to do something with them quickly, before they really start bruising.
I’m considering cooking them up and straining them for their juice. I think we’ll get a lot more juice of them that way, compared to using the juicing machine! Or maybe make some jelly? We’ve made apple jelly before, but the jars had to be kept in the fridge because we didn’t have everything we needed to water bath can them.
There are SO many apples, though, we couple probably make a few different things!
The girls headed outside to get a few things done before heading to bed for the day, and were soon messaging me to let me know we had company!
Two of the renter’s calves had gotten into the outer yard.
The girls made sure the gates into the inner yard were closed, and found plastic covers we’d used in the garden and put them over the Korean pine in the outer yard to protect them, just in case.
The calves were very nervous when I headed over to switch out the memory card on the gate cam. They kept going for the fence into the hay yard – they are normally on the other side of that fence! – and I was concerned they might get spooked and hurt themselves trying to barrel their way through the fence. I made sure to move well over in the other direction, and they eventually followed the fence line back towards the barn. After switching out the memory card, I found them near the shed by the barn. As I came closer they went for the chain gate on the other side of the barn and simply slipped under the chain – and the electric fence wire on the other side! Clearly, the wire did not bother them at all.
I had already messaged the renters to let them know cows had gotten through, so I messaged them again to let them know it was just the two calves, and that they were back on the other side. I also let them know that I couldn’t see any breech in the fence. At least as far as the overgrown grass allowed me to see.
Later, after helping give Leyendecker his meds, I headed to the post office before the store it’s in was closed for their weekly inventory. I was just parking the vehicle back in the garage when I could hear a utility vehicle coming along the outer yard fence. The renter had come to check the fence, so I went over to chat with her. Oddly, she found it had been shut off! As far as she knew, she was the last person to check the fence. The power was low on the fence, so she’d come over with her little ones and a gas powered weed trimmer, cutting the grass and weeds away from the wire, and making making sure nothing was touching where it shouldn’t; she’d found a couple of places where the wire had gotten caught on the barbed wire of the outer yard fence. She told me that when she was done, it running at full strength, and she was sure she had left it back on before leaving. She thought one of their farm hands may have come out, though it they did, we never heard their utility vehicle.
The chain gate runs between two large gate posts near the garage, spaced far enough that large farm vehicles can get through. It used to have a barbed wire fence. I’d cleared the remains of it away from the opening and set it aside, long ago. The only thing keeping the cows out was their electric fence wire, so I’d made a rope gate. After that got broken – along with the electric fence wire – by deer jumping through in the winter, I replaced it with the chain we’d used at our main gate until we fixed the damage from our vandal. It has worked well enough, but with the flooding we had this spring, one of the gate posts was leaning most of the way to the ground. I now understand just why all those fence posts are so rotten! Until this year, I had no idea the area could get so flooded.
While we were talking, I pushed the gate post upright and propped it up with a scrap piece of fence post that was lying in the grass. She told me her husband was thinking of rotating the cows out again, soon. Remembering a comment I’d made the last time we spoke, she asked if perhaps we wanted the cows to be allowed into our side of the fence for a while, first, to help graze down the grass at least a bit. I told her I’d be fine with that. He may not do it, but just in case he does, we’ll keep the inner yard gates closed up. He is also still wanting to replace the outer yard fence. Part of the rental agreement is that they are responsible for the fencing. It would be good if he could get that done, once the cows have been rotated out. Right now, there is another deliberate gap in the fence, next to an old collapsing log building, that the cows sometimes gets through. As near as I can figure, the gap in the fence is for access to the expeller for our septic system. There is a low area next to it that the water drains into, all of which still has the remains of old, fallen barbed wire fence to keep cattle out of it. When they do replace the fence, I have suggested they may want to fence around the the expeller in some way. I also mentioned I’d like the fence to go straight to the road, instead of turning towards the driveway and around the old hay yard. They would loose a small grazing area and the low spot that I’d like to turn into a permanent pond again, but it would also mean quite a bit less fencing to replace. Certainly enough to make the cost difference worthwhile, I think. It would also mean the cows wouldn’t be getting into the junk behind two sheds, including the one with the roof that collapsed under the weight of snow this past spring. I think it would ultimately be a win-win situation.
But it’s up to him, in the end. Whatever he ends up doing, we’ll work with it.
I also told her about wanting to get all the scrap cars and stuff cleaned up, but that I’m still expecting our vandal to appeal the court’s decision against him. She was just shaking her head about him being so possessive about such junk. My mother had wanted to have it sold as scrap metal to help pay for a new roof, but it’s all so bad, I doubt it would bring in even half of what a roof would have cost, back when we got the initial estimates in 2019, never mind the estimate we got this year.
That reminds me. My brother had asked me to contact one more company for an estimate – someone my SIL knows personally and vouches for – so he would have 3 estimates to go over. I did that last night by email and got a quick response saying he’d call this afternoon, but so far, no call. Hhmm.
Well, whatever we end up with, we’ll see if my mother will follow through on her promise to pay for a new roof. I suspect she’ll renege on that. She’s been teasing about paying for a new roof for years now, as a way to manipulate my brother, so I’d actually be surprised if she follows through. Still, if she does, a decision has to be made quickly; these estimates are only good for 30 days, because the prices change so quickly. Even if the work can’t be done right away, if a deposit is made, that locks the contract until the work is done. Still, it would be awfully nice if we could get a new roof before winter! It would make a significant difference on our heating bills, too.
I still needed to use zoom to get the photo, but at least she didn’t run away immediately.
She was hunting something in the grass that was interesting enough to let me get a photo. Which was made more difficult, because the one super socialized kitten demanded to be carried and was clambering all over me while I was trying to handle my phone to take the picture. 😄😄
This afternoon, I headed out to see what I could get from the one crab apple tree that has tasty apples. Most of the apples were well out of reach, but after trying a couple of things, I found I could use the hook at the end of the extended pole pruning saw, at its longest, to grab branches and give them a shake.
Then ducking, so I wouldn’t get beaned in the head. Those things are hard!
Then it was just a matter of gathering them off the ground. The damaged ones got tossed towards the spruce grove, so I wouldn’t have to pick through them again when I had to shake the tree again. With so many apples, I could afford to be picky.
The deer and any other apple eating critters will be in for a treat, tonight!
I got somewhere between 15-20 gallons of apples, and I only shook the tree twice. There are still lots on the tree, but I was out of buckets.
With so many apples, I scrubbed out the wheelbarrow, then used it to give the apples a cursory wash with the hose. The amount in the photo is from the two smaller buckets.
I had to prep a third bin to hold them all.
I love these bins! They interlock to hold together, and even when stacked one on top of the other. They are still just corrugated plastic, though, and can only hold so much before they start bending under the weight while being carried.
For now, the bins are sitting in the dark and relatively cool of the old kitchen. I’ll set aside a bucket for my mother. When she was last here, she insisted in picking apples into her walker, but they were nowhere near ready for picking. They are in their prime right now, and taste so much better. We do have crab apples on some of the other remaining trees, and I do try them every now and then (except the one tree with apples so small, it’s basically an ornamental tree). They don’t taste very good when ripe. When not quite ripe yet, they’re pretty awful. There was one tree that tasted pretty bad right up until the ripened, when they suddenly became tasty and sweet, but that part of the tree died over the winter, leaving only the suckers that had been allowed to grow, so only the not-tasty parts of that tree are still alive. 😕
Tomorrow, I will start de-stemming the apples and cutting them up, and will be using the fermentation bucket from our wine making kit to make a large batch of apple cider vinegar. There will be apples left over, even after taking some out for my mother. We haven’t decided what to do with them. In the past, we’ve made apple jelly, but our Bernardin canning book with the recipes we used is still missing.
I wonder if I lent it out to someone? I can’t remember. I do remember offering to lend it to my SIL, but she just took photos of the recipe she wanted and left the book. I do have other cookbooks with canning recipes, but I’m less sure of their safety.
I suppose I could just go look at their website, but having the book is really handy.
Anyhow, we’ll figure out what to do with the surplus. Then also decide if we want to harvest more, or leave the rest for the birds.
It’s just past 10pm as I start this, and we’re still at 21C/70F, and the higher winds of earlier today have died down to a lovely calm. I found myself looking for reasons to get the fire going, but I really need to get some sleep tonight! Sleep has been frequently interrupted for the past while. 😕
Lack of sleep wiped me out enough that I was feeling quite ill this morning, to the girls took care of feeding the critters so I could try and get at least a couple of hours in. With Leyendecker still in recovery in my room (no, he wasn’t the one keeping me up at night!), and my daughters still having their days and nights reversed, my younger daughter has been taking her “night shift” and sleeping in my room, to keep and ear out on Leyendecker while I’m out. (He seems to be doing all right, though still having difficulties voiding, so we are monitoring him very closely) In the end, it was almost noon before I finally was able to head outside and do my rounds – minus the critter feeding.
Of course, a fair amount of that is spent checking things in the garden. Things like this.
Here we are, into September, and the Red Noodle beans are just starting to show flower buds!
This Kakai hulless squash was the first to develop and is looking like it’s ripe – but it’s about a quarter the size it should be. If the weather holds, there’s a chance we’ll have a couple more, larger ones. In fact, all the hulless pumpkins are going rather well, compared to the other winter squash. Only the Baby Pam pumpkins are managing as well. The Lady Godiva should give us at least 2 fully developed squash by the end of the growing season, with a few more little ones developing. Likewise, the Styrian variety has a couple large pumpkins that should be harvestable by the time growing season is done, with a couple more developing.
As for the Baby Pam, we have a little few bright orange pumpkins that could probably be harvested, that are smaller than they should be, but there are others that are still growing and turning colour that look like they will reach their full size – which isn’t very large to begin with.
This Georgia Candy Roaster is one of two stunted plants that were just covered in slug trails this morning!
While watering this evening, I was amazed to find female flowers among the Georgia Candy Roaster, and even one Winter Sweet. I hand pollinated them, just in case, but I think it was too late for one of the Georgia Candy Roasters.
While harvesting, I was surprised by how many Yellow Pear and Chocolate Cheery tomatoes were ready. I took the few G-Star patty pans that were on the plant killed off by a cut worm.
A few more of the Cup of Moldova tomatoes were ripe enough to pick, and into the freezer the went, with the others needing to be processed.
I keep saying I need to get those done, but the fact that they are in the freezer actually frees me up to work on other things. But that will be in my next post!
As for the garden, it’s a waiting game. So far, we’re not looking to have cold temperatures or frost for the rest of the month. With our first average frost date on Sept. 10, that is very encouraging. I plan to do recordings for another garden tour video on that date. Hopefully, thing weather will hold and things will have time to catch up.
I’d really like a chance to try those red noodle beans!
Today I found myself heading out to the city, and didn’t get to my computer this evening. My usual morning routine on the computer, such as uploading photos, checking the trail cam files and writing a blog post, got completely skipped.
Imagine my surprise when I had a moment to log on and discovered a big spike in visits and views! To those of you popping by from City Steading Brews, welcome! Another welcome to all those who found their way here to check out my posts about doing things crab apples. It’s definitely the season for it! I hope what you’re finding is useful.
Normally, I post at least one photo with my blog posts, but today I hadn’t taken a single photo! Which is very unusual for me. 😁
So, I instead went back a few days and put this together for you to enjoy.
It has nothing at all to do with anything I did today, but it’s cute kittens, so who cares?
They absolutely loved it while I was raking up that pile of grass clippings – and made it a real challenge to not accidentally rake up a kitten, too!
With things working out for my daughter being able to pay the vet bill for Leyendecker, we no longer needed to delay our city trip to continue stocking up. Today is Labour Day weekend, but a lot of places were open for at least short hours. I was not going to do Costco yet, but was going to try one of the other wholesale places I sometimes go to – only do discover it was closed! I still went to the international grocery store that I planned on, making a quick stop at a nearby Dollarama, then hit a Superstore. This time of year, a lot of places have case lot sales that I took advantage of. More stuff for the pantry, as we work on the assumption that we will have at least two months this winter, stuck at home due to weather conditions.
A couple of years back, a daughter and I would make these trips and do all the shopping in one day. Since then, we’ve added a couple more regular stores to shop at, and have split things up into two, sometimes three, trips. Thankfully, gas prices have been slowly going down. We’re currently at 165.9 cents per litre locally, though I did see one place in the city that was at 157.9 It’s still way too high, though. I put $40 of gas in my tank on the way to the city, and it gave me just over a quarter tank. I’m saving the fill for when I get to Costco, where the price will be better.
So, aside from stopping at the gas station, I went to three different stores, with two of them right next to each other.
It still left me totally drained. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I pace myself, whether or not I had an energy drink, or took a break for lunch. These trips just leave me exhausted. Being around so many people sucks the energy right out of me.
How on earth did I manage to keep going, when we were still living in the city? I was so involved in things, too. I now realize I must have been running on fumes for years. My mother often goes on about how we need to get out and around people more. Which makes sense coming from her. My mother spent some 40+ years here on the farm, raising 5 kids, growing a huge garden, and doing all the things that comes with running a “subsistence farm”, as it was called back then. Mind you, I do remember quite a lot of visits from their friends in the city, and attending social events, so it’s not like they were hermits. Still, once my mom moved to where she is living now, she had a lot more social opportunities right in her building, never mind the stuff in walking distance for her. My mother is a social person.
I’m not.
She, of course, thinks I should be. She especially brings it up when she wants me to drive her around all over the place, and/or stay at her place for hours, and I point out I have things to do at home. That’s when I get told how I need to be around people! I am allowed to take a holiday every now and then!
She has no idea just how people’d out I still am. I’ve tried to tell her about all the various things I was involved in before we moved here – things which often included a lot of conflict – but it’s completely beyond her experience, so she doesn’t quite get it.
These trips to the city remind me just how much I am NOT a city person, even after all those decades off the farm. I’m not a people person. It’s not that I don’t like people. I just don’t like being physically around lots of them for too long.
It makes me appreciate being where we are now, that much more. Even if it means dealing with our vandal, or getting snowed in repeatedly, or all the vehicle troubles, or living in a house that needs a top to bottom renovation (but I’ll be happy with just a new roof!), and struggling to keep the garden alive, or cleaning up the place with all the working equipment gone before we got here…
It’s still better than what we left behind. We have quiet. We have space. There is so much less stress. And I love the work that I’m able to do here, even if I have to resort to fairly primitive means to get things done.
There’s a reason I haven’t changed my tag line after being here for almost 5 years.
Sometimes, you really do need to go back, to go forward.
I didn’t head out to do my morning rounds, other than feeding the cats outside, until after I got back from town with Leyendecker, so it was more afternoon rounds than morning!
There were a couple of pleasant firsts that I found in the garden.
This is our very first canteen gourd! Until now, there have been nothing by male flowers. I don’t think it actually got pollinated, but even if it did…. well, it’s September, so there’s no growing season left for it.
I wonder how these would have done, if we hadn’t had such a horrible spring? I wouldn’t mind trying them again. This year was so bonkers, I can’t use it to judge if we can actually manage to grow them here.
It’s the same with the luffa.
Male flowers have finally started to bloom!
Too late for these female flowers. They’re already done, and the developing luffa is going to just dry up and fall off.
There is hope for these ones, though.
Now that the clusters of male flowers are starting to open, there will be flowers available to pollinated these developing female flower buds.
Not that it matters too much. There isn’t enough growing season left. These were started so early indoors, because they need such a long time for the sponges to develop and dry out. They should have been blooming by July, not September!
Ah, well. Something else I wouldn’t mind trying again.
One of the disappointments of the day was found when I took a closer look at the one G-Star patty pan squash plant that was drooping.
It was drooping because the stem was severed! Looks like cut worm damage.
*sigh*
Of course, this happened with the one plant that had the most developing squash on it.
I did get an okay harvest, at least.
Those green beans are both pole beans and bush beans planted with the sweet corn.
What a pain those were! The grass clipping mulch will be great for the plants, but the grass stuck to the beans like crazy. Once they got into the colander, the grass clippings spread to all the other beans, too. Rinsing them off with a hose wasn’t enough. I ended up dumping the beans in a bucket of water, twice, before I could finally get the grass off. Even after swishing them in the water, every bean pod I pulled out ended up with grass floating on top of the water stuck to it, and I still had to hose them – and my hands – off to get rid of it. Who know grass clippings and bean pods would act like Velcro?
There were a few ripe Cup of Moldova tomatoes ready to pick. Those got cleaned off and went into the freezer with the rest.
Now that we’ve brought Leyendecker home from the vet, and I was able to use my daughter’s card to pay for it, we no longer have to delay our city stock up shopping. I still have the tomatoes taking up space in the freezer, though, and I just haven’t had time time to make the tomato paste; it needs to be tended pretty constantly for the hours it will take to get to the right thickness, and too much has been going on. I’ll probably have to split things into two trips, though, so I can make sure the first trip doesn’t have a lot of stuff for the freezer.
Later in the day, I was back out in the garden to see what I could get out of the Caribe potato bed.
This is an earlier variety, and they’ve looked ready to harvest for some time.
The potatoes never grew well, and quite a few never sprouted at all, due to all the flooding we had. I wasn’t expecting much.
The first thing to do was to pull back the straw mulch.
Oh, dear!
What you are seeing in the straw is a whole lot of slugs! I’ve never seen so many slugs all at once before. The whole bed was like this.
The next problem was trying to use the garden fork to dig around where I knew the potatoes had been planted.
We’ve used this bed once before, couple of years ago. I remember digging around in it. What I don’t remember is there being SO many rocks. It was almost impossible to get the fork into the ground, even with how much softer it was with the mulch. What I did manage to turn was full of healthy, active worms, at least, but there is no way we can grow in this spot again, as is. If we ever do, it will have a raised bed on it.
Not that it mattered, in the end. This is all the potatoes I found.
I planted more than I took out. Those two largest potatoes? They’re all chewed up by slugs. One of them is practically hollow.
I wasn’t expecting much, but it’s still disappointing.
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely the other two varieties will be much better. The Bridget are looking ready to harvest, too – what little there is. The All Blue are a late season variety, and some of them are still blooming, but…
*sigh*
With how successfully my mother was able to grow potatoes here, I had really hoped for better results. Yes, the flooding this spring did its damage, but it’s been a lot of years since anyone’s been picking rocks out of the garden. A lot of years with the frosts heaving more and more rocks to the surface. For it to be so rocky, I couldn’t get my garden fork to dig more than a couple of inches is just insane.
Potatoes are one of those staple crops we want to grow in large quantities for winter storage. Quantities that are more than what we could do in the raised beds we plan to build. With so many rocks in our soil, we still will need to build things up quite a bit to be able to have any crop worth mentioning.
It may be more efficient to get indeterminate varieties and grow in potato towers, instead.
It was a gorgeous afternoon and evening yesterday. Not only a pleasant temperature, but even the mosquitoes weren’t as bad. I didn’t want to go back inside when I was done what I needed to do!
One of the things I did was re-do the shelf shelter for the cats. I noticed that the little kittens have been climbing all the way to the top shelf, which was actually use to store stuff, and have been snoozing in a corner, where I’d stacked some smaller pieces of rigid insulation.
The insulation over the bottom two shelves were getting ratty, so I decided to empty the whole thing, give it – and some of the insulation pieces – a hose-down and redo it.
Including making a next in the corner of the top shelf for the kittens, even though it meant not being able to fit everything back in again!
The sheets of insulation lining the bottom shelves were used again, since they fit the best and, aside from a few edges, still intact. When covering the fronts, I left the openings wider than before. When startled, the cats would dash out, catching on the edges of the insulation, sometimes hitting them hard enough to pull them right off the nails holding them to the shelf. I decided to try reducing the height of the openings. I want it open enough for them to easily get in and out, but small enough to let less of the weather in. Hopefully, they won’t get ripped right out by a startled cat!
As for the top shelf, I tucked a small pedestal plant stand in the corner and used it to support two levels with the rigid insulation for the kittens to lie on. There’s more space in front with an insulated floor, and there is insulation along the side and back walls, too. An extra piece across the front, and the kittens have their own little cubby hole to settle in.
Now I just need to clean up and redo the outside of the shelf. It had been wrapped in plastic to protect the wood from snow and rain, with an extended “roof” of rigid insulation, but the wind tore the plastic to shreds, and the cats have broken up the insulation. I’d like to find something sturdier to replace them with.
After I had emptied, swept and hosed down the inside, I had to give it time to dry before continuing, so I started another project.
A new cover for the rain barrel.
A couple of years ago, we made covers for the rain barrels out of window screen mesh and hula hoops. One for the barrel at the corner by the sun room, and the other for the barrel we fill with the host, at the far corner of the garden. The covers were partly to keep debris out, but also to make sure no critters fell into the barrels.
After a couple of years, however, the plastic hula hoops became brittle and started to crack. The cover for the garden barrel had been stored in the old garden shed for the winter, and it looks like something chewed holes in the mesh, too.
The sun room barrel’s cover is held in place with a board weighed down with bricks. When the barrel is getting full enough that more rain would cause it to overflow, the board and bricks hold the rain diverter in place.
Not long ago, I found the cover and its mesh broken up. Something had jumped onto it or something. The mesh had torn, but thankfully whatever did it, did not end up trapped in the water. Then we heard a commotion one night, and I came out to find the board and its weights, and the rain diverter, all knocked off the barrel, and the cover damaged even further. I put the board and its weights back, then found some pieces of rigid insulation to cover the rest of the barrel, with weights to hold them in place, to ensure no critter could access the water, until a new cover could be made. Even that ended up being pusher around a bit, as if some critter was trying to get at the water below – even though we have several bowls of fresh water critters can drink from. A new cover had to be made quickly.
Which is what I did while the shelf shelter was drying.
The materials used are much sturdier!
I considered using some chicken wire, but the openings are too large and the wire too easily broken. I went with some half inch hardware cloth I had, instead. The hoop is the same PEXX tubing I used to make arches to support netting over the old kitchen garden beds you can see in the background.
I used the barrel itself to measure the size needed to make the hoop, then cut a square of the hardware cloth to size, removing excess mesh from the corners to make it closer to “round”. The hardware cloth is a lot stiffer than chicken wire, but the extra strength is, I think, well worth it being such a pain to wrap around the hoop. Definitely glad for gardening gloves! The last step was to use a hammer on the underside to get the mesh right up against the hoop as tightly as I could.
There was, however, one problem.
The top of the barrel is not round. It’s more of an oval shape, and a wonky oval at that. The old hula hoop I’d used before was quite a bit larger than the top of the barrel, so it didn’t matter, but this hoop was cut for a more snug fit. The less sticking out, the less likely a critter will knock it off, even with the weights. I thought I’d still made it large enough to fit over, but the barrel’s shape was just too wonky.
I ended up tying some paracord around it as tight as I could, then used a metal tent peg to twist the cord even tigher.
Yeah. That bend up piece of metal was a tent peg.
Between the paracord pulling the top of the barrel into a more round shape, and the hammering of the hardware cloth tight against the hoop, I was finally able to get it in place. The board and weights were added to support the diverter when we need it, and the extra brick at the back, just in case something knocks the board off again, so the whole thing doesn’t flip off.
I might still add window screen mesh to this, since things like small frogs or insects, as well as small debris, can get through the half inch mesh. As it is right now, a cat – or even a racoon – could jump onto the cover and it’ll hold their weight without issue. The PEXX tubing will also last a lot longer, too.
All in all, I think it worked out rather well for using stuff I got for other projects! 😁 It didn’t even take that long to do. It took long enough for the washed out shelf to dry, at least.
So we now have a shelf shelter for the cats all cleaned out and ready for winter – on the inside, at least – and a cat and other critter proof cover for the rain barrel.
The Re-Farmer 