Ginger has become accepted as one of the few cats Nosencrantz, Butterscotch and Marlee, will accept in the room with them. Almost. Nosencrantz will still hiss and run off. Butterscotch ignores him and keeps her distance. Marlee will sometimes hiss at him and block his way when he tried to go for the door. He’s more intimidated by her, than she is of him! Overall, though, we’re able to let him into the room to enjoy a nice soft bed to nap on – and an extra feeding of wet cat food in the evenings. Better than having him trying to hop down the stairs to join the other cats at feeding time in the basement! Even if he’s not in my office, the girls will make sure to bring up some wet cat food for him, after feeding the cats downstairs, so he doesn’t have to push his way through other cats to get some.
I think he’s quite appreciating the special privileges he’s getting!
Among the things we were talking about ordering that will be delivered in the spring were potatoes and, potentially, raspberries.
It seems we weren’t the only ones that had a bad growing year in 2022, because the potatoes I was looking for were simply not available. However, Veseys has potatoes again, and so I placed another order with them.
Among the items we have ordered before, we are getting the Purple Peruvian Fingerlings again. We were really happy with them, in their grow bags, two years ago. They come in 2 lb packages, so we ordered two of them.
I am also ordering a couple of seed mixes from them that we ordered before (and using the coupon code from Maritime Gardening saved me the shipping costs!). I ordered two each of the Alternative Lawn Mix, and the Western Mix Wildflowers. The areas we had planted them, in the fall of 2021, got flooded in the spring, and nothing came of them. With so many wood piles chipped, we now have areas of bare ground that I would like to seed before they get taken over the invasive weeds again! Two of those areas will get the alternative lawn mix. The third does get accumulated snowmelt nearby in the spring, but should be fine to plant in. That area is next to our budding food forest, and will be good for attracting pollinators.
The seed packs will be sent right away, but the rest will be sent in time for planting in our zone 3.
Here are the new varieties we are going to be getting. All images belong to Veseys.
These are Red Thumb fingerling potatoes. They are noted for their delicious flavour. Unfortunately, there isn’t any information about how well they store over winter. These come in 2 lb packages, so we ordered two of them.
These are Irish Cobbler potatoes, an early variety also noted for their exceptional flavour. They come in a 3 lb pack, and we ordered just one of them.
These last ones are for our food forest. Royalty Raspberries. They come in packages of three, and we ordered just one package to try them. They are a late maturing variety, hardy to zone 2. So far, everything we’ve tried that’s purple has done really well for us, even in poor growing conditions, so I’m hoping the trend continues! These will produce fruit in their second year, so as long as we can keep them alive this year, we should have purple berries to try, next year.
There are still other things we will want to order for spring delivery, such as replacement sea buckthorn. We’ll just have to be careful to set aside the budget for them as we place the spring delivery orders, because we’ll be charged for them all at once, when they’re shipped!
This year, I’m happy to have several items, with different maturing rates, added to our food forest. The raspberries for production next year, apples that should start producing in 4 or 5 years, and the zone 3 mulberry trees that should take a few more years before they begin producing berries, as we will be getting 2 smaller, younger seedlings, instead of the 1 larger, older seedling they normally would have shipped, but are not available.
Little by little, we’re getting to where we want to be!
Yesterday, after many delays, I finally sorted through all our seeds, old and new. I was happy to find I still had luffa seeds left, so I got those started, along with our onions.
Since I’m running out of media storage space on my WordPress account (the down side of having such a photo heavy blog!), I took my photos and made them into a video, instead. I hope you enjoy it!
Please feel free to let me know what you think of it, either here or in the comments under the video at YouTube. If you watch the video on YouTube, you can subscribe to my channel there. I’ll be uploading it to my Rumble account, too.
I will probably be doing a lot more of these, since I’m not about to spend over $300 a year to upgrade my account, when all I want is more storage space! It takes a lot more time, and I borrow my daughter’s microphone for the voice overs, but it does allow me to use higher quality images, and more of them, than I would here. I’d call it an experiment, but it’s not like I have much choice!
On another note, I’m quite enjoying the Movavi Video Suite to make these videos. I’m just barely skimming the surface of what the software allows me to do, since my needs are really basic, but if I wanted to, I could create some pretty professional looking videos. The only complaint I have is how it keeps wanting me to buy into subscriptions to get more choices in media and effects, etc. But that’s pretty typical of most media software these days, I think.
There were actually four cats squeezed onto the warm spot above the heat bulb, but two of them were Pointy Baby and Gooby, who decided to climb me when I stopped to take a picture.
Do you know how hard it is to line up a shot while a cat is manically trying to lick your nose?
I counted 22 cats outside while doing their kibble and warm water this morning!
One of them was Pinky, the only kitten with orange we had last year. I was even able to pet him a bit, though he’s not quite comfortable with attention. I heard from the Cat Lady this morning; it’s been a while, due to her health issues, so it was quite a relief to hear from her. She had someone who was looking for an orange kitten and asked if we had any, so I tried to get pictures of him. This person might be okay with a young cat, instead, so I also sent a picture of Turmeric.
This, however, is not Pinky, nor Turmeric. It’s one of the cats we can’t come near, and I don’t usually see him sitting still when I’m around. I just had to zoom in to take some pictures, because this is the first time I’ve had a really good look at his eyes!
They are so very pale! Most of our cats have eyes that are gold or green, but this one’s eyes look almost like a pale blue! The photo doesn’t do justice to how light they really are. In the shade of the water shelter, they seemed to glow white. Just gorgeous!
After finished my morning rounds, I had to make a trip to a Walmart to get more kibble. The outside cats may be eating less again, but we still weren’t going to have enough to last until our next stock up trip to the city. I just went to the smaller, closer Walmart, and used the trip to pick up a few other things – including some extras for the freezer, and even some treats.
This is $223.46 – after taxes.
Usually, I get the biggest bags of kibble they have – and this time, there was plenty of cat food in stock – but I got the sense the cats were getting tired of it. There’s just one brand and one flavour in the 10kg size. So this time, I got two 9kg bags for the outside cats, and a 7.5kg bag for the inside cats, all in different flavours. The larger bags were just under $30 each, and the smaller one just under $22. Once I got home, I topped up their food, and they were eating quite enthusiastically, so I think I was right about the “getting tired of it” part.
They also had stove pellets in stock this time, so I got a bag for the cat litters. Just one, and it saved me from having to go to another store. When it’s time to stock up, I’ll get several bags from Canadian Tire. This bag cost almost $8. Canadian Tire has softwood pellets for just under $7.
Eggs were on my list, and the 18 count eggs were a good price, at $5.58 each, so I got two. Bread was on my list as well, so I got a couple loaves of rye bread ($3.47 each) and a couple packages of wraps ($6.27 each), which are bread products we don’t make ourselves. I also got a larger Walmart brand of hot dog wieners at $5, so there’s a couple of bags of hot dog buns ($3.67 each) to go with those. The weather has been so mild, we’ve been talking about getting the fire pit going, so these are a treat for the girls to cook over the fire. Also on my list was cheese, so I got Havarti, old and marble from the 2 for $10 selection. I had butter on my list, too, but I got just one pound. The cheap, no-name butter was $5.97. Much better than the local prices, but still getting quite high for no-name!
Not on my list, but at an excellent price, were a couple of chickens for the freezer. They were selling at under $2 a pound. I got the biggest ones I could find, but they’re still much smaller than the ones we got from my homesteading neighbour. At less than $10 a chicken, I won’t say no to something I can add to our supply if I can get it! I also got some sour cream, just because we were out, but I also got some carrots that were a very good price. We do still have the Black Nebula carrots, but we’re just not using them. They’ve got so many root hairs on them, and they’re so small, they’re not worth cleaning. Plus, the colour makes anything cooked with them look pretty unappetizing, to be honest. They’d be good for fresh eating or for juicing, if we could get all those root hairs off, but I think the last of them are just going to get composted.
Too bad we don’t have chickens yet. They’d love them!
Oh, and I got another bag of seed starting mix. We’ve got to get those onion seeds started! I was gong to do that this afternoon, until I realized I couldn’t put off getting more kibble. One last thing I got that wasn’t on the list was a deodorant for the girls to try. The price was really, really good, but it’s not a brand they usually use (my husband and I use antiperspirant), and I wasn’t sure they’d like the scent. I like to pick up stuff like deodorant, tooth paste and other toiletries when the price is good, to stock up our supplies, just in case. With this year’s mild winter, we’ve been able to get out as needed for a change, but last year, with the vehicles freezing and/or not being able to get through the roads or driveway at times, we definitely started to run low on such things before we could finally go shopping!
I also got some treats for my husband and I. The Valentine’s Day stuff is out, so I got some Cinnamon Hearts for my husband. One of the side effects of all the drugs he’s on is that he’s lost much of his sense of taste, so something that’s spicy hot is appreciated. He can actually taste it! It’s something handy to have, if his blood sugars suddenly drop again. He’s definitely had some scary moments. Which isn’t supposed to happen, since he’s on a slow release insulin that is taken only once a week, but it does. 🙁 For myself, I got some dark chocolate mint wafers. I also got a vitamin water drink for the road, and a bag of chocolate almonds to keep in the van. I like to have some sort of munchy in the van for those days when we’re running around, but aren’t able to stop and eat. Usually, it’s a big container of mixed nuts from Costco, but we aren’t going to make it to Costco until the end of the month for our regular stock up trip. Not making it to Costco for our January stock up has left us making way too many smaller trips.
With what I got today, we should not be running out of anything until the end of the month, when we do our February stock up trip. This time, Costco is going to be done first! It seems that if we try to split our shopping days and do the other locations first, we end up not making it to Costco at all, but doing more smaller trips instead – and that takes more out of the budget, for less supplies.
December and January are always odd months for trips, but this winter, even more so than usual. Extra trips involving cat stuff certainly changed things, too!
Hopefully, things will start settling down again, and we can be our usual hermit selves. 😉😄
Marlee has been doing quite well. I’m starting to find her sleeping in my bed more often – even with other cats on the bed! When I took this photo, there were four other cats sleeping on the bed.
She’s been hissing and growling at the other cats less often, and showing more interest in actually leaving the room – though she is very nervous about it! At some point, she snuck out of the room while I was sleepily making my way to the bathroom. I had no idea she was gone until one of my daughters messaged me to let me know her sister had found Marlee, sitting in a loaf, on the bath mat. Being half asleep herself at the time, and without glasses, she was thoroughly confused by the sight of a “strange” cat in the bathroom. She returned Marlee to my room, and I never heard a thing!
Usually, though, she’ll sit politely by the door, looking at me, but when I go to open it, she starts spinning around. There is usually at least one cat outside the door when I open it, and that’s often enough for her to change her mind about going out. Sometimes, she’ll run out, do a quick explore, see too many other cats, and run back in.
Still, that’s more than Butterscotch and Nosencrantz have been doing!
Potato Beetle, meanwhile, has settled right in like he’s been in the house forever. He has especially taken to my husband, and will often settle on his chest and go for a nap. Keith used to do that, to the point that when a cat did that, we’d say “I’ve just been Keith’d!” My husband misses Keith, and is quite enjoying being Keith’d by Potato Beetle. 💛
I counted 18 cats while doing their kibble and warm water this morning.
Look who was amendable to pets today!
While resizing the picture before uploading it, for a moment, I thought there was some sort of digital goof at his back end.
Nope.
The black fur with the white snow behind it is giving an excellent view of both his undercoat and overcoat of fur! It’s really quite remarkable how thick that undercoat gets in winter.
And look! There’s a tiny little face peeking up at me through the window!
I ended up doing my morning rounds later than usual today, but I sure had some beautiful views!
We got another frost last night, and the trees look just stunning!
I had a pretty frosted morning, myself – frosted at Nosencrantz, mostly! Way too early in the morning, I heard a strange scratching sound in the shelf behind my night stand; there is a wall of shelves behind my bed that can’t be taken out of the room without somehow dismantling it, so I have my bed frame up against in, blocking some of the shelves. The one behind my nightstand is only half blocked, and it usually the place Nosencrantz hides in when some of the other cats decide to go after her.
The scratching I was hearing?
Yeah. She decided to poop in the shelf, rather than one of the freshly cleaned litter boxes. In the farthest corner, of course.
Then, after I cleaned it up and went back to bed, Nosencrantz started scratching again.
In a litter box.
She wasn’t using it. Just scratching in it.
And on it.
And the floor around it.
And the baby jail walls next to it (yeah, we still have that set up; Butterscotch loves to nap in it!)
She eventually stopped, but then Butterscotch tried to make a jump onto the window ledge, failed and somehow managed to knock over the small food bowl I’ve got tucked in the corner, partially blocked by a shelf specifically to prevent that from happening!
After cleaning that up, I tried to get a bit more sleep, but then Leyendecker and Cheddar started scratching at the door, wanting in.
I finally gave up and got up, heading to the kitchen to start the kettle going to heat water for the outside cats. It was still kinda dark, and I didn’t have my glasses, so I was perplexed by a glowing blue box in the wrong spot. The Cat Lady had given us their older water fountain for the cats, and it’s plugged in and set up in front of a shelf in the dining room. It has a blue light that makes the base glow, and you can see the water level. Well, the base was several feet away, in front of the entry to the kitchen – and the top part, with the fountain, was gone! I found it pushed up against another shelf.
I’m blaming Susan for this. She has a thing for digging in water bowls and splashing all over. I’m guessing she must have pulled the top right off – then kept splashing in the water, from the looks of the floor!
Still better than having to crawl on the floor to reach and clean up poop, though!
Nosencrantz just climbed onto my chest as I write this, and is getting all cuddly.
As if I could forgive her that easily!
Awww… she’s curling up and settling down now, purring like crazy.
While putting the jars of rendered lard into boxes, I remembered to take a picture of jars from each batch, together.
The batches are in order, with the first batch on the left, and the third batch on the right. My younger daughter ended up doing most of the work for the third batch, as I was not feeling well enough. I just got to jar it up the next day.
The third batch turned out smaller than I expected, with only 5 full jars – and I filled them only to the top of the “shoulders” of the regular mouth jars – and a 6th that was not quite fill. The fat was so thoroughly rendered that when I did the cracklings, there was only an extra couple of tablespoons out of them, so that didn’t even make it into a jar.
Also, I much, much prefer the wide mouth jars.
You can see the second batch is noticeably lighter than the other two. The second batch had less time in the slow cooker, and also got the most fat rendered off the cracklings.
Altogether, we got 22 500ml jars of lard, including the crackling lard and partial jars, out of 3 batches.
There’s actually five. It’s hard to see, but there are three cats along the bottom of the window. When I took the picture, I could see the one on the far left moving around. It wasn’t until I uploaded the picture to my desktop and used the auto photo fix to see if it would be any clearer, that I spotted the one way in the back!
It feels so strange to look out our bathroom window and see only a couple of cats on the swing bench, instead of dozen or more. In fact, yesterday I actually looked out once and saw NO cats in there at all! The cats are definitely enjoying the relatively mild temperatures, and using the cat house instead of the sun room. This morning, I counted only seventeen cats, and only two of those were adults. Junk Pile and Caramel. I still can’t get near Junk Pile but, every now and then, I’ve managed to sneak a quick pet on Caramel, while she’s on the cat house roof.
She doesn’t like that, though.
In other things, my husband and I were supposed to be out today. Last month, we had consecutive appointments with our doctor (having the same doctor saves a lot of time and travel!) that got rescheduled to today. Just a little while ago, we got a call from the clinic. A very apologetic receptionist was calling to reschedule us again! She was able to book us for the earliest appointment she could find next week, though, so at least we won’t have more than a month to wait!
So that opens up my day. A trip to the doctor is about 40 minutes on the highway, plus town driving and usually a stop at the gas station along the way, too. We like to arrive early which, at this clinic, often meant actually getting in to see the doctor early. They’re good about that. We’re both going to be getting our regular blood tests done. Lab and X-ray is right there, so what usually happens is, my husband and I go in together for his appointment (I’m there to keep him honest! LOL He has a terrible habit of making light of what he’s going through, which is not a good thing to do with the doctor), then he goes to do his more extensive lab work while I have my appointment. Then I get my lab work done, which tends to be much faster. This way, we get home as quickly as possible, with the least amount of time for my husband painfully sitting in the waiting room.
Between the driving and the appointments, adjusting to make it as comfortable and least painful for my husband, it takes up quite a bit of time, and most of that time is spent driving “gently”. He feels every little bump and vibration, painfully, so I am a lot more careful about things like how quickly I accelerate or decelerate, taking turns, etc.
Gosh. Now I have a whole day freed up! What shall I do with myself?
I guess I ought to clean out the litter boxes in my office I’d asked the girls to do while we were gone.
The Re-Farmer 