Author: Re-Farmer

Old and New

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Today, we went into town to pick up my early birthday take out dinner (Chinese food!). I took advantage of it to stop at the Purolator drop off location to see if my new keyboard made it in. We were supposed to get a call from Purolator once it was delivered, and we hadn’t gotten one, but I figured I’d check.

It was there! Yay!

I am now typing this on my brand new, ergonomic keyboard, which is an updated version of my old one.

My old one is in the eco-waste pile, so I’ve been using the older one my husband was using, which had been mine before then. It works, but many of the keys are worn off, which is why my husband was willing to trade with me. He doesn’t do as much typing as I do.

As they are both Microsoft ergonomic keyboards, how the keys sit is almost exactly the same. Which means I am not having issues with finding keys, nor is their pain in my hands trying to type, as there was with the other keyboards I tried.

There are, however, some differences.

The overall dimensions are slightly different. My husband wasn’t interesting in taking the keyboard back, so I put it into the box for the new one, as an emergency back up. It was a tight fit, and the lid doesn’t close completely, so the new one is ever so slightly smaller than the old one.

The keys, however…

What the heck?

The first thing to figure out is the new key next to the left hand shift key. The space is the same, but now there are 2 keys in it, and the new key is on the inside. There are three symbols on the new key, but all I can get out of it are \ and | which are not shown on the key itself. As for the shift key, I’m going to have to get used to stretching my pinky out slightly further to hit shift instead of the new key.

The other things is, it’s in French for some keys, pictographs on others. The Home key is now a diagonal arrow, for example, while the Esc key is now Echap (I still haven’t figure out how to do the E with an accent). Entre is Entree. Print Screen i snow Arret Defit, which apparently is now an editable screen grab of some sort. I haven’t tried it yet. There are two Suppr. keys. The one above the arrow keys used to be the Delete key, and the one higher up now has Impr. and Suppr. keys, where there used to be Print and Lock.

The number keys above the letter keys now have an extra symbol on them, as do some other keys. Which would be handy, if I could figure out how to use that third symbol. Something other than the shift key must access it, but what? Also, the ~ and ` key next to the 1 now has different symbols on it – the symbols that the new key by the left hand shift now has.

There is a new key between the Ctrl and Windows keys which shows the same pop up as when I right click in my typing field. To the right of the spaced bar, the Alt key is now Alt Gr – and as far as I can tell, it does nothing. Next to that is a short cut to MS Office. Which I happen to have at the moment, but I just have a shortcut to Word on my taskbar. Then there is an emoji key.

Yes. I can now do emojis on my keyboard.

🍤🥠🍗🍚🎈🎁

Ok, look. I can illustrate my birthday dinner. :-D Oh, wait… 😃

Can you see them as emojis, or do they just look like weird symbols to you?

Oh, I just realized there is a third Suppr key. It’s the Delete key on the number pad. Which makes more sense than having one where the Lock key was.

I went to check the order on Amazon and, after several checks, I found where you could choose a French or English keyboard. English was the default. Yet we got a French keyboard. Not in function, but in labeling.

Today happens to be Amazon Prime day, though, and the keyboard is about half price.

My husband is ordering another one – making double sure that the English one gets ordered. French is his first language, so he can have the new French keyboard once the English one comes in. It really doesn’t make much of a difference, functionally, but it will be less of a distraction for me.

Aaannnd… It’s done. It should get here in roughly a week, and should come by mail this time, not Purolator.

Aside from that, I tried to find a keyboard map that I hoped would show me how to access those third symbols on so many keys. I’ve found descriptions of the new features on the keyboard, then it says to download an app to customize hot keys. I don’t want to download anything extra. I just want to know how to use the default functions.

I’m actually quite happy with it, and even as I type this post, I am getting used to things like reaching that left shift key, and not hitting the new key, instead.

The main thing is, I can type, and it doesn’t hurt, like with every other keyboard I’ve tried.

The Re-Farmer

There are so many of them!

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So my daughter comes over, all excited, telling me there are racoons in the kibble house. Four of them!

Well, we don’t want them eating all the kibble meant for the cats, so I go to chase them off, grabbing my phone, just in case there’s enough light to get a picture.

As soon as I came outside and they saw me, they all just smashed themselves into a pile of pelts.

There was more than four of them!

At the time I took this picture, I was thinking there might be five of them. I didn’t quite see the one being sat on in the middle.

This particular mama cat was pretty chill about the whole thing, but the bandits were really not happy to see me.

I tried moving around to the end, so they could see I wasn’t going to block them, and they were free to run off, but they just mashed themselves into an ever tighter pile! That one in the middle froze into a loaf and would not move.

I finally went around to the back of the kibble house, banging on the wall. It wasn’t until they started running off, one at a time, that my other daughter was able to see that there was six of them!

Four of them ran off, but two were still jammed into a corner. I finally took a mop and sort of waved it at them to scare them off. Only then did one of them take an aggressive stance, leaping towards the mop and snarling. So I moved around to the back again and banged on the wall with the mop. One finally ran off, while the other squeezed under the cats’ house.

I have never seen this many racoons all at once before! Judging by their sizes, I’d say they are a young family unit.

I don’t know if our chasing them off will discourage them much, though. Between the bird seed by the living room window, where we normally see racoons, and the kibble house, they know there is consistent and reliable food here.

Right now, it’s not a problem. They’re just going for the easy food, and not destroying things. They are, however, notorious for destroying garden corn crops in particular, and we don’t have anything strong enough to deter racoons.

I think we need to invest in some Bone Sauce from Perma Pastures Farm soon! From some of their videos, it works on critters other than deer, too.

Why do all these destructive critters have to be so gosh darn cute?

The Re-Farmer

Future food forest progress

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We’ve been having rain off and one, and are still getting storm warnings for today as well. Nothing too excessive; our expected highs and lows are well within average, and the garden beds seem to be really liking it.

After doing my morning rounds, I was able to get the cardboard laid out along the saplings. The pile had been well rained on, which made it easier to lay them out, and less likely to get blown around if we get high winds.

This is the end I started at. The main thing was to get cardboard laid down close to all the saplings – but not too close!. The sticks I added to make them more visible (especially when using the weed trimmer) helped with that. Once all the trees had cardboard around them, I started filling in the spaces in between with what was left of the pile. It started raining again as I was working on it, which I didn’t mind at all. I’d have had to take a hose to it, otherwise.

The Sea buckthorn has all the cardboard they need, and are ready for when we have wood chips to lay on top of the cardboard.

I had enough cardboard to fill in the gaps all along one row, then start on the other, before I ran out. The priority is to cover the two rows, but if I can get enough cardboard, I want to fill in the space between them, too. That might take another 2 loads of cardboard to fill it all in.

We’re going to need a lot of wood chips to cover all this!

Once these bushes are fully grown in, this entire area should be a solid barrier of interlocking branches. There might be enough room to walk between the rows when they are fully grown, but not much. As they are bushes, once a good thick layer of mulch is laid down, they shouldn’t need anything more; they’ll basically be their own mulch, eventually. When we start planting fruit trees in the area, we’ll be working towards planting different edible cover crops into the mulch around them, but there won’t be space for anything like that with these, once they’re filled in.

The space between the saplings and the trees at the fence line is being left open as a lane to drive through. Once the berry bushes are getting to the point where they are starting to form a privacy screen, we’ll start cleaning and clearing up the rest of the fence line. Most of those fence posts in this section need to be replaced, and I want to open up access to it for that, for general maintenance – and to eventually replace the fence with something other than barbed wire! I’d like to also put a gate next to where the sign is, or some sort of fence crossing that will allow us to step over it, rather than trying to get through it. I really hate getting my clothes caught on the barbed wire when trying to go through it! :-D We’ll figure something out.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Fixed

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Last night, my younger daughter was able to crawl under the kitchen sink and get it fixed. Yay!

This the old stuff she removed.

What a mess! Just disintegrated!

The sink the pieces are in was much like this when she fixed it our first spring here.

The new drain kit is very different. The cup is deeper, and it has a completely different stopper, both in how it fits in the drain, and aesthetic appearances. I didn’t see it until later, or I would have included it in the picture. It’s not standard at all, and I don’t recall seeing replacements of it anywhere. I’m thinking, if I ever do see a replacement stopper in that style, I’d better pick up some extras, just in case. I suspect they will be harder to find compared to the usual design. Still, I’m happy with the design. I think it actually works better than the standard ones.

I really appreciate that my younger daughter is up to being our plumber for jobs like this. She’s the most able bodied in our household! I might be able to get under the sink if I really had to, but I’d probably need someone to help me get back up again. I’m much better suited to doing the outdoor stuff! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Morning and evening kitties

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I was able to get pretty close to a pair of kittens in the branch pile last evening.

They were all smooshed together, playing. :-) They are looking directly at me in the photo; I had my arm stretched out to try and get my phone closer for a picture, which they ignored. I didn’t want to bother them too much, though, and quickly left. So far, I have not see them today.

I saw the four kittens that regularly come to the house yesterday, too. Bradiccus is nursing the long haired one. These four kittens seem like one litter, but I see two mothers taking care of them, so we have no idea how many are actual siblings, and which mother then belong to!

This morning, after I was finished up outside and heading for the sun room, I spotted a ghost.

Ghost Baby was hanging out in the kibble house! She was loafed in the pan, seeming to nap for a while, then eating a bit of kibble, then napping again. We don’t see her often, and she tends to stay away from the other cats, which means she tends to eat after all the others are done. I didn’t want to scare her away from the food, so I tried to keep my distance. I assume she has kittens somewhere well away from the house, but we’ve seen no sign of any, yet.

I do wish we could get her to be less scared of us. Of all the cats, she’s probably the most feral. Even the toms that aren’t ours will let me get closer than she does. At least I know she’s getting food, and that she has found herself some shelter and safety in the outer yard somewhere.

The Re-Farmer

Stormy weather, and more bebbies!

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When I headed out to the hardware store, I very carefully, very quietly, skirted around this little scene of motherly bliss!

Yeah, I was zooming in. The mother normally would have run off, but the little calico was asleep while attached to a nip, and she didn’t want to move.

Interesting thing to note: this is NOT Bradiccus.

I’ve seen Bradiccus nursing this little calico and two others.

I have no idea which cat is the actual mother, now. It seems they are sharing parenting duties.

Then, while heading to the garage, I was actually able to get quite close to these two!

The little black and white one kept staring at me, while the other climbed up next to it, but neither ran away. They are at that clumsy movement stage, and running away isn’t something they can do very well just yet. :-D

Oh, those blue, blue eyes!

Oh, that big a$$ mosquito on the one kitten!

After picking up the parts needed to fix the kitchen sink and heading home, I just had to pull over to get this picture.

Using the wide angle setting actually picked up more detail than I could see from inside the car. Mostly, I was seeing those very smooth layers of clouds in the distance.

Not long after I got home, the storm reached us. I’m glad I remembered to shut down my computer! We had power fluctuations long enough to reset some clocks. My husband was asleep at the time, which means that every time the power went out, so did his CPAP, which meant he suddenly couldn’t breathe anymore.

Thankfully, it didn’t happen too often, and the power never went out completely for more than a few seconds. Internet connectivity was interrupted more, though. I didn’t turn my computer back on until just before uploading pictures for this post, but I did try to watch some TV with Roku. Original Star Trek series. :-D At one point, we were loosing signal for longer than we were getting it. We weren’t losing our internet completely, though. According to the StarLink app, we lost connection twice – once for 1 minute, 3 seconds, and one for 41 seconds, and neither of those were at times while I was trying to watch the show. I had my phone with me, and could still access the internet, so whatever the interruption was for the streaming service, it was not at our end.

Right now, however, it’s looking bright and sunny again. Time to head out and check if there was any storm damage.

And see if the kitties are out again… :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning discoveries

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Sunday is normally our day of rest, though of course work still needs to be done. Today, however, is going to be more of a day of rest than I’d hoped. We had rain overnight, and everything is still wet, so finishing the mowing is out. We’re also still getting all sorts of weather warnings, from severe thunderstorms to high water levels from rain falling elsewhere. At least we’re not getting tornado warnings in our area.

The garden, at least, if finally seeing some grown spurts. I’m most happy to see how this bed is doing.

That Kulli corn has been staying small for so long, I was starting to be concerned, but it is finally kicking in. I hope the beans planted with them are helping!

Hungry kittens are brave kittens! Nice to see them actually inside the kibble house, instead of hiding under the cat house.

There was an unexpected harvest this morning. Just a tiny one.

I checked on the wild strawberry patch, and could actually see the red berries from a distance!

The berries are so tiny, they are hard to pick! Many were already over ripe, but there are still lots of under ripe ones. This is the most we’ve seen since we found the patch while cleaning out the maple grove.

At some point, I would like to prepare a bed for them and transplant as many as I can, so they’re not fighting with grass and weeds to grow.

While moving things over to the burn barrel, I found another surprise in the branch pile.

One of the other litters of kittens has emerged! I had no idea there was another litter of kittens in this branch pile. Definitely the largest litter we’ve seen, too. There are six of them.

So adorable!

The cats are going to miss this pile of branches when we finally get it chipped!

We got another, far less pleasant surprise.

Our first spring here, one of the things that suddenly gave out was the drain on one side of the kitchen sink.

Well, the other side has finally given out, too. I heard some dripping a couple of days ago and asked my daughters to check it for me, as I can’t get under to look properly. My younger daughter found where it was leaking. When examining it from below, she was actually able to push the whole thing upwards!

So today, I’ll be making a trip to the hardware store to get the kit to replace it all. They open in about half an hour, so I’ll be heading out soon. At least we know, since we’ve already had it happen before, what we need to fix it! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning flowers and not quite enough!

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Look what I found blooming this morning!

This is the flower of an apple gourd. Usually, the flowers are some shade of yellow, leaning towards orange or white, but these are almost brown in colour!

While doing my morning rounds and tending the garden beds, I can’t push back on a feeling that everything is really “wrong” this year. Added to that, I’m seeing people in my zone 3 gardening groups posting pictures of how far along their gardens are right now, and they are WAY ahead of ours.

So I just went and looked at garden posts I made around this time, last year. I did a tour post on July 3 or last year, but mostly I compared to posts closer to 1 year ago today.

This year, our purple Kulli corn is starting to grow more enthusiastically, but last year’s purple Mountain Morado corn, which was also started indoors and transplanted, where producing silk by now.

Last year, we had bush beans starting to bloom, and the King Tut purple peas were blooming and growing pods, in spite of the heat. This year, even the first bush beans we planted with the Kulli corn are not yet blooming, and the peas are really just starting to actively grow. The King Tut peas we started indoors are much larger and climbing the chain link fence, and there are a few flowers on those.

Our summer squash is all pretty small, though some are starting to bloom, anyway. Last year, I posted a picture of our first yellow pattypan squash that was of a size we would normally harvest.

Last year at this time, the Crespo squash was looking as big as the Giant Pumpkin plants are this year, and just days later, things were starting to eat it, but this year’s Crespo squash is still quite small.

This year, our beets are just a couple of inches high. Last year, we had lush leaves we could harvest for salads, and had to use a row cover to keep the critters from eating it all.

This year, we have a tomato bed that was started indoors very early, and those determinate varieties are growing fruit. Of the tomatoes we started indoors at about the same time as what we started last year, the Yellow Pear are starting to bloom but nothing on the Chocolate Cherry yet. Last year, the cherry tomatoes already had sprays of fruit forming.

So it’s not just in my head. The garden really is far behind, when compared to our own garden last year. A summer of heat waves and drought, no less. This year, things that should have been planted before last frost didn’t, because everything was under water, and even things that needed to wait until after last frost date were a bit on the late side.

We’ve got rain and hotter temperatures coming up, with a possible thunderstorm tonight. Conditions that are actually better than at this time last year. I hope this means that what we’ve got will start catching up soon, though from the looks of the melon patch, I think we’ve lost most of them. Especially the Kaho watermelon, which has actually gotten smaller instead of bigger, and it looks like something ate a few of them.

At least most of the potatoes are finally coming up, though there are some blank spaces. As these are in groups, I think they ended up in water for too long and rotted before they could sprout.

There is little I can do about things. All I can do is be glad for what growth is happening, and pray we will have another long, mild fall to make up for the cold, wet spring.

We do the best we can.

In other things, while putting the kibble out, I’ve started to leave some in front of the pump shack door, and on the metal table in front of it (where the skunks can’t get at it). As I came around towards it, I saw the black and white kitten, the tuxedo and a tabby looking kitten, just as they say me and dashed into the pump shack. Which is encouraging, as I was concerned most of the litter didn’t make it. I also saw the tiny little calico, playing in the big branch pile, by itself.

Yesterday evening just kept getting hotter and hotter, but I decided to head out and see if I could get the new clothes line up. I was able to remove the tightener from the old line, then had to set up a step ladder at the post opposite the laundry platform, to be able to reach the pulley. Then I walked both ends of the line back to the laundry platform.

Except… not.

100 feet was not enough.

I got to about 10 feet short of the post. Which means I’m about 20 feet short in clothes line.

I don’t want to start splicing ends, so I’m just going to get another 150 feet. They sell them in 50 ft rolls that are still attached to each other. I’ll get 3 rolls and should have roughly 30 ft extra. Plus I’ll have a spare 100 ft of clothes line. I don’t mind having extra. I’m sure we’ll find a use for it at some point.

I was also able to finally undo and re-wrap the excess cable from our StarLink dish. When my brother helped install it, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, so he just quickly wrapped up the excess and used zip ties with screw holding heads (I forget the proper name for them) to hold it all together against the outside wall. It was pretty tangled and messed up. I finally picked up more of those zip ties. After removing what my brother used, I re-wrapped the cable nice and neat, making sure there was slack available in strategic places, just in case. Since I didn’t want to leave holes in the wall, I use the same number of zip ties that my brother did, then screwed them into the same holes as before.

It looks much better now!

Unfortunately, in the few minutes it took me to do that, I was just baking! The hottest part of the day has been hitting well after 6pm.

Keeping that in mind, I tried to go to bed early last night, so that I could get up much earlier and get things done before things got too hot.

Instead, I ended up having a sleepless night with all sorts of distractions, issues, and just plain not being able to fall asleep.

Which means that right now, when I should be doing things outside, I’m sitting here typing, and trying not to fall asleep on my keyboard. I’m feeling to tired, I actually feel ill.

*sigh*

Well, at least I got some things done this morning, but right now, I’m feeling pretty useless.

We’ll see what I manage to get done before the thunderstorms start. If they even hit us at all, rather than going around like the often do!

The Re-Farmer

That’s quite the discrepancy!

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Today was forecast to be a hot one, and getting even hotter tomorrow, so my morning rounds including watering the garden beds. The nice thing was being able to use a nice, full rain barrel to water the old kitchen and south garden beds, while the soaker hose was going under the big tomato bed in the main garden area. There was even enough water in the barrel out by the trellises that I could use to start watering there.

Once the hose was available again, though, I watered them some more. Especially the pumpkins, gourds and cucumbers.

A few of the cucumbers are getting bigger, though most seem to be stagnating. I took a picture of one that is blooming, but didn’t see the baby cucumbers until I uploaded the photo to my computer! There are not a lot of flowers, so I don’t know if there are any male flowers around to pollinate them. The Baby Pam pumpkin that I found never did, and fell off the vine this morning. I spotted two other female flowers, and the little pumpkins under them were already yellow. It seems very odd for female flowers to develop first, like that. At least to me. I have never grown cucumbers before, and none of the Baby Pam we tried to grow last year germinated.

By the time I came in, at about half past noon, it was 24C/75F out there, with a “real feel” of 29C/84F. At least according to the app on my phone. The thermometer outside my husband’s window was at 25C/77F. That window was just getting out of the morning shade.

While I was watering, however…

Yeah. The bean tunnel thermometer was reading 41C/105F already!

That’s quite a discrepancy!

The tunnel gets no shade this time of year. Thankfully, the pea trellis at least gets morning shade. The other two trellises also get morning shade, but not as long, and the silver buffalo berry were still mostly shaded when I headed in. The beans and gourds planted at the tunnel, plus the hulless pumpkins planted near it, would be just baking in the sun! The pumpkins have a nice deep mulch around them, but the beans are large enough that we should start adding more than just the wood shavings and stove pellet sawdust they were planted in.

Where we live is certainly an area of extremes. Long cold winters and short hot summers. It would be nice if we could have something in between! Ah, well. Such is life on the Canadian prairies! We’ll deal. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Enjoying the indoors life

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Butterscotch kept me company while I was getting dressed this morning.

The Grand Old Lady is certainly enjoying the indoor life!

She still shows zero interest in leaving my room. She will put up with Nosencrantz and Cheddar, but wants nothing to do with the other cats. If another cat comes in, she goes into her cubby hole in a shelf, where we gave her a bed and even her own bowl of food, because she simply would not come out if other cats are in the room. While she will happily come for cuddles with humans – just don’t pick her up! – she generally wants to just be left alone.

After all her years surviving outdoors, I figure she’s earned it.

I just wish Nosencrantz wasn’t doing the same thing!

The Re-Farmer