Author: Re-Farmer

Broken. Like our system

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Okay.

I think this is going to be a difficult post to write.

To recap for our new followers (Welcome! Thanks for joining us!); about a year and a half ago, my husband ended up in the emergency room for what turned out to be pulmonary edema. He spent the night in the hospital, was sent home with a prescription (without being told what it was for) and told to follow up with his regular doctor. He had a week’s worth of what turned out to be water pills, but the earliest he could get an appointment with his doctor was almost 2 weeks later.

While he had been feeling a bit better for a while, once he ran out of the pills, he started to crash again. When we got to his appointment, he was in such bad shape, I had to ask for the use of a wheelchair to help him come in.

The clinic was part of a hospital building, but there was only 1 bariatric wheelchair. I can’t even remember right now if they ever found it. I think he ended up using a regular wheelchair. The nurse that wheeled him into the exam room was looking very alarmed, and was saying my husband would probably be going straight to the emergency room. Sure enough, the doctor basically took one look at him and sent him over. They were wondering why he hadn’t been followed up on after his time in the emergency before, and we told them that this was the follow up!

He ended up in the hospital for 3 weeks. In that time, along with almost killing him by giving him too much insulin and not checking his blood sugars before deciding on the doses, they managed to drain over 100 pounds of fluid out of him. His pulmonary edema was actually peripheral edema, and he was diagnosed with heart failure.

Since then, my husband had been expected to go into the city once a month or so, as they tried to determine the cause of his heart failure and decide on courses of action. There is only one cardiac clinic serving the entire province so, as you can imagine, it’s pretty busy.

These trips have been incredibly hard on my husband, his back injury and his pain levels. It’s one thing to be sitting in the van for the drive (about 3 hours driving in total). It’s another to be sitting in the waiting room for such a long time, then waiting again in the examination room, only to be seen for maybe half an hour.

Now, we deliberately leave early for these appointments. It takes an hour to reach the city, under normal circumstances. Getting to the hospital, if traffic is light and we get nothing but green lights, takes maybe 10 minutes. Most of the time, though, it takes about 20 minutes. That gives us another 10 minutes for me to pull in, unload his walker, leave him to find his way in, then search for someplace to park.

However, we don’t leave things to chance and leave 2 hours early, and today is a good example of why this is necessary. On the way to the city, we hit a section where cracks in the road were being patched. A two lane highway was reduced to one lane, and they were alternating each direction of traffic to let through. So we spent some time driving very slowly through the construction, then just stopped on the road as we waited for traffic from the other direction to pass through. Then, once in the city, we were delayed by more lane closures bottle necking traffic. That one area has been under construction for as long as we’ve been out here, so more than three years! I really would have expected them to be done by now. :-/

My point being, we respect their time and go out of our way to ensure we will be there before the scheduled appointment, so he can be checked in and ready when they are.

There was one day, however, that – after waiting for 1 1/2 hours – he was in so much pain he walked out. It was that day that we discovered they built in a half hour waiting period. So while he was told in to come in for a certain time, they had his appointment for half an hour later. We’d already come in 15 minutes early. Even with the built in waiting period, they were still 45 minutes late when he left. Who knows how much longer he would have had to wait if he hadn’t. They certainly didn’t seem like they were going to bring him in anytime soon.

He talked to the clinic on the phone after that, and for his next appointment, they had a stretcher for him. It helped, but the trips still wiped him out.

To make things worse, they have not been able to figure out why he has an ejection fraction of only about 20% (I think it’s up to 22% now). They can’t find anything to explain it. There is no reason that they can find, for him to have heart failure.

Then the pandemic shutdowns happened.

He was supposed to have an appointment in April, when they called in March. After interviewing him on the phone, it was decided to continue with phone appointments until they could start rescheduling. It was a surprise to be called back for a June appointment. We were expecting July or August.

He ended up having having to cancel due to pain.

He was rescheduled to July and had an appointment then, but with the pandemic measures, I couldn’t go in with him. It was a short appointment.

He had an appointment in August. Pain was a major issue again, so he called to ask if they would be able to accommodate with a stretcher again. I’m not sure what exactly they said, but he was made to feel like he was imposing on them significantly, so he cancelled the appointment.

Today was the rescheduled appointment. One of the things they want to see him for, is to decide if he is a candidate to have a defibrillator implanted.

With all the delays, I was still able to drop him off almost 15 minutes early, then found a place to park some 5 blocks away. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go in with him, so I just walked around to play Pokemon Go.

The high winds that broke our tent had clearly hit the city, too! This tree was in a park near the hospital, and I was seeing broken branches all over the place.

My husband was able to text me to keep me updated, so I knew when he was able to get checked in. Some time later, I got another text from him.

He was still in the waiting room.

Alone.

There was absolutely no other patients waiting. Not only that, but I found out later that at 12:30, which is he was told his appointment was for, he saw and heard a group of doctors, leaving. They were going for coffee.

Did they book in a half hour waiting time again? Without any other patients???

Finally, after he’d been waiting half an hour, and he was already telling me he was ready to leave, he was brought into an examination room. By that point, I was starting to meander back to the van.

Then I got a text simply saying “I’m out.”

So I rushed to the van. When I got there, I quickly texted him to let him know I had reached the van, so he would have an idea of how much longer I would be.

That’s when I noticed the time stamp on his last text.

There was no way anyone had seen him.

So off I went to pick him up at the main entrance. This is supposed to have a patient loading zone in front, with enough room for several cars, or a couple of handi-vans.

Of course, people were just parked there. The vehicle in front of me didn’t even do that. He just sort of half pulled in and stopped. I ended up having to drive around him, then stop in the lane – thankfully, there was no traffic behind me – to pick up my husband and load the walker into the van.

As we drove, he told me the rest of what happened. After waiting, in pain, for so long, he finally struggled to get his shirt back on, then simply left. As he was leaving, a tech was coming in with the EKG machine, and she called out to him, but he kept going. As he went through the waiting room (which finally had one other patient in it), the woman behind the counter started chasing him down. By this point, he had no tolerance left and simply said that next time, make the appointment for the actual time, and kept going.

We both realize that he is probably viewed as a problem patient right now. What we can’t figure out is how a cardiac clinic in a hospital can be so oblivious to accommodating the needs of disabled patients. I mean, besides heart conditions. After a year and a half, and his pain being an issue in the past so often, you’d think they’d at least have notes on his file or something, about his extenuating circumstances.

I don’t know.

My husband plans to write to the clinic with a letter of complaint – though he’s going to give himself time to calm down, first! I suggested that he send a copy of it to our new doctor, too.

At this point, he doesn’t want to go back. At all. He sees no point. They’re not finding why his heart is doing what it’s doing; everything else related to his heart is checking out healthy. He’d already been doing most of the things they recommend, and the things he isn’t doing, he can’t because of his back injury and pain levels. They did acknowledge this issue.

He is hardly the only patient they have with multiple health issues beyond a heart condition. How many other patients are going through the same problems he is, but aren’t confident enough to simply get up and walk out? How many are just meekly accepting being treated like afterthoughts, because they are too scared of their condition to speak out? I guess that’s one “benefit” for my husband; he’s been through so much over the last while, developing a heart condition is just another thing on the list, and not even near the top.

At this point, I don’t know what steps will happen next. For my husband, getting the pain under control is the greater priority. And that is waiting for the doctor at the pain clinic to talk to our new doctor. Which doesn’t seem to have happened yet.

This is all so incredibly frustrating.

The Re-Farmer

Frosted carnage, and we’re back to 1 1/2

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After seeing how great the sunflowers did, after last night’s first frost, it was time to see how the squash beds looked after a day of relative warmth.

You can see how all the leaves that got hit with frost have shriveled and darkened.

There is some hope, though…

For many (not all) of the larger plants, the leaves underneath are looking just fine, as are the little squashes. Even the pumpkins look like they’ll make it.

On the one hand, I’m encouraged. On the other, it shows that if we’d been able to cover them, they probably would have fared much, much better.

Ah, well.

In other things…

Our trip to the cardiac clinic in the city turned out to be a waste of time, but that did result in us coming home earlier.

Yesterday, my younger daughter and I had gone into town. Since she needed to go to the grocery store and I didn’t, I popped across the road to the garage to see about my mom’s car.

It’s done!

In fact, he had stayed late on Friday to do it. However, the car had been sitting there for so long, the battery was dead! He had it on a charger and said it would be ready for pick up this morning. Since we were heading to the city this morning, I told him I could come in tomorrow morning.

With today’s changes in timing, we were able to zip into town before he closed for the day. We were going to pick up something else half an hour before he closed, so we went to the garage first. I paid the bill and got the keys, and we would come back later. It’s a good thing we did it that way, because by the time we were done, the garage was closed!

So we are now, once again, a 1 1/2 vehicle family (since I own half of my mother’s car! :-D ).

This is a relief, as we now have a back up vehicle if something ever happens to the van.

The guy at the garage did warn me, though, that the car might make some noises for the first while. Not only did the battery die from sitting so long, but the discs on the brakes are all rusted up again! He advised we drive it as much as we can, which I was already planning to do.

I don’t think I’m ready to drive it to the city quite yet, though. I want to take if for a few spins locally, first. Even if it’s just to the post office and back.

So glad to finally have that done!

The Re-Farmer

In the sun

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I just couldn’t resist sharing these photos!

I’m happy to say that last night’s frost seems to have had no effect on the sunflowers at all.

The only leaves with frost damage that I saw were leaves that had first been broken by the high winds we had a few days ago.

Right now, we’ve got seed heads at pretty much all stages of opening and ripening!

The birds seem to have finally discovered this one. Based on what I researched, I should be able to cut this seed head off and set it up to dry, but in the video I saw that demonstrated this, the guy was able to easily brush off the flower heads from the seeds. That isn’t happening on this seed head at all! The ones that haven’t already fallen off on their own are still attached quite well.

The girls and I will be heading into the city tomorrow, but I might harvest this seed head after we come back. If not then, then the day after. I’m planning to dig up the potato beds as well. We’ll see how the timing of things goes.

Hopefully, tomorrow’s trip to the city will be more productive than today’s – but that will get it’s own post later!

The Re-Farmer

Frosted

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My husband has an appointment at the heart clinic in the city today, so I was out a bit earlier to do my rounds this morning.

As I write this, it’s still only 1C (33F), with a “real feel” that has warmed up to -2C (28F) since I last checked. Our high today is supposed to reach 15C (59F), which is warmer than the last few days. We’re then supposed to go above 20C (68F) for a couple of days, before dropping back to the mid-teens, which is more typical for this time of year.

We don’t have what we need to be able to cover plants as large as our squash right now, so this morning was more about surveying the damage.

I will check them again, after we get back from the city. Some look like they’re completely killed off, but others might still make it through the rest of the season.

I’m pretty sure the pumpkins are a total loss, though.

This is the largest of them, and you can see where the frost was on the pumpkin itself.

This pumpkin hill is the one that’s the furthest South – which means that it gets more shade from the trees than the others. It isn’t much, but as you can see by the plant, it doesn’t take much, either. This plant still had visible frost on it.

The other two hills were pretty much clear of frost. The developing pumpkins don’t show signs of direct frost on them – but from the state of the plants, I think they’re likely complete losses, too. We shall see.

Remember this little birdhouse gourd, bravely blooming just yesterday?

This is how it looked this morning.

*sigh*

Well, this year was our year to figure things out, and we’ve learned a lot.

We will have to work on finding different ways to cover and protect our plants from late and early frosts. Especially since we do want to keep growing squash, which are more easily damaged by the cold. The beets, carrots and parsley are just fine. Even the cucamelons showed less frost damage than the squash, which surprised me.

Altogether, though, we did far better with our gardening this year than I expected. It really has been a successful year, for the circumstances!

You’d think, having grown up here and helped my mother with the gardening for my entire childhood, I would already know what is needed, but everything is really quite different than the garden of my childhood. Especially with my parents planting or allowing so many trees to encroach into the garden.

While we will continue to have garden plots in this area, my mind is already starting to look at the outer yard, towards the barn, for possible raised beds, polytunnels or greenhouses for vegetable gardening.

But that is still years into the future!

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Cryptid kitten

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For a few times now, when going about the yard, I would see a cat among the trees. First glance, and I would think it was Junk Pile cat, only to realize that this cat looked slightly different. More white in the fur, and more the size of her own kittens – though they are almost as big as she is, now!

Last night, all possible doubt about whether or not this cat was really Junk Pile cat were cast away. While walking around the house, I startled a cat away from the food bowls by the sun room. It dashed off towards the storage house and disappeared under the lilacs at one corner – just as Junk Pile and two of her kittens came out from under the spirea at the other corner.

This morning, I finally got photographic proof of our cryptic cat’s existence. :-)

I stayed well back and zoomed in as much as I could, so this was the best my phone’s camera could do.

The kitten on the steps is Junk Pile cat’s tabby kitten, and they are very much the same size. Another kitten – possibly Junk Pile’s third kitten that is so very shy – had already run off.

This mystery kitten is most likely one of Rosencrantz’ kittens, but I honestly don’t know where it is from.

I’m glad that the shy ones are at least getting some food.

The Re-Farmer

The kittens disapprove

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Butterscotch’s kittens disapprove of me.

Or maybe they disapprove of the dropping temperatures!

Especially this one.

We get quite the giggle over how all four of Butterscotch’s kittens – including the camera shy calico – have these matching expressions!

The Re-Farmer

Hard crab apple cider: Getting clear

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What a difference a day makes!

This is how the crab apple juice looked, right after we got finished setting up the fermentation.

This is how they looked this morning.

The photo does not do justice to how bright the colour is!

When I was checking these last night, the tops were full of dense foam, which has mostly collapsed, but you can certainly see how high it got.

Their temperatures seem to be holding at between 18 and 19C, and – most importantly! – we are seeing activity in the airlocks. Not a lot, but it’s definitely started to bubble!

So far, so good… I think! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Zero

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Today, for the first time since we had produce we could harvest from the garden this summer, I collected nothing at all this morning.

Normally, I would have at least collected a few sunburst squash. With the cooler temperatures, though, the many little squashes out there are growing a lot more slowly. I like to pick them, and the zucchini, while they are still quite small, but not that small!

Amazingly, even though we dipped to almost freezing last night, one of the bottleneck gourds has started to bloom! This is one of the last ones that got transplanted. Of the tray of seed starts, a few germinated well after the others had already been transplanted, so I planted them, even though it was so late in the season.

I suppose I could have harvested some carrots and beets this morning, but they do better in the ground until we’re ready to use them. The potatoes are ready to be dug up, but it’s going to warm up a bit over the next few days, so I might wait a day or two.

I’m really hoping this little cool down is an aberration, and we’ll have a long, mild fall. If the pattern of that last couple of years continues, though, we should have a blizzard right around Thanksgiving in October! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Making hard crab apple cider; will it work?

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Today was our first attempt at making hard apple cider. We are using the remaining apples from the one crab apple tree we have that produces the most amazing, sweet, delicious little apples, after using some of them to start an apple cider vinegar.

When we first moved here and saw how many crab apple trees we had around the property, we looked into what was needed to make hard apple cider. At first, we didn’t think it would be anything we could do, or at least not anytime soon. Making hard apple cider, we found, required using a large press to crush whole apples, then sealing up the resulting juice to ferment a few months.

We didn’t have a press, and with so many other things on the go, we were not about to build or buy one, either.

Then I found the CS Brews YouTube channel, now called CS Mead and More. I liked it enough to include it in my Recommended series.

They started making hard apple cider, using store bought juice. Sometimes, right in the container it was packaged in!

We could make hard apple cider without having a press, after all!

One of the things we found when cleaning up this place after moving in, was a juicer exactly like the one we had to leave behind when we moved. I think one of my siblings bought it for my mother, but she hardly used it. Everything was still in its original packaging, even!

We decided to try making hard cider using our own juice.

Now, making it using store bought juice in the bottle they were sold in works, because everything comes pasteurized and sanitized off the shelf. Basically, enough juice needs to be poured off to make room for the sugar and yeast, an airlock gets put on, and you can leave it to ferment to get a very basic hard apple cider.

Of course, doing it the traditional way, with a press, the juice didn’t get pasteurized or filtered or anything.

We decided to try making our own hard crab apple cider with raw, unpasteurized, unfiltered juice. The juice would be going straight from the juicer to the sanitized gallon jugs, so the chance for contamination would be very lower.

Lower than trying to do it the old fashioned way, that’s for sure!

The first step was to clean the apples and de-stem them. They didn’t have to be cored, but the stems would cause problems with the juicer.

The crab apples from the one tree completely filled my two largest bowls. Though I cut away some obvious nasty bit, I wasn’t worried about light bruising. I also have the not-quite ripe apples from the tree that broke in the wind storm.

It’s a good thing we had so many of these apples this year, since I had to toss the cider vinegar, and start over again.

Juicing the apples turned out to be more difficult than expected. It was made slightly easier when we found a way to raise the juicer high enough that a 1L pitcher could fit under the spout. We had 2 one gallon jugs, and a gallon is about 4L, so I could use the pitcher to loosely measure how much juice I was putting in. However, these little apples don’t have a lot of juice in them, and their pulp kept jamming the machine. My daughter kept having to stop the juicer, open it up and peel away the pulp that accumulated on the perforated metal cone inside, instead of going out the back. The pulp was so dry, it could be taken off in ribbons!

Using information I got from one of the hard cider making videos, I used 2 cups of sugar per gallon. Each got 2L of juice before I put in a bung and shook the heck out of them to dissolve the sugar.

Look how pink that is!!

Also, you might notice the liquid is not at the same level. Though these are both 1 gallon jugs, one is actually bigger than the other. They are 1 gallon at about the “shoulder”, which leaves space for the fermenting liquid to bubble up a bit.

I also used the same wine yeast we’ve been using for everything else; I don’t know the specific strain of yeast, but it’s basically what is available for a non-sparkling wine from the local brewing supply store. Again, following what I saw in the video, I dissolved about a tsp of yeast in a bit of juice, then added it to the full jugs, after getting a hydrometer reading.

After the yeast was added, they got another thorough shaking, then the airlocks were put in place.

I’m also trying to be more diligent about recording everything. I have to admit, I still don’t understand the hydrometer information, so I wrote down all three readings. It has a “potential alcohol by volume” measure right on there, but I keep reading that it isn’t any good, and that it’s better to use the specific gravity reading. It doesn’t help that I can barely see the tiny numbers and lines in the first place!

I found it interesting that the readings for the 2 jugs that were made up identically, are slightly different. It’s possible that the different sized jugs means that one does have slightly more juice in it than the other, and that could explain the difference.

The juice is not only incredibly pink, but incredibly cloudy! They were, of course, just shaken when this photo was taken. You can tell which one got finished first, as the cloudiness is already starting to settle.

We have set the jugs up on a side table in the dining room for now. It’s not a particularly bright room, it’s warmer than the old kitchen, and we can keep an eye on them. I just took a look at them, after they’ve had several hours to settle. I will have to take a photo of them during the day. They look very different right now! The sediment has settled to the bottom, and the clear juice in the middle is looking a deep, deep pink – but there is a significant layer of lighter pink foam at the top! I used the temperature gun on them, and got different readings, depending on where I aimed it. The top, where the foam is, was fluctuating between 19C and 20C (66-68F). The middle was around 17-18C (62-64F), while the bottom, where the sediment has settled, is 17C (62F). Which I think is good.

Also, I’ve turned the thermostat up for the house. It was set just below 15C/59F when the furnace turned on earlier today, so I’ve upped it a few degrees! So the ambient temperature will not be too cold, either.

I have no idea how this will turn out. Will the fact that we used raw, unfiltered juice be a benefit, or a disaster? Will we get something that tastes horrific, or wonderful? Considering how great the apples themselves taste, I would hope the resulting hard cider would be its match. I have no idea. This is a total experiment for us!

As for the remaining apples, it took so long to juice enough to fill the jugs that we didn’t juice the rest of them. I had started cutting them up to cook them into a dessert, but realized I didn’t have the energy for that left, so they ended up in the freezer! Meanwhile, my poor daughter had been standing at the juicer for so long, her back was starting to give out on her! We couldn’t even plug it in somewhere where she could sit down, since there are so few outlets in this house.

Here’s hoping the end result is worth it!

The Re-Farmer

I am such a goof: crab apple cider vinegar reboot!

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Today, the girls and I worked on juicing apples and getting some hard crab apple cider started (which I will post about next). While I was de-stemming the crab apples and cutting off any nasty bits, they took care of sanitizing the gallon jugs and the various items that would be needed.

They usually did the sanitizing part during our few beginner attempts at making alcoholic drinks.

That’s my excuse!

You see, when I used sanitizer to start the crab apple cider vinegar a couple of nights ago, I made a mistake. A silly, forgetful mistake. A laughable mistake, even.

But for the cider vinegar, it was a deadly, disastrous mistake.

As I listened to the girls chatting while using the sanitation solution, then rinsing everything off and setting it aside on a towel to drip dry, I suddenly realized my horrible mistake.

When I sanitized everything for the vinegar, I set everything out to drip dry – but forgot to give them a final rinse, first. Which means, when I made the vinegar, everything had dried sanitizing solution on them.

There’s no way they’d be able to ferment at all!

Later, while my younger daughter and I were juicing apples, I mentioned it to her. Oh, my, the look on her face!

Sweetheart that she is, she took over the juicing while I went and got the jars.

There was, of course, no sign of bubbling in the air lock, but after only 2 days, would there have been any? I don’t know. However, when I opened them up, I could see they were already a loss. There may not have been any fermentation happening, but decomposition had already started at the very top. :-(

Thankfully, since I had prepped all the other apples for juicing, I was able to wash, sanitize and RINSE THE HECK OUT OF everything, then quickly chop apples into pieces for a new batch.

The only thing different from last time, aside from actually rinsing everything after sanitization, was to not fill the jars as much as I had before. The recipe had said to fill the jars 3/4 full. I think I was still over that, but the first batch was full almost to the top. Here, you can sort of see through the container they are in, that there is a fair bit of space under the floating apple pieces.

I foresee only one problem right now.

These are in the old kitchen and, right now, it’s pretty cold. It was cold enough today that the furnace actually turned on – and the thermostat was dropped quite low over the summer! As I write this, it’s already dropped to 4C (39F), and we have frost warnings for tonight. Amazingly, we’re supposed to go above 20C (68F) in a couple of days, but for now, it’s downright chilly! The old kitchen doesn’t have any heat going into it. Back in the day, with the wood stove going, it was a source of heat for the rest of the house, not the other way around! I don’t even know what the old kitchen has for insulation, if anything. It stays cools in the summer, and in the winter, it gets pretty close to freezing in there. We can actually use the room as an extra refrigerator in the winter.

The cider vinegar should be done well before we reach those sorts of temperatures all the time, but the next couple of days might slow things down a bit!

We shall see how it goes.

I still can’t believe I made such a silly mistake!

The Re-Farmer