Author: Re-Farmer

Charting our course

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Ah, January. The perfect time to be planning our gardening!

Last year, a lot of what we did was flying the the seat of our pants. Yes, we did some planning, but mostly we were just forging on ahead before things were fully ready. If we waited until we were ready before starting all the time, things would never get done! :-D Sometimes, you just have to just say “screw it” and jump in with both feet.

There will still be a lot of that this year, but we have more information and are in a better position to plan things out.

One of the things I’ve done was find some Facebook groups that are dedicated to Zone 3 (or colder!) gardening. One of them is dedicated to cold hardy fruit and nut trees! It’s been pretty awesome to be able to talk to people about the different things they’ve come up with to extend their growing seasons.

Some of them are already talking about starting their onion seeds NOW!! It turned out these are people with greenhouses. They start the seeds indoors, where it’s warm, later move their trays to their unheated greenhouses to start hardening off before finally transplanting them outdoors.

This had me wondering… I know my mother grew onions, but I had no idea how she started them. I remember we had a cold frame with cabbages in it. I know she grew tomatoes, so she had to have started those indoors, somehow, and while I remember the onions in the garden, much later in the season, I have zero memory of how she started them. Did she use seeds? Sets? I didn’t know.

When we first moved here, my mother was quite furious that we didn’t plant a garden right away. The way she did it, years ago, of course. ;-) One of the things she kept saying to me is that we should at least plant onions. They’re easy to grow, and we’d save money, so we needed to at least plant onions…

It seems to be a really big deal to her, for us to grow onions.

Now, over time, while she still tries to guilt me about not allowing her to hire someone to plow the garden area, because there was too much other stuff that we needed to focus on, first (an offer she has stopped making, now that we are more ready! LOL), I think she finally has started to understand that the land she remembers as being so perfect in every way, isn’t. At all. Of course, nothing we did do was good enough; we used mulch, which she’d never heard of being done before, therefore it was bad. We used only a small part of the old garden area. She didn’t approve of how we planted them anything, and she did not approve of our growing sunflowers at all, because when she grew them, the birds ate the seeds, And so on. She also kept asking me about her onions and if they were still growing. There were a few that started to come up, along a section of fence that used to be around the old kitchen garden, but they didn’t grow much. She seemed quite disappointed and I got the impression she thought I deliberately killed them off. :-/

Still, when I had the chance, I asked her about her onions. I told her I was going to plant 4 varieties, three of them from seed and one from sets, but that I could not remember how she started hers.

We talked a bit about the cold frame I remembered, and it turned out that cabbages and tomatoes where the only things she started in the cold frame. She did not start onions from seed, nor did she get sets.

It turns out she had a variety of onion that comes back year after year. She referred to them as Spanish onions when I last spoke to her, but I remember a previous conversation with her where she mentioned Egyptian Walking Onions. I think that’s what she actually meant.

It turns out she didn’t like the onions themselves, but just used the greens.

???

All that fussing and verbal abuse, and it turns out she didn’t even like the onions she grew? She just grew them because they were “free” and she didn’t have to buy them.

I did mention to her that, while that can be good, sometimes you get what you pay for! In this case, it was onions she didn’t like to eat!

She was absolutely indifferent to my telling her I was planting onions this year, too.

*sigh*

It’d be nice to be able to learn from her experiences, but that doesn’t seem to be much of an option. Ah, well.

With so many seeds that we ordered already in, more still stuck in the mail, and others to be shipped closer to planting time in our zone, we needed to find a way to organize them and plan things out. I’d spent some time looking at planting charts, many of which are available as free printouts, but none of them were suitable for us. It took some digging to find any for Zone three, but they also all had lists of vegetables already on them, most of which we aren’t growing. Sure, someday, we’ll probably try to grow some of them, but not yet. Meanwhile there are things we are planning to grow that weren’t included.

On top of that, these were all printer sizes. Too small!

I decided to make my own planting chart, large enough to stick on a wall or something.

Time to dig through my craft supplies!

I had a sheet of foam core that got pretty beat up during the move, but not enough to throw it away. It was just the size I wanted!

My daughter loaned me her T-square and steel yardstick. The sheet is 30 inches long, so I marked of a grid of half inch squares in pencil.

Then I broke out my collection of Sharpies and marked off a table with the weeks, with a different colour every 4th week, and so on.

Before erasing most of the pencil marks, I remembered to keep the week numbers in permanent marker.

Of course, the months don’t line up with perfect 4 weeks groups, so I counted back on the calendar on my phone and found our last frost date of June 2 falls in the middle of week 22 this year. So I highlighted that week. I figure, from year to year, it’ll still be around that week.

After the pencil marks in the grid were erased, I brought out the seed packs we have right now, sorted them in alphabetical order, then worked out the times for starting seeds indoors and transplanting or direct sowing.

There is room enough to add the other seeds that have yet to arrive.

How the months line up are not as important as the last frost date. We can now look at it and see at a glance, what time range the seeds should be stared indoors. If something needs to be started 4 weeks before last frost, for example, I marked off blocks for 3, 4 and 5 weeks. Some things recommend succession sowing directly into the soil, starting before the last frost date, so I marked off every other week for those. Things like that. We will probably mark off harvest times and the first frost date later on, too, but this will do for now.

After looking it over, one of my daughters added the Post-it Notes. We will also be starting up a shopping list of materials we will need to make the trellises, covers and deer fencing. Having all the things we’ll be planted, listed out like this, will also help us work out where some things will be planted, how many boxes, trellises, etc. we need to build, and so on. Thankfully, one thing we do have a lot of is space. It may mostly be hard as cement, but we can work with that!

All of the squash and melons need to be started at basically the same time. That’s the period we’re going to have the biggest challenge with, as far as space for seed starts. There are just so many varieties we will be planting!

And yes, I plan to start corn indoors. From what I’ve been reading, I’m going to try planting them in toilet rolls for pots, so that we can later transplant them without disturbing the roots. Some of the people in the Zone 3 gardening group use the red plastic beer cups. My mother had always direct sown corn, but I’m remembering this from the very warm decade of the 80’s, when it was hot enough in May and June for kids in school to be passing out in the hallways. Most of the people in the gardening groups are saying they have never been able to successfully grow corn without starting them indoors first; things had cooled down quite a bit over the 90’s, and the 2000’s haven’t been any better, really. Any hot summers we’ve had did not make up for late, cold springs. I really, really want that purple corn to succeed, so I want to give it every boost I can!

I even have the Kohlrabi on there. I want to find a way to grow those, without them being decimated by deer, caterpillars and beetles!

I think this will work out rather well, and if it does, we can potentially reuse the chart, year after year.

The first thing we need to do is get those aquariums ready to use a cat proof greenhouses!

The Re-Farmer

Happy Three King’s Day, and digging out the fire pit

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Happy Three King’s Day! Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, which is our last day of Christmas. After today, we start taking down our decorations. :-)

It was another mild day today, so when I finished my rounds this morning, I decided to go ahead and dig out the fire pit.

I considered breaking out Spewie, our little electric snow blower, but for the amount of snow we have, I figured it would be easier to just shovel it!

I shoved the snow off what I’m using for a cover, but didn’t bother moving it, yet.

On our warm days, the snow melted enough to create a layer of ice on the surface of the picnic table. We’ll be staying at these mild temperatures for a while, so now that it’s uncovered it should melt away on its own.

I cleared a path to the organized wood pile. That cover did not need to have snow removed from it. I didn’t bother shoveling to the big pile of branches. The little pile has kindling and should be enough for our needs. We may not use the fire pit at all, but at least now we have the option! :-)

I made sure to dig the path to the fire pit wide enough for my husband’s walker, should he feel well enough to join us if we do a cookout.

I was being watched the whole time!

You can see the cats’ favorite way to get under the storage house. The path that goes around the back branches off to a partially broken window they also like to use, as well as through the trees to the path they’ve made to the storage building outside the yard. Well worn little footy paths in the snow! :-)

I also had to dig a wider path around the kibble house. There is a lot of overhang on the roof that is working quite well for the cats, but not so well for a human with a walker! :-D

While clearing around the cat shelter and kibble house, I found this.

It’s a frozen little cat treat! :-D Next to the slab of ice that slid off the “porch” roof of the cat shelter.

Rolando Moon looks like she’s thinking of that delicious frozen treat! :-D

So we will now be able to easily get at the fire pit if we feel like having a cook out, or just a nice fire. I still like the idea of using a fire to thaw the ground out, so we can set up the fire pit grill my brother and his wife got for us!

We do have the BBQ they have us, and the propane tanks does have fuel in it, but I am much more interested in the fire pit, instead! :-D

In other things, I was able to get through to the clinic to make an appointment with my doctor about my breathing issues. After hearing the messages about restrictions before it ever got to a human, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make an appointment at all. The messages say nothing about medical exemptions to mask wearing, of course. Which sucks, since not being able to breathe properly is why I need to see a doctor in the first place. I was able to make a telephone appointment for Friday afternoon, and then it will be up to my doctor to decide if I should come in or not. I made an appointment for my daughter for right after mine, so when he’s done with me, I can just hand the phone over to her. This is the first doctor’s appointment either of our daughters have had since we moved. After seeing how difficult it has been for my husband and I to get good medical care, they have developed a strong distrust of doctors. I can’t say I blame them, either.

But that is done. We shall see what the doctor has to say when the time comes. I am not expecting much of anything, to be honest. No one is getting real health care right now, and our premier has just put us under another 30 days of house arrest, even has many of our politicians have been caught ignoring those restrictions and have gone traveling to tropical places, visiting with their friends and family, and then pretending to be sorry after getting caught.

Thankfully, we are out here in the boonies, and I get to focus on more pleasant things. Right now, I’m working on a project to help me be organized about our gardening, including keeping track of what seeds to start indoors and when.

More to come on that, later! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Yesterday and today, with some odd stuff thrown in

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I never got around to making a new post yesterday, so I’ll start with what I intended to write, yesterday!

While doing my morning rounds, I noticed the step ladder we’d left leaning against the storage building was no longer there. So I trudged my way through the snow, dug it out of where it fell and was half covered by snow, and set it aside in a better spot.

The space under this building is one of the places the cats like to go for shelter, with a well worn path in the grass from there to the yard.

The one in the snow is also well worn and…

… kind of drunk looking! :-D

There are deer tracks all over.

It looks like they found something to dig for under the snow!

This morning, while doing my rounds, I had a whole crowd of kitties following me. I thought it was 6 at first, then a 7th one popped out of the snow at me! :-D

There are three up them, watching me from under the garage door. :-D

There was some odd stuff going on yesterday.

For starters, my breathing issues have lessened… for now. I haven’t had those “gasping for breath” moments I had while driving to and from the city. It’s not gone; while I’m sitting at the computer, for example, my breath does feel slightly restricted, but I’m not suddenly gasping for air like I was earlier. Which is good, but leaves me wondering what the heck is causing it. When the clinic reopens after their lunch break (they don’t book appointments and stop answering the phone for 1 hour, every day), I’ll call about making an appointment for myself and one of my daughters.

I talked to my brother about what our van has been doing. His thoughts lean more towards something restricting air flow, rather than it being the powertrain control module, which is what my thoughts were leaning towards. He’s had critters make nests in his air filter that caused his vehicle to stall. That it’s happening when the van is loaded down makes him thing something might be blocking the exhaust.

I looked around the van yesterday, and plugged in my OBDII reader.

It wouldn’t connect to the ECU.

It hooks up to my phone app with Bluetooth, and that was working fine. I could also look at the “live” readings, with its animated gauges, so I could tell that data was being transferred. I simply could not do a scan for any error codes. It couldn’t talk to the onboard computer.

*sigh*

So I will have to call the garage, probably next week, about bringing it in for a quick look see.

Until then, we will use my mother’s car. Tomorrow I’ll be using it to take my mother out for her errands.

Which leads me to my final odd thing.

My mother got a strange call, yesterday, from a former neighbour. She and her husband used to own one of the quarter sections adjacent to one of ours. Our vandal has been using her as an example of what my mother should be doing with the farm, rather than willing it to my brother (now that she’s transferred ownership already and the farm is no longer part of the will at all, he still seems to think she should give it “back” to him, and that she’s actually given it to me… ???).

Apparently, this woman recently drove past our driveway on the way to visit her sons, saw a camera, and called my mother to ask why there were cameras.

Well, first of all, that’s none of her business. Who cares if there are cameras on someone else’s property? Second, there is no way she saw either camera while casually driving by. They’re close to the gate, but not that close! Someone would have to stop and be actually looking well past the gate to find them. The new one’s camo colours aren’t as good as the basic grey of the old one, but it’s still not that easy to spot unless you know where to look.

My mother knew immediately that our vandal had talked to her and told her to call about it.

The cameras where not the only thing that came up. Apparently, everyone is laughing at us, for taking our vandal to court.

Of course, this person had no idea what was really going on. So my mother told her about the vandalism, and how he somehow feels entitled to the farm and everything on it. This person did help my parents a lot, and we were very close in the past. My parents were also very generous to him, even as his behaviour became more erratic and abusive. They owed him nothing, and considering all the things he’s helped himself to before we moved out here, he owes my mother more!

At the end of the conversation, this former neighbour said she would call our vandal and talk to him.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, my mother got a phone call from him soon after. He had the audacity to start by saying how much he loved her. She called him on the BS, and when he started ranting again, she hung up on him.

*sigh*

And things had been so quiet, here. Unfortunately, what we’ve learned is that the quieter he is, the more likely he’s coming up with nefarious plans in the background. Like filing a suit against me.

One thing these calls my mother got has confirmed for me: our vandal is busily slandering us to whoever will listen, making himself out to be the victim instead of the aggressor. Since most of the people here have known him for decades, and we’ve been here for only a few years, they probably have no reason to doubt him.

Ah, well. We just have to work with the hand we’ve been dealt.

And now that our internet is back, I’ll see if I can post this before it cuts out again!!

The Re-Farmer

Second shopping attempt and, what the heck is going on?

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We are having another beautifully mild day today! Just look at this image I got off one of the trail cams.

What a gorgeous sunrise! So moody with the fog. I changed the batteries on the camera yesterday, so it’s slightly out of position from where I want the motion sensors to be focused, but that just put it in the best position to get the sun rising behind the tree.

On the down side, this was screen capped from a video, and in the video, the sun was actually flashing like a strobe light. :-D I was able to catch a frame in between flashes. In other videos, the sun was a giant, blinding orb covering most of the frame.

The camera has since been adjusted. ;-)

It was a gorgeous day for another trip to the city. In past winters, I would have appreciated the mild weather and dry roads for such a trip. It would make things more pleasant for someone who doesn’t like to shop in the first place.

Things are not normal, though, and I was dreading the idea of trying to shop at Costco, but we still needed to get bulk items in flat cart quantities.

It didn’t happen.

When I got to the Costco, the line up outside was actually longer than it was when I tried to go there on Saturday! As I messaged my family to let them know I’d arrived, the line got longer, even as I could see it moving forward.

Since I wasn’t even sure if I’d be allowed in the store with my shield, I wasn’t about to stand in line outside to find out.

I decided to go to the Walmart in the smaller city. I wouldn’t be able to get everything, as it wouldn’t all fit in a cart, but at least I know I would be able to get most of it.

So after about 2 hours of driving, I finally made it to a store.

*sigh*

On the plus side, I did get almost everything we needed. Also, it was not the least bit busy, which is what I had expected at the Costco on a Monday morning!

We’re going to run out of cat litter before the month is out, but we shouldn’t run out of either wet or dry cat food. I was even able to get the big bottles of hydrogen peroxide they were out of stock of last time, to treat the hot water tank when it gets that sulfur smell again. I got only about half the protein for the price that I would have been able to get at Costco, but I won’t be trying to shop there again this month.

So we are mostly stocked up for the month. The rest can be bought locally, though we’ll have less room in the budget than usual for that. We will manage.

At least we would be able to, if nothing breaks down.

Which brings me to the first, “what the heck is going on” topic.

There’s something wrong with the van.

In past trips, when the van was loaded down, I could feel that it was struggling with the weight. A month’s worth of cat litter and cat food for more than 25 indoor and outdoor cats adds up. Add in our own grocery items, and it becomes an issue for our vehicle. It’s get up and go just goes away! I found that loading the heaviest things in the middle of the van (we’ve taken out one of the middle seats and simply left it out), seems to help.

As I was heading home from the Walmart and was starting to leave a controlled intersection, the van just did not want to move! But move it finally did, and it even got up to speed normally.

I had intended to fill the tank at Costco, but never had a chance to, so I was going to stop at a station when I passed through the town my mother lives in. When I got there, however, something told me to just keep on going. We have jerry cans of premium gas at home for equipment we can’t use right now, so I figured I’d just use those up, rather than have it sit in the garage all winter. I just did not want to stop and get out of the van again, if I didn’t have to.

I’m glad I didn’t.

When I turned off the highway onto the gravel road, I slowed into the turn as usual, but when I tried to accelerate again, nothing happened.

The van had stalled.

It started again without issue, but when I reached the gravel road to our place and stopped at the stop sign, it stalled again. No stuttering or any kind of warning to show there was an issue.

When I stopped at the gate and then drove into the yard to unload, it was fine.

I have no idea why this has started to happen.

I had hoped we’d be able to have a winter without vehicle repair expenses for a change! I’ll have to take it in to get it looked at. Whether or not it’s something we can fix this month, or something that has to wait until next month, we shall see. Until then, thankfully, we can use my mother’s car.

Then there is the other “what the heck is going on” issue.

This is something that has actually been happening more often in general, but it was a real problem while I was driving today.

I couldn’t breathe.

I kept finding myself suddenly gasping for air.

I thought, perhaps, it was because my sinuses were a bit stuffy, but I’m a mouth breather, anyhow, so that shouldn’t be it.

This is something that I’ve had happen to me while I’m, say, sitting at my computer. I’ve never really thought of it as an issue, though. I thought it was that whole “oh, I forgot to breathe” thing that happens when you’re really focused on something (when my husband was still working as a programmer, forgetting to breathe or blink while coding was common enough to be a running joke). However, having it happen while I’m driving is something else entirely. I seemed to be better while walking around, so I thought maybe it had something to do with being in a sitting position; pressure on the diaphragm, perhaps? But then, as I was standing and telling my daughter about it, I found myself running out of breath while I was talking.

I have no idea what’s going on.

I feel fine. There is nothing out of the ordinary. There are no other symptoms. I’ll just be going along as normal, then suddenly find myself gasping for air.

I need to make a doctor’s appointment, but with all the restrictions right now, health care for non-Covid related things are rationed almost out of existence. I’ll call the clinic anyhow, and see what they suggest. Perhaps I’ll start with a telephone appointment, first. I don’t know.

Meanwhile, we had parcels to pick up at the post office. (My husband finally got the rest of his Christmas gifts from me! LOL) I got my daughter to drive and we used my mother’s car. With the restrictions, my daughter has not been able to book the 2 hours of driving with an instructor she needs to do before she can book another road test. I don’t think they’re even doing road tests right now. She does have a license, and is a very good driver, but it’s still a learner’s license, and I have to be with her when she drives.

We’ll have to go out again, tomorrow. We still need to do a dump run, though if we use my mother’s car, we won’t be able to fit much in there and will have to make several trips. Probably on different days that they’re open, rather than multiple trips in one day. The Mingle Masks I ordered should be in tomorrow, so we have to go to the post office again. Plus, they were out of deer feed today, so I’ll be picking that up at the same time, too. I’ll have to drag my daughter around and have her drive me, just to play it safe.

What I really want to do is just stay home and be a hermit.

Ah, well. It is what it is! :-)

The Re-Farmer

In the pink

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We are having some beautifully mild weather right now – the forecasts are still predicting we will hit a couple of degrees above freezing! (and I’m already seeing people “blame” it on climate change, as if we’ve never had warm Januaries before… *sigh*).

Our hard wired security camera is set to take a photo and email it to me when the motion sensor is triggered. With the infrared flash, that often means I wake up to a lot of pictures of precipitation. We had neither rain nor snow last night. Instead, this morning, I found a whole lot of very cloudy, out of focus pictures.

Yup. We had fog heavy enough to trigger the motion sensor last night!

I discovered something about the new trail cam. When the lens gets frosted over, we get this.

That is one heck of a pink! :-D

Even after the frost is brushed off the lens, there is a pink hue over everything.

The other cameras would go greyscale, or blue.

I find this unexpectedly cheering… and I don’t even like pink. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Low battery

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I made it into the city today, to attempt our monthly shop.

I am definitely running low on batteries right now. I hate shopping at the best of times.

These days are not the best of times.

But before I explain that, let’s have some cuteness! How about some hugging kitties?

The cats have a habit of taking over my bed. There is always a row of them along my pillows, all mashed together. I just couldn’t resist getting a picture of Leyendecker and Keith all face-smashed together! Then there’s David, hiding his face in his paws… so cute!

Cabbages, I’m happy to say, is completely at home with the rest of the cats. Now if only she would be as comfortable with us humans! We can sometimes pet her and even pick her up, but she is not a fan of human attention, except for the occasional ear skritches.

Her siblings outside are almost more accepting of human attention!

Well, okay. Maybe not.

That doesn’t stop them from following me when I do my rounds!

One of the bigger cats (Nostrildamus, I think) burrowed these hiding places in the snow. From the gate, all I see are little ear tips above the snow, twitching in pounce mode, waiting for another cat to walk past on the driveway. :-D

I got the rounds out of the way early and didn’t even go through the trail cam files, other than to verify that the new camera had thawed out enough to start recording again. Then it was off to the city to see if I could do the monthly shopping.

My first stop was at a particular Walmart where I’ve never had problems before, but I’ve heard of some people having issues every now and then. It’s at least twice the size of the one in the smaller city I went to last month, and better stocked, so I thought it was worth a try.

It wasn’t.

Now, one of the things that had become part of the monthly shopping routine is that we would have breakfast in the city. That’s not really an option anymore, but I figured I would pick up something I could eat in the van at Walmart. I know it’s said, never go shopping while hungry, because you’ll end up buying things you shouldn’t. For me, it’s the opposite. The hungrier I get, the less I want to eat. The less I want to be around food. I’m more likely to walk away without buying anything at all. And if I let it go for too long, the sight and smell of food makes me feel physically ill. I end up having to force myself to eat at least a little bit to get back to having a normal appetite. Along with feeling physically ill by the sight of food, I also start to become … less patient, shall we say, and oddly weepy.

I had not reached that point when I arrived, but my tolerance levels were definitely on the low side.

I came in with my shield, got a cart and, while I was using the hand sanitizer before going through their barrier, the staff from the sanitation station on the inside of the barrier came over and asked if I had a mask. I told her I was medically exempt and that the shield was my compromise. That went back and forth a bit, then she looked over to a little station on the outside of the barrier and said she would get someone. There were two people at that station and one of them came over and asked if I had a mask. I said I can’t wear one. He started to say something about the shield and a mask, but I honestly couldn’t make it out though his mask. :-/ I did hear him say he would get me one and he went back to the station.

I was blocking the way, so I moved over to where he was and told him, I can’t wear a mask. I have a medical exemption. The shield is the best I can do. He ended up handing me a paper ear loop mask and told me to just hang on to it in case the inspectors give me a hard time. Great. Whatever. I turn to the barrier, and there’s a woman on the other side – another customer – who’d been watching me and she started waving a mask still in it’s packaging at me. As best as I could make out, I think she was saying she just bought a mask and… she wanted me to take it? But she just watched me being given a mask just like what she was holding… and I was wearing a shield… so… ???

At that point, I just couldn’t handle it. I’d already put up with hassles from the staff who seemed to think that a person who can’t wear a mask and is wearing a shield instead, should be wearing both. I didn’t need to be hassled by customers, before I even fully entered the store. I turned around and left.

Once back in the van, I messaged my husband and, by the time I finished, I was in a better frame of mind.

The next stop on my list was an international grocery chain that I knew would be okay. And it was. I was able to go in, do my shopping, and no one batted an eye at my shield instead of a mask.

This is the place where I like to pick up our fresh produce in non-Costco sized quantities, as well as stuff in their international aisles that we just don’t find anywhere else. This place is awesome. Best of all, they still have their hot take out food section open, so I was able to get some Chinese food to eat in the van. By then, it was almost noon, and I was reaching the “so hungry I want to throw up” stage.

This is not the place where we pick up the cat food and litter, though, and we were pretty much out of both. Normally, I would have picked up part of that at the Walmart, with the rest at Costco.

I decided to try the Costco. Which is half way across the city from where I was.

When I got there, the parking lot was full, and there was a line all down the side of the building.

It was warmer today, but not that warm.

I found a place to pull over long enough to send an update to my family, letting them know I was going to go to the Walmart in the smaller city I’d gone to last month. They might not have as much inventory, but I knew I would at least be allowed to shop and not get hassled.

So it was, again. I had no issues at all I did get some odd looks from costumers, and at one point, while I was loading the cart with bags of cat food alongside the litter boxes, a couple of ladies in the same aisle were looking at me and whispering at each other. I could make out just enough to know they’d said something about the shield. I was going to be a while, so I shoved my cart into a corner and waited next to it, and they rushed past me. I kept running into them as I continued shopping, and every time we crossed paths, they would give me looks over their shoulders.

*sigh*

By the time I was at the cash desk, however, I was having a really hard time with shortness of breath. I hope those Mingle Masks I ordered come in soon; I’ve been told they don’t create that problem. I started chatting with the cashier and made a point of saying how much I appreciated that I don’t get any hassle there, and mentioned what happened at the other Walmart. Even with her mask, I could see how startled she was. Then she told me about her mother, who basically hasn’t left the house in 8 months. Her mother has PTSD and can’t wear a mask. They were going to try a shield, but haven’t been able to find one (they used to be available at that Walmart, but it looks like a lot of places have simply stopped carrying shields). I ended up telling her about the Mingle Mask and recommending it, based on the experiences of others.

I gotta say, I was really glad to get outside, where I could take the shield off an finally breathe again. I was so disoriented by the end of it, I almost walked away without paying!

By the time I got home, I was too drained for anything else. I must have looked it. As the girls were unloading the van, my older daughter took one look at me, and asked if I was up to going to the dump, or leaving it for later.

We left it for later. It was only open for another hour, and I would have needed more than that to recover enough for another trip out!

We’ll have to make another trip to get the rest; I got most of what we needed, but not necessarily in the quantities we need for the month.

I did splurge when I spotted a few things that I grabbed while I could.

One of them was this soil test kit. We had looked for one last year, and they were completely out of stock all summer. I couldn’t find them anywhere! This has enough to do 40 tests, so we will be able to use it on different areas as we decide on where to plant. It tests the pH, which I already have a meter for that just needs to be stuck into the soil, but it also tests for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. That will be useful information.

The other toy I got was a battery tester.

With the trail cams each using 8 batteries, and those batteries draining much faster in the winter, we have a LOT of batteries accumulating. The dump has a special shed to drop off things like batteries, so we don’t put them in the garbage. Plus, while some batteries may not have enough juice for the trail cams, that doesn’t mean they are actually dead.


The first batch of batteries I’d tested were the frozen one’s I’d switched out of the new trail cam.

They still had full power!

Then I went though the old batteries boxes.

This first batch is all of the batteries that are not usable. Some of which I didn’t even test, since they’d started leaking!!

And yeah, that’s an old DSLR camera battery in there.

Some of the batteries in there were ones that we found while we were cleaning the place up after moving here. I have no idea how old they might be.

The next batch are the batteries that are still usable.

All the batteries in here were either in the green zone, or the very small, yellow “low battery” zone.

All 276 of them.

They may not be usable in the trail cams, but we can use them for other things. Like the battery operated string lights we have in the hallway in place of night lights. We used to use night lights all over the place, but this house doesn’t have many outlets, and there are none at all in the hallway. We rather like being able to see well enough to not trip over cats in the dark, while also not having to turn on the hall light and blinding ourselves at night.

Aside from these, there were some AAA and D cells that had full charge, too.

That little meter has already paid for itself, many times over.

As for me, I’m looking forward to Sunday actually being a day of rest. After today, I need to recharge my own batteries!

The Re-Farmer

New Year Kitty, and looking ahead

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Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful time last night, kicking out the old year, and bringing in the new. :-)

For us, we don’t normally do a whole lot. Living away from town or city celebrations is quite within our preferences! We had good food, each other’s company, and the entertainment of cats that were very interested in those good food smells! ;-)

This morning, as I went into the sun room, I discovered one of the spice boys in there! He would have been there since yesterday morning. :-( Not a very good New Year’s Eve for him!

Normally, when a cat gets accidentally closed up in there, we hear a ruckus or meowing and know to let them out.

We heard no such ruckus.

I suspect he didn’t actually mind being in there all that much. It’s much warmer than outside, and there are soft things to curl up on. He had to have been pretty hungry and thirsty by morning, though!

I’m not even sure which of the spice boys it was. As soon as the door opened, he ran and hid under the swing bench, then peeked at me. The two of them look so much alike, and move so constantly, it’s really hard to tell which is which unless they are next to each other. Even then, we haven’t decided which one is Nutmeg and which one is Ginger! :-D

That didn’t stop both of them – and four other cats! – from following me around as I finished my rounds!

Just look at that face! :-D What a glare!

Today is going to be a quiet day of rest for us, then tomorrow is going to be a busy one! I will be heading into the city to do our monthly shop, as early in the day that I can. When I get home, we’ll unload the groceries, then load up the garbage and recycling for a much delayed trip to the dump. Earlier in the week, I had my days mixed up and thought we could do it on Thursday night, thinking that New Year’s fell on Saturday, not Friday. Thankfully, Saturday is the one day a week they are open for a full 8 hours – and it’s not a holiday – so we will have time make the trip to the city first. It’s been so long since we’ve gone to the dump, though, we might have to make two trips. We shall see.

Amazingly, it’s going to warm up quite a bit over the next couple of days. For Sunday, the predictions keep going up, and are now at 2C

Yes. Two degrees above freezing. In January! That would be 35.6F Then it’s supposed to stay warmer than -10C/14F for the next two weeks.

I had feared we would have another bitterly cold couple of months, as we had for the previous winters we have been here. I am really going to enjoy a milder winter – and the reduced electricity/heating bills. Even our equal payment plan payments will drop, with temperatures this warm! Before we were able to get on the equal payment plan, we were paying over $600 a month for December, January and February. Last year, we had a month were we would have been paying over $700 for our electricity. On months like that, our equal payment plan adjusted to a little over $300. Usually, it’s about $290, though it’s dropped to as low as $250ish.

This house is not very energy efficient, at all! :-( And the upstairs is freezing cold in the winter, with it’s one heat vent for the entire floor. When I stand at the bottom of the stairs, I can feel cold coming down, like a breeze. The girls put sheets of rigid insulation on the walls by their beds, which they then covered with decorative fabric, which made a big difference. Without out the insulation, they were actually feeling waves of cold, coming off the walls. !! This year, they haven’t even needed to use their little heater, yet. Meanwhile, in the summer, it gets insanely hot up there. :-/

Of course, with snow on the ground, my mind keeps going ahead to garden plans. In fact, I’ve been almost obsessed with garden plans! In a good way. ;-) I’ve been researching on different ways to start seeds indoors – something we had issues with last year. I am constantly reading about how important it is to use grow lights, which is something we just don’t have and can’t afford right now.

Or…

Maybe we do…

Everything I’ve been reading says ordinary lights can be used, so long as they’re bright enough.

We have two aquariums.

The little 20 gallon one I’ve given up on after the last fish finally died, has a light that is part of the lid, so no worries about the cats getting into it. It can hold one of the seed starter trays we have now, and maybe a bit more.

The big tank has two lights. The original that it came with, and one we got later. The glass lids on the big tank eventually broke and couldn’t be used. The original light rested very close to the glass lids, which actually caused problems with algae growth and scale forming on the undersides. When we had to get rid of the glass lids, the light was no longer protected from what little splashing there was from the filter output, so we got one that with risers that set it higher off the frame. It also has a built in timer.

Since a piece of the filter system broke during the move and we have not been able to find a replacement part, the tank has been used to store baskets, hidden by a cover that the cats can sit on. If we can find a way to cover the top of the tank to keep the cats out, while still allowing full light and air flow, that tank would make an excellent greenhouse for a whole several seed trays or lots of pots! We plan to use at least 3″ pots to start squash, this time, and we have a lot of summer and winter squash we want to start this year! :-)

So that is going to be a project for the next while. I’m pretty sure I have enough hardware cloth left cover the top of the big tank. I just have to figure out how to make a frame that can handle the weight of cats that are sure to jump on it, while making sure the stands that hold the light will still sit on the tank edges, where they are supposed to.

That would leave us with one more aquarium light from the big tank. If we can find a way to set that up over trays and keep the cats off at the same time, we could have even more seed trays well lit.

This might actually work.

The Re-Farmer

Well, it was bound to happen some time!

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While heading out to do the food and water for the kitties outside, I discovered the heated water bowl.

Frozen solid.

A quick glance through the entry, and I found the cord wasn’t just knocked loose from the outlet, but the hook I put in to hold the cord and keep the cats from knocking the plug loose.

Which meant I needed to lift the roof.

*sigh*

At least it happened on a warmer day, and not when we had our deep freezes!

I could take the weight of the snow off, easily enough, but there’s nothing I could do about the ice. The roof was much heavier to lift, because of it. For me to lift the weight is not the issue. The problem is that, as I lift it, I can hear the dry old wood the roof is made up, creaking and cracking. Thank God we found a way to put on a counterweight. The beam it’s attached to runs the length of the roof, so it takes a lot of that strain off.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think to shovel under the counterweight after moving the milk crates that support it. The roof was just barely open enough for the centre of balance to keep it from dropping right back down again.

As you can imagine, I got that heated water bowl plugged in as quickly as I could!

Then the snow had to cleared to the ground, so I could put the crates back under. The brick is tied off so that the crates support it’s full weight, without having to lift it more than the few millimeters needed to clear the outer edges of the crate. Any higher, and the entire block needs to basically be picked up.

The heated water bowl was half filled with ice, so I didn’t even try to get it out. Any attempt to knock the ice out would shatter the frozen plastic, so I just topped it up with warm water.

We had some very thirsty kitties!

They do all seem to prefer drinking from the old frying pans we’ve repurposed as water bowls. One is steel. I think the other two are aluminum.

The aesthetics of using old pans for their food and water may leave much to be desired, but they work a lot better than anything else we’ve tried, except for the heated water bowl.

After finishing up from putting out bird and deer feed, I heard a strange scrambling noise.

Nostrildamus had clambered up the side of the kibble house, and was playing with the string! :-D

The good thing is, with the layer of snow on top now, the string is no longer needed to hold the tarp in place. Funnily enough, the tarp is there to protect the roof from snow until we can paint it. :-D

It wasn’t until I uploaded the picture that I noticed there was a spice boy in the kibble house, glaring at me. :-D

The girls and I have talked about the state of the cat shelter. In the summer, we will have to look at how we can reinforce the roof and attach a handle of some sort, to lift it from the side instead of grabbing it under the the edge at the top. Along with replacing a few more damaged pieces, maybe redoing the roof (I found a box of leftover shingles in one of the sheds) we should be able to keep it usable for many years.

The Re-Farmer

Year End Review: top 10 posts!

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Today we come to the close of what has got to be the most bizarre year we’ve had in my 5 decades! I think many of us will be very glad to see the hind end of 2020, even though there’s no sign that 2021 is going to be much different. :-/

[edited for formatting problems. WTH, WordPress??]

Thankfully, one of the side benefits of 1) living in the boonies and 2) living on my husband’s disability income, is that not a whole lot of the crazy affected our everyday life. We were already living on a tight budget, and disability payments are not affected. We were already doing things like stocking up in bulk purchases once a month, so that changed only because suddenly, everyone else was stocking up, too! My “job” is taking care of this place, and only one of my daughters had to stop working outside the home because of the crazy. The other was already working from home, so as long as we’ve got internet, she’s good to go. We got to focus on taking care of the property and each other, moving forward as much as possible on our long term goals, and basically be hermits. Which is kinda how we like it! The only real negative thing affecting us is my husband not getting the medical care he needs, but honestly, I don’t know how much of that can be blamed on the virus response. We’ve been here for 3 years now, and he still hasn’t been able to get the same level of care he had access to when we lived in the city. :-(

For me, one of the things I’ve tried to do is keep up with daily posts here on the blog, even if it’s just posting a photo. I’ve learned long ago that if I don’t get at least some writing in every day, it’s not very good for my mental health, but I also hope that the things talked about here will be enjoyed by, and useful to, others.

Though I am making no efforts at all to promote the blog, somehow, people are still finding it and following along. I don’t know how you all are finding us, but I really appreciate you stopping by and giving it a read, liking and commenting. Thank you so much!

In celebration of the end of the year, here are the top 10 most popular blog posts written in 2020. I skipped over any that were written in previous years, just because I want to focus on 2020. All links should open in new tabs, so you won’t lose your place here. :-)

So here they are, starting with number 10.

Comparisons. As this was our first year gardening, it comes as no surprise that we are starting with a gardening post! This one is from early August.


This year, I did something new, with a series of “Recommended” posts. These ended up getting their own permanent page, with a tab at the top menu. Number 9 is one of these posts. Recommended: Justin Rhodes. There is a massive number of videos on their YouTube channel! If you have any interest in self-sufficient living, do check them out!

This year, I finally started to do some more creative things with all the trees we’ve been cutting down, other than sticking them in huge piles for future chipping, or burning them.

The Wonkiest comes in at Number 8, showing off my first ever carving of a fork… and it truly is the wonkiest!! :-D

This year, we continued our attempts to brew booze, including our first attempt at making hard crab apple cider. Making hard crab apple cider: racking day – what happened? (updated: I found out!) comes in at number 7.

Every now and then, a post becomes popular, and I have no idea why! Like this one, at number 6: Let’s give this a try. It’s just a mix of all sorts of things, but apparently, people found it interesting!

No surprise to see another gardening post on the list! Number 5 is an analysis, First year gardens: what worked, what didn’t


Another Recommended post on the list. Number 4 is Recommended: Kris Harbour Natural Building. This YouTube channel is filled with years of videos, following along as Kris Harbour builds off grid in Wales. Well worth checking out!

Our first post about making hard crab apple cider is on the list, too! Here it is at number 3. Making hard crab apple cider; will it work?

Our crab apples were very popular this year! This time, at number 2, it’s Making Crab apple cider vinegar: airlock or cheese cloth?


And now we reach our number 1, most popular post of 2020.

This one blew away all the other posts, with almost triple (!!) the hits that number 2 got! In fact, it still gets hits almost every day. It’s another from the Recommended series of posts. Recommended: XiaoXi’s Culinary Idyll It’s another YouTube channel, and there are some really awesome videos to check out. Yet, I have no idea what makes this post stand out more than any other, that it should get so many more hits!

If you have discovered this blog through this post, I’d love to hear what brought you here! Please feel free to let me know in the comments. :-)

Well, there you have it! The top 10 must popular blog posts written in 2020.

I look forward to joining you again in the New Year! May 2021 be a year filled with many blessings, growth, healing and above all, normalcy!

God knows, we could all use some plain, boring old “normal” right now!

:-D

The Re-Farmer

2020 Goals: Review and Reset

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Well, here we are, at the end of 2020. This is our 3rd full year, and 4th winter, of living on the farm.

We set up goals to accomplish the task of getting this place cleaned up and fixed up. Of course, goals are always flexible, since life has a way of blowing right through any plans we might make! So it’s good to take a look and see where we stand.

Of course, the first priority was getting the house itself settled. While we did get most of my parents’ belongings stored away, with some of it staying to be used, there are still things that need to get done. They are not a priority, though, so they can wait. I don’t think anyone wants to go into the attic over the old kitchen to clean that up, for example! Some day, we will have to, but it will wait.

After getting a good look (or so we thought!) of what needed to be done outside, we set yearly goals. The first two years were to be focused on cleaning up the inner yard, then moving on to the outer yard in the third year, before finally moving beyond the outer yard, where we could start looking at clearing out the vehicle graveyard and large junk piles.

In the first year, focus was on clearing out the maple grove and the south and west yards, while year two was supposed to focus on clearing out the spruce grove and east yard. The old garden area in the north was basically in limbo until we decided on what we wanted to do for gardening. The big accomplishment there was getting a new push mower that allowed us to actually mow the overgrown old garden that had been badly plowed some time before we moved out here.

Year one went to plan, but year two had other plans for us, as my husband ended up in the hospital for 3 weeks, followed by trips to the city for medical care, and other such things. The weather also did not cooperate, with drought conditions and heat making heavy physical labour outdoors potentially dangerous. So that whole area got pushed back another year, except for one thing. I managed to clear out the old wood pile, uncovering the only good and soft soil in the entire inner yard! We also set aside an area where my mother’s garden used to be for future gardening, covering it with mulch, then using the giant black tarps reclaimed from the old wood pile to cover most to the area over the winter.

Between those two accomplishments, we ended up planting an actual garden this past summer. This was not something we expected to be able to do for some time, but really, if we waited until conditions were just right, nothing would ever get done, so we went for it. In that respect, this past year had us ahead of the game a bit.

Another plan we had for this past year got pretty much zero progress. We wanted to build a cordwood shed to use as an outdoor bathroom. Having what we thought was the septic tank backing up into the basement, and having to use a honey pot until that got cleared up, showed us that we don’t just need a second bathroom. We need a bathroom that does not rely on our septic system. The old outhouse we’ve got here has a growing hole to the pit developing under the door, and we don’t consider it safe to use. We want to move away from having a pit and use a composting toilet, instead. Sure, it means having to empty the contents regularly, but in the long term, it means the shed could someday be used as something else, just by removing the toilet box.

At the very least, I hoped to get an area dug out so we could create a level “foundation” to build on top of, that would allow for drainage while also holding the weight of cordwood and mortar walls.

This past year, we had a wet spring followed by some pretty extreme heat (well… for our area), and the only thing we managed to accomplish to that goal was clear away the last of the little trees that had sprung up by the old wood pile. I think not getting any progress on that is my one real disappointment for the year’s plans gone awry.

At the same time, even with the setbacks of the previous years, there were things that needed to get done in the outer yard. Thanks to my brother, gaping holes in the roof of one the sheds were patched with pieces of metal roofing left over from when the barn and garage were done, years ago. Windows were replaced or fixed. Some trees cleared away from other roofs. These were things that were part of the original plans, so in that respect, they were being done on schedule. The other things that need to be done in the outer yard will be slowly accomplished over the space of years, but some things were just more urgent than others.

The summer heat made working in the spruce grove severely limited. Plus, while we were glad to have an actual garden this past year, tending them did take time away from the goal of clearing out that grove. It is a fire hazard, which increases with every tree that comes down in a storm, or any branches that fall. Plus, we want to take down the dead trees and plant more spruces in the spruce grove!

So that area has been pushed back for yet another year.

Which brings me to our updated plans and goals.

For 2021, we’ll be focusing even more on gardening, having picked up a ridiculous number of seeds, with more things to arrive in the spring, when they can be planted right away. This is going to rather force us to get the spruce grove cleared up faster! Areas of the spruce grove are being taken over by poplars, and these will be perfect to use to build trellises and arbors for the garden. We even plan to build a gate/arbor combination to set up next to the main gate, so people can come in without climbing the locked gate. The taller poplars would probably be useful in building temporary, deer proof fencing to protect our garden, too.

There’s at least one large dead spruce I want to take down. Not starting on the cordwood shed may actually be a plus, since I would be cutting it to (hopefully!) fall in that direction, where there are no other trees for it to fall on top of. With the old chainsaw we have breaking at one of the switches needed to start it, the very first time I tried to use it, we will need to invest in a new one to get the spruce grove cleaned up. There’s only so much that’s reasonable to do with a buck saw! Plus, we have a mulberry tree coming in the spring. It’s a zone 4 tree, so we want to ensure it is growing in a protected area that also gives full sun, and that’s going to be in the spruce grove.

With having varieties of corn and sunflowers that need to be kept away from each other to avoid cross pollination, we’ll be working in areas of the old garden that are well away from the house. All of that will be temporary as, in the long term, we are looking to plant nut trees in there, and move most of the gardening into the outer yard, south of the house. So any gardening we do around there in the upcoming year will mean breaking up the hard, rocky soil and amending it, which will make it better for any future nut trees we plant out there.

One of the goals we had for this past year was to hire the tree company to come out with their massive chipper, and get rid of the piles of wood we’ve got all over. We couldn’t do it this year, but it still needs to be done. It may be worthwhile for us to just buy a chipper instead, though the cost of one that can handle what we’d be putting it through would be considerably more than the cost of hiring this company to come out for 6 hours. From the estimate I got at the time, he figured 6 hours would be enough time for them to do all the piles, too. Hiring someone would be more efficient to get these big piles done. We can invest in a chipper of our own, later on. We will always have branches to clean up and get rid of, so it would be worth it.

So the past year has been an odd mix of goals delayed, while others were accomplished faster than expected. One thing that has been delayed for way too long is getting the junk pile hauled to the dump. This is something we will be hiring people to do, so it basically comes down to whether or not it’s in the budget at any given time. So far, it hasn’t been! It would be fantastic to get rid of that unsightly mess, though.

Aside from time and weather dependent things that will need to get done, like all things garden related, our goals and plans for 2021 have become a lot more loosey-goosey. Timelines have become much more vague, and we’re still at a loss on how to accomplish some vital goals, like replacing the roof.

Still, we’ve managed to accomplish enough in the past year, that we can spend more time building things up, rather than taking things down, in the next year.

Which is as good for the psyche as for anything else!

The Re-Farmer