Some smiles to share with you!
My daughter joined me this morning, to help with crowd control. Leyendecker promptly scaled her and settled on a shoulder.
Saffron, on the other hand…
… claimed her spot, getting her way with sheer adorableness. :-D
Turmeric and Nicco, meanwhile, had themselves a wrestling match!
Big Rig settled down to eat and be completely non-photogenic, this morning. LOL
What a great way to start the day.
The Re-Farmer
Today started off very well, so I’ll start with that, too!
I’m happy to say that the new bed has made a huge difference. There must be something about no longer being so close to the floor, because I slept like a rock – for almost 11 hours!
Which meant I got a late start to doing my morning routine.
The kittens were in fine form this morning!
They found perfectly kitten sized places to hang out, about it all!
These little nooks exist only because the area under the entryway was walled off to make the root cellar. The ceiling there is slightly lower than the rest of the basement, so the top ledge there is actually level with the entryway floor, while below is the root cellar wall.
The upstairs cats wanted to play, too.
In the one photo, you can see David’s nose – and the glowing eye of another cat!
I’m going to have to delay doing the kitten stuff until there are others available to come down at the same time. Saffron and Turmeric got upstairs before I could close the door, while David, Cheddar and Two Face made it downstairs. While wrestling her kittens downstairs, Beep Beep went up and stayed there. I only saw three kittens, though, so I started looking around for Leyendecker and Big Rig. I realized Leyendecker had also snuck upstairs, when I saw tiny little black and white paws going past – right about where you can see David’s nose in the above photos. :-D So I got him down, but I still couldn’t find Big Rig. I feared she may have gotten into the old part basement, but after some searching, my daughter found her curled up asleep, under the bed frame. The box my husband’s computer came in had a cardboard divided that fits under there perfectly, and they use it to sleep in. I’d pulled it out, but apparently not enough, and never saw her. I felt no weight, and didn’t think to pull it out all the way! It was a relief to find her. Once we managed to get the adult cats out, we were able to treat the babies with some wet cat food, then persuade Beep Beep to come down again.
Once outside, I was joined by Creamsicle and Butterscotch.
Lots of things are blooming now.
More wild roses are blooming now.
I also checked on, and counted, the sunflowers.
I counted 30 this morning, with some having just broken ground. We also lost more; in one spot where I was sure there was a seedling growing, I checked more closely, and found the remains of a stem. :-(
I was very happy to find this. Last year, I spotted two little bunches of red berries on this bush. Using the magic of the internet, it turns out to be a cranberry bush.
It was not planted there deliberately.
This is another of the things that are getting more light, after I cleared away trees from the fence line. Last year, that resulted in this bush having just a few berries. This year, it is covered with clusters like this! I am thrilled to see them!
These are tiny wild strawberries growing at the base of a dead tree in the maple grove. We need to be weeded with great care, as the other growth is so close, it’s hard to pull them up, without also pulling up the strawberries.
This will require a lot of time set aside (after being liberally covered in bug spray) for delicate weeding. At some point, I’d like to transplant them to a better location, but transplant wild strawberries is another delicate thing!
I don’t know what these flowers are, but I really like them! Near them are some lilies that are full of buds.
The hawthorn my mother planted as a “living fence” bloomed so fast, I missed it! Berries are starting to form now.
I’ve read that hawthorn berries are edible. We might try something with them, one of these days.
My mother’s white roses and double lilacs planted near the old kitchen and sun room as looking good. The lilacs are almost done their blooming time, but the roses are just covered with buds!
After making sure it was okay with my mother first, checking to make sure there was nothing she wanted saved, I completely covered and mulched the old kitchen garden, two years ago. You can see what it was like when we started here (back when I thought the ornamental apple trees were cherry trees, because that’s where the original cherry tree had been planted, years before). As I cleaned up, you can see in this post, just how much the above flower had spread all over. I got it to the point where I could lay down a layer of cardboard, and finally cover it all in mulch. The idea was to basically kill off what was already growing there (especially the invasive vines we were finding all over the place!), and eventually use the space to grow vegetables and herbs that we use most.
After I finished all that, my mother suddenly started talking about some blue flowers that were there that she wanted me to keep, because they reminded her of flower that grew in Poland, when she was a child. I reminded her that she’d given me the okay to get rid of everything! Still, some things have worked their way through the mulch, including her little blue flowers, so she was happy to see them and asked me to save some. Which I can do. :-)
After I’d finished my rounds, I called my mother, then went to help her do a grocery shopping trip. That went quite well, and I was happy to be able to help her stock up on the bigger items she would normally have to pay to get delivered.
It was when I got home that things started to go wrong.
I had just driven through the gate and stopped the van so I could close it again, when I saw someone in my rear view mirror.
It was our vandal.
He’d seen me go by and came over.
He then proceeded to yell verbal abuse at me – all while recording me closing and locking the gate – from where he stood. I just ignored him while taking care of the gate, and he eventually just walked away, but he was yelling loud enough that the girls came out to see what was going on.
Based on past experience, from long before we moved out here, I knew I had to sit down and write down exactly what happened to record it. While I was in the middle of that, I got a call from my brother. It seems our vandal went straight from hurling verbal abuse at me, to calling my brother – who was at work – and verbally abusing him. There were things he said to both of us, though, that got us wondering about a triggering event. Once I had the chance, I called my mother.
Sure enough, it went back to her. He had left another abusive message on her answering machine, and she made the mistake of calling him back. She’d left a message, basically asking what he wanted from her, and they ended up speaking in person. He told her that he wanted to sell the farm and split up the money, part of which he believes he is entitled to. The farm, however, is supposed to stay in the family name, and that’s why she transferred the ownership to my brother. We had been trying to keep that quiet, but it’s public knowledge now. We have the same arrangement with my brother that we had with my mother. We are taking care of the place for him. So now we know, by his own words, that our vandal was pressuring my parents to change their wills for years, just so he could sell the farm to line his pockets.
This revelation explains why he started showing up recently on the trail cams, giving us the finger. He thinks something has been taken from him. I’m still a target, since we live here, and he believes the things that are here belong to him. Of course, he’s got his own place, so there is no reason anything of his should be here. He’s also the reason so many things disappeared over the years, and especially while the place was empty for 2 years.
Now that he knows about the transfer of ownership, it’s hard to say how he will continue his harassment. At least when it came to ownership of the farm, there was some predictability. Now that he knows the farm belongs to my brother, not my mother, he’s going to be coming up with something new. The only thing we can be sure of, is that he won’t stop. He’s become obsessed with this place, and my family living here.
*sigh*
Ah, well. It’s still better than what we left behind by moving here. We just have to worry about one crazy person, now. :-/
The Re-Farmer
I found some lovely new things growing this morning!
The first was the sudden appearance of these mushrooms on a dead tree.
They were not there, yesterday!
Meanwhile, my mother’s honeysuckle just exploded with flowers!
It is so good to have the rain, after last year’s drought!
The Re-Farmer
While doing my rounds this morning, I had some company.
Butterscotch looks downright malevolent! :-D
While checking things during my rounds, I found we have fewer sunflowers today, compared to yesterday. It’s possible I missed a couple, but it seems that something has been eating them. One or two at a time.
I visited the kittens again, after my rounds.
They really love that box of wood bits!
…
So, my morning posting got interrupted today. I am not continuing this almost 12 hours later!
My daughter happened to ask me about a bed frame I was looking to get. When we were prepping to move out here, one of the things we discovered was that the two twin sized box springs under our king size mattress were broken. No idea when that happened. We figured we could get new ones after the move.
Well, the move being the fiasco that it was, that didn’t happen. Instead, my husband and I had the mattress directly on the floor.
Which is not good for someone with a back injury. It was, however, the best of our mattresses. Also, the other mattresses were all twin sized.
When my husband ended up needing a hospital bed, we had to set the king size mattress aside and I used the spare twin. The king size ended up stuck behind the couch in the living room. It was just too big to put anywhere else. The cats, of course, discovered they could climb it and take naps up by the ceiling.
Which would have been fine, until they started using it as a scratching post.
Nothing we did would stop them. Of course, when we were asleep, we weren’t there to stop them. They were slowly destroying it. The only way to stop the destruction was to start using the mattress.
On the one hand, that was great. The twin mattress was a cheapy, and painful to sleep on, so the better quality mattress was much better on my body. On the other hand, my knees, feet and hips are pretty shot. Getting up and down from so low to the ground was taking its toll.
Eventually, we found the frame I wanted at Ikea; one that did not need box springs, and with 6 drawers underneath. We just had to save up for it.
Of course, other things kept popping up that was priority on the budget. Like repairing vehicles. This year, however, we finally got some decent tax returns, and were able to set some aside.
Just in time for Ikea to have a sale on the bed frame I wanted.
Which was out of stock.
Also, Ikea was closed because of the pandemic, and only doing online purchases. We would have an arranged time to pick up. So after a few days, when I tried again and saw 1 frame in stock, I tried to buy it.
Before I could finish going through the checkout process, it was gone.
So I signed up to be notified by email when it was in stock again.
Today was the last day of the sale, and when my daughter asked about it, I told her I hadn’t received an email saying they restocked. I decided, however, to check again. Just in case.
There was 2 in stock! They never contacted me.
I tried to buy it online, so we could pick it up later.
The website was having technical difficulties. When I tried to check out, it told me it was out of stock, but when I looked at the item directly, it still said there were two.
Their customer service web chat wasn’t working and when I tried phoning, there was no answer. Not even an automated one.
I did notice, however, that the store is now open to customers.
I decided to go for it. One of my daughters and I headed out within minutes. We couldn’t be sure there were any in stock – with a 2 hour drive to get to the location, at the far end of the city, even if they were in stock, that didn’t mean they still would be when we got there. We figured it was still worth it, and we could use the trip to go elsewhere, while we were at it.
I had the item number so when we finally got there, we made our way straight to the pick up area, but there was no aisle number. After asking around, we ended up at an information kiosk. The woman looked it up for me and…
Yes, there was indeed two left in stock.
We would never have found it in the pick up area, though. It turned out that the king size version of this bed frame was only available through their loading/pick up area. She called it in, gave me a print out with the bar code and order number so I could pay for it, and instructions on where to go to have it brought to us.
It was a bit confusing and frustrating, but it finally got done. Not only did I finally get a bed frame, but I was able to get it while it was still on sale.
Yay!
We took advantage of being in the city and made a couple more stops, then when we got home, the girls spent the next couple of hours assembling it.
I helped.
A little.
:-D
Once it was done, of course we all splayed out on it.
I love having a king size!
Then, I did something amazing.
I got up.
Then I sat down.
Then I got up and sat down and got up again.
Because I can do that now! Effortlessly!
The unplanned trip blew away any plans we had for today, but it was so worth it!!
This is going to be so much better on my knees!!!
I’m so excited! :-D
Yes, it’s the little things that make me happy. :-D
The Re-Farmer
Welcome to my “Recommended” series of posts. These will be weekly – for now – posts about resources and sites I have found over the past while that I found so excellent, I want to share them with you, my dear readers. 🙂 Whether or not I continue to post these, and how often they are posted, will depend on feedback. Please feel free to comment below, and if you have a favorite resource of your own, do share, and I will review them for possible future posts.
I hope you find these recommendations as useful and enjoyable as I have!
This week, I would like to recommend a really excellent and interesting YouTube channel. How to Cook That, with Anne Reardon. Along with the YouTube channel, there is a website, and various other social media, Patreon, etc. sites, linked on the About page.
This channel has been putting up videos for 9 years, and the videos cover a LOT of ground! The primary focus is on dessert how-to’s, like this one from 2012.
Reardon – with the assistance of her incredibly brave husband! – also recreates some historical recipes.
That one is rather terrifying! :-D
They also put out “Clever or Never” videos, where they test out various kitchen gadgets.
We used to have the French Fry cutter they tested out here! Ours worked a lot more easily. I think the one they tested may have started to get pretty dull. :-D
Then there are her mind boggling Teeny Weeny Challenge videos.
I just can’t imagine working in that scale! Talk about going all the way, with that miniature kitchen, too!
The thing that first brought me to this channel, however is on a very serious note. Anne Reardon is a food scientist, and she has put out some very important videos. If you’re on Facebook at all, you’ve probably seen the cooking “hack” videos go by, which show several quick clips of “how to” make or do various things food related. Some of them simply don’t work. Others are actually dangerous.
With so much current pandemic misinformation around, she also did a video on some of that, too.
There is just so much great stuff here, in such a variety of food related topics. I highly recommend subscribing to the channel and spending some quality time checking out the videos!
The Re-Farmer
Today, I finally made it down to the basement to do some practice carving, using the spoon blank that came with the carving kit.
While talking to one of my daughters about my mother’s request to carve her a mushroom, she had a brilliant suggestion.
Make a spoon with a mushroom at the end of the handle.
Well, that sounds like a great way to get my practice carving in!
The first problem was, kittens.
All of the kittens. :-D
Plus Beep Beep, of course.
It took several minutes just to open the storage box, and probably another 15 or 20 before I de-catted myself enough to get started.
The first thing to do was mark off the spoon blank.
Pretty basic.
It’s typically recommended to carve out the inside of the bowl, first, which meant I could finally break out the curved sloyd knife.
While fighting off kittens.
That… didn’t quite work out.
I realize I got a cheap kit, but I was quite happy with the other two knives when I first tested those out. The sloyd knife, however, seemed to be completely dull.
At one point, I figured maybe it was because I was using a different wood. My previous practice carving was on lilac, which I’ve read is really great to carve. So I tested one of the other knives on the handle.
It cut beautifully. You can see where I made a few quick cuts to start removing excess material on the handle. What little I got out of the bowl took a surprising amount of effort. Mostly, the curved blade wanted to just slide across the surface.
The kit came with a leather strop, suede on one side, smooth on the other, and a polishing compound. Which doesn’t work too well on a curved blade, at all, and certainly isn’t enough to create an edge, when there barely is one.
I have since brought it to my husband, and his significant collection of sharpening tools. He did some research on how to sharpen a sloyd knife, and while he was able to get an edge on it, it would be a lot easier to make sharpening tools out of dowel.
After I gave up trying to carve with a dull knife, I let the kittens go wild. The basement is nice and cool, but I think the kittens were enjoying the warmth of a human to crawl all over and snuggle into.
Until, that is, there was a mom available…
And what a good mom she is! Here she is, loving on Nicco.
As you can see, Leyendecker decided to get in on it, as I was taking the above photo!
He had ulterior motives, though. Nicco was blocking access to Leyendecker’s nip! LOL
Big Rig joined in, too!
While all that was going on, Saffron and Turmeric were crawling all over my shoulders and attacking my hair.
David had come downstairs with me and had jumped to the top of some shelves to get to one of the windows.
Then he fell into the giant plant pot I’ve got waiting for our umbrella tree.
I’m pretty sure his getting in was an accident, but he seemed to like it in there!
Even when I took the pot down so he could jump out, he wouldn’t! I had to tip him out. :-D
So, anyhow. That was my attempt at using the curved knife to practice carve a spoon. Hopefully my next attempt will go much better!
The Re-Farmer
Heading down to visit the kitties was certainly a wild and crazy ride, this morning!
The kittens were waiting for me.
First, I had to shoo away the cats from the door in the entryway. Then, when I opened it, Beep Beep was ready to rush through, which would have been fine, except Leyendecker dashed through, too. Turmeric was at the top of the stairs, too. She was just a bit more hesitant about actually going through, so I was able to keep her at bay.
Leyendecker managed to get through the door three times before I could finally close it. Meanwhile, Beep Beep had run back down, with David and Two Face making a dash for it, too. By this time, all of the kittens were on the stairs, and with the door closed, they decided my feet and legs were fair game.
They continued to attack my feet, jump up my legs, and try and eat my shoelaces, as I very, VERY carefully made my way around.
Once I started taking care of the food and water, they started to get distracted by other things, thankfully.
Not one stayed still long enough to get a decent picture! :-D
I was eventually able to get all the adult cats upstairs, which meant I could give the kittens some wet cat food, and they’d actually get some!
By the time I was done, I was more than ready for the relative calm of doing my rounds outside.
I just had to deal with hordes of mosquitoes. Which was an improvement. !!
Checking the garden plots, it looks like more cat damage to the one plot of carrots. We won’t be getting a lot of rainbow carrots this time around. :-(
The grape vine I accidentally clipped is starting to look at bit droopy, higher up, but the lower leaves still seem quite strong and healthy. Fingers crossed that it will survive.
While walking around the spruce grove, switching out the memory cards on the trail cams, has been interesting. I didn’t do a lot of clean up here, yet. Mostly, I just focused on clearing the fence itself.
The improved like has resulted in all kinds of things popping up.
These are Saskatoon berries, and there are SO MANY little tiny bushes growing, all over the place.
I will be keeping an eye on these new ones. When I was cleaning up, a lot of the larger ones were not looking very healthy. The drought certainly didn’t help. We do plan to buy Saskatoon bushes at some point, and plan out where to put them, but if these are strong and healthy, we might end up also transplanting some of these to better locations.
I had cut back the wild roses along with all the other undergrowth, quite a bit as we cleaned things up. I know they will grow back, so I’m not too worried about them. After we’ve cleaned things out, the wild roses and the dogwood are the two things I want to encourage as undergrowth in some areas.
Even with what little clearing we’ve done so far, we’re already getting more wildflowers.
There are a few of these Lily of the Valley, scattered about, in between another one with sprays of white, star-like blossoms. My attempt at getting a photo failed, though.
The goal for the spruce grove is to open it up, get rid of the dead trees, plant some new spruces to replace some of them, have paths we can walk through, with grass or moss, areas of wild roses and dogwood, and lots of wildflowers. Here and there, I’m planning to put various types of seating around. Not boards nailed to logs, like I’ve been finding all over! Those don’t do well, over time.
But first, it needs to be cleaned out, and that’s going to involve a lot of hard physical labour!
And chainsaws. Definitely chainsaws. There are some pretty big trees that need to be cleared out of there.
I probably won’t be back at that today, though. It’s cooler, if not any less humid, and still insane with mosquitoes, but my husband is encouraging me to take a day off, and give my wrist more time to recover. The problem is, it feels pretty good. Right up until I start using it. I shouldn’t need two hands to pick up a glass to take a drink. :-/ His concern is that I’ll just keep re-injuring it. He has a point. We are both notorious for that sort of thing. I just hate wasting the time. :-(
We shall see how it goes.
The Re-Farmer
I headed out to see how much I could do for clean up, before the weather drove me indoors.
This is the area we decided we will put the outhouse we are planning to make as a cordwood practice building.
The double ended arrow is a dead spruce that will need to come down, before it falls down. There is another spruce we’ve identified as a risk, near it. It’s still alive, but already starting to fall, with roots on one side torn loose from the ground. Likely from high winds. Getting rid of those before we build is on the to-do list. The last thing we need is to build what is intended to be basically an emergency outdoor bathroom (because we discovered a need for this!), only to have a tree fall on it.
The other arrows point to tree stumps hidden among the underbrush. The ones I’ve spotted so far, at least. I’m sure that, as we clear things away, we will find more. Hopefully, the roots of these trees will not be an issue when we start clearing away sod to a depth of 6 – 8 inches.
This is all the progress I managed to do.
Basically, I cleared a bit of an old tree stump. Some of the stuff I cleared last year was starting to grow back, so that had to be gotten rid of. Then there were some cherry trees that are spreading. The cherry trees in this area have still not started to bloom yet, unlike the one near the house, which has already completed it’s flowering stage. I did keep some larger pieces of cherry.
I checked the weather about an hour after coming inside, and it was 26C/79F, with a “real feel” of 32C/90F, and a humidity of 62% – and it would have started to cool down by the time I checked!
They’re predicting thunderstorms again. Go figure.
While trying to clear around the old stump, some grasses pulled away much easier than I expected.
It turns out that there is an ants nest in it. We have two common types of ants here (though I don’t know what their proper names are). Black ants, which build their nests in the dirt and in open areas, like lawns, and red ants, which like to build their nests of spruce needles and in trees. These ones are NOT carpenter ants. That much, I do know. But they will take advantage of a dead tree stump, if it’s rotting enough.
The other thing I was able to do was clear away the piles of old boards we’d used to mark out the garden beds and hold down the protective plastic. I didn’t want to just stack them on the ground, where they will just rot, but where to put them that will keep them off the ground?
Well… there are these two old dog houses by the old outhouses, that we will cover in the fall again, so little critters can use them for shelter.
May as well use those!
We are going to need to clean up the rest of the wood in the junk pile, so I figure we can add more of the better boards onto here, to create a sort of roof. Who knows if they’ll stay here, but it’s one way to keep them off the ground, and that’s all I’m really after, right now.
Once I got inside with my chunks of cherry wood, I went into the cool of the basement to debark them, and keep the babies company.
I misjudged my ability to work with them around.
This would be Big Rig, under Leyendecker, both of whom got all sleepy on me. As I was trying to maneuver my phone to take this picture, Big Rig’s head just flopped over like this as she feel asleep!
Then Beep Beep climbed up, waking them both up, so she could curl up on my chest and demand attention. !!
For I while, I had Saffron perched on my shoulder, just watching the world go by, Big Rig, Leyendecker and Beep Beep, curled up on my arm and chest, snuggling and falling asleep, while Turmeric climbed my leg and tackled the tip of Big Rig’s tale. Only Nicco left me alone, preferring to explore the table behind me, then curl up for a nap on the platform bed frame they like to sleep under.
Thankfully, since I was able to reach my phone, I was able to let the girls know about my predicament, and they came down to assist me after they finished making supper. I did manage to detach most of the cats off of me – temporarily. Saffron was just sitting on my shoulder, so I left her be, but even as I worked on a piece of cherry with a large knife, I soon had kittens back on my lap to watch!
Thanks to the girls distracting the kittens, I did manage to debark two pieces completely – and even get the bark off in one piece!
The thicker, shorter section was only partly done; more than half of it seems to have been in the process of dying or something. You even see where the colour changes in the photo, from fresh to dry wood. The bark just would not come off, and with my wrist still giving me grief, using the knife to take off the bark was not a good thing!
My daughter looked it up, and it turns out cherry is poisonous to cats (except the pulp of ripe berries), so all the little bits and pieces went into my sawdust bin, which has a seal-able lid. The pieces of wood are now drying in the rafters, and the bark I was able to remove all in one piece are now laid out on a shelf in the sun room, drying next to my seed trays (where a single squash of some sort has germinated!).
I do hope it we finally get a solid rainfall, instead of having the systems swoop right past us again! It’s not like we’re dry right now, but it would be wonderful for that humidity to finally be reduced! I would love to be able to work outside for longer! There is just too much to get done out there.
The Re-Farmer
The kittens now being able to climb to the top of the stairs makes visiting them in the morning rather treacherous!
Getting into the basement is difficult enough as it is, with the door opening over the stairs the way it does. Doing it while juggling a pitcher of fresh water, a bucket for the old water, while dodging kittens who want to climb my legs or dash into the entryway before I can close the door makes it that much more challenging! :-D
The cats upstairs, and the kittens downstairs, have discovered the space under the door.
Oh, and to make things even more challenging, I had Beep Beep trying to climb me, too!
Thankfully, the lure of wet cat food was enough to draw them away, so I could leave safely! :-D
While doing my rounds outside, I had to check out the grapes.
Because I may have killed one. :-(
Now that they are leafing out, a couple of evenings ago, I took the pruners to cut away the old, dead growth that should have been pruned away last fall. A piece I cut away twisted as it fell, and I suddenly realized that a fresh vine I thought was growing from behind and below, was actually growing out the back of the piece I’d just cut.
I was so upset with myself. This was a strong, healthy vine I’d just killed.
Could I save it?
I cut the live vine from the stem and tried to see if I could bury the end, so it would root itself. Attached to the trellis as thoroughly as it was, I couldn’t pull it down far enough.
Well, there’s a tire planter right there, with a giant insulator I’d used as a shallow planter last year, in the middle of it.
I attached the vine to another piece to hold it in place, then added soil from the planter to the bottom. Once the cut end was buried, I watered the whole thing, thoroughly.
Can you tell which vine got cut?
I came by, fully expecting the cut vine to be drooping and dying, but it’s looking as fresh and green as the others!
It’s the one on the far left of the trellis.
Here is the base of it. There are even fresh new leaves, still strong and healthy looking.
Could I have actually have managed to salvage my mistake?? Does anyone reading this know much about grape plants? Will this root itself and survive?
I certainly hope so!
The rest of my rounds included checking the garden plots, and I was disappointed to find one area of carrots looked like something had dug them up. It turned out a cat had used it as a litter box. :-(
It also looks like we lost at least one more sunflower to something, but in total, there are more seedlings today than yesterday.
My rounds, however, were very fast this morning. The mosquitoes were insane! While we did not get the predicted storms – they swooped even further south than I thought they might, and we didn’t even get much rain – it is hot and muggy and perfect conditions for mosquitoes.
Once the morning rounds and chores were done, I had to make a quick run to the post office, then into town for some errands, so I’m a bit behind on things I intended to do outside. I’m going to have to start on clearing away where we’ve decided to build the cordwood outhouse, and since it’s too wet to continue working on the lawns, today would be a good day to get into that.
I will have to slather myself in bug spray, first, and hopefully not sweat it all off in the first few minutes. :-/
The Re-Farmer
A couple of days ago, I mentioned that our riding mower had stopped.
It didn’t stop running. It stopped moving.
Of course, I looked around at anything I could see to try and figure out why it stopped. The only thing I couldn’t do is look under it, because we can’t see under there without lifting it or removing things, and it’s too heavy to lift more than a corner. It’s not something we can just pick up at one end/side and tilt, either, due to the design.
So I pushed it into the garage and left it. The plan for mowing still involves using the push mower to get into areas the riding mower can’t, so I saw no issue with letting it wait until the end of the month, when we were already planning to take it in for some general TLC.
Then I got an email from my brother. He had needed to pick up a ball hitch, so he’d bought an extra one for out riding mower. This way, we can use it to pull the trailer, when that’s all fixed up.
In my response, I mentioned what happened with the riding mower.
Well, my brother – being the awesome person that he is – decided to pop over today. They were already on the way when my SIL phoned us to let us know they’d be going straight to the garage, and not going to the house (practicing physical distancing for my husband’s health), to install the ball hitch and check out the riding mower.
By the time I realized they were here and joined my brother at the garage, he was already done installing the ball hitch. He had also given the mower a once over, and couldn’t see anything wrong. Since I was there, he asked me to give it a try, while he watched. So I pushed it out of the garage, first, then tried starting it.
It wouldn’t start.
Then my brother noticed I forgot to turn the shut off valve on the fuel line. :-D He turned it for me.
Which is when he saw it.
The wheel was almost off the axle!!!
The back wheels are held in place by a bolt that runs through the axle, like a pin. We had to look at the other side to even remember what it was supposed to look like.
We propped the corner of the mower up on whatever we could find to support the weight, and my brother managed to hammer the wheel back on. Then he tried to make sure that the holes were still lined up.
They were, but the narrow screw he was using to check, couldn’t go through.
This was the culprit.
This was still stuck inside.
So, somewhere in our lawn, is the head of a bolt, and a nut, still on the other end of the bolt.
After much scrounging in the garage by all of us, my brother found another nut and bolt the right size, and got it on.
Once that was all fixed, he got me to test it out again.
The mower runs fine now.
Basically, once the wheel got loose, the mower acted as if it were in neutral, regardless of what gear it was in. When I stopped the mower to talk to my daughter, my getting on and off of it must have loosened the wheel just enough to trigger this.
Which is awesome, because if it didn’t have that fail safe, I would have kept on going right up until the wheel fell off, never realizing there was a problem. Just pushing it to the garage is probably why it was as far off the axle as it was. If my brother hadn’t picked up a hitch and decided to come over to install it, we likely would not have discovered it, until it fell off as we moved it around to load it into the van at the end of the month.
Neither of us had even thought to check the wheels as a reason the mower stopped moving. The only reason my brother spotted it at all, was because I’d forgotten about the shut off valve on the fuel line, and he turned it for me. That’s when he could see the bright, shiny, silver part of the axle that no longer had wheel over it. It I had turned it from my seated position, I wouldn’t have seen it. If it had been the other wheel, neither of us would have seen it.
Sometimes, it amazes me when so many tiny things line up like that.
The awesome thing is, my brother has once again saved the day! :-D The riding mower moves again.
I also got to see my SIL for the first time in way too long. She is allergic to cats, so we were planning to visit their place for a change, when the pandemic lockdowns started and all such plans went poof. So it was really, really great to be able to see them both. I just wish it could have been for longer!
And for just a visit, and not to fix yet another thing. :-D
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 