Author: Re-Farmer

This and that

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We’ve got a gorgeous day out, today! Cold, of course. The weather apps told me it was -6C/21F out there, with a “real feel” of -12C/10F, but we’re sheltered enough that I’m still not breaking out the parka. My only concession to the cold was to wear one of my ball cap ear warmers that I made recently.

The kittens – even the smaller ones – seem to be handling the snow rather well, though this one looks quite affronted by it! 😄

In the slide show above; the fluffy tortie is making use of the self-warming pad set up in their favourite shelf to sit in and watch what’s going on outside. I got that shot yesterday. The other two, I took this afternoon. We have several very handsome black cats with little white bibs this year. The one sitting on the shelf shelter looks downright angry that the snow is on their favourite corner! 😄 In the last picture, you can see that the cats are making full use of the cleaned out and heated cat house.

While doing my morning rounds, I finally got around to a few things that either got missed while we had to do other things, or that kept getting forgotten about. One of those was to empty and move the rain barrel by the sun room. It was full, and had the diverter over it, so that got removed first. Then I had to break up the ice on top until I could remove the hardware cloth cover. We keep a rock and a brick on it to weigh it down, as the cats sometimes jump up on it. They also serve to hold the diverter (which is just a scrap piece of eavestrough) in place. I got the brick off easily enough, but I ended up removing the cover with the rock still stuck to the wire by ice! After emptying about half of the barrel into the old kitchen garden with a bucket, I was able to tip it over and empty it down one of the paths, then set it aside by one end of the wattle weave bed for the winter. After that, I had to use a hammer to break the rock loose from the cover. 😄 The cover is now stored away, but I ended up having to use the diverter and its supports later on!

I waited until this afternoon, when it was warmer, to deal with the old rain barrel way out in the garden. It didn’t have a lot of water in it, but it would have been somewhat frozen to the ground. I didn’t want to risk breaking the cold, brittle plastic any more than it already is. So that got taken care of this afternoon. I had a pile of branches we’d used as trellis supports on it to keep the critters out, since the cover for that barrel didn’t survive the winter, even though it was in the garden shed. Just in case, I also had a couple of branches in the water, so if a critter did fall in, it could climb out. Those all got set aside, then the emptied barrel set on its side next to the pile of branches. The watering can that’s kept beside the barrel and filled with water to keep it from blowing away, got emptied and stored inside the barrel itself. Leaving the barrel out like this also provides another shelter from the weather for small critters that won’t come closer to the house.

(As I write this, we’ve warmed up to our expected high -2C/28F, but the “feels like” is apparently -13C/9F. Not where we are!)

One the way back to the house, I remembered to grab the folding saw horse that was set up by the new trellis bed construction area. We’re not going to get more progress on that until spring. When I got back to the house, I realized that it had warmed up enough that all the snow was melting off the roof – and there was no longer a rain barrel or diverter to keep the water away from the base of the sunroom wall! That corner has already been undermined by water, and the last thing I want is for a freeze/thaw cycle happening under there. So I set up the diverter again, using the saw horse to support it, and the weights from the barrel cover to keep the diverter from sliding off the saw horse. I’ll probably have to come up with something else, though. The cats could very easily knock it all down. I might end up tying a rope loop the the nearby hand rail to hold the diverter, instead. For now, however, it’s doing the job.

We’re supposed to have highs above freezing in the middle of the week. Just for a couple of days. I don’t expect it to be enough to melt all the snow, but it will definitely get rid of most of it, I think. That will be when we cover the garlic and carrot beds with a deep mulch for the winter.

There’s just a few things left that absolutely need to be done before the ground freezes. The rest can wait until spring.

The Re-Farmer

Addendum: one of the yard kittens had gotten into the old kitchen earlier and wouldn’t come out, so after I hit publish on this post, I went back to check on him. This time, he was willing to come up to me and even let me pick him up and take him out. We’ve got bright sunshine, the yard cats are enjoying their sun spots, and things are melting all over. So I checked my weather apps on my phone. Of the two apps I have, one of them says we are at 1C/34F right now! The sun room thermometer reads even warmer, of course, and the thermometer outside my husband’s window is right in a very sheltered sun spot. I just checked. It’s reading 15C/59F!!!

Still happy!

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Today, I got to do a dump run with the new truck.

It doesn’t take much to make me happy!

In this case, it’s having the garbage and recycling bags in the box of the truck, rather than stuffed in the back of my mother’s car, behind my head as I drive.

I made sure to grab a long handled garden cultivator tool to grab the bags that got pushed further in. Most bags had drawstring ties I could grab with the teeth and pull forward. A couple smaller bags didn’t have the same ties. I could grab them and roll them forward, but had to be careful not to tear holes in the bags. It worked out very well.

Next, I drove into town to pick up some prescription refills my husband ordered yesterday, while I was in the city. Along the way, the check engine light turned on again. After I got the prescriptions, I hooked up the OBDII device and did a scan. Once I got the reading, I took a screen cap, then cleared the codes. While I was doing that, I started getting a warning that the battery was low, and to start the engine!!

So I swung by the garage before heading home. It’s Saturday, so our mechanic wasn’t in, but I talked to the guy that was there and showed him the codes. He couldn’t say for sure (there’s a long list of possible causes that comes up when I generate a report), but looking at the 3 different but related codes, he thinks it is electrical. It could be as simple as a loose wire.

Which is when I brought up the low battery warning. That seems to confirm its an electrical issue. Whatever is causing the codes to come up may also be draining the battery.

The truck is fine to drive, though. I’ll just have to talk to our mechanic next week about checking it out. Decisions can be made after he confirms a cause.

Once at home, I put the charger on the battery again! 😆

Meanwhile, on a more adorable note…

… I seem to have lost access to my office chair!

What a difference in sizes between Cheddar and the Littles!

Pom Pom is getting big enough we now let him out of the room. These two are still so tiny, they only get supervised tours. 😆

The Re-Farmer

Stocking up at Costco: this is what $1062, plus a few donations, looks like

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I have to keep reminding myself: I did in one trip what I used to have to do in two or three trips while using my mother’s car.

Still, this is the most we’ve ever spent at Costco in one trip, and… ouch.

I did things a bit differently this time, in that I had all the cat supplies put on one bill, then our own stuff was rung in separately. The total for both together came to $1061.97

*choke*

First, though, was the trip in with the new-to-us truck.

Road conditions were not very good. From our place to the town my mother lives in was packed snow and ice. There was blowing snow, but the visibility was still okay. I was quite okay with being behind vehicles doing only 80 or 90kph in a 100kph zone (100kph = about 62mph). Things started getting messier as I reached my mother’s town. I timed it so I could stop at the gas station to grab some fried chicken for brunch first. That gave me time to respond to some messages from the Cat Lady. She had a cat carrier and some kibble donations for us and we were trying to figure out when and where we could meet. She needed to go into the same area of the city as the Costco we go to, so we would be able to meet up today.

Once back on the road, the further south I went, the more the highway went from slush to water until about halfway to the city, when it all started going to ice and slush again. The truck handled it like it was nothing! In fact, I had to watch myself, because it was just too easy to start speeding before I even realized it. Normally, I’d have just set the cruise control, but with the conditions, I expected to be slowing down more often. I did, but it was usually because I found myself behind vehicles hauling trailers, or heavy equipment.

As I was leaving the city, I stopped at a gas station convenience store to pick up something to drink for the drive. At this point, conditions were deteriorating again, and visibility was getting poor. The further north I went, though, the better it got. I drove out of the snow, and the roads that had been slushy or icy before were now just a bit wet. It’ll be a problem once things freeze during the night, but at the time, it was good. It wasn’t until about 5 minutes from home that I started driving into falling snow again, but it wasn’t an issue at all.

As for the shopping, I forgot to get a photo of the flat cart before I started unloading into the truck, but that’s okay. I got pictures of how it fit into the truck, instead.

The Cat Lady caught up with me as I was starting to pack things into my reusable bags, and was able to pass on the cat carrier and some bags of kibble she had for us. She couldn’t stay long, though. I don’t know how she keeps up with everything she’s got going in her life! She’s amazing.

She is able to do couponing, so those bags of kibble probably cost next to nothing. The new carrier is a perfect kitten size! She’s told me she’s had to turn down donations of cat carriers in the past, because she had no space for them, but now she plans to accept them to pass on to us. We have 1 hard sized and 2 soft carriers, and the soft carriers can potentially be torn out of, so hard carriers are preferable. The wet cat food was part of our own purchase.

I’d remembered to grab a snow brush to keep in the truck and ended up using it to push the filled hard sided bags further in, so I could fit the kibble bags. The TP and puppy pads sitting on the tailgate went on top of the kibble. I didn’t even need to open the cover. In the cab, I had an insulated bag for the hot rotisserie chickens, and a bag for the rye bread. The only thing that didn’t go into the back of the cab were the eggs, which I put on the front seat, instead.

This is what we got for our money today.

Cat supplies:
12 bags, 9kg size, dry kibble @ $26.99 each, for a total of $323.88
canned cat food: $38.99
puppy pads: $24.99
Tax added another $46.54 to the bill, for a total of $434.40

We have got to get that bill down somehow. We’d have no problem at all with having a car payment right now, if we weren’t feeding so many cats! But we’re not going to let them go hungry, either. Hopefully, we’ll be able to adopt more out soon.

Also, I was intending to buy 14 bags of kibble, but the stack on the flat cart was getting a bit tall and less stable, and I still had lots of other things to fit on there.

Human supplies:
Toilet paper, Kirkland brand: $22.99
4pk Pronamel toothpaste: $19.79
Coke Zero: $14.69, plus 32¢ enviro fee
double flat of eggs (60 eggs): $18.89
AP flour, 10kg size: $9.99 (most places have bags this size at about $15 – on sale!)
family size pack of fresh sausages, mild Italian: $20.11
whole chicken, 3 pack: $28.64
2 chubs of ground beef: $28.49 each
1 chub of ground pork: $19.99, minus $5 at the till
pork blade roast: $20.87
4pk bacon: $24.99
pork loin: $29.15
Old Cheddar: $14.99
Mozzarella: $14.99
Whipping cream, two 1L cartons, $4.70 each
double cream brie: $10.99
4pk Kirkland cream cheese: $9.49
5 pounds of butter: $5.49 each
Two 2pks of rye bread: $5.99 each
Two 2pks tortilla wraps: $9.99 each
9pk pasta, 3 varieties: $13.99
Mayo: $10.99
dehydrated mushrooms: $19.99 – I haven’t seen these in years!! We used to love getting these before we moved!
Kirkland Olive Oil: $32.99
Avocado Oil: $16.99
popcorn: $10.79
hazelnuts: $11.49
Kirkland Basmati rice: $15.99
2kg size Peanut Butter: $10.39
2pk Butter chicken sauce: $9.99, minus $2 at the till
6pk Kirkland canned chicken: $18.99
2 rotisserie chickens, $7.99 each
pork rinds: $10.99 (meant to be used in place of bread crumbs)
Kirkland chocolate chips: $17.99

plus tax: $10.17
Total: $627.57

The alarming part was paying for this second bill. I’d already paid for the cat supplies, but when I tried to pay for the rest, it failed. Payment not authorized. ??? We tried again, and got the same response. I was asking her to suspend the order so I could check my bank account to see what the problem was when someone came by. Someone that turned out to be a supervisor.

It was the debit machine going down.

My order did get suspended and the receipt printed out. The supervisor took it and tried to process it on another till, but that one was down, too. She ended up taking me to their supervisor station over by the bathrooms, where they have a different type of debit machine.

I was not the only one trailing along! There were at least four other people gathering around, waiting their turn.

Thankfully, fourth time was the charm, and I was able to pay for our stuff!

I really ought to use cash, but I just don’t like carrying around that much cash. Especially when I’m not quite sure what the total will be, given how much the prices change.

On top of this, I did fill the gas tank before I even went in to shop. I was at half a tank by the time I got there, but the Costco gas price for regular was 141.9¢/L, instead of the 153.9/L at my mother’s town, or the 152.9/L in the town we usually go to. So it cost “only” $68 and change to fill the tank.

As painful as it was to spend so much in one day, the fact that we won’t have to go to Costco again just saved us another $50 – $60 or so, just in fuel. We do plan to go to the city again next week, but I’m wondering if we even need to make that trip. This would be the trip where we go to the international grocery store, a Walmart and a Canadian Tire, all in one trip. However, the only reason to go to Canadian Tire is for litter pellets, and we still have plenty of those, and to get a few more fire bricks for our outdoor kitchen build, which can wait a month or two. The Walmart is where I get the shredded wet cat food I use for the kittens (the Costco wet cat food is all paté), and maybe a couple more bags of cat food, which we don’t need to do right now. The only other thing we’d be getting is the fresh produce and non-bulk stuff, and we can do that at the closer Walmart or the local grocery store.

We’ll decide on that later. I’m just so happy that I was able to get all this in one trip, with zero issues with the drive!

A few days ago, we finally got a copy of an email confirming our financing FINALLY was approved, and our mechanic was finally going to get paid for the truck. Getting my husband’s full name added to the electric bill was finally good enough for the lender! After I got back from the city and everything was unloaded and put away (and the outside cats fed, to get them away from the truck so I could park it in the garage!), I made sure to send a thank you email to our mechanic and the lady at the finance company. They bent over backwards to get us this truck, and it’s made all the difference in the world.

Best of all, we can work on plans to get my husband into the city to see his family. He hasn’t seen his dad since late 2018, and hasn’t seen his sister at all since she moved back from out of province, a couple of years ago. We had to turn down a planned family gathering, but the seats in this truck support his back so well, he feels he can actually handle the trip!

Which makes having car payments again, completely worthwhile.

The Re-Farmer

Found the warm spot!

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Overnight we got what I would call our first real snowfall. Enough snow is on the ground that it might actually stay. At least in the shadier spots. We shall see.

It doesn’t stop the outside cats from preferring to eat on the cat house roof!

Junk Pile has found the warm spot, above the terrarium bulb inside. 😄

Most of the cats have been using the sun room. At least the smaller ones. I’m seeing more cats peeking through the window of the cat house now, too. I counted possibly 33 or 34 cats this morning, including Sad Face.

I’ll be heading into the city within the hour. I’ve been keeping tabs on the local highway conditions groups and chats. The highway I’ll be taking has been described as icy and filled with packed snow. Not too bad, but enough for people to warn about driving carefully and taking it slow. As I write this, we are at -3C/27F, with a wind chill of -12C/10F. We’re pretty sheltered from the wind around the house, as it’s coming from the northwest. I just wore my light hooded jacket while doing my rounds and didn’t feel much chill at all. This afternoon we’re supposed to stay at 1C/34F for several hours, so I expect the roads will clear pretty quickly.

I am so glad we got the truck when we did. I would not be comfortable driving my mother’s car in this at all. It’s not even the tires, which checked out fine, or the road conditions, which aren’t that bad. It’s more that I keep expecting it to suddenly break down. It keeps checking out fine, but it makes so many noises and just feels wrong when I’m driving it. So going back to driving it only when I need to help my mother is a relief.

This will be my first time driving the truck in the city. I’m going to love having better visibility, but I’ll have to pay attention to those few extra inches in length! I don’t want to be “that” vehicle that parks with the back end sticking into the lane. 😄

The Re-Farmer

We have cows again!

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I’ve had some sleepless nights, so the girls were kind enough to do my morning stuff for me and let me sleep in. I headed out in the afternoon to go to the mail, then into town to refill a couple of our big water jugs, and ended up picking up a lasagna for supper.

When I got home and went to open the gate, I was pleasantly surprised to see we have cows again!

The renter has rotated his cows to our quarter section one last time before they bring them in for the winter.

Seeing his cows makes me smile, every time!

I drove into the yard to unload the water jugs, then took the time to try and figure out how to open up the cover over the truck’s box. I’d looked up online, but found instructions for a specific brand, and it turns out ours unlocks differently! It took using the flash on my phone to finally see the loop under one corner that released the cover. I rolled it up then climbed in with a broom.

That was NOT fun. I could get onto the tailgate easy enough, but my knees are so shot, it was a real struggle to get up again. I would get one knee up, which would cause massive pain on the other knee. I’m going to take a page from my brother’s book and get some high density foam pieces that can be slid onto the tail gate and make it less painful. We’ve already been talking about keeping a folding step stool to make getting into the back easier, too. We wanted a taller vehicle for important reasons, but … well, I’m short!

Tomorrow we will be making our first stock up shopping trip to the city, and I’m planning to hit Costco on this trip. I will be able to load an entire month’s worth of cat kibble in the back! I might actually run out of room on the flat cart in the store, and should still have space in the truck! With temperatures the way they are right now, we can even skip the ice packs and load the insulated bags in the back with the kibble bags, while things that don’t need to stay cold can be loaded into the cab.

If all goes to plan, I’ll only have to do the one Costco trip, then do a second trip a few days to a different areas of the city, where there are several stores all along one street that we go to. I might even go check out the liquidation place we found but rarely go to.

That should be all the necessary trips to the city after that – two trips instead of 3 or 4. I’m quite looking forward to seeing how it goes!

Oh, I was just reminded as I wrote about the kibble; with how much we get every month, I did some searches to see if I could buy the kibble from a wholesale supplier, instead of at retail. I did find some Canadian “wholesale” outlets, but the prices were often more expensive than what we’re paying at Costco! Which makes these the retail store for wholesale outlets.

I should try that livestock supply store again. Their huge bags of cat food were cheaper, but the cats didn’t like it, but they did have other brands and higher quality cat food. If they have better prices than Costco, for kibble that cats will actually eat, that would be awesome. They don’t have any products listed online, though.

We shall see.

Anyhow.

Aside from the trip to town, we got a bit more progress done outside. The last of the garden hoses are put away, the septic tank covered, and a few more garden supports and stakes bundled and stored. Over the next few days, it will be getting cold enough to do the winter mulching before the ground freezes. We’re still expected to get temperatures hovering around the freezing mark for most of November, so it’ll be a while before more than the surface freezes.

It is amusing to start the truck and get a warning on the display saying “ice possible, drive with care”. 😃 We’ve only been getting a light dusting of snow that’s mostly gone by the afternoon, but the south end of our province has been getting a mix of snow and rain, so there are plenty of warnings about road conditions going out.

It’s going to be a long day tomorrow, so I hope to finally get a good night’s sleep, tonight!

The Re-Farmer

First snow. “I meant to do that!”

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We got a bit of snow last night. It’s already pretty much gone but, for this year’s kittens, it’s the first time they’ve encountered the stuff!

Gosh, this guy reminds me of Decimus so much! That permanently stunned expression is what does it. The white arrow on his head reminds me of Pointy Baby.

We’ve passed on photos in hopes someone will adopt him, but he does have lung issues. We can hear his lungs rattling as he breaths. Unfortunately, we’re out of Lysine, and our Amazon subscription supplier seems to be either out of stock, or no longer carries it? I’m not quite sure which it is, based on the very brief notification. I’ve looked at alternatives, but those in the bulk size I’m after that’s meant for humans seem to all have other vitamins mixed in, while the ones marketed for cats cost almost twice as much, for 1/3rd the quantity! I hope our usual supplier starts shipping again. Winter is always the hardest when it comes to respiratory issues in the cats.

Yesterday, my daughter and I finally lifted the roof on the cat house to give it a cleaning. I’d hoped to be able to brace it somehow, but there’s a large ridge beam down the centre; it’s the beam that extends out the back that the counter weight is attached to, so it’s very substantial. Unfortunately, the roof has such a low slope, it means I can’t attach cross pieces (collar beams, I believe they’re called) to the rafters. The ridge beam it in the way.

Once open, we took out all the bedding and threw away the sheet-wrapped pillow that had been in a box, because it got damp on the bottom and started to mold. The litter box was simply switched out for another with clean litter pellets in it. The smoke detector battery was tested, the heat shield put back around the light fixture, then we plugged in the electrical and tested the terrarium heat bulb. My daughter also found a way to secure the timer so that the light sensor should stay upright and facing the window. It will turn the bulb on when it gets dark, then off when it gets light.

We also cleaned the windows, inside and out! Gosh, they get greasy on the inside. All those cat faces rubbing on them. 😄

We had cats in and out the whole time we worked on it! Once the bedding was returned and it was time to drop the roof, we had to be extra careful to make sure no cats decided to jump in from the top! That roof is really heavy, and even with the counter weight, it drops hard if we’re not careful. With how much the roof has been wiggling around, we’re being extra careful, anyhow. We’ll have to plan ahead for building a new cat house, because this one is just getting too old and the wood too rotten. That and the cats are using the inside walls as scratching posts, and WOW are they tearing it apart!!

That done, we’re also starting to do things like put away the hoses for the winter. We haven’t shut the taps off in the basement, yet, so we do still have access to water for a while longer, but mostly we’ll be bringing warm water out from inside, instead.

We ran out of kibble for the outside cats already! When I got another bag, I didn’t realize we were so low for the inside cats, too. By the time the bin for the inside cats was refilled, plus the one I keep in my room for the kittens, there wasn’t much left. Rather than take from the inside bin, I took advantage of delivering Nosencrantz to her new home by arranging to meet near a Walmart, then picked up another 10kg bag. I’ll be doing our first stock up shopping trip to Costco in a couple of days. Now that we have the truck, I should be able to get the entire month’s worth of kibble in one trip!

While I was driving, I started to get some messages that turned out to be from the Cat Lady. I’d brought up about bringing the 5 kittens to get fixed during the clinic’s cheap day. She came back to tell me she has us booked for 6 slots – all females! We don’t even have 6 females to bring in. There are the 3 older kittens (Tiny is just too tiny), Toni and Tissue. We have had no progress in getting at any of the outside females. It would probably be easier if the males weren’t so aggressively friendly and pushing their way past the ladies and spooking them. But this clinic wants to do only females for their cheap day. The rescue would pay for 4, and she was asking if we could pay for the other two. We were already expecting to pay for one (Toni).

Bringing Tissue, though… Tissue: Destroyer of Cars. That’s a risk!

I’ve messaged the Cat Lady about how many we can do, but haven’t heard back. She’s in the middle of getting her house ready for sale, and to start moving next month, if things go to plan. Thankfully, the new house is very close, but moving is always very stressful. The hardest move we ever had was only half a block. It took us a week and we all were sick with colds. At one point, I just collapsed and was bed ridden for a couple of days. And we had only 4 kids and two cats at the time, too! So she has a lot to focus on that are a higher priority. All that, and she’s still hoping to come out here this weekend to drop off a donated cat carrier for us to keep! With the move, she’s not positive she’ll be able to take Ghosty after the spay. It might be better for her to come back with us for a bit longer, instead.

With us now having car payments, starting next month, finding the money to do spays – even super cheap ones (only $75, instead of $350!!) – is going to take a bit more juggling of the budget than usual. We’ll manage. Especially if we are able to adopt out more cats, and not be spending so much on cat food every month!

The Re-Farmer

Saying goodbye

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Oh, my goodness.

This was an unexcepted thing. I was connected with someone last night, we got together this morning, and it’s done.

Nosencrantz no longer has to be constantly stressed out being around so many other cats. She has a new forever home, and she’s already settling in nicely. When feeding the cats this morning, she came out of her hiding places as usual, and I was able to get her into the carrier. She got treated to some wet cat food while I finished my morning rounds, then off we went to meet her new family.

I am feeling really good about the family she went to. You know how, when you sometimes meet someone and there is this automatic connection? That’s how it was when I was introduced to someone who was looking for a new cats. Nosencrantz checked all her boxes, and she checked all of ours!

This is a hard one for me. Of all the cats, Nosencrantz is the one I connected with the most. She, however, was so stressed out. There’s a reason we also called her Anxiety Bear! Too many other cats. Both inside and out, she had specific cats that targeted her, too.

Now, she has a safe, warm “suite” to stay in for a couple of weeks as she gets used to her new home, before they let her out to explore. She’ll have one other sweet and friendly cat to get used to, and cat loving children to dote on her. They also have other cats that are completely indoors, including a rescued tripod. I have been promised lots of pictures, and look forward to getting to know the family more!

It feels like this family was put in our path at just the right time, too. I am going to miss Nosencrantz, but this was the right thing to do for her.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Last onion harvest, plus adorableness

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Let’s start with the adorableness!

Shadow in the Dark has turned into a pretzel!

It occurred to me that these guys are coming up on 6 months old. The Cat Lady was looking into getting 5 slots for the cheap spay and neuter day, including Toni, Ghosty and a couple of outdoor males, but I just asked if her if we could get the 5 oldest kittens done, instead. She still wants to get Toni done, too, so she’ll see if she can get 6 slots. She might be moving next month, though, and things are really hectic for her and her family right now (and their 27 or so cats!!), so she’ll get back to me on that one. I told her I’m less concerned about Toni than I am about having 5 kittens old enough for their first heat (well… three female kittens going into heat with intact males around!). Ghosty, depending on how things go with the move, would not be coming back, as she’s found a home for her.

Speaking of large numbers of cats, I did a head count outside this morning. Including Shop Towel/Sad Face, I counted 38.

As much as we’d like to reduce that population, we really need to reduce the indoor population first. It’s just not healthy for them, mentally or physically. The Cat Lady, once they move to their new home, will be able to convert a heated shed into a place just for cats. That’s something I wouldn’t mind finding a way to do. Too bad we can’t use the storage house for that! We need more sheds, anyhow. The ones we have are either fallen apart, falling apart, or jammed full of junk. Or, in the case of the warehouse that used to be my late brother’s workshop, filled with my parents’ stuff my mother insists we keep. Not that we’d use that for cats. We need a workshop more!

Ah, well. All in good time.

With the temperatures dropping below freezing consistently over night from now on, I pulled the bed of Red of Florence onions, yesterday.

There was enough to half fill the wheel barrow, plus there were a few too small to bother keeping.

Their necks are still too “fleshy”, so we won’t be able to cure them like we did with the other onions we harvested already. We’d had a night and morning of consistent rain, so these were also pretty damp. We have the hardware cloth “door” we made to keep the cats out of the old basement when we keep the door open in the summer. It does double duty for laying out vegetables. I was able to set it up in the old kitchen and laid the onions out to dry a bit. From there, we will need to process them; some for freezing, some for dehydrating. This is on top of the onions we’ve been able to cure and braid for casual use. We got a very decent haul of onions this year, but only the yellow onions, plus these ones. Oh, and the shallots. We also had the Red Wethersfield onions, but not one of them survived transplanting! I’ve no idea what happened to them, but I want to try that variety again before we conclude that they just won’t grow here.

The high for today, and the next couple of days, is expected to be 3C/37F. After that, the highs will be lower, and reach just above or below freezing. So far, the overnight lows are not expected to drop very far, and remain just a few degrees below freezing, but we will no longer be seeing overnight lows above freezing from here on. It’s still not too bad, though. Nothing severe or extreme. Also, we don’t have the snow that other parts of the country got yesterday, including the city we lived in before moving out here!

There was a thin layer of ice on the outside cats’ water bowls. It’s starting to be time to bring warm water out for them when we feed them. It’s time to put the hoses away and cover the taps, anyhow. The electrical in the cat house needs to be plugged in and tested, so we can plug in the huge heated water bowl in the water bowl shelter, plus the terrarium heat bulb inside, with its timer set to turn it on at dusk. I’ve already set up the smaller water bowl in the sun room and plugged it in.

Still lots to be done, but as long as we get the essentials taken care of, the rest can wait until spring, if necessary.

The Re-Farmer

Good morning!

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Breakfast is served.

I counted 37 or 38 this morning. Plus Shop Towel. He came over to the kibble house and seemed okay at first -I was even just starting to be able to touch him – but then one of our friendly males came by and he attacked. I chased him off and he actually stopped to attack another cat that had been startled by the commotion and happened to be running in the same direction.

*sigh*

Also, yes. That tuxedo has a messed up eye. That’s the one that had a badly infected eye, but we could never catch him to clean it up. Not the tuxedo that lost its eye entirely. I haven’t seen that one in a long time.

Today looks like a day where not much is going to get done outside. It looks like it’s been raining for most of the night, judging by how much water is pooling in our driveway, and is still raining now. It’s expected to continue raining until the evening.

Which I’m okay with. It’ll be good for the ground to get a lot of moisture before the snow hits and the ground starts to freeze. That will benefit any young trees, like the apple we planted in the spring, and the Korean Pine in the outer yard, as well as the garlic and saffron crocuses that were planted not long ago. A good, deep watering before winter is a good thing.

Oh, I need to remember to contact Veseys about those purple raspberries. I double checked and yes, I was remembering correctly. They are regular cane raspberries, not primal cane. Primal cane raspberries produce berries on new canes every year, so you can literally mow the whole patch down in the fall, and they will produce new shoots in the spring. With regular cane, berries are produced on second year canes, which then die off, leaving the fresh first year canes to survive the winter and produce the following year. What we should have gotten in our order was first year canes, and we should not have had any berries this year at all. Instead, the canes planted this year would have produced berries next year, while also having new canes come up that would produce berries the year after. There were no new canes that came up. Just the ones we planted, that produced berries, instead. It seems highly unlikely, but we either got second year canes in stead of first year canes, or conditions somehow “tricked” the raspberries into acting as though they’d gone through a winter. This can sometimes happen with biannuals like onions or carrots. For example, the year we had groundhogs eating our carrot greens, quite a few went to seed after their greens started growing back. I can’t think of anything that happened with the raspberries that could have simulated that sort of annual pattern, though.

Anyhow…

Days like today – rainy and overcast – always make me feel really, really sleepy. I’m resisting the urge to crawl back into bed!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: root vegetable harvest, plus a first longer drive with the new truck!

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Things started out a bit rough, this morning. While I was in the kitchen, my husband opened the door to my room to let some of the bigger kittens in/out (usually we get both happening at the same time), when Soot Sprite dashed out.

The littles are still too little to be let out.

Unfortunately, my husband couldn’t catch him, but he also thought it was kinda cute, so he started following the Sprite around to keep an eye on him.

Right on down to the basement. The one place that we absolutely did NOT want him getting into. At Sprite’s size, there are too many places he can squeeze into that are not safe or healthy for him. We learned that when we had Beep Beep and Butterscotch have their kittens down there.

I put the food I was working on aside, protected from cats, then went down to see if I could catch him.

I could not.

Worse, I ended up losing sight of him entirely. I was pretty sure he’d squeezed under a counter shelf, but couldn’t be sure. That is one of the worse places (though not the only one) for him to be hiding in. When cleaning up in that basement, we weren’t able to move that shelf. We did clean out stuff inside it, though, which included things like pain cans that had spilled or leaked – it was a long time before we were able to clean out enough to finally get rid of whatever it was that was making the basement smell like a chemical factory! It’s very likely things leaked under that shelf, but we really don’t know.

I ended up messaging my daughters to see who was available to help out, and my younger daughter came down. Part of the problem was that, wherever Sprite ran off, the bigger kittens would run after him and tackle him, like it was a game, which it partly why he ended up disappearing entirely. My daughter had brought a toy to lure him, while I ended up going up and down the stairs with arm loads of other cats and kittens that were causing problems.

Have I mentioned that stairs and I do NOT get along?

My knees are just not stable enough. It isn’t too bad going up the stairs, but going back down is something else entirely. Basically, I have to take one step at a time and hang on to the door, the wall, the window ledge and finally the rail, to get to the bottom.

It took toys, wet cat food and finally letting Clarence (formerly Tweedle Dum) down to finally lure Soot Sprite out. He could barely squeeze his way out from under that counter shelf!!!

That done, my daughter could finally take a shower before heading out. She and her sister had a grocery shopping list and were thinking of going to town, but I took advantage of that to get one more bag of kibble before our stock up shopping, so we went to the nearest Walmart, instead. They carry a 10kg size that costs less than the 7kg sizes that are available locally. Not enough to drive all that way for just a bag of cat food, but worth it if we’re buying other stuff, too.

I made a point of not getting gas on the way out. I’d put some in on Wednesday, before taking the truck home, and got it to just above half. We’d had another trip into town for my husband’s medical appointment, but didn’t go anywhere yesterday. This is our first city trip, enough though it was to the smaller, closer city, so just a 45 minute or so drive, one way. After we did our shopping, we took a different route home so I could get gas at the same station I got gas at a few days ago.

The trip ended up taking just over a quarter tank of gas – I can’t see the odometer to keep track, because we still can’t find where we can cycle through the computer display, and we’ve got that “service tire monitor system” warning. (Which should just be a battery change on the module.) Our model just doesn’t have the computer display buttons that are in the owner’s manual diagram, and there’s nothing else we can find.

The gas station in town we normally go to now has just switched to full service today, which was a nice surprise. Happily, the prices have also dropped a bit again. We are currently at 154.9¢/L When I added gas on Wednesday, it had dropped to 155.9

It cost $102 to fill our tank from the 1/4 mark – and that’s after my CAA discount!

Ouch.

As for mileage… it’s hard to say, considering the substantial difference in tank size between the truck and my mother’s car, and not being able to see the odometer, but I’m pretty sure it’s better for gas than my mother’s car. Probably about what the van did.

I’m glad to have a full tank of gas, but that was painful.

Once at home, I pulled up to the house to unload, then left my daughter to take care of putting things away while I parked the truck in the garage. I even managed to get it in far enough to close the door behind it.

Except….

Well, when I opened the door before we left, I had a bit too much momentum and opened it all the way. The pull strap broke off long ago, so I usually leave it down a few inches, so I can reach to pull it closed again.

Ah, the joys of being short! I could barely touch it with the tips of my fingers, never mind actually grab it to close it!

So I texted the family to let them know, then went to feed the outside cats. My husband, sweetheart that his is, came out to close the door for me. He’s probably the only one that can reach without jumping or standing on something. My older daughter might have been able to reach. Maybe.

We really need to replace that pull strap.

As for the drive itself, it was fantastic. It was a smooth ride, without any of the shuddering or creaking that my mother’s car does, that drives me bonkers. Also, it’s so nice to be driving a larger vehicle again! I can see!

Once we were home and settled in, I headed out to do some clean up in the main garden area. All the stakes and supports needed to be gathered and sorted and tied into bundles, along with tools and supplies. All those feed bags used as grow bags had to be bagged up for the dump, the tree roots growing through the felted fabric grow bags needed to be pulled out as much as possible – they didn’t dry out as much as I’d hoped, given the off and on rain we’ve been having – and everything put away in the old garden shed.

It was also time to harvest the last of the Uzbek Golden carrots, and see what there was among the turnips, beets and radishes.

Would you look at the size of some of those carrots! I am quite happy with this variety.

Much to my surprise, I also found a few yellow onions that got missed, including one fairly larger one.

In digging up the turnips and beets, I honestly did not expect to have anything worth harvesting, but there were a few little turnips of a useable size that weren’t all chewed up by slugs. This variety is meant to be harvested at about golf ball size, if I remember correctly, and these are pretty close to that.

The beets were a complete loss.

There was also one really big radish that I thought was actually the root from one of the two blooming radishes, but it turned out to be next to one of them. Only one other radish was big enough to harvest. I left the two that are still blooming alone. The bed cover I’d set over them got moved to the new trellis bed for storage for now.

What I found interesting about the turnips and radishes, though, it that most of them had lots of fresh new growth. The greens on both had been pretty damaged. Whatever insect has been eating them – I never did see what it was – seems to have gone away with the frost and cooler temperatures, and the greens were actually starting to grow and recover!

This is the last of what was in the main garden area, and as I’ve been writing this, my family has been enjoying the carrots as a snack while making supper! After this, we have the sunchokes to harvest, and the Red of Florence onion bed. The orange carrots will be left and harvested as needed, until it starts getting cold enough to deeply mulch them for winter storage. Beyond that, it’s just preparing the beds for the winter, and hopefully making more beds before the snow flies and the ground freezes. The garlic, saffron crocuses, strawberries, asparagus and the Liberty apple tree will all also need to be given an insulating mulch, but not too early. It’s a balancing act between covering them early enough that they don’t freeze too much over the winter, but late enough that they don’t stay too warm and start growing before the real cold hits.

Which, if the long range forecast is to be trusted (ha!), won’t be for a little while. We’re expected to be consistently below freezing, including daytime highs, in the middle of November. For now, though, we’re supposed to get heavy rains this evening and into the night, and we’re under a weather advisory, as the first Arctic air blast of the season is expected to hit us later this week. We’re still supposed to get days above freezing, though not by much, and we may even get a mix of rain and snow on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

I am so glad we have the truck NOW, before the weather turned! Thank God!

The Re-Farmer