Author: Re-Farmer

I love our truck!

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Today is relatively mild, as far as the temperature goes. It’s only -8C/-18F as I write this. The windchill, however is at -24C/-11F and honestly, I think around our house, it’s actually feeling colder than that!

The historical records for today are pretty wild! Our record high was 23C/73F set in 2012, but the record low for today is -26C/-15F, set in 1974.

I well remember my childhood winters here in the 70’s. There’s a reason the “experts” were saying we were heading into a new ice age back then! It was brutal! Of course, as a child, I didn’t know any different and thought it was normal. It wasn’t.

Our earlier long range forecasts that said we were going to have highs above freezing through the rest of March and into April have been completely reversed. Now they say we’re going to have highs below freezing for at least another 10 days. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for that bloody wind!!!

One thing about the cold and wind; we’ve got more yard cats!

I got a different number, every time I tried to do a head count, but the range was still between 31 and 33 cats! And at least one – Sad Face – was “missing”. I haven’t seen more than 30 cats here in weeks.

I was happy to note that the matt of burrs in Adam’s fur seems to be almost all gone. At least the ones on her hip and side. The burrs on the tip of her tail are still there. I’m also still keeping an eye out of a printer baby with an injured back leg, but have seen no sign of a limping cat, so that’s good.

Which reminds me; I reached out to the Cat Lady about the Wolfman and his eye, sending her a picture. It was a long shot, but I was hoping donations to her rescue might be available, as we have zero vet budget right now. I wasn’t surprised when she said there was none left; she’s taking care of the rescues out of pocket again. However, she was able to give me advice, as she’s dealt with this before. She agrees with my husband, that it’s most likely a scratch from another cat. She asked if we still had some Metacam left, which we do, so we’ll be dosing him for three days. It’ll get the swelling down and reduce pain, and help it heal faster. We had to weigh him, first, to calculate the dosage.

He did not like that. 😄

Along with the Metacam, we’ll continue using eyedrops and carefully dabbing around the eye. She described the treatment regimen they did with their cat that had an eye like this. With their cat, it took about a month to heal completely – but it also turned out to have a piece of claw stuck under a lid that finally came out on its own! I don’t think we’ve got anything like that, but it’s hard to see. They ended up self treating because, when she called the vet about it, treatment would have cost at least $600. As it is right now, she’s making weekly payments to cover their bill with her usual clinic, because they still owe them thousands! They have a good working relationship with this clinic. This is the one that wouldn’t give up on Cabbages (which is now saving the lives of other cats), and a couple of other sick kittens from our place the Cat Lady took. I’ve actually lost track of how many cats they now have permanently that came from us! There’s at least four or five.

Which reminds me; they have an area prepared for Ginger. He’ll stay with them and get the standard vet care before being officially put up for adoption. He’s going to be sharing space with a very chill cat with no eyes (also up for adoption), so bullying will not be a problem! Right now, it’s just a matter of scheduling a day to connect.

I did get out today, and I am so very happy about it! I was able to get the truck into the yard, so we could load it up and make a dump run. There was just one drifted area I wasn’t sure about, but the snow is hard packed enough that the truck just climbed right over! We could never have done that with the van. It would have broken something! The truck made it through, easily.

Once the truck was by the house, the girls took care of loading it while I opened the gate, penguin walking the whole way. I had just asked them to bring the bags out, expecting to load the box myself, but by the time I shuffled my way back to non-ice covered paths, the girls were just closing up the tailgate!

I did have to laugh when I opened it up to unload it at the dump. Getting back out of the yard had sent almost all the bags flying to the cab end of the box.

There’s a reason we keep a long handled garden cultivator tool in the cab all the time! Very handy, to pull things closer.

I had considered continuing on to the town North of us after going to the dump, after my husband had confirmed they have the bio drain maintenance stuff that finally got our toilet going again, in stock. After unloading the garbage, though, I decided against the trip. The winds were even worse than at home! At least it was blowing in the right direction, so the bags I was tossing into the pit were being blown further in, rather than back at me! On the way home, I did make a stop at the post office, though, and picked up a few grocery items while I was there. There are a few other things we need to get, along with refilling the big water jugs, but that will wait until I meet with the Cat Lady in the smaller city. Next week, we’ll be doing our stock up shopping for April, so I don’t want to be making any special trips if I can avoid it.

I’m just glad we were finally able to made that dump run. We were way overdue! I am SO appreciating this truck!!! It’s such a good beast.

We should name it. Our previous van was named Sleipner. This truck needs a good, muscular name. 😂

The Re-Farmer

ps: Oh, my goodness! I just noticed the date and realized – today is the first day of spring! Winter is officially over!

Well. On the calendar, at least!

A good start to the day, and some less good stuff

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Considering what time I made my last post, I’d say it was an excellent start to the day – we have a toilet that flushes again, and it’s still flushing. 😄 In fact, it’s working better than ever.

We have got to find more of that bio stuff!!! If I can’t find it locally again, I’m even willing to Amazon it.

I should call the plumber back and leave another message, saying we don’t have an urgent need for him to come out anymore. Getting that main drain pipe cleared still needs to be done, but it can wait a bit.

It’s still rather chilly out there, but we’re supposed to reach a high of 4C/39F this afternoon. With a bit more melting, we should be able to drive into the yard again, which means finally being able to load up the truck and do a dump run. The dump is open tomorrow, and highs are supposed to drop below freezing again after today (so much for the long range forecasts have highs above zero for the rest of the month!), which means our skating rink driveway is going to have a fresh layer of ice on it. At least it’s not the roads! There are some patches, of course, but for the most part, the gravel roads are clear of snow and ice.

I didn’t bring our water jugs to do our refills when I did my mother’s shopping yesterday, so I’m debating going into town today. The thing is, I’m going to meet up with the Cat Lady with Ginger some time this week – she’s not sure what day she can meet me, yet, but assures me it’ll be this week. Hopefully, they won’t have any more disasters like losing part of their roof in the high winds we got a few days ago! Since I’ll be meeting her at a half way point that’s close to a Canadian Tire, I would rather wait until then. Their refills are almost half the price as locally, plus they have a sanitizing station for the insides of the jugs. If we manage to do a dump run tomorrow, though, I might just combine trips. We’ll see.

I don’t mind hanging onto Ginger a bit longer, but he’s still being harassed and bullied, so the sooner he can be adopted out, the better.

*sniff*

Speaking of cats, check out this crowd at feeding time this morning.

If you look closely at the black and white cat on the left (Adam), you can see something in her fur. That’s a big matt of burrs! She also has some stuck in her tail. Yesterday evening, the tip of her tail was actually stuck to the burrs on her hip!

The problem is, like all the other females (including the three around her), they won’t let us near them. Even Junk Pile, who for a short time came to me for cuddles after she lost her litter, won’t let me touch her anymore.

Today, however, I had some success with Adam!

While she was eating on the roof, I came up behind her and put my hand on her back. Normally, she’d notice me and run off before I could touch her. This time, she was startled and looked at me, but then kept eating. So I started giving her shoulder rubs – and she let me! For a little while, at least. Then she moved out of reach. No matter! That was the most contact we’ve managed to get with her, ever!

In the back, on the right, you can see a tuxedo. That’s another one we can’t get near, so I’m assuming it’s female, too. That’s the one with one damaged eye. I was able to get a fairly clear view of it this morning, and half of the pupil is looking brownish now. I suspect that eye will be lost. The cat doesn’t seem to be in any discomfort, but cats are weird that way. I remember when we had Ginger in the sun room, waiting for his appointment to remove his leg, and Ginger was rolling around on the floor, leg flopping and bending all over the place, like it was nothing!

Speaking of eyes…

We need to keep an eye on the Wolfman (formerly Pom Pom). Yesterday, the girls noticed one of his eyes was red and had swelling around it. I haven’t been able to get a look at him today. It’ll take two people to check it out properly, and maybe apply some eye drops, or assess if this is going to require a vet trip.

My daughter also asked me to keep an eye out for one of the “printer babies”. That’s the term they use for all the white and grey cats, collectively, since they can be so hard to tell apart. When she was dumping out the cat litter behind the outhouse, she saw one through the trees, hop-walking while keeping one back leg off the ground. I hadn’t seen anything like that when I fed them last night, nor did I see any limping or favouring of limbs this morning, so I hope that whatever was bothering the cat healed up. The alternative explanation is, I’m simply not seeing that cat at all.

Well, I got a bit of good news from my husband, while I was writing this! He tried looking up the drain maintenance stuff on Amazon, but only found another brand. It was marketed as “green”, but I couldn’t see anything on the label about what was in it that made it work. I didn’t throw away the empty bottle of the stuff we used, so he was able to look it up by brand. It turns out another branch of the hardware store I bought it from has plenty in stock. It’s only an extra 10 minute drive away – and the dump is about 1/3rd of the way there, so it would be convenient to keep on going, after stopping at the dump.

If I can get the truck into the yard tomorrow. We really, really need to do a dump run, but the path to the garage is even more slippery now than ever!

The Re-Farmer

It worked!

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It’s almost 1am, but I just had to write this post!

I hoped the plumber would have called while I was at my mother’s.   When he hadn’t called by the time I got home, I called again and left another message.  This time I mentioned we had only the one bathroom, and were using a honeypot.

No call.  Which probably means they are really busy.

With the drain cleaner having no effect, and the plunger just splashing and making a mess, we were getting pretty frustrated.

Then I remembered we might have another option to try.  After looking around, I found this stuff.

There wasn’t a lot left in the bottle.  We’d been using it for a while, but when I tried to get more, I couldn’t find it.  Even the employee that tried to help me had never seen it before, though she did still try to find it for me.  Then we just forgot to use what we had left.

I dumped the last of the bottle into the toilet bowl, then left it for several hours.

Just a little while ago, I tried plunging again, and it actually worked!  We have a flushing toilet again!!!

We have seriously got to find more of this stuff.

It also confirms for me that the root of the problem is the main drain pipe itself.  Too many decades of grime coating the inside.

So we definitely still need to get it cleaned out, or it’s going to clog up again. 

Plus we need to stock up on this stuff and use it regularly!!!  It’s like magic!

The Re-Farmer

Time to call the plumber, and slip sliding away!

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It’s a bit nippy out there this morning. As I write this, we’re at -11C/12F, with a wind chill of -25C/-13F. We still have high winds, but not as bad as yesterday. I do see fallen branches around the inner yard, but not in areas we can get to to clean up, until the snow is gone. We’re looking at a possible high of -7C/19F this afternoon. Not bad for going out to help my mother with her errands.

Over the past few days, we had some rain, then the high winds and cold, and last night we got a light dusting of snow. The end result?

Our driveway and the flooded parts of the paths are a skating rink!

You can see where they were skidding around while trying to cross the ice! It’s frozen solid now; no need for rubber boots this morning, that’s for sure!

I counted 28 cats today, and they are definitely taking advantage of sun room to get out of the wind. Looking out the bathroom window, I was really wishing I had my phone with me to get a picture. On the platform above the heat lamp, there was at least 8 or 9 cats, all smashed together, looking at the window, creating a forest of necks, heads and ears sticking out of a furry mass! There were more in a pile on the other half of the platform, all curled up around each other on the self warming mat. It was adorably funny!

What isn’t funny is, we’re going to have to call a plumber.

For the past while, our toilet hasn’t been flushing well. Almost, but not quite, clogging. I tried plunging it last night, but with no actual clog, all I was doing was splashing water around. What I think the actual problem is, the drain pipe from under the bathroom to the septic outlet needs to be augured. When the drain for our washing machine started backing up, we had a plumber come in and he augured the pipe from under the kitchen to the corner under the bathroom. It’s likely the first time that was done since the addition was built, and we got running water in the house. Which means the other length to the septic tank has probably never been cleaned, and likely has 50 years of gunk accumulated inside.

Well, we’ll find out soon enough. After I did as much as I could, one of my daughters went to use the bathroom, and it was clogged. The weird thing, though, is that the bowl keeps filling. We knew we had some sort of phantom flush. Every now and then, the tank would suddenly start refilling, even though no one had flushed, but I didn’t realize it was leaking into the bowl. We’ve got a tall, mobility friendly toilet, and the water level in the bowl has always been very low. When we replaced the innards of the tank this past summer, we were able to increase the level a bit, but not much. Frankly, I think the low water level certainly wasn’t helping.

Now, we’re actually having to bail the water out of the bowl, because it just keeps filling, ever so slowly!

Meanwhile, no amount of plunging made a difference. I even got our plumber’s snake out, but it can’t get around the U bend.

We do have toilet-safe drain cleaner, and gave that a try, but it did absolutely nothing.

So, we set up the honey pot in the bathroom to use until a plumber can get here. Much preferable to making our way through the slippery paths to a bone-chilling cold outhouse! I’ll give the plumber a call after I’m done writing this, then make sure to leave the gate open when I leave for my mother’s. Our plumber has 24/7 emergency services, but none of us were up to that. Hopefully, clearing the pipes will be enough to fix the problem, and he won’t find some other, bigger problem on top of that!

Why does this stuff always seem to happen in the winter?

One more odd thing that I’ve noticed before, but was never quite sure of until now. I heard the septic pump going off this morning. Obviously, no one flushed the toilet, and no other water was being used anywhere, because everyone was in bed, and it was about 15 minutes or more since I’d bailed water out of the toilet bowl. Which means we’ve got water leaking into the septic tank enough to trigger the pump. Granted, we’re going to need to get the tank emptied, once the snow clears enough to make it accessible again. I know the solids side of the tank must be getting pretty full. The liquid side has a float to trigger the pump, so it gets emptied regularly. It just empties more often, the fuller the solids side gets, since there’s less room for the liquid. Still, just how much water is leaking into there, that it should trigger the pump like that? This is something that’s been bugging me pretty much since we’ve moved here but, until now, I was always second guessing myself, thinking that maybe I just didn’t hear someone flushing the toilet or using a sink somewhere. My bedroom is right above where the septic pump is, so I can hear that, but I can’t hear if someone’s using water elsewhere in the house. This time, I can be 100% sure that no one was using water anywhere. Talking with my daughter about it, just a little while ago, she wondered if the phantom flush leak is just a bit slower than the leak into the bowl.

Definitely something to tell the plumber about.

Time to make that phone call, and then start heading out to my mother’s!

The Re-Farmer

Nothing to complain about!

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Wow. I thought we had high winds here!

I just heard back from the Cat Lady. She was more than happy to change when we would be connecting.

Part of their roof just blew off!

Their new house has a metal roof and one of the panels went flying. Turns out the winds are higher in the city than where we are!

Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the damage was minimal, all things considered.

When it comes to our own winds, I’ve got nothing to complain about!!

The Re-Farmer

Brrr

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Even Adam thinks so.

She’s just a big, round ball of fluff, disgusted with this wind.

I’m glad I did that burn when I did, because yesterday, in spite of the temperature being a mild -1C/30F, we were getting winds of around 45kph/28mph, and our wind chill was -17C/1F. As I write this now, we’re at -5C/23F, but the 34kph/21mph winds have it feeling like -21C/-6F.

It’s a good thing the winds are coming from the north-northeast. When I came out to feed the yard cats this morning, I found the sunroom doors wide open. I’d chased at least 4 racoons out last night, and heard others in the kibble house, before tying the doors off again, but somehow, the buggers unsecured the doors anyhow. At least they didn’t trash the sunroom too much, and we do make sure to feed the cats early enough in the evening that they will have had their fill before the trash pandas ate their food!

We had plans to meet up with the Cat Lady this weekend, but I wasn’t sure when. Now it looks like I’ll be doing errands with my mother tomorrow (Sunday), so that’s not an option. While I do need to go into town to refill a couple of water jugs, I’m seriously considering not heading out. The wind on its own is not a problem. We did have some rain yesterday which, along with the driveway and roads covered with snowmelt, means things are awfully slippery out there. Just going down the driveway while doing my morning rounds mean doing the penguin walk to avoid landing on my a$$. The highways are probably okay, but the gravel roads will be nasty. Maybe I’ll leave it for tomorrow, and do it in my mother’s town, instead.

I think today is a good day to stay indoors and catch up on my crochet.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: starting tomatoes, peppers and milkweed (video)

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Okay, so I’m really a week early for this, but I decided to start more seeds, anyhow!

It was also an excuse to finally get my video making software up and running on the new computer. That was far more complicated than it should have been, but once it was all set up, everything went well.

Plus, PBC makes a cameo appearance.

This time, I started the three varieties of short season bell peppers left over from last year; Early Sunsation, Dragonfly and Early Summer. When it comes time to transplanting them outdoors, we need to try a completely different location. Definitely well away from those trees along the north side of the low raised garden beds! Hopefully, by starting them indoors this early, as well as planting them in a better location, we will actually get ripe peppers to try. With the peppers we started last month, this will make for 6 varieties, only one of which was able to ripen outdoors last year. None of the seeds are new.

I ended up starting 4 varieties of tomatoes. We were intending to only plant a couple varieties, originally; one paste tomato variety and one cherry tomato variety for fresh eating. Then we got some free seeds I wanted to try, too. When going through the tomato seeds we had, I decided to grow the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes again. I used the new seed starting trays for the tomatoes, which have only 12 cells, so I’m going for more variety over quantity of plants. I know the cherry tomatoes should be prolific (if they do well this year), but the free Forme de Coeur we got are also supposed to be quite prolific. I planted only 2 seeds per cell. If we end up with only a few plants of each variety, all together should be adequate to our needs. If we do end up with a high germination rate, I’ll might thin by transplanting, but we’ll see when the time comes.

The San Marzano tomatoes went into my remaining new style of tray I got this year, with the larger, deeper cells. There weren’t a lot of seeds in the package, though, and I used them all up. I filled the cells only half way for now, and will top them up as the seedlings get bigger. With this, if we do have a high enough germination rate that they’ll need thinning, I will definitely thin by transplanting. As it is, I only had enough seeds to plant a pair of seeds in two rows, and the last row got only one seed each. It’s entirely possible that thinning won’t even be an issue.

Last of all, I started some Butterfly Flower, which is an orange variety of milkweed. That one had plenty of seeds, so I might also try direct sowing in the spring, too. I had a small tray with Jiffy Pellets left over from last year, so I used that. The seeds are pretty big, compared to all the others I started today, and each pellet got only one seed each. That’s still a dozen seeds, so not bad. Since these are perennials, we will need to be selective on where we transplant these.

Starting these seeds meant a bit of rearranging needed to happen. The seeds starting in the Red Solo cups were still in the big aquarium greenhouse, and that was going to be needed for the large tray of tomatoes.

Zero oregano seeds germinated, so I took those cups out completely. With the Purple Beauty bell peppers, one cup had all 4 seeds germinate, while the other had none, so I transplanted two of them into the empty cup. The German Winter Thyme doesn’t seem to be growing much bigger. I’m not sure what to make of that. The bin with these went into the mini greenhouse in front of the window. The two trays with the LED grow lights on them went into the mini greenhouse as well, and are now plugged into their USB cables. For now, I can still use the remaining three lights to supplement the tray with the eggplants and hot peppers.

The trays with the tomatoes and peppers are set up above the heat vent. Hopefully, that will be enough, because we’ve only got one heat mat, and that’s now being used with the San Marzano tomatoes. The milkweed is in the big aquarium greenhouse, too, but off on the side. These shouldn’t need the extra heat, anyhow, but the warmth from the lights themselves should be adequate for them.

Now I’m really going to be getting antsy. We are at 11 weeks before last frost and with these seeds started, the seeds I have left don’t need to be started until 2-4 weeks before our last frost date. Unless I decide to start some gourds, but even they all are recommended for starting at 2-4 weeks. That means having to wait until the start of May, at the earliest!

Well, before then, I’m sure some things will need to be potted up or something, so I should still be able to get my gardening fix! 😂😂

The Re-Farmer

Adoption update, changes in plans, and a sad job finally done

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I got some sad news from the Cat Lady last night. The “problem cat” that they took on from the city shelter is going to have to be put down. For her to make this decision, you know the situation has to be exceptionally bad. She has had vets recommend euthanasia for cats many times, and she’s hung in there and saved so many cats, including several from us that are now living with them permanently. She was even wondering why the city shelter hadn’t already done it, long ago.

In the middle of all this difficulty, she was still thinking about us and her promise to help out.

The original plan had been for both tripods to go to the city shelter and their special needs area, while Ghosty would be going to the shelter that specializes in Siamese cats. However, because our adoptees are going from a loving home where they are well cared for, she feels it would be too stressful for them to go to a shelter, no matter how much they promise that tripods get adopted very quickly. If they were kittens, that would be a different issue, but if she wouldn’t feel right putting one of her own cats in there, she wasn’t comfortable putting any of ours in there, either.

I will trust her on that assessment!

She’s going to give herself some time to decompress from the situation with this other cat, and will then take Ginger from us on the weekend. Ghosty is going to wait until the other shelter has an open space, rather than go to the Cat Lady until they do. Toni is not being bullied like Ginger is, so she is not an urgent adoption. She was even willing to take Leyendecker instead of Ginger, since she’s quite familiar with dealing with cats with urinary issues, but Leyendecker is not the cat being bullied, and the chances of getting Leyendecker adopted out is much lower. His urinary issues are related to stress, and he’s had no issues at all for quite a while – just increasing the amount of wet cat food they all get seems to have helped with that, too.

So we get to keep Ginger a little bit longer. This time, we’ll be meeting in the town nearest us, rather than in the nearer city, half way between our homes.

I had intended to pick up more litter pellets after meeting with the Cat Lady, since I could only fit one bag in the cart along with the kibble. When my daughter wanted to go into town to pick up a few last things for her sister’s birthday, I suggested we go to the nearer city so I could get the litter pellets, too. That worked for her, so we headed out late this morning and ran our errands.

When we got home, I took advantage of our weather to do a job that should have been done awhile ago. We have not been able to do burns often enough, usually due to high winds, so our burnable garbage has been building up. Meanwhile, we’re getting to where my daughter wants to start burning the used litter, rather than adding it to the pile behind the outhouse, to compost. On top of that, we have not been able to cremate the cats we’ve lost over the winter. Today we happened to not only be pleasantly warm, at 2C/36F, but there was virtually no wind at all. It was time to finally get the job done.

The burn barrel is falling apart and needs to be replaced, so we’ve been using a burn ring, instead. That’s getting too full of ashes. So after digging a path through the snow to the burn ring, I also dug out a larger area nearby to basically do a bonfire. We’ve still got all those old rotten pallets we cleaned up from where the wood pile used to be, so I set one of those down on top of the snow where I’d cleared a space, then prepared a space in the middle for our lost ones. Their remains were kept under cover in the burn ring, so I moved then over, then continued to build up a pyre over their remains.

Between our paper garbage and the old pallets, I was able to built quite a fire – and wow, did it get hot! I couldn’t get close to it to tend the fire for more than a few seconds before having to back off to at least 10ft away.

I took advantage of this and cleaned out almost all the old rotten pallets, setting aside the wettest ones where they could dry in the sun, for the next time we need a fire. That junk pile looks so much better now! We’d intended to take the old pallets to the dump, along with all the other oversize garbage in there, but we were never able to hire someone to haul it all away for us. I would have preferred not burning them, since they are so full of nails, but we’ll just have to take extra care in cleaning up the ashes. Right now, I’m glad we didn’t get them hauled away, since they made for an appropriately hot and clean fire to take care of our lost ones.

Not something I ever expected to need to do, when we moved out here!

The good thing about doing something like this, this time of year, is that once things burned down enough, I could leave it to smolder. The fire melted enough snow around it to create quite a puddle under it, and there’s nothing but more snow for a substantial distance in all directions.

So there’s a job that finally got done. Hopefully, not one that will need to be done again for quite some time. This past year had an insane amount of cat and kitten losses, both indoors and out. Something the Cat Lady tells us has been happening all over our province, so it wasn’t just with us.

As for the inside cats, pretty soon we’ll be down one and, hopefully, we’ll be able to keep finding forever homes for more soon. It’s been really all over the place in getting adoptions done, but at least they are happening! I am so thankful we connected with the Cat Lady. She’s been awesome for us!

The Re-Farmer

Things NOT to start indoors! (video)

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Gardening in Canada put out another really useful video today that I just had to share.

Of course, we still need to take into account our individual situations.

Some of these I would have thought were obvious. Root vegetables, for example. I’ve heard you can actually buy root vegetables as transplants in greenhouses (I don’t recall seeing them, myself, but I might just have missed them), and to me, that seems downright unethical.

Only recently have I seen people starting things like peas, beans and spinach indoors, which I found perplexing. Peas and spinach are among those things that need cool temperatures to germinate, and can be planted before last frost. It’s just too warm to start them indoors, isn’t it? Beans germinate and grow so quickly, it seems like extra work to start them indoors. As for lettuces, I do know of people who grow them indoors, not for transplant, but for winter greens, so that’s an option. I do recall seeing lettuces and leafy green transplants in the stores.

With things like melons, cucumbers and squash, winter or summer, I’ve been starting some of them indoors because I only have a 100 day growing season. Last year was the first time I direct sowed summer squash, and they were a magnet for slugs. Some of the ones that survived did well – the G Star patty pans in particular – but I had to resow most of them several times, and still ended up with just a few plants that didn’t produce very well, compared to past years where they were transplanted. This year, I will be direct sowing again, but need to find a better way to protect them from slugs. I just won’t have the space to start them indoors.

As for the winter squash and melons that we transplanted; the melons did well in the kiddie pool raised bed, but needed more time than we had, even though they were supposed to be short season varieties. With the winter squash, the mounds that got full sun suffered more than those that got partial shade. Basically, the full sun ones got baked. The transplants also survived the slugs better than the direct sown summer squash. Because of the growing season, I will probably start winter squash indoors, but this year, we have some shorter season winter squash, so we might be able to get away with direct sowing.

Her comments about luffa is in line with what I had been considering doing myself. I don’t have the seeds to try them again this year, but when I get more seeds, I want to try starting them in a larger pot, and simply taking the pot outside when the time comes. Last year’s transplanted luffa, we got one plant that did remarkably well in the wattle weave bed, so I know it can be done!

As for cucumbers, those were something we tried starting indoors two years in a row. The first year worked fine. The second year, not at all, so we’ve got something else going on there. It could simply be the different varieties.

I have never heard of anyone starting potatoes indoors before! Same with garlic, other than in those silly 5 Minute Craft type content mill videos.

As for corn, we did try starting corn indoors, because we were trying to grow kulli (Maize Morado) corn. We could get away with direct sowing the Montana Morado corn, as it’s a shorter season black corn, but kulli needs 120 days to maturity. Transplanting the kulli corn did result in transplant shock that set them back. Once they started growing, they got huge – but didn’t start developing tassels or cobs before the season ran out. Since we are building covers for our beds, I am thinking that when we try them again in the future, I will make use of those. First, to create a greenhouse situation to warm the soil of a bed earlier, then keeping it warm after sowing. While our last frost date is June 2, we do tend to get nice warm weather before then, so we should be able to get that extra 27-30 days (days to maturity, plus days for germination). Basically, we’d have to find a way to plant them at the beginning of May to give them enough time to fully mature.

Hmmm… I should check the calendar. I’m sure there’s something I can start indoors about now…

The gardening itch is hitting me hard right now!! 😄

The Re-Farmer

Moody morning, and testing them out

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

We’ve got a foggy, moody day today!

I took this several hours ago and, while it’s not as dense now, it’s still foggy out there.

We’re just barely above freezing right now, but even earlier things were starting to melt again.

I got to test out the new rubber boots!

This is part of the path crosses the moat that surrounds our garage every spring. I was more than happy to break up the ice and walk in water, because it was incredibly slippery in all the paths! The boots don’t have much grip.

They did allow me to check the lake that’s forming in front of the outhouse, and finally get to the sign cam to switch memory cards. I cut through the spruce grove to avoid the deepest snow, then went around the edges of the tree and fence lines. The snow in the open isn’t excessively deep, but why fight through it, if I can avoid it?

I did remember to change the clocks on the trail cams, though – just a little bit late! I actually forgot about daylight savings time almost entirely. We have only two clocks that need to be manually changed, and one of those is on the oven. I suppose we could do the microwave, too, but after getting a series of power outages a while back, we just didn’t bother setting the time on it again, at all. I find myself at least a day late in switching the trail cams, every daylight savings.

As for today, I’m looking forward to a quiet day of indoor tasks, and no driving around with errands. Especially with so much melting on top of ice out there! We’re only supposed to hit a high of 2C/36F today. Right now, we’re at 0C/32F, with a “feels like” of 3C/37F. So we’ll see what we really get. Oh! I just checked one of my weather apps, and the forecast has changed again. Now they’re saying we’re supposed to reach 4C/39F today.

One thing we do have with this weather is far fewer cats running around! I think I counted about a dozen or so this morning and, every now and then, I’ll see one come running from somewhere in the outer yard. They are most definitely exploring further afield, possibly to neighboring farms.

They also haven’t been eating as much kibble as things get warmer, which is going to be nicer on the budget, but all the containers were empty this morning. I think we got visited by racoons again. I’m pretty sure I heard some screeching outside my window last night, but I didn’t see any in the sun room when I checked the critter cam. I imagine we’re going to start seeing the skunks again in the near future.

The inside cats, meanwhile, are being driven insane by the occasional lady bug or fly that has come out of dormancy and started bouncing off the ceiling or windows.

Ladybugs are remarkably loud when they do that!

So is the crashing and banging when the cats launch themselves after them, sending anything in their paths flying! *sigh*

Speaking of cats, I’ve been keeping in touch with the Cat Lady. The “problem cat” she took in at the request of a shelter is not doing well. Hissing and spitting and terrifying the other cats in the room. It’s only been a couple of days, though. About the only positive thing she could tell me is that the shelter didn’t have to remove all the cat’s teeth. She’s still a gummy cat, but there are a few teeth left. The poor thing must be so traumatized – and that’s on top of having been removed from an abusive home in the first place.

Needless to say, I’m not going to be pushing about the Cat Lady taking our three. Especially since I think they would be staying with her for a short while, first. Thankfully, she does have an entire separate, heated building on their new property for some of the rescues, but others have to be in the house for special care.

She and her family are so amazing. They put up with so much – and she puts up with the two calicos from our place that are still nasty to her, even though they are great with everyone else! In all her years working with rescues, she’s never encountered anything quite like that before!

Hopefully, the new addition will learn to feel safe and trust again, but it’s likely going to be a hard road after having gone through so much.

I just can’t understand people who abuse animals.

The Re-Farmer