Month: July 2025

Morning kitties, and a mid month shop

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Well, I won’t be working on the wattle weave bed today, as we ended up making a trip into the city for are mid month shopping.

The day started, of course, with feeding the outside cats and doing my morning rounds.

That orange and white one, Colby, will come SO close when I’m putting the food out, but won’t quite let me touch him! The little tortie is the shiest of the bunch. Still can’t get near the mama, though she will sometimes come to the house for food.

Pinky, the garage kitten mama, always come to the house at feeding time, leaving her kittens in the garage. She does NOT like any of the other cats, and is quite aggressive towards them. If they come to the garage, she will chase them off. I did move their food tray closer to the the door between the middle and the side where the back door is, and have been seeing both kittens. I saw the white and grey one outside the garage, near the back door, this morning. Hopefully, that means they will soon make the trek across the yard and discover the wonders of regular food, water, shelter, toys and other kittens to play with.

The dump opened at 10 today, so I didn’t want to do anything that needed more time. I watered the garden beds last night, so they were okay for the morning. I’ll need to water them again, this evening.

My younger daughter’s desktop – currently the oldest in the household – has been dying, and she’s been looking online for a new one. She settled on one at Best By, but they would not accept any version of our mailing address. Not the physical address, no postal boxes, not even the physical address of the store the post office is in. No shipping company alternative that services our area. Nothing.

Oh, and they won’t ship to one of their own physical stores, either.

Their methods of contacting someone through the website were useless, so my daughter hoped to be able to talk to someone at an actual store about it.

That meant a trip to the city. There was a brick and mortar location near a Walmart we go to during are monthly stock up trips, so that worked out.

After loading up the truck with a couple of weeks of garbage, we headed out. When we got to the entry to the pit, my daughter got out and walked ahead of me. The area in front of the pit hasn’t been cleared since the last time I was there, 2 weeks ago, and it was bad, then! My daughter made sure there was nothing that could puncture our tires so I could drive in, stopping me when she reached and area of shattered glass. I did have room to back up towards the pit, at least. Well. To the pile of garbage and what looked like the remains of a small, busted up shed, in front of the pit.

I don’t understand why no one has gotten the front end loader to push all this into the pit. The custodian can’t do it; she’s a senior with mobility issues, so that’s not part of her job, but arranging it to be done should be part of her job! Unless council, for some reason, is refusing to get someone to do it? I don’t know, but it’s getting really bad in there.

That done, our next stop was the post office. The post office itself is closed today (Saturday), but my MI Gardener order of seeds is in, and I thought it might be in the mail box.

It wasn’t.

In fact, there were three parcel slips in there. I was only expecting one package. I’ll have to come back on Monday, when the post office opens again, and see what’s there!

That’s what I get for not going to the post office, after getting our truck back.

After picking up what mail we were able to, it was off to the city.

The first stop was in a mall with a tiny Best Buy shop in it.

My daughter explained her situation to the guy there, and it was clear she was not the first person he’s talked about this. He knew the answer right away.

Basically, there is no way to get something as large as a desktop computer purchased from their website delivered to a PO box, nor with they deliver to a physical address as far out as we live. Including the store the post office is in.

We’re just too far from the city. He did acknowledge that they lose a lot of sales because of this.

Apparently, it comes down to security and theft. They can’t assure that a large package delivered to a rural area won’t get stolen, so they just don’t do it anymore.

It makes me wonder just how often things had been disappearing for them to go that far!

Their own stores, however, will cannot accept personal orders for pick up, either.

The only alternative, other than buying a computer somewhere else, is to find someone in the city that was can get it mailed to, then pick it up ourselves later.

We have a few options on that, with the best one being my brother and his wife.

By the time we were done talking to the guy, it was about 1, and the only food we’d had were a couple of cheese buns I picked up at a gas station, along with a couple of energy drinks, for the drive in.

The cheese buns were from a bakery in the town north of us, and they were awesome.

So we went to the food court for lunch. As we were eating, I messaged my brother, asking if we could have something shipped to their place. It turns out they have a lock box for deliveries, so they don’t get left on the front step. The problem is, delivery companies and Canada Post mostly ignore the delivery instructions and just leave things at their door, in full view. However, with Canada Post, they might also just leave a card for pick up at the nearest post office. If necessary, my brother also has the option to work from home on the day something is supposed to be delivered.

They were good with it, though, so that was a relief for my daughter!

After lunch (I packed more than half of mine up to finish at home, the portions were so large!), I popped into the Dollarama to look some stuff for the garden – that will be in a separate post – before we finally headed to the Walmart.

I am not bothering posting a picture this time. We had a lot of bulky stuff, so the cart was full, even though we didn’t actually get a lot.

We got more cat food; a couple of 32 packs of canned cat food – we made a very large dent in our supply when we ran out of dry kibble and the inside cats were getting wet cat food only, until I was able to use my brother’s car to pick some kibble up. Then never drive it again, because of the brakes issue. I’d run out of canned cat food for the kitten soup outside, and have been taking from the inside cat supply, too.

We still have feed store kibble for the outside cats, but I got two more 9kg bags of kibble. One for the inside cats, one as a spare.

The cat food alone was about $120.

Then we got toilet paper and paper towels, which we’ve also been going through faster than usual this month.

Then it was three loaves of rye bread, two 18 packs of eggs, a small jar of mayo, three cheeses (gouda, Havarti and Old Cheddar), and a package of hoagie-type sausages. At my husband’s request, we also got some Crystal Light water flavours and a couple of large bags of pretzels. Oh, and we got 6 cans of Monster; two each for me and my daughters, and a jug of orange juice for my daughters. I did remember to get insect repellant, so we got a 2 pack of that. For the drive home, we got a couple of cold drinks.

All of that, plus $5 to the Red Cross, came out to $322.83 after taxes.

*sigh*

That done, we headed home, stopping to put in $40 in gas before leaving the city, as the prices were a bit cheaper there.

Once home and unloaded, I had to feed the outside cats to get all the kittens away from the truck, so we could move it away from the house again! By that time, it was late enough that they were being fed only a little bit early.

It was also supper time, so I have me leftover lunch, then headed outside to make use of my Dollarama purchases. I’ll be doing the watering, once things have cooled down a bit more.

Next up: finding ways to deter the deer!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: harvesting garlic

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By the time I headed out in the late afternoon, I was recovered physically enough to get a bit done in the garden. It was time to harvest the garlic!

In the first image above, you can see the potatoes in the background. They are yellowing and dying back, even though they’ve never flowers, and there are no signs that they ever will. I’ve looked around and have been able to rule out insects or fungal disease, which pretty much leaves heat and lack of water. I’ve been trying to keep up with the watering, but it’s very possible I wasn’t able to keep up, with the heat that we’ve been having. Mind you, the wildfire smoke probably hasn’t helped anything, either.

I’ve avoided watering the garlic bed for a while, so it could dry out before harvesting. A quick loosening of the soil with a garden fork, along both sides, and they all came out quite easily.

We got some of the biggest garlic heads we’ve ever grown in there!

In preparing this bed before planting the garlic, I did trench composting with whatever organic matter was handy. Including kitchen compost and grass clippings. These garlic have the biggest, strongest roots we’ve ever had, and a few of them pulled up partially broken down grass clippings, and even some egg shells, with them. The roots seemed very happy with the trench compost!

Once picked, I brought them over to the canopy tent I’d set up for them, and sorted them on the bench. Some of the garlic was picked too late, and were starting to split. There was one garlic where the scape never made it out, and instead got stuck in the stem. The bulbils formed in there and broke through the stem. We could keep those and plant them, if we wanted.

Or eat them.

The remaining garlic was strung up on two lengths of twine and hung across the canopy tent to cure.

The garlic that got too big and starting to split was cleaned up and trimmed, and are now in the kitchen for immediate use.

That done, I was finally able to give the garden a solid watering. I even had a full rain barrel to use on the old kitchen garden. I didn’t do the new food forest trees, though. I wasn’t feeling that good, yet!

Tomorrow, the dump is open and, now that we have the truck back, we’ll be able to do a dump run. I’m also going to have to do a shopping trip large enough to make it worth driving to Walmart. I’m hoping to get that done early enough in the day that I can continue working on the new wattle weave bed later on. Since I have an abundance of willow switches in particular that are too short for the distance the verticals are set at now, I’m going to take advantage of those chimney blocks and go the completely the opposite direction. Each of the concrete blocks has a series of openings around the sides. The posts are inserted in those openings along one side, with four empty ones in between each post. It was an easy way to evenly space the verticals.

I’m going to try adding verticals, using thinner posts, in each of the openings between the posts that are already there. I’ve got six posts now, which means there are five sections where I can add four more verticals. Since these will be sitting on top of the retaining wall, there will be no need to debark them, which will certainly save time, and be easier on my hands!

What this should do is allow me to use the shorter, thinner and more flexible willow switches we have so much of, adding new lengths along the way, held in place more securely. Right now, with what I’ve got so far, the overlapping ends just sort of sit there, loosely. I could probably tie the overlaps together, but that rather defeats the purpose of weaving them in the first place!

One of the things I am planning to get, to plant in the outer yard, is basket willow. Properly coppiced, these can produce an abundance of really long, flexible willow. It seems weird to buy more willow, since we have so much of it around, but they are a different variety, and surprisingly not-straight, unless they’re really, really young. I was originally thinking to get basket willow so that we could… you know… make baskets. However, if the coppiced willow is allowed to grow long enough before harvesting, they would be ideal for wattle weaving, too.

That’s at least a couple of years in the future, though. For now, we make do with what we have!

And right now, we have garlic.

Lots of lovely garlic, curing in the wind! 😁🧄

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties and tiny harvest

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Okay, I definitely over did it yesterday. Which happens a lot faster these days, then it used to!

I was preemptive on things, though. Before going to bed, along with my usual painkillers, I made sure to treat all the usual muscle groups that I’ve had Charlie horse issues with, with Tei Fu lotion. Just in case.

Once outside this morning, I did my usual rounds, starting with feeding the kitties. Including these hungry little wildlings.

The forth one did show up, eventually.

As I was finishing up, I spotted these two full belly babies, being adorable.

I didn’t see the garage kittens until much later, and not both at the same time, but they are there, and getting their own bowl of kitten food. I should start moving the bowl closer to the back door, to encourage them to go into the yard and discover all the amenities, awaiting them!

I should have watered the garden this morning, but my body was giving me a great big FU on the subject. I did manage to get a tiny little harvest, though.

Just a few Spoon tomatoes. In the next photo, there’s a few sugar snap peas, the Spoon tomatoes, a few tiny little strawberries from the old kitchen garden and some raspberries. I was able to leave a bowl full of berries and tiny bowl with the Spoon tomatoes for my husband, as a morning treat when he woke up.

Once back inside, I pain killered up and went back to bed for a few hours.

Being old and broken really sucks sometimes – and I’m still almost the most able bodied person in the household! Both girls are feeling better, though, hence the “almost”. My younger daughter still has to watch herself with the wrist, and has been doing mild recovery exercises. I heard her talking with her sister today, marveling at how much better her wrist feels, even with the remaining pain and discomfort from the surgery, without Squidly wrapped around the bones. She’s so happy to have been able to get that done!

On a completely different note, thanks to some assistance from my older daughter, I was able to pay the deposit for getting the main door and frame replaced. We had 30 days to accept the estimate. After that, we’d have to get a new estimate and, with the way prices are going up, the cost would likely increase if that happened. I’m okay with them taking a while to get the job done, though. That’ll give us time to raised the balance without having to use more debt. *sigh* It needs to be done, though. It’s not like we can go a winter with nothing but a storm door there!

Ah, well. It is what it is. We’ll manage. We always do!

The Re-Farmer

Finally building the new wattle weave bed

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Spoiler alert.

It’s not finished, and won’t be for a while!

The first thing I did was harvest our unexpected maple coppice by the pump shack. It’s been a few years since I cut the suckers back from the old tree stump, so they were getting pretty big – big enough to start getting into the power line for the pump shack.

Time to take them down.

I cleared out all of it, including the smaller suckers. It’ll grow back, as maples tend to do, and the first ones should grow pretty straight, without having others to grow around.

The two stacks in the last picture of the slideshow above are the largest, longest and straightest ones. All the rest went onto the branch pile for future disposal.

The ones I was keeping got dragged into the inner yard, where I could work on them in the shade. I’ve been setting aside things in two piles there. One of longer, straighter poles and branches that can go into the chipper chute. The other is leaves, branches, etc. up to 1/2 inch, which can go into the shredder chute. Once I’ve got quite a bit built up, I’ll be bringing the wood chipper over to clean them all up.

The first thing to do was cut away all the little side branches and twigs.

The resulting pile looked so much smaller!

Since these are going to be in contact with the ground, my next job was to debark them.

Which took such a very long time.

It had to be done, though. Otherwise, the maples could start growing again. Willow and poplar – the other two materials we have for this – do the same thing. In the current wattle weave bed, I used stripped wood on the bottom layers, while the rest still had their bark. Amazingly, even without contact with soil, I spotted some fresh leaves growing!

I have to admit to feeling conflicted on this job. The job itself went well; stripping the bark on freshy cut wood went quite well and was almost meditative. I still felt like I was wasting time, when I could have been working on the bed so much faster, if I just left the bark on! I’m glad I took the time to do it, but gosh, it took forever.

I started stripping bark from the largest ones, leaving the shortest pieces with their bark on. By the time I was getting to the last few, the thinner ones were starting to dry up enough that I had to use my utility knife to strip the bark off, more and more.

I’ve got quite the pile of leaves, twigs and bark started for the shredder chute!

The largest of these were going to be the vertical supports. I measure the bed and worked out that I needed 12 for the long sides. I debated whether to just have one more for the ends but decided to have three smaller verticals at the ends, slightly offset from the long side’s posts. I decided to make the verticals a bit taller than the other bed, too, and cut them to 2’6″.

The posts then needed to have points made. For that, I went into the side of the garage where we store the lawn equipment. My late brother had set up a workshop in there, and there’s still an old vice on the counter. I was able to use that – wrapping the posts with an old cloth grocery bag to protect the wood from the vice – and the draw knife. That green wood cut so nicely!!

Ideally, I would then have treated the wood with oil, or charred the points, but I didn’t have oil for that sort of thing, and we’re under fire bans. So they went in as they were.

I’ve decided to add some wattle weave on the retaining wall blocks as well. With the spaced in the old chimney blocks, it was easy to evenly space out where the verticals would go, then hammer them into the soil. I then had to re-level the edge of the bed, since critters have been playing in the lose soil. I used one of the posts to measure roughly 2 feet from the retaining wall to set the corner posts, then set a line between them. I then used the line and the posts in the retaining wall blocks to set the remaining posts, before hamming all of them into the soil.

Then I dragged over the remaining maple pieces to start weaving.

The longest ones were used up in no time. Two were needed for each level.

The verticals are roughly 2 feet apart, like the other bed. In videos, etc. that I’ve seen about it, they tend to recommend 1 foot apart. When they’re that close together, it’s harder to bend the horizontals around the posts, and they are more likely to crack. However, with them being about 2 feet apart, the narrower ends get pretty loose before they stop. I’d do one from each end per level, which meant running out of length in the middle, making for loose ends and a bit of a mess. Some of that will be hidden once the soil it returned. Adding extra length per level would be more secure and less messy in the overlaps if the posts were just 1 foot apart, though. Which doesn’t help much if the wood ends up snapping, trying to bend them around the verticals that close together. Even using flexible green wood. In fact, I still ended up snaping one, trying to secure it, so the end wouldn’t be sticking out.

I’m glad I decided to do the ends as separate little walls. I was able to use those to help secure the ends of the long side pieces.

I ran out of the longs ones quickly, and the shorter ones were too short to be able to secure them between the verticals. They’d weave between 3 posts and just sit there, loosely.

Which is when I decided it was time to harvest some willow.

Once again, this was needed to get branches away from the power line to the house. I took only the largest ones for now; the smaller ones will need to be done, but I don’t have a use for them just yet.

After stripping off the leaves and shoots, there was a very small looking pile left behind! However, several of them were more than 12 feet long. I was able to weave those in from end to end, and just trim the tiny bit of excess with loppers.

But first, they got debarked.

The kittens LOVED playing with the ends while they were being debarked, and had a blast in the pile of leaves and bark.

Once I got as much as I could, woven in – leaving quite a few shorter pieces behind – it was time to call it a day.

I’m going to need a LOT more material to finish this.

The problem is finding lengths that are long, thin, flexible and straight.

The “straight” part is the hardest to find. Typically, the branches and suckers grow straight for maybe three feet, then branch off. Or there’s been some sort of damage that cause them to grow a new “top”.

For the retaining wall side, I could probably get away with adding more vertical posts, then use up all the skinnier, shorter pieces to weave onto there.

Tomorrow, if I’m up to it, I’m going to go into the edges of the spruce grove to start hunting down some of the poplar that has regrown. Hopefully, I’ll find some nice, long, straight pieces.

We have so many willow, maple and poplar suckers that I’d hoped to harvest for this, but the majority of it isn’t actually useable. I need to really hunt for what will work.

Which means this bed is going to take quite a while to finish. Which is fine. It’s not being used this year, and will be ready for next year. I also plan to leave the vertical supports tall, so that things like hoops or whatever can be added, if the bed every needs to be covered, to protect anything that gets planted there.

I am so tired and sore now, though, I might have to take tomorrow “off” and give my body a change to recover.

For now, I’m ready to take some pain killers and go to bed!

The Re-Farmer

Getting things done

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It’s been a long day! I didn’t have to go anywhere, and the weather was good, so I finally got some progress outside.

First, the cuteness!

The mama and her secret babies seem to be good with my coming into the garage and leaving food for them. No attempt to move them again. I guess actually picking up the smokey kitten was just too much for the mom.

Still, seeing both kittens at the same time – and eating with Mom – is pretty rare!

In the next photo of the slideshow above, we have full belly babies, enjoying the morning sun on my late fathers old car. I’m pretty sure this is two litters, but they behave like one.

I’ve been checking on the garlic while doing my rounds and they will be ready to harvest soon. With that in mind, I finally opened up the canopy tent I bought on clearance last fall and set it up.

I have to admit; for a cheap canopy tent, it came with the highest quality pegs I’ve ever seen with any kit we’ve bought before!

Usually, they’re skimpy pegs that easily bend. I’m quite glad for the high quality ones, because with a couple of the legs, I had quite a time finding a spot where I could actually put the peg through without hitting something.

The tent was packed in a cardboard box inside the case. After I got everything out and starting working on the tent, the cats discovered it.

They were having so much fun with it, I left it there for them when it was time to clean up.

That done, my next project was to finally start on the new wattle weave bed in the old kitchen garden.

Which took all day, and is nowhere near finished, but I’ll get into that in my next post!

See you there… 😊

The Re-Farmer

More kittens, and an update

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Yes! We have transportation again!!!!

Before my friend arrived, I did have to play interference with an Eyelet, who wanted to follow me along. Which meant cuddle time!

It’s so hard to get pictures of those eyes, but I think I managed to capture their colour pretty well. They are SO white!

Eyelet kept trying to follow me down the driveway, which is not good, since I’m 99% sure he’s stone deaf. You can’t tell to watch him running around and playing, but I’ve gone past him with a lawn mower while we was sleeping and he didn’t wake up, so that’s a pretty sure sign!

I also spotted the secret kitties.

Can you spot the mama in the first picture?

These two kittens are the bravest of the four secret kitties – and the location of their “nest” in the outer yard is still very much a secret. Sprout is a good mama, but I do wish she would learn to accept us humans. When I got closer, she hissed at me and hid deeper in the tall grass. The white and grey ran off and hid. The orange on, however, started to run off, then came back. He’s getting curious enough that I think we might be able to touch him, fairly soon.

Sprout, meanwhile, just glared at me through the grass! 😄

As soon as I could hear a car coming down the road, I tucked Eyelet into the isolation shelter (which is open) and dashed to the gate before any cats or kittens could follow me! I did see Pinky’s two kittens in the garage, but they ran off before I could do more than confirm I was seeing both of them.

The drive to my mother’s town was a good time for catching up. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other.

I did, however, have to interrupt the conversation to ask her about the noise her car was making. She thought it might have something to do with a recall on her vehicle model, but she didn’t know for sure. She needed to get it checked but didn’t want to go to the dealership in the city she bought it from, because it turned out, they suck.

When we got to the garage, I paid my bill – $56 and change, after taxes, including 12¢ for the C clip he used to fix the break in the linkage. I asked about the part he’d ordered, and he confirmed that they had sent him the wrong one for some reason. Frustrating, but their mistake saved me about $300, and the truck is working fine.

Then, since we were there, my friend asked about her car. He asked some specific questions about the noise, then asked if she was okay to go for a drive. So while I got set up in the truck and put back a few things I’d made sure to take out before leaving it for the tow truck, they went for a run. The mechanic did the driving. Later on, my friend laughed while saying it was a good thing there were no police around at the time! He was wanting to see if it was the wheel bearings, as the sound should change while swerving.

The sound didn’t change.

She was really happy with him, though, and booked an appointment with him for next week. I happen to not have anything scheduled on that day, so she’ll be coming over to here, first, to pick me up. We’ll go for breakfast somewhere nearby, then visit with my mother.

Which is what we did after we were done at the garage. Well; breakfast for her, lunch for me. We had a great time catching up before heading over to my mother’s.

I didn’t call ahead to my mother that we were coming by. Normally, my mother doesn’t like surprise visits like that, but I knew she would be happy with this one. She has always liked my friend, back from when we first got to know each other in junior high. Even back then, she called my mother “mom”, just like I called her mother, “mom”. When my mother nearly killed herself causing an accident, years ago, my friend happened to be there to witness it, and took care of my mother afterwards. If it weren’t for that, we would have never found out what happened that day, since my mother basically lied about some of the details, and left lots of information out.

My mother was thrilled with the surprise visit. She was also just as tickled to be called “Mom” by my friend, still, after all these years.

I had showed the pictures I took of Eyelet this morning to both my friend and my mother. My friend has a one cat right now. She was telling me I needed to come visit her and meet her cat, and I joked about bringing Eyelet along.

Long story short, after her car is done at the garage next week and she drives me home, I will grab Eyelet and follow her to her place in the truck for a visit. We will see how Eyelet and her cat get along. If they get along, she might adopt Eyelet! She does know he is probably deaf. I do want to make sure she knows he’s probably got ear mites and worms, and has never had vet care. At least I’ve seen him use a litter box in the sun room, though, so he’ll figure that out rather fast.

Once done at my mother, we parted ways.

I’m now rather glad my sister wasn’t available to drive me today. It was so good to catch up with my friend, while getting the truck back. She has a very eclectic work schedule, so even for her to have today available at all was serendipitous. It worked out for her, too, since she is now going to get her own vehicle looked at with a mechanic/garage owner she really likes – unlike the dealership garage in the city she’s been having issues with!

It’s late enough now that I won’t be starting any projects outside, and will just do my evening rounds after feeding the outside cats. Right now, other than a potential grocery shopping trip for my mother, I have 4 days of pleasant weather to get work done outside. Finally! I have two large projects I’ve had to set aside for now, partly due to being pulled away for other things, and partly because I had to give my left arm time to heal from my fall. It is still bothering me, but at least I can do more with it. If it’s still a problem when I see my doctor at our rescheduled time next week, I’ll request X-rays. It’s been quite some time, and it really shouldn’t still be hurting like it does.

Oh, speaking of medical stuff, my daughter just came by to show me her wrist. The surgical bandage could finally come off today and, my goodness, the incision is healing quite nicely! Oddly, it looked so small while the bandage was on, but now that the bandage is off, it seems larger, somehow. They definitely needed space to evict Squidly.

So that is where we are at now. The truck is back and working, we might have Eyelet adopted out, and plans to spend time with my old friend again next week.

It’s been a very good day.

The Re-Farmer

Morning (and evening) kitties, and an update

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I’ll actually start with some evening kitties. I got these shots last night.

Havarti does NOT like to be picked up or carried, but gosh, he loves pets!

He also loves wrestling with grommet.

After the heat we’ve been having, daytime highs are finally getting to be more reasonable, but last night?

We dropped to 7C/45F last night. Lower than was in the forecast.

We’re expected to drop that low again tonight, though some apps say to expect a low of 9C/48F which means we might actually be hitting lower, the way the forecasts have been off lately.

Yes, we’re still in July.

Not quite cold enough to cover things, but pretty darn close. Overnight lows are expected to warm up again after tonight, but not by much.

As if the garden isn’t have a hard enough time as it is. My squash and melons still haven’t recovered from that one cold night back in June.

At least they’re protected from cats, though.

They do like the grass clipping mulch around the winter squash!

This morning, I tried to get some images of the feral kittens at the shrine feeding station. One seems to be missing from view. No idea if it was just behind something, or hadn’t made it to the feeding station yet.

Several of the older cats tend to push the littles away from the cat soup, even though they’ve already had dried kibble. I don’t make a lot of it, since it’s supposed to be just for the kittens, but there’s no stopping the adults from getting at it. All I can do is spread it around as much as possible, so everyone gets at least a little bit.

I have one more quick share for you – an inside cat this time!

Oh, Clarence. You are something special…

I need to get ready to go now. I found a ride to pick up the truck! Yay! We’ll have transportation again! Plus, I get to spend time with an old friend. 🩷 That’s about as good as it gets. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Pickled radish pods taste test

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I meant to try these after they’d had a day to pickle in the fridge. Instead, I went to bed!

So I tried them out this morning, and included them in with my sandwiches.

That picture looked so much better on my phone.

They were still nice and crunchy, which is nice. There is still that very mild radish flavour. They were much sweeter than I expected, though. Not a complaint, but I did expect more of a vinegar flavour, considering it used two types of vinegar. It was quite good, tasted on its own, and would be a nice little something on the side of any meal. In my sandwiches, they added a bit of a crunch, but are mild enough in flavour that they really weren’t than noticeable.

This is definitely something I would do again, and try out different brine recipes. I think they would do nicely with a garlic and dill brine.

For now, we’re just doing quick pickles. I am thinking that we might try to grow more for next year, to have enough to make it worth breaking out the water bath canner, to have some shelf stable jars for the pantry.

As someone who doesn’t really like radishes, I’m happy with how these turned out, and I think they may become a regular in our garden – as long as we’re able to sow the seeds in the fall, since they don’t tend to survive spring sowings.

Definitely a win.

The Re-Farmer

Feral kitties – secret kitties have been found!

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I was definitely wiped out yesterday. I went to bed before 8am and, other than a few cat related disturbances, slept until 6am.

Some time yesterday evening, it started to rain, and was still raining when I went out to feed the kitties. Nothing major; just a gentle, constant rainfall. It was enough to finally refill the rain barrel by the sunroom, though, and I had to add the diverter!

Sprout’s feral babies (and she seems to have all four of them now; I don’t see the other mama around as much) are getting braver. Now that we’ve got kibble again, I’m back to setting out the dry kibble first, then distributing the bowls of kitten soup. As I was going back to the shrine feeding station, I spotted the tortie, loafed in the upper level of the isolation shelter! She ran off when I got too close, but that she was there at all, and just chillin’, is progress.

They were very happy when the kitten soup bowl arrived.

Even Sprout is starting to go in there more often. You can see her in the second image above, with Colby on top of one of the box nests behind her.

I took some kitten soup to the bowl in the garage, just in case the secret kitties were still around. This side of the garage is where we store the lawn equipment, and is accessible only through the main doors. A hole was dug under the door, I believe originally by skunks, so the cats could also get in and out with the doors closed. My brother tried to cover up the hole with a sheet of metal when he stored their big mower in there, but it got dug out again beside it, before we knew there were kittens in there!

After I was able to pick up and hold one of the babies, the mama moved them, and I feared she took them to the barn or one of the sheds in the outer yard. I was still leaving food in where they were before, just in case.

This morning, after putting the food bowl in, I spotted the mama coming up through the garage. The middle is where we park our vehicle, and where my brother’s vehicle he loaned us is currently parked. It has a doorway to the other lean-to side of the garage, and the back door is beside that, so it’s not unusual to see cats cutting through the garage from the yard through there.

She went to eat while I continued on to switching out the gate cam memory card. When I came back, I saw the mom going around into the middle of the garage, making calling noises, while doing to a back corner of the garage. Currently, there is a wrapped and stacked pile of summer tires from the van we no longer have, sort of blocking the space into the corner, between a built in counter shelf on one wall, and a storage shelf on the other.

On a hunch, I moved the food bowl into that part of the garage, and left it in front of the shelf near that corner.

Walking by a few minutes later, I spotted the mama sharing food with her white and grey kitten, which you can see in the last photo above. I didn’t see the smokey one, but it would be in there, somewhere.

The mama had simply moved her kittens to the other side of a wall.

I am so glad she didn’t take them far!

Now, we just have to convince them to come to the shelters in the inner yard.

The Re-Farmer

The good and the not good!

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First, the good.

I was able yo use my brother’s vehicle and pick up kibble first both the inside and outside cats.  Forty pounds of kibble for the outside cats should last us a couple of weeks.

When carrying the bags to the house, I spotted two of the feral kittens crossing the lawn to the cat shelters, looking for food.  The tortie ran off, but the orange one dashed to the tray under the water bowl shelter.  I fed them as soon as I got the first bag in.  They were very happy, and I soon saw Brave little Colby was back at the tray.

What a sweet little thing!

Now, for the bad.

I was forwarded that this vehicle ran rough.  It’s older than out truck and is really old school.  Manual door locks and windows, no AC, no cruise control.   None of which was a big deal.  As long as it got me from A to B.

I didn’t realize the rough ride was from the brakes!  Yikes!  When just driving slowly to the gate and stopping to open it, my initial thought way, why is the ABS doing that, when I’m driving so slow?

When braking from higher speeds, the shudder was worse.  To the point that the entire vehicle was shaking.

When I got to the feed store, I messaged my brother about it.  I then had to go to the next town to pick up prescription refills for my daughter and I, with a quick stop at the grocery store before going home.

It was so bad, I avoided using the brakes as much as possible, slowing down well in advance.  When I got to town, I parked at the grocery store so I could walk to the pharmacy, rather than hit all those stop signs along the way.

Which us when I saw the message from my brother.

The brakes didn’t have a shudder.

????

I just assumed this was one of the things they were having issues with on this vehicle. 

Well, now.

I got the prescription refills, then got some things at the grocery store, including a normal large bag of kibble for the induce cats.

Before leaving, I messaged home, asking gor the gate to be opened, and maybe help unloading, because I was going to park straight into the garage.  We leave that door open most of the summer.

For the drive home, I was able to barely use the brakes at all, and not impede traffic by slowing down so far in advance.  There was no traffic to impede!

Once the vehicle was parked, my younger daughter was there to take the grocery bags in, while I took care of the kibble bags.  Once everything was taken care of, I sat at my desktop to give a detailed description of what the brakes were doing, to my brother.

We will not be using it again, unless it’s to take it to the garage and leave it there for them to check out.

It dies leave us with a problem.

The truck is supposed to be done tomorrow.

We have no way to get to it to bring it home.

Can anything else go wrong?

Don’t answer that.

😆

The Re-Farmer