The arrival of some expected snow kept being pushed earlier and earlier. It hit us last night, so we woke to a winter wonderland of soft, fluffy snow. We were at 0C/32F while I was outside, so it could just as easily have been rain. That was supposed to be the high of the day, but by the time I was settled back inside, we’d warmed up to 1C/34F and the system had passed us by. As I write this, the system is still hitting the southern part of our province, and crossing into the next, as well as hitting the Canada/US border. From what I’m hearing, the city is getting more snow than we got, and some of the highways are getting packed snow. Enough that I’ve decided to not bother with a dump run today. It can wait until next week.
We’re supposed to hit 3C/37F over the next couple of days, and then warm up a bit more, before we’re supposed to start getting highs below freezing next week. All I care is that the roads and weather are good for Saturday, when we’re heading to the city so my husband can finally visit his family!
The deep snow did make it a bit harder for the cats to eat on the roof of the cat house – but they insist on eating there!
It wasn’t until I uploaded this photo to my desktop that I realized I’d caught, not one, but two tongue blehps!
I didn’t even try to do an overall head count, but…
… at one point, I could see eight cats crowded together in the big cat bed at this window! Then the tabby in front came by – there was no room in the cat bed for him! – plus I saw some other movement in the background.
They do love the cat house, this time of year!
While I was out, I took advantage of the snow still being light and fluffy and shoveled around the cat shelters, paths around the yard, including to the compost ring, the back of the garage and our emergency bathroom – the outhouse! 😄 I also made sure there was a path from the house to the front of the garage, wide enough for my husband’s walker, and cleared enough snow that we can open the doors on the sides, to access my mother’s car, of where the little snow blower is stored. No point in using the snow blower at all, though. The snow may have been light and fluffy, but it was also very sticky. Nothing like trying to toss a shovel full of snow and nothing happens, because the entire load is stuck!
We’re supposed to fluctuate around the freezing mark all day today, but as we reach our high tomorrow, all those paths should melt away first and make things easier, later on.
It’s a good day to say inside and work on the Christmas decorations I am crocheting for this year’s ornament.
We have a cat free zone in the living room now. We can actually put up a proper tree, rather than hang one against the door in the dining room. The problem with that is, we’ve been using the room as a catch-all for everything we need to keep safe from the cats, so it’s just jammed full of stuff!
Wanting to set up the Christmas tree is a good excuse to finally go through everything and reorganize.
Six years ago today, the four of us were finally altogether, here at the farm. After over 24 hours on the road, and a near-deer experience (I’d forgotten about that!) my older daughter and I arrived in the wee hours of the morning.
After our first sleep, all under the same roof, it quickly became clear that the state of things here at the farm were quite a bit worse than I expected – and I already knew things were not anywhere near “perfect”, like my mother claimed it was!
And that was before we found out how bad things would get with the movers!
She took a break from squirming and worming around and actually posed for me!
Like the kittens, she is recovering just fine from surgery. I managed to get a look at the incision site, and all is clean and clear.
Our new addition, however, is comically difficult to photograph.
This is the best of many attempts.
Our phone cameras simply do not want to focus on that fuzzy black fur! Especially when we try to get a photo of the face.
We’ve settled on a name. Almost.
We have a tendency to stick to a theme with names, if we can. Like the calicos: Cabbages… Broccoli… Brussel and Sprout. Then there was Rosencrantz, Nosencrantz, and Toesencrantz. That sort of thing.
With an all black kitten named Soot Sprite, someone suggested another sprite name; Brownie. I loved the sprite theme idea, but … well … this is a black kitten.
Then I heard a wet, snorking noise behind me, and I was inspired.
Snorri.
Snorri is one of the Huldufólk – Icelandic sprites – living in Gimli, Manitoba. My daughters and I have been in their attic home, and even got to meet Leo Kristjanson some years before he passed away. We even already have a cat named Freya (aka: Grandma), which is the name of another of the Gimli Huldufólk.
The girls have also been talking about names, and they have been thinking of using Hunter. A friend of theirs has an almost identical cat named Fisher, so they thought that would be funny. But they like Snorri, too.
When the girls were tending to Snorri/Hunter yesterday, they took a look and determined we had a female on our hands. Considering how difficult it’s been to socialize the females outside, this was good news. One less pregnant cat, next year!
Except…
Well, I took a good look this morning, and I’m 99% sure we’ve got a male.
The problem is he, or she, is so tiny, so fluffy and so black, it’s really hard to see!
As for his first night indoors…
I woke up during the night to find him sleeping on my hip.
This kitten has settled in like he’s always been indoors. Even when another cat gets nervous and hisses or growls, he either ignores it, or responds by head booping them.
On being introduced to David, David immediately started to groom the new baby.
As I write this, Snorri/Hunter is curled up and sleeping near Cheddar. Cheddar is sleeping in the little cat bed I got from the dollar store.
He’s bigger than the cat bed, so it’s quite amusing to see.
I have yet to see Snorri using a litter box, but my daughter noticed sawdust under his feet when she came to see him this morning, which suggests he’s at least been in one. I’ve not found any messes anywhere, either.
As for settling in, that has been pretty much instant. He’s been spending most of his time on one corner of my bed. For a kitten that was still a bit stand offish while outside, he’s done a complete turnaround. If you so much as walk close to him, he’ll start purring. While walking past him one time, I reached down to pet him, and he immediately rolled over to let me pet his belly, and started grabbing and playing with my fingers.
Which is how I now know that, along with a white patch on his chest, he has a white patch on his belly, near his hind legs, and one white armpit. 😄 Most of the time, though, he’s loafed, and we can’t even see the white patch on his chest. He also has a pair tiny white stripes at the base of his tail, right over his … brown eye, shall we say.
He’s also much tinier than we thought. It’s all that fluffy fur. He is mostly undercoat, and is more of a long or medium haired cat, unlike his siblings, Soot Sprite and Tiny, The Beast. Those two are short haired cats. He’s more like his brother Pom Pom, who is practically all undercoat with long hairs sticking out.
Snorri is actually smaller than Tiny. !!!
He’s so fluffy, he looks bigger, but he is most definitely smaller, and all skin and bone!
Now that he’s inside, he’ll be getting wet cat food regularly. When I did their morning feeding, he was right in there with all the others, milling around the food bowls laid out on a towel on my bed, along with the other kittens and Toni, as if he’d always been there. A full belly and an eye wash later, he was more than content to go for a nap. Hopefully, we’ll get him healthy, and some meat on those bones, in short order.
By the time the Cat Lady and her family have moved and settled in, he should be ready for adoption. I think he will be snapped up rather quickly, too!
First, my apologies for the terrible picture, but it was the best of the lot.
Meet our new baby.
This is the kitten, sibling to Soot Sprite, Tiny and Pom Pom, that I’ve had to bring inside every now and then, to wash its eyes. It’s the only kitten right now with such messed up eyes.
When I got back from town, I unloaded the truck by the door, then my daughter started taking things inside while I parked in the garage.
It’s rather difficult to haul things through a pair of doors while one cat inside – Big Rig – is trying to get out, and another cat outside – Rolando Moon – is trying to get in. So she got her father to do door duty while she went back for the 5 gallon water jugs. This time it was the one orange tabby kitten of the year that was trying to get in.
As she came out again, this little black puff ball came over. Purring.
It tried to get in, too.
So my daughter ended up picking it up, and it was so very happy. This was the first time she had handled it!
As I came around, she asked me what I thought about bringing it in. It’s eyes were getting messy again, and it’s basically skin and bone. I’ve been debating keeping it inside, every time I brought it in to wash its eyes, and after finding 2 dead kittens we didn’t even know were particularly sick… well…
What else are we supposed to do?
So my daughter took it to the isolation ward – my bedroom – while I did the evening cat feeding. While I was doing that, the girls did the evening cat feeding in my room, too – both were being done hours early – including wet cat food.
The kitten was purring non-stop already, but once there was wet cat food to be had, it was in heaven!
Also, they were able to take a peek, and it seems we have a little girl on our hands! Which is awesome, because we’ve had such bad luck when it comes to socializing the females, so we can get them fixed and help with population control.
As I write this, the feeding frenzy is over, and she’s on my bed, loafed next to the tiny cat bed that has Soot Sprite and Pom Pom in it. So she’s getting reacquainted with her long-lost siblings!
My daughter was able to wipe her eyes while they were setting up for feeding, but we’ll give her a bit more time to settle before we try to wash her eyes again. My husband and I did her eyes this morning.
Aside from a couple of surprised moments that brought out quiet growls, there was been zero issue between her and the other kittens. Even the adult cats in the room were barely even curious.
It looks like the only thing we’ll have to deal with is making sure she figures out the litter boxes.
I’ve already sent this picture to the cat lady and told her why we brought her in. I don’t expect a response for a while, since they’ve got so much going on right now. Nothing is going to happen until after their house is sold and they are settled in their new house, so some time in December, at the earliest.
Which will give us plenty of time for us to get her healthy, and get some meat on those bones!
She is tiny, long haired, black with some white on her chest, and tiny patches of white in other areas. I think she will find a forever home very quickly, once she’s ready for adoption!
The Beast looks so tiny at the top! Directly below is Pom Pom, and they are both on top of Clarence, who is getting HUGE. Then there’s Shadow at the bottom. Tin Whistle is snuggled into Clarence’s chest, and Ghosty is off by herself. Soot Sprite crawled into the pile after I took this photo, too!
All the cats are doing well. I have not been able to get a picture of Toni. She is such a worm! If you come close to pet her, she starts to squirm and roll and wriggle – then seems confused when the petting stops, because she’s no longer in reach.
Today is working out to be a fairly quiet day. We have reached 8C/46F! Warmer than forecast. I think I’ll take advantage of it and head into town to refill the water jugs after I finish writing this.
Speaking of taking advantage of the weather…
After talking with my brother (I don’t think he’s happy with me, but he did agree to the vehicle sales), I did some research on that old panel van, then contacted the guy today. The van is actually a 1950 Dodge panel truck, and it turns out to be a collector’s item. I found some similar ones, 1959 or so, in rough shape like this one, but they still had their engines and door handles, etc. selling for $2000 or more. That would be US dollars, too. Anyhow, some years ago, my brother said it was worth around $1000, and that does not seem to have changed.
When I first called the guy, I left a message and mentioned that. They decided not to buy the panel truck! 😄 The other vehicles will be used in restoration, but that one was an “extra”.
To take advantage of the mild weather we’re having, they’ll be coming out on Friday for a truck and two cars. The tractor his son wants to buy will likely have to wait until spring. The forecast does say we are supposed to get heavy snow on Thursday, but only briefly in the morning, then Friday warms up again, so it should be okay.
I missed getting a picture of Judgement curled up around the kitten. He moved when I stop to get a picture.
Every once in a while, that kitten lets me pet it, and even pick it up.
Today was not one of those times.
It’s been really nice outside today. According to the weather apps, we hit 6C/43F instead of the predicted high of 4C/39F. We hit 6C yesterday, too. The forecast is for 4C tomorrow, then 7C/45F! All the paths we shovelled are melted and green, and there is water pooling in parts of the driveway, visible in the tire tracks.
A perfect day to walk around!
The guy that was interested in the old vehicles has come and gone. He came with his wife, his son, and two of his son’s friends. Really nice people! We started off looking at vehicles in the old hay yard, then made our way to the car graveyard, then back into the outer yard to where there are some vehicles by the storage shed, and even the ones by the old threshing machine. The son and his friends were really excited when we went past the old Farmhand tractor. Turns out one of them has one, that runs. They were so thrilled to see that it still had the original hand crank! 😄 In fact, they were geeking out all over the place. The wife, meanwhile, was just following along with her coffee, slightly bemused. Cars are definitely not her thing. 😁
In the end, they identified three vehicles they want to make offers on, and the son and his friends asked to include the tractor, too. That actually made me happy. I’ve already talked to my brother about having someone take it. I was thinking one of my nephews, perhaps. This is something that has historical value, and can still be restored. The longer it sits out there, though, the worse its condition will become.
They will talk it over, then he’ll call me with an offer to pass on to my brother.
I know my brother asked me not to let them in, but I hope he can trust me enough to understand why I did, anyhow. We’re already talking about selling this stuff for scrap, and we won’t get much money for them. Not the cars, anyhow. The old farm equipment would get more, since they don’t have things like vinyl dashboards and padded seats that need to be removed. If there is someone willing to buy individual vehicles for parts and restoration, I see that as a better option. We’d get a better price per vehicle that way, too, even it’s not by much.
We shall see how it turns out! I was very happy to meet them all and we had a great time walking around and chatting. They were excited like kids in a candy store at times! There were even a couple of vehicles they’d never heard of before, and would be all giddy about things like window shapes on an Epic, and the fins on the back of one old car from the 50’s.
The only downside I can think of, is that I don’t think my brother knows just how bad a shape most of these vehicles are. He thinks anything can be fixed, which may well be true, but who is going to fix them? Not us, and he sure doesn’t have the time to do it. He’s already got way too much to deal with! I even feel bad that he took so much time to come out here to climb up on the roof, then into that tunnel, and finally to replace the light fixture. He was here for 4 hours, plus another 2-3 hours driving time, plus time at the hardware sore, plus the amount of money he spent on the supplies. He really went above and beyond! He always does.
He is protective of his baby sister, too. Perhaps a bit over protective! 🧡😁
I tried to do a head count this morning, while feeding the yard cats. I got either 34 or 35. Rolando Moon was not around, but Sad Face was there this time.
I still don’t know which ones are the new ones. All 15 cats in this photo are regulars, as far as I can tell. There’s that spotty grey tabby, on the water house roof, that I was talking about yesterday, that I hadn’t seen in a while.
I ended up spending most of the day in the van with a friend, two cats and our aquarium fish in a bucket, while my daughter took a walk around downtown until I messaged her to come back.
What a mess the whole thing turned out to be.
It gives me the willies, just thinking about it.
On a completely different note…
I’m going against my brother’s wishes today. Partly.
Last week, I got a call from someone interested in some of the old vehicles we’ve got lying around. He’s interested in restoring vehicles which, to me, is a lot better than just selling them for scrap! I did tell him it was my brother that owned the place, and we were going to wait until the weather was better for him to come out. He called last night, and talked about his son and a friend coming over, late this morning. I did tell him, he wasn’t going to be able to get anything out right away. He’d have to see, to understand.
Then, of course, I told my brother. I would never sell anything without talking to him, first, since this is all his stuff.
My brother said, don’t let them in.
???
We were messaging, so he called and we talked about it.
There were a few concerns he had. The first was that this was someone trying to take advantage of me and offer less than the vehicles are worth – and I sure as heck wouldn’t know what they’re really worth. Still, I think my brother doesn’t realize just how far gone some of those vehicles are. I didn’t even know which one the guy was interested in; he’d said a Ford truck, but there are several of those!
Another concern my brother had is that these vehicles have basically been used as storage. They have all sorts of things in them he might want to keep. He’d have to go looking through them all, even if we were just going to call a scrap dealer, to make sure nothing was hauled away that shouldn’t be. That won’t happen until spring, at the earliest.
And finally, there’s the question of how to transfer ownership. As far as we know, none of these vehicles have any sort of ownership papers left. It wouldn’t matter for something going for scrap, but if a vehicle is going to be restored, registered and insured, there needs to be some sort of paper trail. It’s something he and my parents had to deal with, years ago, and it was a major pain to find a workaround.
So when the guy called this morning, as I asked him to, so I could open the gate, I told him I had bad news and explained the situation.
In the end, though, I decided to let them come and take a look. I honestly don’t think they’ll find anything worth buying, but looking wouldn’t hurt. It turns out he’s not only interested in looking at the ones in the old hay yard, but was wanting to see the vehicles way out in the car graveyard, too. He knows nothing will change hands, but he will bring along pen and paper and write out which (if any) he’s interested in, and an offer. I can then pass that on to my brother.
I hope my brother understands that I’m actually trying to help him out with this. Of course, if they don’t see anything they’re interested in, it won’t matter either way. In the end, we really need to get those old vehicles out. If for no other reason than they are a hazard for the renter’s cows!
So I’ve got the gate open, and am keeping an eye on the security camera live feed for them, and we’ll go for a walk together. The guy is even bringing his wife along. 😊
Would you look at that fur pile???? That is David, covered in kittens. Clarence on the left – he’s getting big! – Shadow in the Dark on the right, with Tin Whistle above him. On top of David, under his head and front legs, I see the pink nose of Mitzy, and finally, in the middle, with a paw in his face, is Pom Pom.
David is so good with the babies! They just adore him, too. Also, Tin Whistle still tries to burrow in to nurse him at times, which is kinda hilarious. He’s got so much for, she’s usually nowhere near a nip, but burrowing into his hind leg or something, instead.
On a less pleasant note…
When I headed out to feed the outdoor cats, I happened to look into the larger south facing window that is next to the entrance of the cat house. The entrance is an add on, so there is another opening inside that goes into the main space. There was one fluffy black kitten at the big window, in the cat bed near the heat bulb, looking at me, but there was another black kitten lying near the opening into the entrance, and… Something did not look right. It wasn’t moving, even when I knocked on the window.
Damn.
My husband was available, so I got a small carboard box and threw on some gloves, then he helped me open the roof.
There was another black kitten, closer to the other wall, that I hadn’t seen in the shadows. Both were gone.
I tucked the two of them together into the box. Clearly, they’d been gone for at least a day, maybe two. In fact, I’d been wondering about one of them, as I hadn’t seen it this morning, when I normally would have. I’m not sure about the other.
There were no injuries. As they were in the cat house, it wasn’t the cold that got them. It was most likely this year’s strain of herpes virus that has apparently been killing off a lot of kittens all over the province this year. I was talking to the Cat Lady about it, back in the spring, and she was telling me the vets she works with have all been saying, they’ve never seen it this bad before.
Unfortunately, we won’t be able to bury these ones, this time of year, so they will be cremated.
Damn. We’ve lost so many kittens this year.
What makes it a bit strange, though, is that I still got a head count of 35 this morning – and there were at least a couple of regulars, including Shop Towel, that weren’t there at the time I was counting. Now I realize we were also down two kittens. That means there are possibly as many as 5 “new” cats that have joined the colony! Considering which ones are the friendliest or the most distinctive that we see, I have to guess that these newcomers are all grey tabbies. The tabbies and the white and greys have been the hardest to tell apart, but the white and greys tend to stay closer to the house and we see them more regularly, so I know there is not more of them. We do have a lot of black cats with small patches of white on their chests, or a touch more white in other areas, that are hard to tell apart, but I know we have had fewer of those, not more. The one that lost an eye, for example, seems to be gone entirely now. So that leaves the grey tabbies and, at least once, I spotted one that seemed unfamiliar. That one was adult sized but, now that I’m keeping an eye out, I’m wondering about some of the smaller tabbies that look more like teenagers. Only one of them is really distinctive, because the colouring around one eye makes it look like the eye itself is darker and shaped differently than the other, so I know that one isn’t new. Then there’s Junk Pile and Slick (Octomom) that we can identify among the adult tabbies.
Oh, good grief. I just remembered we had a grey tabby with distinctive spotting rather than stripes, and realized I haven’t seen that one in ages. So… more than 5 or so are “new”?
Well, whichever cats are “new”, they have certainly been absorbed into the colony seamlessly by the other cats.
I’m happy to say, they are recovering nicely. You’d never know they’d all just undergone surgery!
In this photo, you’re being looked at by Shadow in the Dark. The boys definitely seemed to get more energetic faster, which makes sense, since they didn’t have open surgery like the ladies.
The other kitten is Pom Pom, who is just getting big enough to be done. He’s quite a bit bigger than his siblings, The Beast and Soot Sprite! Hard to believe they’re from the same litter.
Also, he is getting some very distinctive white fur on his sides. I’ve noticed that in some of the outside kittens, too. Pointy Baby was the first cat we’d see to develop that pattern, which suggests there’s some paternal genetic connection between them.
Anyhow. All is good with the post-op kitties, and they are so very happy to be allowed out of the room again!
Today, I had a chance to experiment with cornbread again. Last time, I did a strawberry version. This time, I did the exact same thing, except with bananas.
It’s still cooling as I write this and oh, my, does it look good! I can’t wait to try it! This time, we have enough extra that if it goes over well, we can make another one.
Next time I experiment, I think I’ll try apple.
On a completely different note, as we come up to our 6 year anniversary of all 4 of us finally together again, here at the farm, I went looking at some of my posts from back then.
Oh, my.
My husband and younger daughter were already here, and today was the last day my older daughter and I had to get things done, before the movers arrived in the morning.
We had no idea just how bad that would turn out.
Reading over those old posts again makes me shudder.
I know at some point, my husband and I will likely have to move somewhere that is more accessible for limited mobility, but at this point, I’m still thinking, I never want to move again!!!!
Thank God my brother now owns the property. If my mother were still our “landlord”, we probably would have thrown in the towel and found a way to move out, years ago.
He came out here to take a look at the vent and plumbing stack to see if he could find why we have had a leak in the bathroom ceiling. When my SIL told me he’d stopped at the hardware store first, I couldn’t think why, but then thought… oh, no! He’s buying us a new fluorescent light fixture for the kitchen! That fixture had a “temporary light” label on it when we moved here. (It didn’t even have the cover anymore; that fell off while the roofers were here, and dropping heavy packages of shingles on the roof.) I’d asked my brother about it when we first moved in, and he told me about not being able to find the right fixture for there, anywhere. He was very frustrated about it, too. I got the impression that it had something to do with the electrical, which is pretty janky in this house, so when the light blew two bulbs, which had been replaced not that long ago, for fluorescent bulbs, it was our first warning something was going wrong. Then, when we replaced the bulbs from the extras in the basement, they started going strange things. They were darker at the ends, and we started to see waves of gases flowing inside… Not good! So we stopped using it. I told my brother about it and asked him again, why it had not been replaced. We were not going to take any chances with replacing it until I knew for sure we actually could!
It turned out, the local hardware stores simply didn’t have the right size in stock. 😄😄 If I’d known that, we would have probably replaced it, long ago!
So we were going to just replace the fixture when we had the funds for it. Getting the truck, then getting cats fixed, were a priority. The only inconvenience, really, was how dark it was to do dishes. They sent me some photos of lights at a hardware store they were visiting one time, and asked me what my plan was. At that time, I told them we had no plans, yet. We just needed to know if there was an electrical issue.
What I did NOT want them to do was spend several hundred dollars on a replacement fixture.
So when I heard he was at the hardware store, that’s what I thought he might be doing.
When he arrived, though, and opened up the back, what I saw was a package of pink fiberglass insulation and some rolls of heavy duty plastic. Still more than I wanted him to spend, but at least that made sense!
He then climbed up to check the stacks and they looked okay, overall. There was no obvious area a leak could have been happening. I’d sent him a photo from the ground before I roof raked as best I could around there, and you could see an island of clear roof in that corner. Clearly, we were losing a lot of heat in that area, which might also have been a contributing factor.
It was VERY slippery up there, though, so he had to be so, so careful as he came down to get his bucket of tar. He went back and forth a few times, which was quite nerve wracking! However, he basically slathered that vent, not just around the new shingles, but up the sides as well. Then he put more around the opening for the plumbing stack, next to the vent. If there was water coming in through there, it sure as heck wasn’t going to be getting through anymore! He had to work fast, too, because it was cold, and he had to get it done while the tar was still warm and pliable. He was glad to have been able to get here and get it done while it was still light, too. It gets dark awfully fast, this time of year!
As he was putting away his ladder and stuff, we were chatting and I mentioned how our roof rake, when full extended, can reach all the way to the peak of the roof over the main entry. Since we were looking at it anyway, I mentioned the eavestrough there is something we needed to repair or replace in the spring.
My bad.
The eavestrough was coming loose in one spot, causing a bend at a join, so water would drip through a crack before reaching the downspout.
Next thing I knew, he was setting his ladder up in the pile of snow I raked off the roof and climbed up to take a look. Seeing what he was doing, I got hammer handy – apparently, not a “real” hammer, but it’s what we’ve got! – and he was able to secure it in one spot, but in another, the nail is completely missing. Still, for now at least, there is no longer a sagging area. We can deal with the rest in the spring.
Then he went inside and upstairs to look into the area that’s above the bathroom.
To explain, the upstairs is what might otherwise have been an attic. When it was converted to bedrooms, my dad raised the roof on one side for head room, and that’s where windows were added. My daughters use one of those windows to get onto the roof over the new part of the house to shovel it. The other wall, however, is right under the roof and at an angle. In the room that is above where the bathroom and my husband’s room is now (which used to be a combined living room and dining room, when I was little), there is a small section under the angled portion that is now walled off. When we got an indoor bathroom, it was built to cover the vent and plumbing stack.
This is what it looked like, when we first peeked in there back in February, 2018, just 4 months after we were all moved in.
How or why that stuff was in there, I have no idea.
You can see, however, that there are very old water stains in the wood, however, it is dry in there.
We were able to get the stuff closer to the front, but none of us is able bodied enough to actually crawl in.
My brother, however, could.
He was able to get all the way past that vent, with a little broom and dust pan, sweeping away decades of dust and pieces of wood. I tried to help as much as I could, but that was little more than passing him things and holding a flashlight, in addition to the one he had in the tunnel with him.
I’m just comparing the photos now, and can see that the water stains have grown, however the floor is dry. Wherever the water was coming from, it has been pooling under those floor boards somewhere, before dripping into the bathroom, without getting anything wet in this tunnel.
After sweeping the worst off the floor, he started pulling out the stuff he was finding. Some odd pieces of linoleum with a bold floral pattern I’ve never seen around the farm, and yet somehow feel like I should recognise. My brother also felt he recognised the pattern. He dragged out a folded up… vinyl table cloth? We aren’t sure. There was a box with leftover tiles that cover the floor upstairs! What good are spare tiles, if they’re hidden in a tunnel behind a wall, where no one can see or reach them? Then, most curious of all, he tossed out an object for me to see. Before I could even shine a flashlight on it, something about the shape looked oh so familiar to me.
It was a plastic toy kangaroo, with a joey in it’s pouch.
I remember playing with that toy! What it was doing way back in there, I have no idea!
It is also now sticky and disgusting. It’s old enough the plastic is degrading in that slimy way only “vintage” plastic can do!
Once things were clear, my brother began working in stages. He cut plastic to lay down as a vapour barrier, then began stuffing in the fiberglass insulation.
He literally filled the tunnel with insulation, using a garden hoe to push it into place at the back.
When he got to the vent and plumbing stack, he used spray foam, top and bottom, to seal around them, laid down more plastic, cut to fit around the vent, then kept added more insulation.
Every time he went in, he had to inch his way in like a worm, then inch his way back out again. He did that dozens of times! Oh, he was so exhausted by the time he finished the bag of insulation. It didn’t quite fill the space right to the entry but, by that point, there is the attic over the old kitchen on the other side.
We don’t go in there.
That tunnel above the bathroom is now the most insulated space in the house.
We’ll be keeping an eye on the roof in that area. There should be no more escaping heat melting the snow off there, anymore, that’s for sure!!
By this time, it was completely dark out, and I helped my brother pack things back into his truck. Then I went to feed the outside cats to get them away from the truck, so he could safely leave.
He didn’t leave.
The next thing I know, he’s at the counter between the kitchen and the dining room, clearing it off and setting up to reach the light fixture.
Yup. He bought us a new light fixture.
I suspect they actually bought it that day they sent me the pictures, and asked if I had a plan.
After turning on the light to see what it was doing, he started taking it apart to look at the wiring. He couldn’t see anything obviously wrong. He then went to find the right breaker to shut off the power (there are some gaps in the labelling), and got to work. The breaker also turned off the dining room light, so I set up our large flashlight to light it from below, plus he had his headlamp. He had to fuss with it a bit, and drill a hole in the base plate for the wiring in the ceiling to fit through, but otherwise it was a pretty basic fixture switch.
Here is our shiny new light fixture!
It feels so weird for there to be so much light over that counter again! The light itself it completely different, and far more yellow than the previous bulbs. The fixture is slightly narrower than the old one, so you can just seen an outline on either side, but who cares? We have a working light again.
That done, he packed his truck up again, and finally got to leave! He was here so much longer than he expected to be, but was not about to leave until he’d done what he came to do. And extra, of course, because he’s like that!
The Re-Farmer 