Month: March 2024

Good morning, my pretties!

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Just look at these handsome boys!

Gotta laugh at Patience in the back, caught mid yawn!

I got to pet the tuxedo on the left while it was eating. He seemed so surprised when I did. Not “oh, no, the human is touching me!” surprised. More like “I’m not supposed to like the human touching me!” surprised. 😄

I counted only 17 outside cats this morning. Most in the sun room. They are using the cat house for shelter, but clearly the heat bulb in there is not working. I tried looking in the window, and I can see the heat shield is handing down, but that’s about it. I am assuming they unplugged it somehow, because I can’t see the red light that’s on the timer device. The window is so dirty and dark on the inside, I can’t see the timer or the outlet it’s plugged into at all. The good thing is, even without the heat bulb going, it’s warm enough that their body heat alone will warm it up in there. Opening up the roof to check isn’t an option right now. I like to leave the snow on the roof for extra insulation, plus we haven’t dug the path around it since the most recent snowfalls, so we can only access one corner right now. Even the back, where the counterweight is set up, would need to be dug out more. Otherwise, it can’t be fully opened.

When it comes time to build a new cat house, I definitely want to change up how to access the inside. The roof is just too heavy to be opened the way it is now. As it’s getting older and more fragile, we have to have two people to open it, so it won’t twist and crack. The counterweight helps, but not enough.

My brother built it so it’s sitting on a skid that allowed him to move it around. That skid is rotting and falling apart now, so it wouldn’t be of any use to try and move it again. In the future, I want to built a cat house that’s on legs maybe 6 inches off the ground, and then we can use things like bricks or whatever, to 1) protect the wood of the legs from the moist soil and 2) level it, since our yard is wildly uneven.

Since the cats like to use the space under the various shelters, I will also want to put some sort of skirting around probably three sides, maybe 3 1/2 sides, to shelter them from the winds. With how well having a sheet of rigid insulation under the kibble house has worked out so well for them, I’d want to do something similar under any other shelters we build, too. It would be good to include a racoon proof space to store their kibble and supplies. We need to free up space in the old kitchen, where it’s all currently stored. We used to keep it in the sun room, but the racoons kept getting at it.

I also want to have one whole wall, or at least a large part of one wall, to be of Lexan, and have that side facing south. That will allow for passive solar heating (we would need to be able to vent that heat out in the summer, so it doesn’t get too hot!), while also allowing us to see what’s going on inside. The problem is, a single sheet that’s .093 Inch x 18 Inch x 24 Inch costs almost $90! That’s at Home Depot in the city. There are cheaper brands, like Optix, where a sheet that’s .080 Inch x 18 Inch x 24 Inch costs a little under $35. Lexan is a much higher quality, but… well, it’s for a cat house, so we don’t necessarily want to go all out on it!

One of these days, when we have a budget for it, I want to go to the Restore in the city. There’s no way to know what’s going to be in stock at any given time, but they often have all sorts of building materials available for much lower prices. Not just for building cat houses, of course! We need materials for the sheds and other structures we need to build. For the cordwood garden shed we want to build, for example, I want to make sure it’s on a foundation that can hold the weight of the walls. Otherwise, it’ll just sink into the soil. I follow the local Restore on Facebook and have seen all sorts of bricks and pavers and the like some available at times. There’s also a salvage yard in the city that sells items salvaged by a demolitions company – the company my late brother used to work for – and they’ve got huge piles of bricks and stone that would work. For a trip there, though, I’d want to go with my brother and his trailer. This is not stuff I would be able to load into the back of our truck!

So many plans to prioritize!

The Re-Farmer

Is growing your own food affordable? (Videos)

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I just had to share this really interesting video from Huw Richards.

Richards is based in the UK, and he’s in a wildly different growing climate than we are, but some things are pretty universal.

Richards set himself the goal of growing enough food to feed a household of four in a small space, and kept track of everything, including the costs, then comparing to what it would cost to buy that food (he does include what the costs are in US$ and Euros). Of course, his costs and availability would be different than were we are, but the same methodology can be used anywhere.

For our situation, we have the luxury of space, which is good because we also need to take into account accessibility in our planning. His narrow paths between beds, for example, are not something we can get away with. We also need to have higher raised beds, again for accessibility and mobility reasons. To a certain extent, we are also able to scavenge materials around the farm, whether it’s felling dead trees and using the logs to build the raised beds, or scrounging for lumber and tools in the barn and various sheds, we should be able to get away with spending less. Our plans will – eventually – incorporate animals to help improve and amend our soil. We were supposed to at least have a few chickens, a couple of years ago, and that just didn’t happen. It’s a goal that has been shifted to this year but, the way things tend to derail our plans, I’m just hoping we can at least get started on building a chicken coop, so we can get chicks next year!

This next video on self sufficiency is also really useful.

He’s a real wealth of information!

The Re-Farmer

Gorgeous morning, and good neighbours!

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It’s all gone as I write this, but heading out this morning was a glittering, sparkling winter wonderland!

All the trees were frosted like this. There’s no way the camera in my phone could pick up how it was all sparkling in the sunshine!

I also had a nice surprise when I got to our gate. Yesterday, I saw that someone had opened up one side of the driveway more for us, at the plow ridge. This morning, the other side was done! This time, the motion sensor on the trail cam was triggered, and I could confirm it was the same neighbour who would suddenly clear our driveway last year. Last year, we had enough accumulated snow that, once it was deeper than the bottom of our gate, we left the gate open, so he just went in and cleared our driveway for us. With how much milder this winter has been, and seeing our vandal do things like stalk along the road when the vehicles we’d sold for parts were being collected, we didn’t dare leave the gate open. Otherwise, I know he would have widened the whole driveway for us. As it is, he did what we could, just because he could!

Having such great neighbours does make up a lot for having to take extra precautions because of our vandal.

The good thing is, our new truck can handle a plow attachment. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find a used one, because even the cheap, generic new kits start at around $1300, before taxes, with some costing more than $5000!

Something else to try and figure out how to squeeze out of our budget!

The Re-Farmer

I think they like it!

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The yard cats seem to really like the freshly cleared paths!

They are much more active these days, and I’m seeing far fewer of them when I head out.

On the downside, this being prime baby making season, is increased fighting among the males.  This morning, I found things knocked about in the sun room.  As I cleaned up, I was finding tufts of fur all over.  When I untied the doors, I found fresh blood on the threshold.   I’m not seeing new injuries on any cats, but Sad Face has more scratches healing on his nose.

We did make it out yesterday to pick up some takeout.   The driveway is a bit tight in places, but we had no issues getting in and out.  This morning, though, I saw that someone had widened the end of our driveway, on the side we normally turn towards.  I’m pretty sure I know who it was, but the piles of snow are so high that whoever it was did not trigger the motion sensor on the gate cam.  Which is fine since it still gets triggered where I need it to monitor.

I shared a couple of photos of our plow ridge to a FB group for our municipality.   Many others had the same problem, which they never had before this year.  One person lost days of work because their road wasn’t plowed, then when it did get plowed, their driveway was blocked by the plow ridge, and they still couldn’t get out!  It seems we are not the only ones with limited means to clear our own driveways.

I’m glad we got it done, though.  I heard from the Cat Lady this morning, and we are on to bring three cats to her on Monday.  We will meet her at our usual parking lot to do the deal. 😉  I just need to get a time to meet, depending on her schedule.  I might widen a couple of spots in the driveway between now and then.

I did clear the paths to the compost heap, back door of the garage, and outhouse this morning.  It was a beautiful day for it.   I’m actually quite surprised by how much I am not in pain today.

As much as I’m tempted to get out and do more digging, I need to make myself take a break.  I’m a terrible one for pushing myself too far, then paying for it for days.  I keep forgetting how broken this old body is!  Especially on beautiful days like today.

So today will be a day of enforced rest, even though I did already do more digging! 😆

The Re-Farmer

I guess I wasn’t done, after all!

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But I at least got some rest, first.

I saw my daughter on the garage cam, trying to cut her way through a snow drift in front of one side of the garage that didn’t need to be cleared. It was so deep, she had to use a shovel to cut into it before little Spewie could do its job. When I cleared the area in front of the garage, I hadn’t made a wide enough turn radius, so when we headed into town and I tried backing the truck out of the garage and turning into the driveway, I couldn’t back up far enough to clear a corner of the drift I’d left behind.

So I quickly took some painkillers, bundled up and headed outside, grabbing the snow shovel along the way.

After talking to her for a bit to explain that only the one edge of the drift needed to be cleared, not the whole thing, I stayed out to help. The area in front of the garage was drifted over even deeper than when I cleared it yesterday, and it wasn’t light and fluffy, like in the yard! To top it off, my daughter could maneuver Spewie only in certain directions without the wind blowing the snow right back into her.

For the next while, we had a routine. I’d use the shovel to break up the snow along the edge she’d just cleared, then rested while she cleared the area I broke up. Once she did a pass, she’s drag the snow blower back towards the garage, then she could rest while I broke up the next area of snow.

We kept this up until we cleared a decent sized area, far enough to clear that section of drift that I’d hit, then my daughter started making the first cut through the snow to the gate. While she did that, I started working on the turning radius space that she couldn’t get into with Spewie. After a while, though, she stopped and asked if I could help her out. In order to not trip the power bar by overtaxing the snow blower, she was doing a lot of slow back and forthing, while dragging the extension cord behind her. She kept stepping on the cord as she backed up, so I helped by simply following along, holding the cord off the ground behind her, moving back and forth with her, while also pulling more slack from the garage along the way. My daughter had the cord slung over her shoulder, so this ensured she never had to have the cord pulling at her as she went along. We have 100′ extension cords, and we need to use both to reach the end of the driveway – roughly 150-160′, I’d say. Dragging that behind you can get pretty “heavy”.

As we got closer to the gate, I was trying to see if the road had been plowed, but was very perplexed by what I was seeing. Everything was so glaring white, I just couldn’t make things out until we get closer.

I was seeing a mountain of snow, blocking the end of our driveway.

It was easily the worst plow ridge we’ve had left across our driveway, in the 7 winters we’ve seen since moving out here! Not even when we were snowed in for a month, did the plow leave behind a ridge so high!

Once we reached the gate and my daughter stopped to unlock it, I went back to get the snow shovel, and a metal shovel to break up ridge. The snow shovel is plastic and already has a crack in it, so I didn’t want to use that to break up the plow ridge.

Then I clambered over the ridge to start working on it from the road side, first. I quickly realized that, even if Spewie were powerful enough to clear the ridge (which it isn’t, even if I broke it up, first), the snow was so full of gravel, we couldn’t have done it, anyhow. Spewie’s parts are plastic, so the gravel would have completely wrecked it.

Check this out.

It’s hard to see, with everything so white, but that plow ridge reached to over halfway up my thigh. I had to use both shovels to steady myself, just to climb over it.

You can get a better idea of how tall it was in this next photo.

I’d cleared about half of the ridge at this point.

The thing is, it isn’t enough to clear enough space to fit the truck through. There needs to be a turning radius, of course, but we also need enough space to get in and out of the truck to open and close the gate.

It’s a good thing I enjoy shoveling.

By the time I mostly cleared the ridge, my daughter was almost done the rest of the driveway. She even cleared a path to the trail cam for me, while I got the last bit done, and she could finish her pass and turn around.

While she did her last pass, I went back to working on the turning radius by the garage. I hope I got the range right. It was actually faster for me to use a shovel to clear the space than it took for my daughter to cut her way through the last section of driveway with Spewie, so I just kept on clearing until we finally caught up with each other.

Once everything was put away and my daughter brushed the snow and ice off of Spewie, we were more than happy to hobbler our way inside. I’m thankful for the longer daylight hours, because it was already starting to get dark by the time we were done!

My husband, sweetheart that he is, has offered to order take out pizza for tonight. Once I’m done writing this, I need to decide if I’m up for the drive. Not that I can eat pizza during Lent, but they might have something on their menu I can have, instead.

What do I feel more up to? Cooking, or driving?

I think driving might just win.

The Re-Farmer

I’m done, plus cat adoption update

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Last night’s storm turned out to be bigger than predicted. The 10-15cm/4-6in snowfall we were told to expect quickly changed to 10-20cm/4-8in The local highways group I’m on was getting constant updates from people describing terrible road conditions and many people in ditches, while advising others to not go out at all, if they didn’t have too. Highways were being closed all over the south half of our province, too.

The winds weren’t as bad, at least. Which meant that when I started digging out paths around the house, I didn’t have to break through several inches of hard packed snow at the top, first.

I did the main paths, clearing the main entry and front steps, the sun room doors, and around the cat shelters. The sidewalk from the main doors to the gate in the chain link fence, then on to the garage, got cleared wide enough for my husband’s walker to fit through. Once at the garage, I cleared enough to access and open the doors to where little Spewie is stored.

And that’s it. I’m done.

I traded chores with my daughter, instead. I did the litters and, as I write this, she’s bundling up to go out and clear the driveway. At least the temperatures are pretty mild. We’re at -8C/18F right now, and expected to warm up another degree for our high. We’ll warm up very slightly over the next couple of days, then are expected to make the jump to highs above freezing by Sunday. Which means all the paths we clear now will melt clear first.

I did see a plow on the main road last night, but I didn’t see if it had gone down our road or not. I sure hope it did!

One reason we wanted to make sure and clear the driveway today was so that we could head out to meet the Cat Lady with three adoptees tomorrow. Yesterday evening, though, I got a message from her. The “problem cat” that she agreed to take in return for them making space for our tripods, isn’t going to her quite yet. The cat turns out to have dental issues and will need all its teeth pulled! So she’s going to have two gummy cats soon. It’s a good thing the shelter caught it and is taking care of that. When they had to do it on the cat they adopted from us, it ended up costing $1800.

So she won’t be getting the cat right away, which means they should have space for our tripods some time next week. Ghosty is going to a different shelter, but she will collect all three of them at once.

Which turns out to be providential, considering the conditions right now! We’ll have our driveway clear, at least.

Based on the long range forecasts, winter has made its last gasp.

We’ll see if that holds out! It’s not unusual for us to have a blizzard around our anniversary, in the first week of April, but we are still being affected by the strong El Niño, so we might escape it this year.

I sure hope so. I want to see green growing things outside again!

The Re-Farmer

Orders in!

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We’re back from town and picking up the packages in the mail. One of my daughters came along to do her own shopping, so I had both company, and help bringing things to the house!

Here’s one of the packages that came in; we finally replaced the outside heated water bowl that stopped working.

It’s the same size as the one that’s in the sun room. I had intended to buy another large one at the local hardware store again, as the price was better than ordering the same larger size online, but my husband went ahead and ordered this one before I got around to it.

I like the pretty colour. 😁

I was happy to see our order of lysine came in a couple days earlier than the tracking information said it would.

Then there were these.

I decided to get a new USB extension and adapters, instead of using the old ones we’ve got. The ones we’ve got would be from before we moved out here, so probably close to 10 years old. I figured some newer, more up to date items would be better! The adapters came in a three pack, so we have extras for anything else we might need them for. So many things come powered by USB these days!

Of course, I had to test it out on the lights that came with the seed starting kit. We can easily fit 4 of them on one shelf of the mini-greenhouse at the window. Then, since we don’t need to start seeds for a while yet, I decided to set three of them up. I’ve got the tray with the eggplants and hot peppers on the second level right now, and two trays of onions at the top level. Since whatever is on the second shelf wouldn’t be getting as much light, I would alternate them every few days. Of course, they would also need to be rotated regularly. What I did was place three of the LED grow lights from the kits on the top shelf, over the side of the seedling tray that gets the least amount of light.

It should be interesting to see if it makes any noticeable difference.

Meanwhile, I’ve been looking up the bulbs for one of my aquarium greenhouse lights. We have one burnt out bulb, and the other is starting to look dim. I got them from the same fish supply store my daughters bought the aquarium set at (hugely discounted for Boxing Day, or we could never have afforded it!), and never really looked into the type of bulbs. I just knew it was the right kind for our tank.

Well, it turns out these bulbs are general grow lights, not just aquarium bulbs. Which, unfortunately, makes them a bit more expensive. I found them on Amazon, but I don’t want to buy them there. I’m going to check out some hardware stores, first. At least that way, I can be sure any bulbs I get will make it home without breaking! Plus, I might be able to just buy one or two, instead of packages of 5, 10 or more! Not something I’ll have the budget for until next month, anyhow, but I can look.

As for our drive to town and back, our road is STILL not plowed, but at least the main road to the highway is. I am starting to think they’re not going to bother plowing side roads like ours until after tonight’s expected snowfall. I am SO thankful for our truck!! If we still had the van, we would have been dragging the undercarriage through the snow the whole way. My mother’s car wouldn’t have made it at all.

When I got home, there was a message from the salvage yard I’d contacted to see about getting rid of things like our collected aluminum, and the 13+ large batteries we found while cleaning out the basement and parts of the garage, plus a few other things we could get rid of, like the broken appliances. Other stuff, I would want my brother to be there to say what can stay and what can go. I called the guy back. He told me they’d be in our area in the next while, however we can’t get to the barn right now! So I suggested we wait at least a couple of weeks. When I told him about how some things would need my brother’s okay to clear out, and we’d have to book it in such a way that he could arrange a day off to come out here, he suggested we wait until we can do that. By doing one trip for everything, they only have to bring the equipment out once, and can give me a better price. This company actually weighs the scrap metal on location, rather than hauling it away first, then weighing it. That way, the customer can see exactly what the weight is, right then and there.

So that will wait until spring, or at least until enough snow is gone that we can get to areas like the car graveyard well beyond the outer yard.

I will be really happy to finally get a lot of that junk cleaned up. And I’m sure the renter will be happy to see it gone, too. That way his cows won’t be getting into stuff and possibly hurting themselves!

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: new sprouts, no sprouts, plus possible cat adoptions!

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While shutting down the lights in the big aquarium greenhouse, I spotted a bit of green. By this morning, there was more!

In one of the two cups they were sown in, all three Purple Beauty bell peppers have started to sprout.

In one of the three cups the Sweet Chocolate bell peppers were sown in, there’s one sprout emerged, and another pushing its way through. There may even be a third, under a piece of perlite, on the right. If it is, we’ll know by the end of the day.

With the thyme sprouted for so long, but nothing else, I had unplugged the heat mat some time ago and just hoped the tank would still be warm enough for the other seeds. There is NO sign of the oregano. We had issues with oregano last year, too. I’ll give it a bit longer, then decide if I want to try sowing them again, or just give up on the oregano from seed this year. It might be better to buy a transplant when the garden centres open in the spring.

In other news…

I was contacted by the Cat Lady a couple of days ago. She has been able to find open adoption spaces at a couple of shelters in the city for us. After much discussion, we’ve decided that both Ginger and Toni will go to one shelter. They have a set up just for special needs cats, and apparently three legged cats are extremely popular. In the city, at least! The other shelter specialized in Siamese or Siamese looking cats. I sent a picture of Ghosty’s face, and she was identified as a Lynx Point Siamese. My daughters figured she was a tabby with albinism! Either way, this shelter tends to have rather high end clientele, so Ghosty will likely find herself in the lap of luxury before long!

As I write this, I can see the live feed from the garage cam. There are 6 cats milling about. It’s that time of year again. There’s been a lot of baby making going on, and the males are starting to fight over the females. I’m so frustrated that we haven’t been able to snag any of the females to get fixed! They simply will NOT let us near them! I think the super fluffy little tabby that is sibling to Patience outside, and Peanut Butter Cup, the Beast, and Soot Sprite, inside, is female. It’s hard to tell with all the fur, and I can’t get close enough to check, anyhow, but the way I see her behaving around the males right now…. *sigh* Why are all the females so skittish, but the males so friendly?

Anyhow.

If all goes to plan, we might be down three indoor cats on Friday! I’ll be driving them out half way to meet the Cat Lady, and she’ll take them the rest of the way.

This morning, after giving the outside cats their food and warm water, I did a bit of shoveling. I’m much less stiff and sore than I expected to be, after yesterday! I made sure to have some Golden Milk before bed, which I think helped a lot. Lord knows, the painkillers aren’t doing much. We now have paths to the compost pile, the back of the garage, the outhouse, and the litter pellet compost behind the outhouse.

What I am NOT going to bother doing is clear a path to drive into the inner yard. I don’t see the point.

We are getting snowfall warnings for this evening, though – another 10-15cm/4-6 inches – so we might need to clear the driveway again tomorrow, so we can meet with the Cat Lady on Friday. Hopefully, the gravel roads will be plowed, too. I thought it was done already, but when I cleared our driveway, I found that what I though was a plow ridge visible on the garage cam was just tire tracks from the one vehicle that managed to make its way down our road. !! I don’t expect to have troubles with the truck on the road, but our driveway tends to drift a fair bit. Mostly right in front of the garage.

We have several packages to pick up at the post office, which closes at noon today, so I will be heading out soon to get those, then keep going into town with a couple of water jugs to refill, and pick up a few groceries. I’ll have to snag a daughter to help me bring things to the house from the garage, since I won’t be able to pull up to the house. Either that, or reclaim the wagon from the storage side of the garage. It’s got our chainsaw and other tools I was using to clear trees and work on the first trellis bed stored in it. With the paths in the snow, though, it might be easier to just carry things in. We’ll see.

As I write this, we’ve already warmed up to -13C/8F, and we are expected to reach a high of -5/23F after the snow starts to fall. We’re expected to stay below freezing for a few more days, but the forecast is now saying we should reach of high of 2C/36F on Sunday, and be staying with highs at or above freezing from then on.

We’ll see what actually happens! I just want that snow to melt away slowly, so we don’t get any flooding aside from our usual moat around the garage. 😁

Well, time to get ready to head out, and see what the roads are like!

The Re-Farmer

Four hours

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That’s what it took me to do this.

That includes digging my way to the garage, first, and clearing enough of the front that I could open the doors and lease little Spewie from hibernation.   That little snow blower got a real work out, today!

I am totally knackered.

The Re-Farmer