It’s supposed to start snowing later, so it’s a bit of a now or never day to get those beds mulched before the ground freezes! I’m so glad my mother decided to have me come over to her place tomorrow instead of today.
If you scroll through the Instagram slide show above, you’ll first see the carrots that we are overwintering in the soil, harvesting them as we need to, rather than harvesting them all at once and having to process them for the winter. Quite a few people swear by this, and say the carrots taste so much better when stored this way. There was the remains of a pile of grass clippings next to that bed, so it was the fastest to get done. I used up pretty much the entire pile – I didn’t bother digging too far into the snow around the edges – and piled it right on top of the snow layer. The snow will also act as an insulator, as well as add needed moisture, come spring time. I put the cover back on, partly as a way to store it, but also to keep the grass clippings from being blown away. This is the only bed where that would be an issue.
Next is the old kitchen garden. All the garlic now has a thick layer of mulch, plus the chamomile, thyme and strawberries grown from seed are covered.
I also finally picked that last big luffa gourd. I’d forgotten about it! It’s now sitting in the living room to dry out.
I also remembered to put a deeper mulch on top of the saffron crocuses, plus a nice, thick “donut” of mulch around the Liberty apple tree. Both are zone 4 plants, so they need extra protection in our zone 3 temperatures. Some time ago, I added the tree protector. It’s wrapped around the stem and the bamboo stake together until it reached the bottom branches, and then got wrapped around the bamboo stake. As the sapling gets taller, the wrap can be adjusted accordingly. This area also has the fencing wire around it, so it should be safe from deer, but this will also protect from rabbits and other critters. Mind you, the yard cats do a great job of keeping the small critters under control, so we don’t have any rabbit or mouse problems, but there are other creatures that might try to eat a nice, juicy young sapling!
All of this pretty much finished off the huge pile of grass clippings that was next to the high raised bed! There’s just the dregs along the edges, buried under snow. Those are really full of crab grass rhizomes, anyhow. I was pulling quite a few of those out of even the deepest parts of the grass pile!
Last of all, we covered the asparagus and strawberry bed, and the sunchokes. We ended up not harvesting any. I decided to leave them to propagate, and we’ll have more plants to harvest from, next year. In theory. Instead, I decided to use the loppers to cut the stems and lay them down while my daughter raided the straw pile for more mulch.
The surprise was discovering half the sunchoke plants had lost their tops! Some time between when I did my morning rounds, and when we came over to tend to the bed, a deer had come around and eaten them!
The straw we used is what had been moved off the area the trellis beds are going on. It had been used for our Ruth Stout method of growing potatoes and melons that instead got flooded out, in our 2022 garden. So it’s had some time to break down, and the pile was quite damp! We used most of it to make a nice, deep mulch over the asparagus/strawberry, and sunchoke beds.
In the spring, these mulches will be removed (the carrot bed should be empty before then) to allow for the plants underneath to get sunlight and warmth and start growing. In the wattle weave bed, the chamomile should have reseeded itself by now. The thyme in there might actually survive the winter. It’s hard to say, as they are close to the wall of the bed, which means they’ll get cold from the side. Even with the mulch, they might freeze too much. This is why I made sure to plant the garlic well away from the walls of the raised beds they are in.
If all goes well, we’ll have a nice head start to our 2024 garden!
Oh!!! I just found out our lysine order is in already!
Well, I won’t be going to help my mother today – we’ll be doing that tomorrow – which means I can get work done outside while it’s “warm” today. Yay!
But first, the adorable:
David is so good with the kittens! He’s also a great ball of fluff, and the kittens love to snuggle up to him. At one point, Shadow, here, was completely engulfed in David’s fur, but moved before I could get a picture.
Now, the funny:
As the day warmed up yesterday, the snow on the metal roof of the water bowl house started to slight off – until an icicle stopped it! Yes, that overhanging piece of snow is being held in place by the tiny tip of the shorter icicle.
And now the ugly.
Tumblr.
Fair warning, I guess, that some people might have issues with what I’m about to say next. That’s okay. I’m not offended by people disagreeing with me. Also, a warning for later on, for those who don’t want to hear about war crimes.
I got a Tumblr account, quite a few years ago. Mostly because my daughters got accounts, and it was a way of sharing things and so on. Just another social media account. I’ve got quite a few of them, most of which I rarely go to. My older daughter uses it for her online business, and it’s the source of many of her commissions. Frankly, with her skill and talent, I think she could do much better if she marketed herself elsewhere, but it’s her business – literally – not mine. When I started this blog, I set it so that my posts will automatically share to a Facebook account I created for it, and to the Tumblr account I created under the same name.
At the time we started our account, Tumblr was still a pretty sane. It was a lot of younger people, who wanted something other than Facebook. The joke was that Facebook was all about middle ages wine drinking women. It isn’t, but I know enough of them that I found the joke funny.
In its early years. Tumblr went through the same struggles FB did, with the usual p0rn bots and explicit material inundating people’s feeds. They did eventually solve that one, and things settled for a while.
Social media, in general, is a cesspool. The anonymity of the internet tends to bring out the worst in people. People throw out threats of death, rape and violence at the drop of a hat, as well as vile insults, instead of having actual… you know… discussions about things we disagree with. Limitations on how long comments can be make it harder to hold those discussions, but people don’t even try. Instead of “I disagree with you, here’s why”, it’s “You are a terrible, evil person and deserve to die” or whatever. Twitter in particular used to be really bad for that. It’s why I never started a Twitter account. I probably still won’t, now that it’s X, but since Musk took over, he’s actually done a pretty good job of cleaning it up.
Which brings me back to Tumblr.
Over the past few years, the content on Tumblr has gotten increasingly worse. We’ve got an entire generation of people who have been indoctrinated into far left extremism from kindergarten through university. They can barely read, can’t spell, can barely formulate a coherent sentence, know nothing of history except for revisionist history, can barely do simple arithmetic, and couldn’t logic their way out of a paper bag (there are exceptions, of course, but they are the minority), but my goodness, they sure do think Capitalism is Eeeevil, all white people are racists, and of course, riddled with gender ideology.
Then Musk started cleaning up Twitter, and all the p0rn bots, child s3x traffickers and g00mers moved to Tumblr and TikTok. They were already there, of course. There was just suddenly more of them. Right after the takeover, a lot of leftwing extremists, who think “freedom of speech” is a bad thing, left the platform for Tumblr and TikTok (the garbage took itself out!). For a while there, my Tumblr account was being inundated with new “followers” that were bots and/or p0rn, which I would block and report – hopefully before I saw some animated gif … activity, shall we say.. Eventually, Tumblr seems to have gotten control of that, but not quite. They have this think in the dashboard with recommended Tumblrs to visit, including “live” streams. From the thumbnails, every single one of them I see looks like it’s p0rn. I could report them, as p0rn and sexually explicit material is not allowed, but in order to do that, I have to click on them, first, and I’m not about to do that.
Things have really exploded since Oct. 7. No, not because a terrorist group with the explicitly stated, charter written goal of genocide against Jews attacked Israeli civilians – a war crime in itself. Not because these creatures (I wouldn’t even call them “animals”, because animals would never stoop to this level of degeneracy) murdered, tortured, raped and abducted civilians, degrading women in public and desecrating bodies. Not because they murdered entire families, from infants in their cradles to the elderly. No.
They support the bad guys.
As with so many other things, they’ve redefined things. Evil becomes good. Lies become truth. Wrong becomes right. Even words are redefined. For a group that hates “capitalism”, they don’t even know what it is. Likewise, words like “colonizer”. They only know the meanings they’ve been indoctrinated into. Then, because they live in a very loud bubble, they have come to believe they are the majority, and that anyone who disagrees with them is evil. Not just wrong.
A kicker was when I saw some “art” being shared, purportedly done by an artist in Gaza that was killed by an Israeli air strike. If this were true (and there was no reason to believe it is), this would have been suicide by Israel, and I said as much. There was plenty of warning. Civilians could have left. Or at least, they could have, if Hamas hadn’t blocked their routes out of Gaza, but that’s another issue. Anyhow, I was accused of having “no empathy”.
So now we have Tumblr awash with Palestinian propaganda, with absolutely nothing about what was done to Israel. As far as these people know, Israel just up and decided to commit genocide against Palestinians for no reason. They either have no clue, or justify, the fact that Palestinians supported with Hamas did, and were celebrating and dancing in the streets, not just in Gaza, but around the world.
Which makes being accused of having “no empathy” truly ironic, since these people clearly have no empathy for things like a baby being put in an oven and roasted alive, while the mother was repeatedly raped, and after the father was murdered. Or about how families in their safe rooms (imagine living in a place where you need to have a safe room in your home!) had their houses burned around them. Some survived. Some roasted to death in their safe rooms. Those that tried to escape their burning homes ran out, only to be shot to death by the waiting Hamas. Or the people who got tortured or raped in front of their loved ones, before being executed. There was even a Hamas terrorist that phoned his mother from the home of one of his victims, bragged about the atrocities he had just committed, and was praised by his family for it.
But nooo…. these are not the bad guys. The “zionists” are the bad guys, and the Palestinians that were so happy about what was done to Israeli civilians are the victims.
Tumblr is just oozing with anti-Jew hatred right now – and the people engaging in it actually try to say that “the Jews” agree with them.
Yeah. Logic is not their strong point.
Anyhow.
So I started going something I haven’t been doing for years.
I’m starting to use my Tumblr account.
More specifically, I’m sharing accurate information to Tumblr. Historically accurate, evidentially accurate and truthful information. Yes, I vetted this stuff first, and if something is a mix of both (the best lies have at least some truth in them), I won’t share it.
One of my sources is someone who grew up with the ideology of the region. He knows it because he lived it and believed it. Today, he made a video about a statement made today by the Palestinian Authority – not Hamas – that explicitly stated their intention of exterminating the Jews, complete with koranic verses about it, that was being preached in mosques in sermons. It even showed how these “leaders” are lying to their own people. I shared it, and lo and behold, I actually got a comment (“notes”) on it (I don’t promote my Tumblr account, so I don’t typically get any reactions from there).
I also shared an unrelated video talking about Canada’s insane and bizarre gun “buy back” scheme that got delayed. This is what I got under the gun control video.
As you can see, I don’t have any patience with idiocy.
Note that the person did not say anything to counter the actual claims in the post. They just went straight into an attack on me – and my crops. I doubt they even watched the video to see what it was about. Also “say it to my face” is hilarious, considering they’re the ones that started off attacking me.
As for the video about the PA declaring their intend to commit genocide on Jews?
That’s right. Under a video about how the PA – not Hamas – has made a statement explicitly saying they intend to wipe out all Jews in all the world, I was attacked for not having “real empathy” for people.
Again, I doubt this person even bothered to watch the video. Especially considering how quickly after I shared it, that they commented. Also, for this person to then claim to speak for “Jewish people” would be funny, if it weren’t for the fact that Jewish people were so horrifically slaughtered.
This is pretty typical. They don’t even try to argue their position. They just go straight into the personal attacks. What you WON’T see is any sort of proper argumentation or rational debate. It’s all pure emotionalism and pure, unadulterated hate. These comments are pretty mild. I’ve seen much worse, elsewhere.
I didn’t bother screen capping the rest of my response, which was a bit of a history lesson. Which is probably talking to a wall, but I don’t expect people like this to have the cognitive ability to process the information. Someone reading it might, though.
So Tumblr is a cesspool, and it’s gotten much, much worse of late. The things my daughters are being exposed to is bad enough that it’s affecting our relationship. I’ve even seen one daughter sharing “art” that was essentially p0rn featuring surgically mutilated bodies, under the guise of a particular s3xual identity. Recently, I was telling a daughter about a Mary Pickford movie I’d just watched, that had a particularly well done and moving scene involving the death of a child. I mentioned the name “Jesus” and my daughter had a visceral reaction of disgust. Keep in mind, that my daughters were strong Christians, based on research, evidence and logic. But reason, evidence and logic holds little sway against emotionalism. One of the first things the “gr00mers” and indoctrinators do is divide their targets away from their loved ones, and that means viewing them as the “enemy” and shunning them. We used to be able to talk about anything, even when we disagreed. Now, they just walk away or make snarky, gaslighting comments. I’ve considered deleting my Tumblr account, but that wouldn’t actually solve anything. It’s gotten to a point where my husband and I are seriously considering blocking certain sites, using parental controls (ironic that we never needed to consider this when our daughters were younger!), but that won’t solve the problem. Just cause new ones. We’d have to cut of the internet completely, and that would end my daughter’s online business, end this blog, and end a primary means of communication (we’d have to cut off the data plan on our cell phones, too. Though we do live in a cell phone dead zone, some signal does still occasionally make it through and, of course, would be an issue anywhere we go).
So what, realistically, can we do about it? Not a whole heck of a lot that will actually be useful.
Well, hopefully, things will improve. Right now, am about to go outside with my daughters to get some physical labour done. We all need to spend more time outside, and less time on our computers.
I took the truck in to get things checked out; along with the “service tire monitoring system” warning on the computer display, I started to get a “left rr tire low, add air” warning. Plus, the check engine light was still on. The battery needed to be looked at, too.
I dropped the truck off, then headed to the grocery store to pick up a few things and wait until I got a text to come back for the truck. This was just a look-see appointment, not an appointment to get any work done.
When I got back, he explained about the sensor issues. And it is sensors that are the problem, not actual mechanical problems. The tire module probably has a low battery, so that will need to be replaced. The part is a somewhat over $60, from what he could remember. As for the battery, he checked, and no, HE did not replace it. The previous owner had replaced it. He looked it up and it’s a 2019 battery, so past warranty. He recently changed suppliers, so he couldn’t give me an idea of the cost.
Overall, though, we should have no problem waiting until December to get this done, if we have to. The priority would be getting a new battery. The sensors are just turning on lights.
That was when I commented about the computer display, and how the manual said there was a control panel for it in a location that is not included in this model, and there’s no button.
Yes, there is!
Of course, I had to get him to show me exactly where it is, because we’ve looked and looked. There HAD to be something, but we just couldn’t find it.
He showed it to me, and I STILL had to stick my head right in to see it.
I took this picture of the dash after I parked at home. Can you see it?
If you spotted it in that V between the top gauge on the right, and the speedometer, you’ve got good eyes! We LOOKED in that area! We looked all over the console. We missed it completley.
He got a laugh about that.
Once I had the truck back and the groceries loaded, I parked long enough to message my family, then cycled through the computer display. I’ll have to spend some time going through the different displays to see what some of them are for, and how to use the trip function, but the main thing is, I was no longer seeing that “service tire monitoring system” thing anymore. I was finally seeing the odometer reading!
Also, the temperature in Celcius.
It took me a moment to figure out why there was a W above the temperature when I realised I was driving West. It has a compass display, too! Woo Hoo!!!
Yeah, it doesn’t take much for me to get all excited. 😄
He asked me to text him tomorrow and remind him to look up the prices of things and send me an estimate. He’s been very busy lately, mostly with tires! Even as I dropped the truck off, he was taking delivery of a cargo van load. People are getting their winter tires, so it’s a good busy!
I will probably not be home for much of tomorrow, though. Thankfully, it was warm enough today, and the ice is all melted off the roads. I will be calling my mother later to confirm, and am expecting to help her with some errands tomorrow. Of course, tomorrow is also supposed to be our last “warm” day. I’ll have to get the girls to take care of the winter mulching for me. I’d rather be working outside and taking advantage of the last warm day. My mother seems to have developed a strange gift for disrupting our ability to get things done that are weather dependant!! It’s not like she pays attention to the weather forecasts and plans this, either. Ah, well. It is what it is!
First, though, I need to have myself a late supper. I was in town for far longer than I expected, and didn’t think I’d need to get food while I was out!
It’s been difficult to get close to some of the outside kittens. Especially the smallest ones. There’s one little black one that I’ve been able to pick up now and then, and a couple others I’ve been able to pet while they are eating – sometimes. Mostly, they run off before I even come close.
Today, I was able to pick up the two black kittens with white bibs.
That’s because their eyes were messed up! (click through the Instagram slideshow above, to see both)
The one that lets me pick him up every now and then (I think it’s a male, but I’m not sure) had one eye stuck shut. He let me bring him into the bathroom and my husband held him while I washed the eye and got it open.
No sooner did I deposit him into the cat bed in the sun room (I’m concerned the wet fur will freeze!) that I saw his slightly bigger and fluffier sibling.
That one had an eye that was mostly stuck shut, but both eyes were very messy. Normally, I would not have been able to walk up to it and pet it, never mind pick it up, but he did let me pick him up. He wasn’t as happy about being held, but I got him inside and my husband was able to hold him long enough for me to clean both eyes.
The second picture above was the first kitten I caught, that needed only one eye washed. In the picture, it looks like the eye is still shut, but that it actually isn’t stuck.
We ran out of lysine about a month ago. Our subscription never arrived. I checked on Amazon and it seemed they were out of stock but, over time, it started to say that they (Amazon? The supplier? it didn’t specify) were trying to find an alternate source.
I started searching for other suppliers, but was not having much success. Lysine powder marketed specifically for cats was typically twice the price for 1/3 the quantity. I’d been able to get it in 300g tubs. In looking for lysine marketed for humans (it’s the same thing), they tended to be either as capsules, loose powder in much smaller tubs, or mixed with vitamins.
Thankfully, a friend did some looking as well, and she did find some marketed for horses in 1 pound bags! The price was good, but they didn’t ship out of province. I was planning to check out some of the local livestock supply places, when I had the chance, but I have no idea when I’ll have that chance.
Meanwhile, my friend was able to do some searches on Amazon and find some that did not come up for me, for some reason. I now have a larger container – over 400g – of lysine powder ordered. If it works out to be a suitable replacement, I’ll see if I can set it up as a subscription in place of the other brand. It will be particularly important to make sure the yard cats are getting lysine over the winter, as that’s when their respiratory issues can get really bad!
Hopefully, through the winter, we’ll get more of the inside kittens adopted out, and can bring the smaller outside kittens in for treatment and adoption, before the real cold hits!
I don’t mean this, though. THIS is totally worth it.
Tiny: The Beast
Totally.
What was NOT worth it, was a trip to the city.
We didn’t drive anywhere yesterday, but I was keeping on top of updates on road conditions, in a Facebook group dedicated to highway conditions in our area. It was warmer than today is expected to get, but we had “snow squall” warnings over the region, and winds were quite high at times. Lots of people were describing icy road conditions and advising people to stay home, if they could.
Today is working out to be a much more pleasant day. No wind to speak of, lots of sun, but our high is supposed to be only -3C/27F The question is, did the sand trucks get out?
The answer turned out to be, no.
I waited until late morning to head out, as even when it’s just below freezing, the paved roads tend to warm up more and melt.
Not today!
Where our gravel road reaches the highway, there is an exit lane on the other side into our little hamlet. Right away, I could see hints of what was to come, as the entire junction was sheer ice. There was a large truck pulling a trailer that I waited for, then I pulled onto the highway behind it.
The load on this trailer was an unusual shape. You know those trucks that are designed to haul windows? There’s a triangle shaped frame in the middle, and windows are loaded on either side, resting at an angle leaning towards the center? It was something like that, except much, much larger.
Along the highway, we were hitting alternate patches of sheer ice, and clear road. The curves were the worst, of course. As the truck was pulling out of a set of curves, there was a pair of vehicles on the side of the road ahead. There was no oncoming traffic, so the truck moved over the center line well ahead of these vehicles, to give them space, and I did the same. These were not vehicles in any sort of break down, but rather pulled over to do work of some kind. Once I cleared them and moved back into my lane, I barely started to accelerate again, and I could feel my back end start to fish tail! It was a quick recovery, but a bit of a surprise, since I didn’t think I was even on ice at the time.
It wasn’t much further when I saw the trailer ahead of me start fishtailing! I could see no reason for it, as the driver was clearly doing his best to drive to the conditions. My guess is, the load got hit with a gust of wind. Thankfully, I was making sure to keep quite a distance between us, because if I’d had to brake to avoid the truck, I would have gone skating, fancy new tires or not!
Thankfully, the big truck didn’t have to deal with that for much longer, and turned onto a gravel road soon after. By then, I’d already decided; it wasn’t worth driving all the way to the city. There is nothing essential we need to get there, and what we do need can wait a few days. I only continued far enough to reach an intersection, pulled over to message my family, then used the intersection to do a U turn and go back.
The north bound lane was even icier than the south bound lane. When I saw 4 deer running across the road, I was quite happy to have been driving slow and not at all needing to brake or avoid them.
I did decide to stop at the post office before going home, though. The exit and the section of road going through town was easily the iciest I saw the entire time. Since I was in the store to get to the post office, anyhow, I picked up one of their awesome hams as a treat for today.
As I was driving back to the junction, I found myself getting passed on the right, but a little utility vehicle! It was driving on the shoulder, which was clear gravel, unlike the paved road I was driving on, so that thing could easily go much faster, safely, than me! I was happy to be back on the gravel road, which was more snow than ice!
I’m glad we were able to do such a big trip last week!
On the way home from the post office, the computer display on the truck suddenly started telling me my left rear tire was low on air.
It isn’t.
I’ve got an appointment at the garage for tomorrow afternoon to get these codes and the tire monitoring system checked, out. With the tires, it’s the sensors/monitors that are the issue, not the tires themselves. The other codes could be a number of things, but since he’d serviced the truck from end to end himself, he knows it’s mechanically fine. The only thing he’s now second guessing himself over is whether he’d put in a new battery or not. He told me he did but, with it draining like it is, suddenly he’s not so sure! When he asked me if I noticed the brand on the battery, I told him I couldn’t see. I could barely see to attach the cables when I hooked up the charger. I’m too short! He got a laugh out of that, at least. 😁
Seriously, though. We’re going to need to get a step stool of some kind that we can keep in the truck at all times. I’ll need one just to check the oil!
So that means I won’t be going into the city tomorrow, either.
We’re supposed to reach highs above freezing, starting tomorrow and over the next few days – depending on what app we look at! That will clear the roads, at least. The way things are going, I won’t be able to get to the city until the end of the week. I got a call from my mother last night. It was a very strange call, where she complained about how terrible she was feeling, and how she’d called my brother (the on that lives more than an hour’s drive away) and he’s not calling back, etc. I called her out when she started saying terrible things about my brother for not being instantly at her beck and call, reminding her that I’m the one that’s the closest, so she should be calling me, first. Or, calling for an ambulance, if she was really feeling that bad. Oh, no… she doesn’t want to do that…
Then she started asking me what, of her things, I wanted, because she didn’t want her fighting over her stuff when she was gone. I told her, don’t worry about it. We won’t be fighting over her stuff. She was, however, making it like she was expecting to die because she had a headache and was feeling weak. ???
By the end of the call, when I finally got out of where her what she wanted, it came down to wanting someone to come visit. I told her I was going to the city today, and taking the truck to the garage tomorrow, so I could come over on Thursday – and she should be ready for a grocery shopping trip by then, too. She started saying she doesn’t need one, because she has milk now… *sigh* She has always had difficulty with planning ahead. I can’t even say if it’s gotten worse as she’s gotten older! So I’ll have to call her tomorrow and solidify my coming over.
She was sounding much better by the end of the call, too. After I got off the phone, I messaged my brother to let him know my mother was wanting him to call – and forewarning him that she was dragging up how he used to come out every week – and bring chicken! (the same chicken she now tells me not to bring her) – after work. I’ve reminded her, time and again, that he did that before we moved out here, so he had no choice. He made that trip every Friday for years, until we moved in and he no longer had to keep checking on the place.
I got a call from my brother later on. He’d gotten through to her and, after cutting off her immediate attempts to try and guilt trip him and make him feel bad, they actually had a very good conversation, and she was sounding quite well during their talk. So that worked out in the end.
Talking with my family about this, it’s really hard to not feel bitter about this whole thing with my mother. She’s expecting us to “be there” for her when she “needs us the most” – and by “we”, she really means my oldest brother. The thing is, she was pretty much never there for us. My family and I were out of province for most of the time, so we weren’t as affected by it. They would come out with their children to visit, and she’d leave, saying she would rather be “with her religious community”. She sure as heck wasn’t there when my brother needed her, and when my father needed her the most, she moved out and left him in the tender “mercies” of our vandal. So for her to now expect us to drop everything, ignore our own responsibilities, family and friends, and cater to her because she’s got a headache… Yeah. It gets hard, sometimes.
But I digress…
As I’m writing this, I’m also messaging with the Cat Lady. She’s dealing with their move, while also trying to work out getting those 6 spots for us for the cheap spay and neuter day. It looked like it would be only females, but the clinic recently posted an update, and they will do males – and will do trapped ferals where someone may not even know if they are male or female! We won’t be able to have kittens sharing a carrier, though, so she’s going to try to find a couple she can lend us (we have 4). The problem is, with the move, they are using their carriers to move their own cats. Most will be going into a kennel (the owner is a friend who is planning to shut down their kennel to appointments, to house most of their cats for a week), but some will be going to the new house earlier, while other will be staying in their old house until pretty much the last minute, depending on their various catonalities and medical needs.
However it works out, we’ll be getting 6 cats done on November 11, with the rescue paying for 4 of them, and us paying for 2 of them. I really want to get all the bigger kittens done. The females are getting old enough they could potentially go into their first heat, and the last thing we need is for that to happen with their intact brothers around! After that, we’ll still have the three littles, but they’re still way too small.
It’s a bit of a habit of mine to look through the bathroom into the sun room, checking on the cats, during the night. Usually, as things have been getting chillier, there’s a huge pile of kittens in the big cat bed in front of the cat cage. Yesterday, I’d put some scrap pieces of rigid insulation on top of the cage – they had been over the smaller window last winter, but are too scratched up to use again this year, so I just set them aside. The cats love that insulation (and not just to scratch at!), and I was soon seeing several at a time, sitting in the sun spot on top of the cage. I’ll also see cats in the window, or at the food and water bowls, etc.
Last night, however, I wasn’t seeing any cats. Even this morning, as I was about to go out to feed them, the sun room was empty. They didn’t start coming in until they heard the old kitchen door, and the sound of kibble being pored into the little bin.
Even after they were fed and watered, they were staying out of the sun room! I saw most of them running around the yard, but I also saw this…
There are five of the older kittens in the window! The fifth one is a black cat in the bottom left corner of the window. As I was taking the photo, I could see yellow eyes watching me, but it moved as I took the picture, so it’s basically just disappeared in the photo.
Nice to see them using the cat house so much more, as the temperatures drop.
As I was finishing up and heading in, I went into the sun room and looked around for cats. I saw none, but just as I reached the old kitchen door, I started to hear purring! There turned out to be one of the adult males tucked into the cat cage. I took a donated cat bed the inside cats don’t like for some reason, and tucked it into one of the bottom “rooms” of the cage. The cats won’t lie on most of it – the filling somehow bunched up in the middle, and I have not been able to get it spread out. Instead, they lie on one of the edges, right up against the back wall. That’s where he was, barely visible. When we tried to keep Toni in there after her leg was amputated and discovered she could squeeze through the 2″ square openings, we lined most of the outer walls with cardboard. We’ve left the cardboard there, since it helps keep things cozier, and the cats seem to like it. It does make it harder to see who’s inside, though! 😄
We’re supposed to have a mild day today. It’s been lightly snowing, and our high is supposed to be 0C/32F or so, depending on which app I check. We don’t need to go anywhere today, unless it’s to the garage. I’ll be phoning our mechanic in a bit to talk to him about the codes coming up on the truck. Tomorrow, I’ve decided to go to the big city rather than the small one. We don’t need to go to the international grocery store this month, so I was considering going to the smaller city, but for the stores I do need to go to, the big city locations are better. I’ll take advantage of it and check out a Fresh Co. I keep hearing their prices are really excellent, but we usually don’t have time to check out new places during our city trips.
Yep. We’ve been plugging away on here for 6 years now!
At this time six years ago, my husband, with our younger daughter as his mobility assistant, had flown out earlier than planned, as my FIL was suddenly hospitalized and we weren’t sure he would make it. They stayed here at the farm, with a car loaned to them so they could travel to the hospital in the city. The house had been empty for two years and it showed. Thankfully, my FIL recovered and is still with us.
Meanwhile, my older daughter and I were doing everything we could to sell, give away, donate or throw away as much as we could, while packing other things in preparation for the movers, and for our own drive out in the middle of November.
In the middle of all this, we decided to start this blog to document our adventures getting here, and living here. We had such plans!
A lot sure has changed in six years!
We still have plans, but things had to shift quite a bit. Some have pretty much fallen off the priority list entirely, while others that were intended for later had to be dealt with earlier.
For all the unexpected challenges we’ve faced, I’m still glad we were able to make the move. From what I hear, things were we used to live have only gotten much, much worse (don’t ever live in a housing co-op, unless, perhaps, if it’s managed by a separate, professional property management company!!). I’m also incredibly thankful we weren’t living in the city when the world went insane in 2020, and still hasn’t recovered from.
While cleaning up my parents’ stuff in the first couple of years, I found an old journal of mine, written “to” my husband. In it, I’d found long forgotten dreams and plans of being able to buy this farm from my parents (unrealistic dreams, since my parents intended the land to go to my brothers; girls didn’t get land!) and build as self sufficient a life as possible – what today would be considered homesteading and off grid living, but no one really used those terms that way, back then.
It’s taken over 30 years, and some very unexpected twists and turns in our lives, yet here we are. Getting old and rather broken, but with the help of our daughters and the excellent stewardship of my brother as our “landlord”, we’re actually starting to live that dream.
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!!!
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. 😆
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.
