Author: Re-Farmer

Huge kitten progress! Also, how many are there?

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Not only did I see the little kittens this morning, I got to have HUGE progress with them!

First progress was with this one. This one kept right on eating as I came closer, then reached out to pet it. That’s when I spotted a wood tick on its ear. It took some doing to reach over the water tray, hold on to the ear with one hand and pull the tick with the other (getting a wet boob in the process. 😂), but it never stopped eating! It just let me do my thing and ignored me.

The others had moved away, but this little fuzzy one likes to just sit there, posing so adorably, to watch me. After a while, its sibling came out – the less fuzzy one that I’ve been able to handle more often. I did manage to pick up the fuzzy one last night, but it wasn’t happy about that, so I didn’t hang on to it for long.

The calico and the other black and white started to come closer, too. They wanted that food, but not quite enough to go to the tray while I was there.

When these three were in the tray, I was able to pet ALL of them! Yes, even the fuzzy one! They just kept on eating.

Eventually, they all came out, though the other black and white one didn’t want to be too close to me. Still, I was able to pick up the container I use to carry the kibble, without them all running away. Even the calico just froze in place and watched me, then went back to eating after I picked up the container and moved away.

For the past while, I’ve been rather confused about these kittens. While they were in the branch pile, I counted 6 small kittens, and even saw the mama nursing all of them. Then there were the 4 larger kittens, including that calico, and they all played together. I just went back to some older photos to confirm, and that calico is definitely one of the kittens we would see under the cats’ house last month. The one that, when we first saw it, had leaky eyes that were almost glued shut. That dark patch on its forehead is quite distinctive.

So the calico has simply moved in with this younger litter. The other three older kittens still frequent the area by the sun room, playing in the old kitchen garden or on the laundry platform, and eating from the food there.

That accounts for 8 kittens.

So I went looking at older photos.

This is the very first photo I got of this litter, when I discovered they were in the entry into the cats’ house. There are 5 kittens. You can see the two black and white kittens on top of each other. In the foreground is the fuzzy one, and beside the mama is the other one that I’ve been able to pick up every now and then.

The dark kitten next to the fuzzy one is missing.

Also… where did the 6th kitten I saw among them in the branch pile come from? I suppose it’s possible it was in the cats’ house with the 5 pictured above, just out of sight.

Whether it was originally part of this litter or not, where did it go when the mama moved her kittens to the board pile?

I found some video I took of the kittens in the branch pile. The quality sucks, because I had to zoom in so much, but I can still figure out which two kittens are now missing.

So are these two actually gone gone? Was there three, rather than two, litters in the pile at the time? Are the two unaccounted for kittens hidden away somewhere else? The mamas don’t seem to care all that much about which kittens are their own or which are part of another litter.

These guys are hard to keep track of!

The Re-Farmer

Intruder!

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We put a twine “fence” around the squash and corn bed, with bells and whirligigs to discourage deer from walking through it. It wasn’t going to stop any little critters, but I hoped it would at least dissuade the deer from tromping on our plants.

I was wrong.

Well, maybe it did, for a while, but as you can see by the tracks, a deer simply stepped through, then walked along the length of the corn patch. Why it would choose to walk on soft ground where its hooves would sink, instead of the harder ground with grass on it, I have no idea.

Somehow, it managed to not step on any of the corn or bean plants, though. Nor did anything get eaten. It just walked through, so I can’t really complain.

I guess it’s time to put some net around it. I was hoping to be able to finish mulching the area with cardboard and more straw or grass clippings, first. The critter barriers make it a pain to get into the growing areas. I’ll need to find another something to use as a post, so we can make a “gate” into the patch.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: first summer squash!

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Well, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep myself from doing at least something productive outside! So I went out to top up the kibble trays (no sign of the little kittens; I’m hoping the mama hasn’t moved them again) and picking up things blown around by the wind – though I don’t think it was the wind that knocked over the water tray for the little kittens! I suspect something more like a groundhog did that.

Of course, I checked all the garden beds and decided the two Magda squash could be harvested today.

I probably shouldn’t have put them in my pocket while I went on to water the garden! They are looking a little beat up for the experience. 😉

Most of the stuff in the garden that has been struggling are slowly perking up. This includes all the different squash, though they are still so far behind where they should be for this time of year. The beans at the trellises are looking all right. The two varieties at the A frame trellis are both climbing now. The ones at the tunnel are finally progressing. I was starting to second guess myself that these were vining types at all. The shelling peas, though smaller, have finally starts to sent up vines and climb the trellis. The red noodle beans are bigger plants, but still look like bush beans, and aren’t at a climbing stage at all.

The beans that are doing the best, however, are the yellow bush beans that were interplanted with the kulli corn. That bed is looking pretty lush! I’m starting to think ahead to when we’ll have to change how the netting is set up. Right now, it goes over the whole thing, but kulli corn can reach up to 8 ft tall. The net is, at its highest, about 6 1/2 ft. The bush beans are huge, with big, glossy leaves and flowers all over the place. No signs of pods yet, but I’m not looking very hard at this point.

The netting has helped a lot in protecting the plants from critters, but they do make it very inconvenient to weed.

Hard to believe we are heading towards the end of July. We should be picking a lot more than just two little summer squash right now! Ah, well. I’m still holding out for a long, mild fall, like we had last year.

The Re-Farmer

Cuddles

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Last night, I got horribly ill for some reason. I have no idea what triggered it, but it was very painful and unpleasant. I spent most of the night in the bathroom, unsure which end of me was about to explode.

Thankfully, whatever it was responded to some good ol’ Pepto, and I finally got some sleep. I woke up to this.

Nosencrantz had actually been lying on her back, paws in the air, but moved when I managed to reach my phone to get a picture.

She kept trying to cuddle me throughout the night. Such a sweetie! It’s too bad I had to move her every time I had to get up! I like to think she was trying to make me feel better. 😊 Now that I’m up and about, she’s ignoring me. 🤣

Whatever it was that hit me, I haven’t completely recovered. I feel weak as a kitten right now, get dizzy easily, and have been very nervous about eating anything. The girls were sweet and took over most of my morning routine for me, but it sounds like one of them is now not feeling well, either. It’s not whatever hit me, though.

We finally have a day where it’s not too hot to work outside, and here I am, unable to do the manual labour I want to do! *sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Clothesline up, and hidden kittens

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This evening turned out to be a very pleasant 23C/75F, with a lovely breeze. I was able to stay out longer when doing my evening rounds, and take care of a few little things – with the help of a lot of mosquito repellant! We got enough cardboard from packages in the mail that I was able to lay some around the G-star patty pan squash, with only minor gaps. After topping up the kibble trays, I was able to hold a couple of kitties, including one I’ve never been able to touch before.

It was not happy, but it didn’t quite freak out, either. 😁

I also finally got the clothesline up.

The old line tightener worked just fine, and the new spacers will help a lot, too. We’ve never actually used the clothes line much, but now that we’ve got a nice, clean new line, I think we will use it more often. If nothing else, it’s a back up if we don’t want to use the dryer for some reason.

Like now. I did some laundry yesterday and, after popping it in the drier, the entire entryway and dining room filled with steam, basically. One of my daughters was able to clamber to take a look and discovered the hose was damaged and no longer properly attached. Best guess is, a cat fell off a nearby shelf and landed on it. We really need to build some kind of shelf back there, to keep the cats out! They wrecked the old dryer hose, too, as well as making a huge mess behind both the washer and dryer.

Oh, my other daughter just informed me that her sister managed to get behind the dryer and fixed the hose. Only a few inches of damaged hose needed to be removed. I’m still glad I got the clothes line fixed, though!

When I was a kid, we had three clotheslines set up on these posts. The hooks to hold pulleys are still there, if we ever want to set up one or two more lines. One of them has a pulley hanging off a length of twisted wire. It looks like someone had a line that wasn’t quite long enough, so they added length to the pulley to set it up. I have not seen any other laundry pulleys, though, so if we do want to set up the other two lines, we’d need to get 3 more pulleys, and another 240 or so feet of clothes line.

I doubt we’ll ever need to do that, but at least the option is there!

It was so pleasant out that, after I finished with the clothes line, I sat on the laundry platform bench to enjoy the cool breeze.

I had company.

There is a kitten in the above picture! One of two that were watching me.

The fuzzy one was watching me from behind the lettuce bed, and its darker sibling joined him while I was trying to get pictures.

They do not like the mesh over the beds, and kept going further and further around, trying to find a way through to where their sibling was playing in the path.

Their sibling didn’t stay in the path.

Instead, it came around the beet bed, walking along the logs, so get a better look at the weird human that keeps pointing a strange object at them. 😁

I keep expecting this one to be a good candidate for socializing, since he hangs around the house the most, and tends to stay and watch me when I’m moving about. So far, no go. He simply will not let me come closer. *sigh*

Oh, that reminds me. I heard from the Cat Lady today. We now have an appointment at the vet for spays and vaccinations. The two left among the inside cats are Tissue and Big Rig. She had slots for 2 females and a male, but the only male we’d be able to bring in is Potato Beetle, and he’s not around right now.

The appointment is for Aug 3, and they’ll be coming home with us after. Right now, she’s focusing on spays and neuters more than adoptions. No one is looking to adopt right now. The shelters are all full from so many “pandemic pets” being surrendered. !!!

Once the indoor ladies are done, and the yard mamas have weaned their babies, the next thing to do will be to start trapping yard cats to get them done. I expect that won’t happen until much later in August or even September. As long as it’s before the snow flies. Otherwise, trapping is more dangerous for them, due to potential exposure.

The Cat Lady has been in and out of hospital lately, and told me she’s been really missing Cabbages while she’s away! It’s so funny. Before they took in Cabbages, she didn’t like calicos, and preferred male cats, but Cabbages has completely won her over. 😄

I’m not surprised. Cabbages has a way of worming her way into people’s hearts! 😁

The Re-Farmer

A rare sighting

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While putting the kibble and water out this morning, I found the bitty kitties playing on top of the board pile. I managed to catch a picture of a kitten that usually runs off before I can get a good look at it.

There were six kittens from this litter in the branch pile, but since they’ve been moved to the board pile, I’ve only been seeing 5 at a time, and that includes the calico that is from an older litter.

I can usually count on seeing this one around the kibble house or laundry platform, often by itself. While I saw its calico sibling with the bitty kitties, I saw one of its other siblings later on. Mama had gone onto the laundry platform, and the darkest kitten of this litter appeared out of nowhere and practically pounced on her, going for the nip, barely giving her a chance to lie down! 😁

Oddly, I didn’t see a lot of adult cats while doing my rounds this morning, but I did see the black and white kitten near the pump shack when I brought kibble that way, then later saw a tabby eating the kibble I leave on the table by the door.

I suspect something other than kitties has been around during the night. When I came outside this morning, I found the diverter for the downspout above the rain barrel on the ground – along with the screen cover for the rain barrel, and the board and bricks that support the diverter and hold the screen over in place. My guess is, something heavier jumped onto the board and knocked it all down. The shelf on the other side of the door has two shelves for the cats to shelter in, while the top shelf is full of various stuff. Something had gone into there and knocked things about, too. Even one of the bricks that are part of the counterweight for the cats’ house was knocked out and onto the ground. My guess is racoons, since none of the cats are heavy enough to knock some of this stuff about, and skunks can’t climb up to some of the other stuff. Even some of the board at the top of the board pile that I’d straightened out, after the groundhogs knocked things askew while pulling down the old tarp that had been covering it, were pulled aside. At least the wood and water trays were still on the pile and not on the ground.

One of the things I got done this morning was use the slow-release granulated fertilizer on the garden. It’s an organic fertilizer made from chicken manure, designed for tomatoes and vegetables. There wasn’t enough to do everything, so I focused on the heavy feeders, and the things that seem to be struggling the most. I ran out before I could do all the squash in the squash patch, but I was able to get everything in the corn and squash patch, the tomatoes and the bell peppers. The fertilizer releases nutrients when it gets wet, but we’re not expected to get rain again for a few days. With how damp the ground it, it’s unlikely anything will need to be watered before then. Ah, well. It might take a while, but it should be interesting to see how the plants that got some of the granules will do, compared to the ones that didn’t.

The Re-Farmer

It’s in!

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Today, my new-new keyboard came in! And by mail, too, so I didn’t have to drive to town to pick it up. 😄

Here is a comparison.

The top keyboard (the one already full of cat hair!) is the French keyboard my husband ordered for me by mistake. The bottom is the English keyboard that came in today.

Interesting.

That extra key next to the left Shift key is gone, as is the extra key by the Enter key, which I am quite happy about. The arrangement of keys by the Enter key is also back to what I was used to. No more keys with a third symbol on them I couldn’t use. The Alt key on the right of the space bar is now just a regular Alt key again. The new edit key, MS Office shortcut and emoji keys are still there. I’m amused that the emoji keys have different symbols on them.

The physical differences are minor, but it’s amazing how much of a difference it makes in my ability to touch type. Everything “fits” my hands better.

The French keyboard still works perfectly fine, and I was intending to give it to my husband. However, he went and bought himself a gamer keyboard that also came in today. (Discovering that things can be purchased through Amazon on payment plans is a bit too convenient!) The keys and letters light up, which is something I would love on my own keyboard. Lights won’t wear off. However, I am not willing to give up the ergonomic design for it!

I like being able to type without pain!

So the French keyboard is now set aside as a backup, available to use the next time we have a keyboard die on us. Which is more of a thing for me, since I’m the only one that can’t use the other back up keyboards we had!

The Re-Farmer

Morning adorableness, morning finds

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No rain this morning, so the bitty kitties were out and about!

This one looks disheveled because I had just been holding it. 😻 Not only did it let me pick it up and cuddle it, but when I put it down in the food tray, it just started to eat, ignoring me while I continued to pet it.

*melt*

The little calico acts conflicted. It’s curious enough to slink around, watching me closely, sometimes inching closer, but shy enough to not let me anywhere near it.

This one is not conflicted. It will stay and watch me, only if it’s behind something. It will not come any closer, and will leave it I pay too much attention to it, even if it’s holding my phone off to the side to try and get a picture.

It was, however, more than happy to get into the water tray, after I refilled the gallon water bottle that I’ve set up to drain slowly. They seem to like it when I put the frozen water bottle in the tray to help keep the water cool longer, too.

As I continued on, I did a double taken when I realized I was seeing something new. A self-sown poppy had opened.

When we moved there, we found ornamental poppies growing among the lilacs along the side of the house, so seeing poppies show up in other places was no surprise. This one, however, is a completely different flower! The others are more of an orange, and don’t have the ruffled petals. So far, the is the only red poppy like this we’ve seen. A couple of self seeded poppies have sown up in our beet bed. I kind figured they were from the bread see poppies that we have in a nearby bed, but I know my mother had ornamental poppies growing in the old kitchen garden for quite a few years. When I was a kid, she had seed poppies in that garden. It should be interesting to see if these volunteers turn out to be an ornamental poppy, or an edible seed type!

As for the red ornamental poppy that just bloomed, I’ll be sure to allow it to self seed. This area needs more cleaning up, and it would be nice for the stuff we want to get rid of to be crowded out by something we would like to keep! :-)

While continuing my rounds, I had another nice surprise. Our very first golden pattypan squash is forming! It was too small to try and get a picture of, among the foliage. Hopefully, it’ll get well pollinated and not just wither and fall off.

We’ve got a very few other things trying to produce. The sugar snap peas are not doing well, but I did find a single well formed pod.

I ate it. It was tasty!

The King Tut purple peas grown from our own seeds are producing pods, but they are green instead of purple. There aren’t very many, but I have been able to pick the odd pod and give them a taste.

They are not tasty. Quite bitter, instead! Which is different from last year. I wonder if they had cross pollinated with the pod peas growing on the other trellis. The peas did so poorly last year, I would not have expected so. The one King Tut volunteer from last year has produced a single purple pod, which I’ve left to dry out and keep for seed. Now I wonder if it’ll stay true to type. It bloomed well before the shelling peas and snap peas did, so it should be fine.

Some of the Chocolate cherry tomatoes needed additional support. Not all of them are blooming yet, and no tomatoes forming yet. Some of them are growing well, but others, not so much. One end of that bed along the chain link fence got drowned, even though the bed itself it raised about 4-5 inches. We’ve lost quite a few of the shallots from sets to the wet, and it looks like none of the shallots from seed have made it, but I was able to give the yellow onions grown from seed a “hair cut”. I now have more green onions dehydrating in the oven, along with a tray of mint.

I was still able to pick some lettuce this morning. They have not yet bolted from the heat, which is nice. The chard I planted not long ago has started to sprout! I should sow more of those soon.

Though we had a decently cool night last night (it was a wonderful 17C/63F at about 7am), it quickly heated right up to our expected high of 27C/81F. We’re not supposed to start cooling down until about 8pm. Hopefully, between the heat and the wind, things will have a chance to dry up. Yesterday’s downpours flooded out quite a few towns. I’d heard the town my mother lives in got 5 inches of rain in 3 hours, however it now seems it wasn’t quite that much. More than enough to flood streets and parking lots, however. The town to the north of us was among those that got hit the worst in our province, and they had flooded streets as well. We certainly don’t have much to complain about, where we are! Still, it does keep us from getting a lot of outside work done. Frustrating, but we’ll live. 😉

The Re-Farmer