Author: Re-Farmer

Today’s roundup: they want out!

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I’m glad we got as much of the mowing as we did, yesterday. It has been raining on and off since last night, and today they are predicting thunderstorms, with possible hail and tornadoes (?!?!) this evening and overnight.

We may get high winds, but tornadoes are not an issue where we live. Water spouts on the lake, maybe, but these weather systems tend to move to the south of us. I checked the weather radar and it looks like we’ll probably get hit by the edges of the system. So I am expecting rain and high winds, but the main body of the system looked like it’ll hit the city. Which means my brother and sister’s places will likely get hit harder than us.

While doing my rounds this morning, I spotted a Rosencrantz.

We think she has a litter of kittens, somewhere, but so far have seen no sign of them. She comes here for food, then disappears.

I had both Creamsicle and Potato Beetle joining me this morning, but they were not happy with each other. Moments after I took this picture, Creamsicle attacked Potato Beetle! I actually had to break up the fight. :-(

I checked the gardens, and the sunflowers. There are now about 26 sunflowers sprouting, that I can see.

The one on the left is an Early Russian, the one on the right is Giganteus.

Then there is this one.

Deadeus.

Looks like something just bit the top off!

Back in the house, I had to help my daughter with the kittens.

They can climb to the top of the stairs, now, and they want out!

So we spent some time, distracting them.

Dave came down to babysit, while Beep Beep went upstairs. :-D

They really like the lilac branches, and my box of wood chips. This, it’s okay for them to get into. I have a separate, sealed, container for sawdust.

So it looks like today will be an inside day. Time to catch up on little projects I need to finish. Maybe even spend some time with the kitties, and practice carving on that spoon blank that came with the carving kit. :-)

And mabye playing a bit of Civ VI. I used to play Civ II, years ago, but didn’t like the newer ones. Loved Alpha Centauri. Then I moved on to Age of Empires, and others in the series. I stopped playing completely for a while, because the games user interfaces changed so much, I couldn’t figure out how to to the most basic things. The tutorials were no help at all. Civ VI became available for free recently, and I am finding it has become user friendly again, and actually fun to play. Perfect for a rainy day.

Well. Until it starts storming, and we shut all the electronics down! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Outer yard progress: more reclaimed

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My plans to continue mowing and, hopefully, reclaiming more overgrown areas nice and early got delayed a bit. We had an unusually heavy dew this morning, and cooler temperatures kept it from evaporating until well into the afternoon.

However, progress was made!

Remember this area?

I hiked up the lawnmower, and was able to clear the area all the way to the storage building around behind the pump shack that’s in the photo.

Eventually, I will continue on beyond this, making access to the back gate, but for today, I focused on the area around the maples.

The last time any of this area was NOT overgrown was when the renter’s cows discovered his electric fence wasn’t working, and broke through.

Two years ago.

By the time they finished grazing, the entire outer yard looked awesome! :-D

When I was a kid, the fence to the inner yard at this location was on the other side of the maple trees. There was a small gate near the pump shack, for when we went to get water for the house, or took baths with water heated on a wood burning cookstove that used to be in there. When the chain link fence was installed, it was done in a straight line, rather than turning a corner to include the trees.

I miss having a gate there!

I had to be really careful working through here. I’ve tried to keep up on removing any fallen branches over the past couple of years, but knew there had to be more, hidden in the tall grass. Plus, who knows what else would show up.

Like the lone brick I found, half buried in the dirt.

Thankfully, raising the lawnmower meant I didn’t hit many of the larger buried branches, like the one in the photo above, that I pulled out of the thatch.

It’s only a start. We’ll have to go through the area to clear out any other branches and whatnot that is still buried in there, prune back the trees (there is now lilac growing in the space we used to walk through to get to the pump shack), and get in there with a weed trimmer. Some of the trees have fence wire around them, though one of them is just a stump that has some suckers growing out of it. Since we don’t have to protect the trees from cows, I want to clear away the wire, and salvage it for something else.

I’ve been wanting to get into this area for the last two summers! It feels so good to finally start cleaning it up. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning critters; a bird attack?

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As usual, in my morning routine, I visited the kittens.

David dashed downstairs to visit them, too.

It’s so funny to watch how he interacts with them! The kittens are quite happy to include him in their play, while he seems torn between “I wanna play, too” and “stay away from me, you strange creatures.”

Speaking of strange creatures…

… Creamsicle was in fine form this morning! What a drama queen. :-D

After dropping my daughter off at work this morning, I decided to play a bit of Pokemon Go before heading home. I was parked by a gym and playing the game when I heard something hit the side of the van.

It was a goldfinch, at the middle window.

Now, my first thought was that the bird was disoriented by reflections in the window and accidentally flew into the glass.

But it stayed, fluttering away at the glass, making its way across to the front door’s window, and sat there, at the bottom of the glass, looking at me.

When it seemed to be staying there, I opened the camera on my phone. I thought I’d lost my moment when it seemed to be flying away, but nope.

It went to the front windshield and proceeded to try and peck its way in!

This went on for several minutes! I did try and get video, but my phone’s camera does not do zoom well, and the video was horribly pixelated.

I don’t know why the bird did this, but it certainly made my morning! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Reclaiming space

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Well, it’s a good thing I was planning on using the push mower more.

While using the riding mower in the inner yard today, I stopped at one point, to go over to talk to my daughter, who was using the push mower. When I returned to the riding mower, it started just fine, but wouldn’t move. !! There were no issues at all before. One minute, it was working fine. The next, no go. Forward or reverse.

Well, we were planning to take it in for Maintenance next month, anyhow…

After doing most of the inner yard, I switched to cutting the outer yard, as there was so much of it that hasn’t been done at all this year. I quickly stopped using the bag to collect grass clippings. It filled so quickly, and the mower just doesn’t like to restart very well.

That did mean I was able to reclaim more areas of the outer yard.

For the first time since we’ve moved here, I was able to clear the area in front of this old shed.

Do you see where the colour changes from nice and green, to more brown?

While the clippings blur the line a bit, there is a clear demarcation where the colour changes. The brown is where I had not been able to mow, until today. Where I’d been able to mow for the past couple of years, the grass is green, thick and healthy. Where I hadn’t been able to get in with the riding mower (and it’s so rough, I still won’t be able to use it there), the grass was choked out by its own thatch.

I’ve now been able to reclaim pretty much all of the outer yard on this side, and I’ve started to reclaim the area leading to the collapsing log house and chicken coop.

I feel like I should have been making hay! The grass was starting to go to seed.

I will work on this area tomorrow, weather willing. With the push mower, I’ll be able to reclaim even more of the outer yard, little by little. I’ll be mowing a path to the other gate, as before, but will have to be very careful as I go beyond what I’d been able to do with the riding mower. Who knows what is hiding in that tall grass! Rocks and rough ground is one thing, but there could be chunks of wood, metal and small kitchen appliances, for all we can tell.

Since I was walking back and forth so much, I took advantage of it and opened up Pokemon Go on my phone. There is a feature in the game where you have a “buddy” Pokemon that walks with you. While it is your buddy, the game records distance, even when the game is not active. After you walk a certain number of kilometers, your buddy “finds” a candy.

The buddy I have right now is a Meltan. While most buddies need to be walked for 2, 5 or 10 km before finding a candy, Meltan needs to be walked for 20km. Once a candy is found, the meter restarts for the next 20km.

Based on the distance measured in the game, I walked at least 12 km this afternoon. And that doesn’t count the distance this morning.

My phone came with one of those “health” apps that I can turn off, but can’t get rid of. These apps irritate me, since they all basically measure “health” as “lose weight”. It doesn’t matter how good your other health measures are, or how much exercise you get, if you haven’t lost weight, you’re a failure. It does, however, have a pedometer. I’m curious to know just how many kilometers I am actually walking while doing basic yard work.

The Re-Farmer

Morning smiles – and kisses!

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I had some extra company when I visited the kitties this morning.

Both Two Face and David came down with me. It’s the first time Two Face has been in the basement for a while.

She immediately began grooming kittens.

They, however, were far more interested in climbing me, and wrestling each other, on my knee!

So she started grooming Beep Beep, instead. :-D

Also, that’s all 5 kittens climbing one leg. Only Leyendecker kept climbing, so he could tackle my hair. The other 4 battled each other with kitten ferociousness, all at once, on my leg.

:-D

The last while, I haven’t seen the outside cats much while doing my rounds. With so many of the cats ending up indoors, I suspect they are going where there are more cats around outside.

This morning, Creamsicle came to join me, and boy, did he want attention!

He was very affectionate.

I got Creamsicle kisses! :-D

What a beauty he is!

Just look at those gorgeous eyes.

He even let me carry him around as I continued my rounds. He’s such a sweetie. We’re still hoping to adopt him, but once they get big, no one is interested in cats anymore. :-(

Today has turned out to be a much cooler day. Downright chilly, compared to the last few days! Perfect weather to work on the lawn. :-)

Time to get outside and make some noise! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Garden progress: finally!!

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Yes!!!

It’s finally done!

Everything we started from seed has finally been transplanted.

At least, everything that sprouted…

These are all the pellets that didn’t sprout. The tray in the background was the squashes tray. I’d say most of those empty pellets are the gourds. The ones in the foreground are mostly fennel, with maybe a cucamelon or two.

It’s entirely possible some might eventually sprout, so I’m just leaving them out.

Today, both my daughters were able to help, at the same time! Things went very fast with three people working at once.

The first thing we did was transplant the cucamelons in the chimney block retaining wall. It had been our intention to bring up the remaining blocks from the basement, to use as planters in another location, but there is no safe way to take them out. At least not while the kittens are downstairs. So we planted them here, instead. With the ornamental apple trees growing nearby, they won’t have the full sun they should be getting. There are 3 metal posts I couldn’t take out, when I removed the fence that used to be here, so we will use them to hold a trellis. Hopefully, that will help them get more sunlight as they grow bigger.

The few fennel that sprouted were planted in the soil beside the blocks. All 6 of them. They are so leggy, I don’t know that they’ll even survive, but we’ll see.

That done, we moved on to the squash garden.

We had exactly 11 transplants, so we marked a spot in the middle of the row, then measured and marked out every 2 feet in each direction.

In this photo, each has been transplanted into its “pot” of soil mix, and we were starting to add the mulch. These would mostly be the zucchini mix and pattypans (it’s all a surprise mix now, after the tray got knocked over!), but some of them are the birdhouse gourds. We’ll figure out which is which, as they grow! :-D

I had intended to build some rather heavy duty trellises for the squashes, but things aren’t quite working out to get that done, so I picked up some bamboo poles. We’ll use them and, if I can find some, some plastic mesh instead of the chicken wire. The wire, I want to reserve for when I finally do make something more heavy duty.

After we finished mulching and watering, I set out the poles.

I’ve mentioned a few times, how rocky this area is. Just pushing in those flags typically involves readjusting a few times, to get around rocks we hit, inches into the soil.

When pushing in the bamboo poles, I made a point of pushing the narrower ends into the ground, as they were more pointed. I had to make several attempts on pretty much every pole.

Including this one.

I still managed to hit a rock hard enough to break the end off the pole!

This is how it looks now.

It’s hard to say how many of the frost damaged squash will survive, but I still put poles in to trellis whatever makes it. We’ve got the mixed squash on the far right and far left, three pumpkin hills in the middle, and now a row of mixed squash and gourds along the back.

And it’s all done! No more planting!

While working in the area, we also took the time to water various things, including the gooseberry bushes.

Which are not gooseberry bushes.

While cleaning in the maple grove, two springs ago, I uncovered several gooseberry bushes. They were not doing well, with the lack of space and sunlight from all the overgrowth and closely planted, some dead or dying, trees.

Last year, they started to recover, but with the drought, there were almost no berries. Of the few there were, I noticed they were much smaller and darker than I expected, but with the drought, that was true of many of the berries we had.

It was when I was going through the Vesey’s catalog that I saw photos of gooseberries, right next to currants, and realized these might not be gooseberries at all. The leaves look much the same, but the berries are slightly different.

When I had the chance, I asked my mom if the gooseberry bushes really were gooseberries.

Nope. They weren’t.

So what are they?

She had no idea.

My sister had brought them and planted them, but my mother did not know what they were. Since she didn’t know what they were, she figured they were poisonous (as if my sister would give her poisonous berries for her garden???), so she’d never tried them. I happened to mentioned I’d eaten some of the very few berries we had last year, and she was all “oh… you’re okay, so I guess they’re safe.”

*facepalm*

So I think we actually have currants, not gooseberries.

This year, we’ve been better able to water them, and they are looking much better. There are lots of flowers, so I hope that means that, this year, we’ll have lots of fruit!

It had taken a lot of work, but we found quite a few fruit and berry bushes as we cleaned up many years of neglect. After a couple of years, now that these foundlings have space and sunlight again, they are all looking stronger and healthier. Hopefully, that will mean higher yields, to go along with our first attempt at gardening, since moving out here!

I’m looking forward to it. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Bonus smiles!

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Extra kitty pictures!

I popped into the basement for a moment, and just had to come back with a camera.

The kittens are now big enough to get onto the counters now!

Glancing at the drill press and seeing a kitten looking back at me was most adorable.

We will have to keep an eye out. As much as we tried to block things off, there’s still the possibility of a kitten falling behind a counter or something.

When I sat down, all 5 of them attacked me. For the most part, they were moving too fast for pictures, but I did get a couple of good ones!

Big Rig is a real beauty!

Nicco climbed right up into a sun spot again! ;-D

Also, by the time I left, my calves were bleeding, from having pairs of kittens wrestling on each one.

Leyendecker, on the other hand, went for my face.

And ears.

And hair.

And braid, collar of my shirt, my phone, my glasses…

He certainly made things challenging!

Later on, while on the way back from town, I was happy to see our giant furry neighbours near the fence.

Just look at the adorable “little” baby!

Such gorgeous animals!

Thankfully, today was finally another productive day, which I will post about next. I just wanted to share the adorableness with you, first!

:-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning smiles

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Here are some kitten antics to brighten your day! :-)

The ferocious beast likes to climb into the lilac branches. :-D

The like playing with the sun spots, too.

I let David come down with me, and he is very interested in his little doppelganger!

The other kittens and Beep Beep were just too fast moving for me to get any pictures of them. :-D

Outside, meanwhile, the some of the lilacs are reaching the height of their blooming period.

These ones are the first bloomers. The white lilacs and the double lilacs take a bit longer, then there are two other varieties that bloom in succession. So we have lilacs of one kind or another, blooming for quite a long time.

I really appreciate the things that make me smile. Particularly on mornings like today, when I check the trail cam and find our vandal has come for another visit. Twice in the past week, he’s come to the gate, only to make rude gestures down the driveway. Last Saturday, he walked over and stood there, giving the finger with both hands, in multiple directions. I think he spotted the trail cam, but I’m not sure. Either way, he was mugging for the camera. Last night, he drove over on his quad, pulled up alongside the gate to gesture down the driveway with one hand. Almost lost control of the quad. Pretty sure he was quite drunk, both times.

Rather pathetic, really.

Ah, well. At least he’s not trying to vandalize anything anymore.

The Re-Farmer

Babies of a different sort, and wasted day

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I just got back from a much needed walk outside, to do at least part of my evening rounds. I would happily have stayed out longer, but the mosquitoes were out in their masses, and I didn’t want to cover myself with bug spray, this late in the day.

While out, I checked on a different sort of babies we’ve got growing right now.

Baby grapes!

Our first summer here, I had no idea my mother had grapes. They were completely engulfed in spirea. They did produce some bunches of grapes, though, which was really awesome. They were pretty small, but quite delicious. :-)

I did a lot of clean up around there, including cutting away the spirea from the grape vines (there turned out to be 2 of them) the next spring, and making a trellis for them. After a very harsh winter, I wasn’t sure they had survived, but I fastened what I could to the trellis and was diligent about watering them.

They did survive, but there wasn’t a single grape.

We had some harsh conditions this past winter, too, and for a while, I wasn’t sure they’d made it through, but they are finally leafing out, and there are quite a lot of little grape clusters showing! Now that they are no longer being strangled by the spirea, I am hoping we will have nice big bunches of grapes.

It was cheering to see them, after a rather frustrating and unproductive day. I had two time dependent things on my schedule; one was an afternoon telephone doctor’s appointment. Nothing urgent; just some follow up questions. Once that was done, I was going to pick up the rest of my husband’s prescriptions, which needed to be done before the pharmacy closed, but otherwise was just slated for “the afternoon”.

I got a call from the pharmacy late in the morning. They didn’t have enough of one of the meds to fill all the bubble packs, but they would have more tomorrow. Did I want to just get a week’s worth today, or wait until tomorrow?

Thankfully, my husband has enough to last him the rest of the week, so I said I would come in tomorrow.

With the timing of things, I was never able to get outside to do the transplanting I had intended to in the morning, and by afternoon, it would have been too hot for the job, anyhow. I figured, since I no longer had to go into town, I could do it after the phone call.

The time came and went, and there was no call.

After about 45 minutes, I finally called the clinic myself. Was there a problem? Was I the one who was supposed to call? No, I was still scheduled, and the doctor would still call me.

So I waited. It meant I couldn’t start anything that couldn’t be stopped instantly, so nothing particularly useful could be started while I waited.

And waited.

Eventually, it got late enough that the clinic would have been closed, but I still waited a bit longer, in case he stayed late.

Nothing.

I can’t fault the doctor. He was the on call doctor, so for all I know, he ended up in the emergency or something. It still left me feeling like my entire day was wasted.

Here’s hoping I can get at least the transplants done tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Recommended: Dianxi Xiaoge

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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!

In the past, I’ve recommended a couple of Chinese YouTubers, Liziqi, which has been around for less than 3 years, and XiaoXi’s Culinary Idyll, which is only about a year old (at the time of this writing).

Today, I’m recommending a third Chinese YouTube channel I’ve been following; Dianxi Xiaoge. This channel, like the others, is a young one, and has been around for almost 2 years.

This channel has some similarities to the other two, in that it basically follows along as the host does various things. She does sometimes talk directly to the camera, but otherwise, there is only ambient conversation. The focus is on showing what and how she is doing various things, most involving the growing, harvesting, cooking and preserving of a wide variety of Yunnan food.

Dianxi Xiaoge’s videos do show a lot more other people, with various family members and others included.

There is another big star in these videos! Dawang the dog!

What a gorgeous, gorgeous animal!

While most of the videos are centered on food, there are a few exceptions, such as this video, on weaving a stool out of grass!

This one even includes text that explains what’s being done.

New videos are posted weekly, which is pretty impressive, considering the scope of some of them.

It must be so remarkable, to live in a place where such an astonishing variety of foods and spices grow.

It’s a bit of a thing to watch a pig’s head being used like that. When I was a kid, we sometimes had pigs. When we butchered them, we gave the head to the dogs.

Also, I totally intend make myself a cutting board out of a slab of tree, like the one she uses. :-D

As a resource, there really isn’t a lot we can recreate ourselves, but I still find them inspirational, and the videos get me thinking outside of what I’m used to. I’m fascinated by the tools that get used, whether it’s the big cleaver she uses for everything from chopping up bones one minute, to making delicate slices the next, or the specialty blades and tools used for harvesting various plants, fruits, roots and more, to the various crocks, pots, baskets and more.

I hope you enjoy these videos as much as I do!

The Re-Farmer