Author: Re-Farmer

First stock up shop: a triple whammy for $544

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Today was our first trip into the city to stock up for next month. I’ll be doing the Costco trip in a couple of days. This time, I went to three different places.

The first was a Walmart. This is what $249 looks like.

For this stop, I didn’t go to the grocery section at all, but while waiting in line, I saw the display of canned bean cases (9 cans). The price was about what Costco’s price for used to be. $9.97 instead of almost $13. So I grabbed one.

Aside from that one grocery item, I got:

Paper towels: $22.97
Wet cat food (shredded): $28.77
Dry cat food, 7kg size, cheap house brand: $19.97 each. I got 3 for the outside cats, plus one anti-hairball bag for the indoor cats to try.
Puppy pads, 50pk of 30″x30″: $26.97 The kittens are getting better and I’m not changing those as often, but ever now and then, a kitten just decides to pee right next to the litter box. They seem to wait until I’m not in the room to do it!
Men’s t-shirts: one for my husband, one for me, at $8 each
Shampoo and conditioner: $15.47 each Those have sure gone up in price – if I can even find bottles in that size at all!
bright orange acrylic yarn: $5.27 I plan to make baseball cap ear warmers and see if our grocery store/post office will let me sell them there. It took me forever to find yarn in that orange, for the hunters. I also have grey, which I will use together with reflective thread I have.
Dawn Platinum: $2.47 I got a tiny bottle of this to test out in the laundry. I got a couple of new t-shirts for myself not long ago, and both already have stains on them! Unfortunately, I didn’t see the stains until I put the shirts on after washing them. Which is why I ended up buying more t-shirts. From what I’ve been able to find, this stuff will actually get out stains, even after they’ve gone through the dryer. If not… well, I’ve got myself a couple more work shirts. 😕

The total was $223.24, plus $10.66 GST and $14.93 PST, bringing the grand total to $248.83 Plus, I added $100 cash back, which was their maximum.

So that was stop number one.

The next two stops were right next to each other, so it was just one trip. The first was a Dollarama. I was specifically looking for new food dishes for the kittens in my room. We’ve been using old take out containers, which is great for temporary use, or for adult cats, but they’re too big. Since we’re using my room as an isolation ward, it’s time to get proper food bowls. Unfortunately, they tend to be quite expensive, so I tried here. They did have some nice, stainless steel bowls with non-slip rings on their bases that I picked up.

Of course, that’s not all I got. This is what $75 looks like.

Pet food bowls, 8 in total: $2 each
Pet bed (for the kittens): $5
Cat tunnel (for the rest of the cats): $4
Cat toy (for the rest of the cats): $4.75
Cooling rack: $4.75 I’ll be slowly getting more of these. This style, with the squares, will be much better for dehydrating in the oven than the ones I’m using now, which have the wires running in one direction, with only a single support wire down the middle.
Odour remover, 2 of them: $1.50 each
Towel holder: $4 – to replace the wonky one we’re using now, that I made when I was in Junior high, so… about 1980 or so!

I don’t usually get food at the dollar store, but this store has a decent selection, and the prices are a lot better than the grocery stores. Especially the tinned meats. So I got a selection to try out and see if this is something we like enough to be worth stocking in our pantry for the winter, when we are likely to get snowed in for a while.

Chicken flakes, 4 cans: $1.75 each
Light Tuna, 4 cans: $1.00 each
Pink Salmon, 4 cans: $2.25 each
Black olives: $1.75
Artichoke hearts: $2.50
Chestnuts: $1.25 These are cooked chestnuts that I got as a snack for the drive home. 😊
Ice pack: $3.50 We’ve had to throw away some of our smaller gel ice packs, so I got a hard sided type to replace them.

This all came out to $69.25, plus $2.19 in GST and $3.06 in PST for a grand total of $74.50

After that was loaded into the car, it was a walk across the parking lot to my next stop, the international grocery store.

This is a store where we get a few treats or items that we don’t find in any of the other stores we normally go to, plus were we often find new things to try. This is also where I stop for some dim sum for lunch which, together with my drink, cost just over $20.

This is what $206 looks like.

Cleaning vinegar: $5.99 There’s a thing being passed around on social media about how companies have sneakily reduced the acidity of vinegar from 5% to 4%. For people who can, vinegar must be 5% for safety reasons. Well, I’ve looked around, and I’ve yet to see any vinegar at 4% Maybe it’s a US thing. What I did see was 7%. In this store, they have three kinds of white vinegar. Regular vinegar at 5%, canning vinegar at 7% and cleaning vinegar, what I picked up, at 10%. I got their large jug

Bananas: $4.27 for 2 bunches.
Beaver Buzz, 3 Saskatoon berry and 3 Citrus: on sale at 2 for $4.50, or $2.25 each, instead of $2.69 each, plus one cent per can for the enviro fee
Coke Zero: $7.29 plus 12¢ enviro fee
Blade roast: $20.50
Two frying chickens, locally produced and free range: $15.36 (usually, that’s about the price of just one whole chicken)
Smoked applewood bacon (unsliced): $11.24
Smoked bacon (unsliced): $8.17 Both bacons are a locally produced item that we get as a treat.
Raw white prawns, frozen: $9.99, on sale. Regular price, $14.99 These are a treat for the girls.
Truffle olive oil: $15.99 – another treat!
Old Cheddar: $13.99
Mozzarella: $13.99 Normally, we get these cheeses we use mostly for cooking at Costco, but we’re out of cheese, so I got smaller packages for now.
Truffle Gouda cheese: $12.52 This is something we don’t usually see in stock, so I made sure to grab some. Yes, another treat!
Mild goat Gouda: $10.06 Cheese like Gouda are something we get as an “eating cheese” that we enjoy as snacks, rather than in cooking.
Eggs, 1 flat of 30: $9.79
Soy sauce: two at $4.59 each. This is a Philippine brand my husband likes, so I like to stock up on it for the pantry.
fresh green peppercorns: $2.02 We’ve never used these before! We’ll have to look up what to do with them.
Stash Tea, three different flavours: on sale for $3.99 each (regular price, $4.49 each)
Coke Zero: $7.29 plus 12¢ enviro fee
bottled caramel frapp, cold, for the drive home: $3.99 plus 3¢ enviro fee
Jarritos Grapefruit soft drink, cold, for the drive home: $1.99 plus 3¢ enviro fee. At least it was supposed to be for the drive home. I made the mistake of drinking the dairy drink, first. I forgot the caps aren’t a twist off, and I wasn’t going to pull over to the side of the road to dig out a bottle opener! I think I do have one. I’ve returned a multi-tool knife to keep in the car, and I’m pretty sure it has a bottle opener in it.

The total for all this was $202.04, plus $1.65 in GST and $2.29 in PST, for a grand total of $205.98 Plus, I was able to take out another $100 in cash back. We now have enough to get the septic guy in to clean our tank for the winter. He’s really fast about getting to us, so I wanted to make sure I had more than enough cash on hand, before we made the call! Otherwise, I’d have to rush to my mother’s town, where there is a branch of my bank, to take money out before he arrives.

As I was loading up the car, I checked my phone and found my daughter had transferred funds over. I messaged her, asking if there was anything in particular it was for, but it was mostly to just help with the groceries – but it did remind me of a couple of things I meant to pick up for them that I forgot! So, once everything was loaded (with most of the frozen ice packs I brought from home), I went back in and got:

Coffee creamer, largest size bottle: $7.99
soya drink, 1 gallon size: $6.39 This is one of those specific items we don’t find anywhere else. I do wish the girls weren’t drinking soy, though. That stuff’s pretty nasty. Especially since they both have PCOS.

Anyhow. That totalled another $14.38

So that was the damage for today, plus gas, which was just over $20 to fill the tank. Prices have dropped to 163.9¢/L recently, though in the city, I saw places at 162.9 and 161.9 With an energy drink and a snack for breakfast, plus some lotto tickets, the gas station purchases totalled a little over $40.

Not counting my lunch and gas station purchases, the total for today was $543.69 in total.

The international grocery store printed out entry forms with every receipt for a contest to win free groceries for a year. Since I came back for stuff I’d forgotten, I ended up with two entries. Today is the last day for the contest, so I’m glad I made it today. Plus, the receipts for the grocery store, and the Walmart, both have entries to win $1000 gift cards after filling out a “how did we do” survey. Normally, I don’t bother with those, but with the prices of groceries these days, I think I’ll be entering those!

After this will be the Costco and Canadian Tire shop. Canadian Tire is for the litter pellets and another few fire bricks for our outdoor kitchen, if they have them in stock. Since we don’t have a replacement van yet, we will likely have to make a second trip to Costco, just for more bags of dry cat food, now that I know that twelve 9kg bags will not last us a month. In that size, we would need 16 bags for 1 month! If we don’t get anything else that’s large or heavy (like the litter pellets), I can fit eight 9kg bags in my mother’s car, though it really doesn’t like it.

That reminds me. I should book it to get checked. I mentioned how the mileage seems to be getting worse, and he has some suggestions for me to get looked at.

That would be a good time to talk to our mechanic about how things are looking for finding us a vehicle within the financing budget.

I keep saying to myself, as long as we have it before winter, I’m good. In truth, I feel dread, every time I drive my mother’s car. It has had so many problems since my mother bought it, and since we took over keeping it registered so we have a vehicle she can get in and out of, it has had more problems then our van did! The faster we can get a replacement vehicle, the better.

The Re-Farmer

A wasted day

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Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to curl up and sleep like kittens do?

I had another sleepless night last night. 😢 I don’t know why, but every time I lay down, I started to feel wicked heartburn. At least I think that’s what it was. I could even feel it moving up my esophagus, the longer I was prone. I finished off the last of our Pepto, but I’m not sure that it helped. If it did, it took a long time. I ended up having to set things up so I could be upright, but couldn’t sleep like that.

Of course, with me being upright, the kittens thought it was play time. They actually were an appreciated distraction, for the most part.

I feel better now, but totally wasted. Of course, the usual things still needed to get done, but I skipped my morning rounds and switching out the memory cards on the trail cams and went back to bed. It wasn’t until about 1 or 1:30 that I finally had breakfast. I did get some stuff done, but it mostly made me feel more frustrated about how much wasn’t being done. It’s not like the world will end if these jobs get delayed a bit, but I have that constant feeling of time running out, this time of year.

Well, I’d better be feeling better by tomorrow, because I’m heading into the city to do our first shop for October, whether I like it or not. I’ve decided to do the smaller shopping, rather than the bulk Costco shopping, hitting places like the international grocery store we never made it to last month, etc.

It would have been nice if we could be doing this shop in a new-to-us van, but we’ve had no word on anything there, which means our mechanic hasn’t found something that meets our needs and the financing limitations yet. I’ll be happy just to have it before winter. I really don’t to have to be driving my mother’s car in the winter!

Ah, well. It is what it is.

The Re-Farmer

Garden clean up: the tomato beds

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After the almost constant rain yesterday, it was too wet to be working on the trellis bed. So today, I got the remaining tomato beds cleaned up. Or, at least the trellis set ups removed and the tomato plants pulled. Both beds still have other things in them.

In the foreground is the bed that had the Black Beauty tomatoes in it. It still has the Uzbek Golden carrots in it, and those don’t need to be harvested for quite some time. The volunteer sunflower was headless this morning, so I pulled that. The volunteer lettuce among the carrots had been going to seed, but that got eaten, too!

The next bed had the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes. Now, there are still the Gold Ball turnips, and the sad little beets that never really started to grow.

Both beds still had a few yellow onions in them, so those got picked and are set on the bed cover over the radishes in the background. It still has netting on top of it, so they are secure on there for now.

Both beds also had sprinkler hoses in them, so those got taken out, too.

While pulling things out, I saw SO many slugs! They have even started eating onion greens, and very few things will eat onions!

The mostly empty high raised bed is a convenient place to set things aside! Here, you can see the three T-posts and boards that were used to trellis the Indigo Blues, and the bundles of bamboo were used to support the Black Beauties. I made sure to keep all the garden twist ties, clips, etc. Some of the twist ties were long enough to use on the bamboo bundles. This all got put away into, or leaned against, the old garden shed, along with the soaker and sprinkler hoses.

We’ve been wanting to build a larger garden shed as a cordwood practise building. This old shed has a leaky and rotting roof, and there’s a rotted out hole in the back corner that the cats get in and out of.

Taking a closer look, though, the frame is still pretty solid. Some pieces on the roof may need replacing, but that’s about it. We could take off the roof and walls, and repair it.

After moving it. It may have been in a good spot when it was first put there, but the trees it was squeezed in between have gotten much bigger, and the whole thing is tilting.

Something else we could salvage and reuse, instead of get rid of completely! We’ll still be building a larger shed, but you really can’t have too many sheds!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties. I love them. Even when I don’t! 😄

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So… I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.

I was dozing off when something warm and fuzzy suddenly slid onto my face. I could reach my phone and was able to try and get some pictures in the dark. Which basically involved putting the phone on self mode, holding where I hoped was facing the right way, closing my eyes so as not to get blinded, and using voice activation to take a picture.

I was at least able to get one good shot!

At the time, I actually had all 5 of the older kittens on various parts of my body. Which was fine, until they got playful. They have very sharp little needle claws!!

Also, there is something amazing when all five of them are loudly purring at the same time. Suddenly, I don’t mind all the little pin pricks all that much.

But sleep would have been nice, too!

I had quite a crowd of kitties outside, too, though I could only count about 23, I think, before I gave up trying.

Would you look at the cheeky b******d!! That grey and white cat on the right? That’s Sad Face. The girls call him Shop Towel, but you can see why I call him Sad Face. He’s getting bold, to come up on the roof like that!

As long as he’s not attacking the other cats, I don’t mind.

I also had a Nozencrantz sighting. She slithered over to the bowl under the shrine, the slunk away when she saw me moving by the house. Later, I saw her watching me through the stack of wood near the shrine that the kittens like to play in so much.

As much as I wish I could get close to her, it’s been fascinating to see her moving around. Once again, no DNA test needed to know who her father was! We used to have a tom we called Nicky the Nose visit regularly, until Sad Face drove him away for good (it looks like The Distinguished Guest is driven off for good, too). We called him Nicky the Nose because of the distinctive patch of colour on his face that made his nose look much broader than it was. Nosencrantz has that patch, but she also has his mannerisms! That quite way she slinks around, with her body hugging the ground. It’s so much like Nicky the Nose that it’s almost disorienting.

And now we have another Nosey. One of this year’s kittens has a patch on her nose, very much like Nosencrantz. I’m not sure where that gene came from this year, but I’m sure Nicky had other progeny in his territory!

After I finished my rounds and headed in side for breakfast, I had a chance to chat with my younger daughter. Having lived in my brother’s house, alone, for almost a month, she got used to a level of cleanliness we just haven’t managed to maintain in this household. I’ll be honest. It’s a disaster. My focus is on the work outside, so there’s only so much I can do inside. My older daughter is shifting from working nights to working days, so there’s only so much she can do without keeping everyone awake. My husband can barely make it to the kitchen to put dishes in the sink, never mind pick up after himself or anyone else. That leaves my younger daughter. She’s been trying, but with so many cats making a mess of things, it’s really hard to keep up. Add to that things like the worn out condition of the linoleum floors, or the stickiness of the paint used on the kitchen cupboards, and cat hair EVERYWHERE, it get overwhelming, fast. Not to mention depressing as hell. But she’s been trying.

Well, today, she’s decided she’s going to work at it more, starting with the bathroom. While I went outside, she cleared the bathroom out and started cleaning and scrubbing. Which is fantastic. The downside is, we’ve only got the one bathroom.

My main frustration was when I finally made it back to my room and discovered things trashed by the kittens again. Ghosty has decided she WILL get to the top of the wall shelf, no matter how many things there are to block her way. A few things got knocked down (not the antique lamp, thankfully!!!), but there was something my brother had left up there before we moved in. The container is like a small margarine container, and it has a moisture and odor absorbing compound in it. That ended up dumped on my bed. It’s been up there for 6 years, so it was mostly granules. Something I did NOT want the kittens getting into! Plus, it landed on my pillow, too.

So there was a lot to clean up, including changing the bedding and getting the sheets that got covered with this stuff, first.

At least the tiny kittens are behaving. Mostly. The only issue with them is that they still pee on the puppy pad, right next to the litter box under my desk. *sigh* I’m glad they are no longer peeing on my bed, at least – that was mostly Toni, but since she’s been out of the isolation ward, she has only been using the litter boxes! I’ve actually run out of puppy pads but, thankfully, the care package my friend gave me included some bed pads used as packing material along with the first aid supplies! So I’ve been using those. Thanks again, M!!! Anyhow, it’s mostly Tiny that uses the puppy pad, even though I’ve seen her use the litter boxes, too. I’ve caught Pom Pom doing it, too. Frustrating!

The lack of sleep is starting to catch up with me. I’ll just do another post, and then I might just try closing my eyes for a bit.

If the kittens will let me, at least!

The Re-Farmer

Back home, kibble math and some root cellaring

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It’s been a wet and dreary day today. It started raining off and on last night, and has continued throughout the day. I was just getting the kibble ready for the outside cats when it started raining again! No surprise that many of the cats preferred to eat in the sun room. 😁

The squash we harvested was still on the table outside, so I brought it all in. I laid the winter squash out on the freezer in the old kitchen, but there wasn’t room for most of the squash from the compost pile. Those, at least, I could find room for in the sun room.

I left fairly early to get my daughter, since I wanted to make a couple of stops along the way, including a gas station, where I made sure to pick up an air freshener for the car! Having the garbage in the car from Thursday evening to Saturday morning was not a good thing. We can’t even leave windows open to air it out, since either critters or insects would get inside. The last thing we need is for a racoon to decide to get in and tear the inside apart, searching for the source of the smell.

I also wanted to stop at a Walmart long the way to pick up one more bag of kibble, as our supply was not going to make it to our first big shopping trip.

We have not been feeding the cats more than usual with the outside cats, and with the inside cats, we’ve been controlling their feeding a bit more. Instead of having dry cat food available throughout the day, and giving them wet cat food in the evenings, they are getting two feeding times with dry kibble, with a small feeding in between. At least we’re not running out of wet cat food, as I’d been buying extra for the kittens.

This is the first month I’ve really tried to keep track of how much kibble we’re buying. Usually, we’d buy 8 bags during the big shops, then just buy more near the end of the month a few times. This month, however, I got twelve 9kg bags of kibble from Costco. We thought that would be enough. This is, however, the second 10kg bag I’ve had to get.

That’s 14 bags, totalling 128kg of kibble for the month. Which is 282lbs.

With the Costco and Walmart prices, plus tax, that’s about $300 on just dry kibble, this month alone. Then there’s the canned cat food, plus the litter pellets. The litter pellets are cheap and the 40lb bags last a long time, so I’d say about $20 a month, on average. The canned cat food, between the large case we get at Costco, and the slightly smaller cases we get at Walmart, is about another $90

So we’re looking at $410 (US$304.18 at today’s exchange rate) we’re spending on the cats this month. On those months where we had to buy kibble in the middle of the month, wherever we could, it would probably be more expensive.

That would make one heck of a car payment.

Now, part of that can be blamed on inflation. The price of kibble has increased by almost 6% in the past couple of years. And that’s just going by Costco and Walmart prices. Other stores have seen steeper increases. Especially outside of the city.

It’s ridiculous, but the alternative would basically be to start putting cats down. With the outside cats, someone from the municipality would send someone over to shoot them.

I suppose we could just stop providing food for the outside cats, and they’d eventually go away, but considering how starved some of the cats look after they’ve disappeared for the summer, I don’t think there are a lot of options out there for them. More likely, the coyotes would get them. So… no. Not going to let that happen. Even if it means sometimes feeding skunks, racoons and blue jays in the process.

So, we keep feeding them, and looking for people willing to adopt. Thanks to the Cat Lady, we have actually managed to adopt out quite a few, though six of them are still with the Cat Lady, four of them permanently!

Ah, well. It is what it is!

Meanwhile…

When I got to my brother’s, I thought they’d be really tired and I would just be saying hello and good bye, but they were up for an actual visit. It was so wonderful to see them! We got caught up on how things went while they were gone, particularly with my mother. As we were leaving, I mentioned coming back to see their photos from the trip. My SIL told me she’s considering putting them together into a movie, like I used to do, years ago. Digital cameras were just starting to become affordable, and when we moved out of province, we started to basically document everything. Then, about once a year, I’d put them together into a DVD for my parents. Moving making software for home was also just starting to be affordable, but these were still little more than slide shows. Still, I had fun adding music and making captions, and sorting things into chapters. The idea was that these would be easy for my parents to see on the TV.

I did that for several years. Then I found out my parents never watched any of them. So I stopped.

Making DVDs, that is. I never stopped documenting things. It had become a habit by then, along with journaling. A habit that came in very handy when life suddenly got very complicated, and I found myself having to make witness statements, police reports and affidavits.

So glad to be away from all that now. Dealing with our vandal is small potatoes in comparison! It also made his attempts to intimidate me pretty comical, but that’s a whole other topic! 😂

But I digress!

I hope she does put something together. I’d love to see it!

After my daughter and I left, we made a couple of stops along the way, including to pick up the pizza order her sister made after we let her know we were leaving my brother’s. That was sweet of her to treat us!

We’ve had more take out this month than we’ve had in years!

My daughter enjoyed her time taking care of my brother’s place for them, but she was glad to be home.

Once at home, and before we settled in to eat, my older daughter and I were able to deal with the winter squash I’d left on top of the freezer. The first challenge was just to get through the old kitchen door, without any cats getting through. Then it was just getting them into the new part basement, where the root cellar is. Then it took the two of us to get them into the root cellar, but keep the cats out.

But we got it done!

The two round, green pumpkins at the top are from the compost heap squash. All the smallest winter squash fit into a carboard box. The rest are the candy roasters and Pink Banana.

The root cellar is not a very good one, to be honest. We had considered turning it into a cheese cave at one point, so I set up a thermometer and a hydrometer in there, and kept track of the temperature and humidity for a year. Both fluctuate too much to make a good cheese cave – or a good root cellar! Still, my parents used this as a root cellar for many years. It works well enough!

Not that any of these squash can be left there for long. With the frost killing off the plants before the squash could fully mature, they won’t last as long, so they’ll need to be eaten fairly quickly. We are most eager to try the big ones!

The main thing, however, will be to make sure we don’t forget about them. I avoid going into either basement – or even the upstairs – because my knees and stairs are sworn enemies. We go into the root cellar even less often. It’s where we store our Christmas decorations away from the cats! Heck, we still have a couple of cases of mead down there that we keep forgetting exists.

But it’s done, and the winter squash is put up for the season.

We’re still processing tomatoes, too. We have whole tomatoes in the freezer, plus I’ve got a couple more trays dehydrating in the oven right now, and there are still more under the old market tent, slowly ripening. We’ve just been bringing in the ripe ones every few days or so. Thankfully, those are out of the rain, and no critters seem interested in them at all!

I was just yawning and thinking how it’s so late and time to go to bed, but I’m seeing it’s not even 8:30pm yet. It’s full dark out there, and feels so much later! Especially after being such and overcast and dreary day to begin with.

I might try going to bed early for a change.

Ha! Who am I kidding? I’ll probably get started on something, then suddenly realize it’s 2am again. Because I’m silly that way!

The Re-Farmer

Tinies

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Would you look at these two?

Soot Sprite and Tiny. Pom Pom isn’t much bigger! These guys are all over 8 weeks old.

Yes, we do try to keep up on washing Tiny’s eyes. They seem clear. Just really leaky.

Today, I go to pick up my daughter from house sitting. My brother and husband wife got home late last night. They had been up for 24 hours, so they went straight to bed! They had a fabulous trip. I can’t wait to see them!

The Re-Farmer

My morning outside – including a harvest!

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With the popcorn harvested, I needed to find someplace to put the box cover. While removing the chicken wire, I figured out a great spot for it.

The onions had a cover simply because I had one. It made weeding impossible, but with onion tops growing through it, it couldn’t be conveniently moved aside.

Since these covers are all 9’x3′, it fits perfectly on top of the box cover. This would be an ideal set up to protect taller plants! I just used the twist ties that were holding the chicken wire to fasten the two covers together. The onion bed is basically a storage spot for them, but now I can access the onions for weeding!

And yes. Those are new squash blossoms in the compost ring in the background!

While checking the other garden beds, I had a little surprise.

The largest melon had picked itself! 😆

I even found a pattypan large enough to harvest.

That’s the size we enjoy the patty pans best.

My daughter gets back from house sitting soon. We will save tasting the melon for when she gets back. 💚

In other things…

When feeding the outside cats, I tried to do a head count. It takes a while for them to all show up. I eventually counted thirty – then three more kittens ran into the yard!

After my rounds were done, I did a dump run. The car was already loaded, because when I tried to do it 2 days ago, it was closed.

I was glad to be able to air out the car, later!

As I was returning to the house, I spotted Nosencrantz slinking away from the kibble under the shrine, and disappear behind the pump shack. She is looking big and fluffy, and is acting incredibly shy. I wish I knew why! At least we know she’s still around.

Now, if only Butterscotch and Marlee would show up!

The Re-Farmer

Trellis bed progress: first end cap done

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Finally! I was able to bring over my tools and equipment, which I just keep in the utility wagon now, over to the garden and get a bit more done on the first trellis bed.

The first step was to cut the two logs set aside into 4′ long pieces. I know for sure I’ll need two per end, but these logs are thinner than the ones in the side walls, so I cut extra just in case.

Before putting one of the end pieces down, I loosened up the soil where it would be lying and tried to level it off a bit, since there was a dip near the middle of the space. Because I want these beds to be 4′ wide on the outside, after laying down the first end piece and matching it to the outer edge on one side, I shifted the other side a bit to line up with the other end.

Steel toes boots are create for kicking logs and not breaking my toes!

I started with the thickest 4′ log for the base log on this end. Using the side wall logs to mark where I needed to cut, I removed wood from the ends to fit over the side wall logs.

What a pain.

For this job, I used the mini-chain saw, a hatchet and hammer to remove the bulk of the excess wood, and even the electric chain saw to remove the excess wood.

A pain, to be sure, but much faster and easier than when I started building the high raised bed and had only hand tools!

Once I was satisfied with how the end piece fit, it was time to secure it. A couple of years ago, I’d bought some plastic coated metal rods to use as supports in the garden. The rods were hollow, and they quickly bent and broke in our rocky soil. I’ve been using the broken pieces to secure things like hoops for garden beds, but I also used some to secure the corners of the tiny raised bed in the old kitchen garden.

I decided to use them to secure the end pieces on the trellis bed, much like I already used rebar to secure the side walls. I drilled matching holes through the end pieces into the side walls, then hammered the metal rods in place.

Then I went through the other 4′ lengths to find one that fit the best on top of the first log and repeated the process. This time, though, I was having to fit them over two very different sizes of log, so that required some extra angled cuts, as well as flattening the length of both logs a bit, so they’d fit against each other better. There’s still quite a gap in between them in one place, but that can be chinked later. Last of all, they were secured with more metal rods, though the top log was thin enough that I could break one of the rods in half and use the shorter pieces.

And here it is! The first finished end cap, viewed from inside the bed.

This all took quite a while to do, so once it was done, I stopped for the day. I’ve got too many other things that need to be worked on.

I’m quite happy with how it’s working out so far.

Since the vertical posts will be added to the outsides of the bed, not down the middle as I’d planned to do originally, I will fill the bed once the other end cap is done. That way the layers of material will have at least a bit more time to break down under the top layer of soil it will get. I may even decide to get more logs to build the next bed, first. We need beds to plant in next year, more than we need the trellis part of it. The trellis posts can even be added after planting, if necessary. The priority is to have more planting space. This year’s garden is so much smaller than I had planned on, simply because I ran out of prepared spaces to plant in. I don’t want to have that situation again, next year!

So, once this bed is built and filled, it’ll be time to cut logs to size from the two downs trees we have ready right now and drag them over. These trunks are so thick, the bottom 10′ will be set aside to be used as supports for the outdoor kitchen we will be building. Using such thick logs in the trellis beds would be a real waste of material.

The first day of fall is tomorrow, and time to get work done before things get too cold is running short!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: critter damage and corn harvest.

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While doing my morning rounds, I found some new critter damage around. Both corn beds were hit, though not too badly. A few other things were nibbled on, including the way too under ripe Boston Marrow that I had left on the vine. It had gotten about 6-7 inches long and was even looking like it was trying to ripen since the plant was hit by frost. Now, there’s just a bit at the end of the stem left.

Thankfully, the critters seem completely uninterested in the peppers, melons, carrots and onions!

So this morning, I harvested the corn, starting with the popcorn.

In the first couple of photos above, you can see the damage. The slugs were quick to take advantage of the situation!

I did gather all the fallen kernels I could find. I don’t want them reseeding themselves in this bed.

There were still a decent number of cobs to harvest. The stalks will be used in the layers filling any new beds we manage to get done this year.

I took advantage of the chicken wire on the box frame and set out the cobs to dry out in the sun and wind. I moved the pinwheels over, to keep the birds out. We’ll bring them inside at the end of the day, as we have no place to set something like corn to cure, outdoors. Things like onions and tomatoes get ignored, but the skunks, racoons and birds would have quite a good time with the corn!

Obviously, this is still not a lot of popcorn. This is a test crop. Once things are will dried out, we’ll make some popcorn from in and see if we like it. If so, we’d be wanting to plant a whole lot more than this, to provide enough popcorn for the family! If we don’t find it’s worth it, we’ll test other varieties until we find something we like enough to keep growing.

Next was the Montana Morado corn.

Even with having a few critter damaged cobs that were worth salvaging, the losses were a lot higher in this corn. Some of the stalks didn’t even develop cobs in the first place. The few cobs we had were also set out on the wire to dry. In the second photo, you can see spots of white in places. Those are kernels that were chewed on, revealing a snow white interior!

Again, there isn’t much there, but we’ll have enough to make some corn flower to try out. I still want to try growing the South American kulli corn and acclimate it to our area, but if this corn’s flour turns out nice, I’m certainly not going to turn my nose up to a glass gem variety that’s bred for norther climates.

When it comes to growing something like corn with the goal of self sufficiency in mind, once we have found varieties we like, we would need to grow a LOT more to have enough to preserve/store. This year, we didn’t even have the space to try any of the sweet corn seeds I got! If we are going to be growing sweet corn, flour corn and popcorn, not only would we need more space to get the quantities we would need, but they’d have to be kept well apart from each other, so avoid cross pollination. Which may not be too much of a problem, since the different types of corn would start pollinating at different times of the year, but it would still be a good idea.

The bed with the purple corn still has beans in it that survived the frost. They are just there to fix nitrogen in the soil, as corn is such a heavy nitrogen feeder. I don’t plan to harvest any more of them, and the plants and roots can be left in the soil to break down, when the bed is prepared for the winter.

On a completely different topic…

As I was about to bring the purple corn to the chicken wire, with the popcorn, when I saw Broccoli going by – with three kittens following along! This would be a second litter for her, as she was among those that had kittens really early in the season. One looked like a tortie, one looked like a tuxedo, and one seems to be a long haired black and white – more black than white. I saw that one later on, in the shelf shelter, where I’d put some kibble earlier in the morning. I was only able to get a brief video, but my hands shake quite a bit, which is greatly exaggerated when zooming in.

So… three more babies. 😑 I’ve lost complete track of how many there are this year!

My next surprise was not as adorable.

I came into my room to find a couple of small bins filled with crafting material, and the stuff that was on top of them, crashed onto the floor among other things that got dragged down as they fell. A couple of the kittens have discovered the top of the wall shelf and are very determined to get up there, no matter how much I try to block it off!

After cleaning that up, I went to my computer. I don’t know what they stepped on, on my keyboard, but all the shortcut icons in my task bar were gone. Even the start button was greyed out, like when you put the cursor over it. Except, the cursor wasn’t even near it. I tried clicking on the start button, and nothing. I did get that spinning icon that shows when the computer is busy with something, but it wouldn’t stop or go away. I ended up having to do a hard shut down and just hoped it would revert to normal when restarted. Thankfully, it did, and I was able to upload files from my phone and start this blog post!

We really need to start letting the bigger kittens out of the “isolation ward”. I’d hoped to have at least a couple adopted out by now, but still no takers. The problem with letting them out is, they’d eventually make their way into the new part basement, where we keep a number of litter boxes. The girls will need to kitten proof it as best they can, first. There are places the kittens could get into that the adult cats can’t fit in anymore, where they could potentially come into harm or just plain get stuck.

Speaking of the girls, my house sitting daughter will be home in a few days! It will be good to have her back. I’m not sure she’ll feel the same, though. She’s been in a cat free house, with no one to clean up after but herself, for several weeks now! 😂😂

They’ve already got plans for a Hannibal marathon when she gets back, so she’s at least looking forward to that! 😁

Well, time to grab a late lunch, then get back outside. It’s a beautiful day out there, and I want to get as much done out there as I can!

The Re-Farmer

Is it?

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While feeding the outside cats today, I spotted a large cat at the food bowl, under the shrine. I couldn’t get closer, though. It acted quite feral. But…

… could it be?

Is it she?

I couldn’t see any of the more brown fur colors Nosencrantz has, and yet… it does look like her. The patterns match, if not the colors.

I hope she comes back soon and I can get a better look.

The Re-Farmer