Author: Re-Farmer

Update, up and broken things

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First, an update on the kitties!

Beep Beep came half out of her baby nest to have a bit of food while I was there, with the babies peacefully snoozing in a pile. I was even able to get a picture, despite her best efforts to use her butt to block my attempts. :-D

She was more co-operative later.

That is one happy, contented bunch of wormies!

Beep Beep looks ticked off at the flash. :-D

While I was outside, doing my rounds, Butterscotch and her boys followed me around.

Creamsicle really, really wanted up – and not just with me!

He does love climbing things!

Including my leg. :-D

Potato Beetle was more polite about it.

Just look at that face!

He has a terrible habit of running in front of us as we are walking, then flopping down on the ground, right in front of our feet. It can be very hard not to step on or trip over him! :-D

He likes to go up on the roof and watch the girls through the upstairs window. I’m told he even falls asleep with his forehead against the glass! :-D He is such an affectionate boy. :-)

Butterscotch not only let me pet her this morning, but even let me pick her up, if only briefly. This let me get a quick feel of her belly. The one teat that was very swollen yesterday is still swollen, but already getting softer. This is good, since her not suckling could potentially lead to mastitis.

Before heading outside this morning, I checked on the seeds I’d started earlier, and found there are some seedlings sprouted among the fennel, so I took the dome off the tray. They are already really leggy. I need to get them set up in the sun room soon. The main concern I have for there is how much the temperatures drop during the night. We can’t get a good sense of that with the doors propped open all the time, so I was going to close the outer door, leaving the inner door with its much smaller window, open. We could then keep an eye on the temperature through the bathroom window, throughout the day.

Unfortunately, the door can’t close.

Even when we first moved here, this door was difficult to close. I had to lift it and basically force it shut. Now, not even that works.

Not that it matters anymore. We need to replace the door.

A part of the door’s edge appears to have changed shape and just hits the frame. That’s the part that prevents the door from closing. If this had been the only issue, I could just use one of the planes we found in the basement and shave it down. However, as you can see in the photo, the door itself is coming apart at the bottom, and the window is no longer attached along one side. The caulking is old, brittle and has been breaking off all long that side.

Theoretically, I could take the door off its hinges and repair all of this, but it’s really not worth the effort. I’m pretty sure this is a standard sized door, and we should be able to switch it out with one of the doors we’ve found in a shed.

It’ll be worth a try, at least.

If that doesn’t work… we’ll have to figure something out, or I won’t be able to use the sun room as a greenhouse. I need to be able to protect the trays from the cats.

So that’s something I hope to get done this afternoon.

Wish me luck! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Furry worms

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I just can’t help it. I have to share!

Just look at that pile of furry, squirmy wormies!

Beep Beep came out for some pets while my daughter and I checked on her and her babies. While my daughter kept mama distracted, I was able to sneak a quick shot of the babies. :-)

We saw Butterscotch on the way back from the van, and she let me pet her. I tried to feel around her belly, and could feel one swollen teat. Just one. I don’t know if she moved away because it was painful, or because she just didn’t want that much attention, but I couldn’t get more than a quick brush of her belly. She still has no interest in coming inside to suckle her baby, which is just as well, I suppose.

Beep Beep, on the other hand, is quite loving the extra attention she has been getting. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Lilac wood

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A storm last year damaged a lot of trees and bushes around the yard, including breaking off a large piece of a double lilac my mother planted in the little garden by the old kitchen. Noticing the beautiful pattern in the wood, I set the pieces aside for later.

Today was “later.” :-D

I brought one of the branches into the basement to work on it (I am really enjoying having this work space!!!) and started by cutting various sections off, then working on the thickest “trunk” part of it.

What striking colours!

The photo on the left is the base, where it had broken off in the storm, and I had cut off the split part. The one on the right is where I’d cut a pair of branches off.

That’s the end I decided to cut a couple of slices off.

With Beep Beep and the kittens nearby, I didn’t want to use any power tools, even though I now have a Dremel with steel cutting blades that would be perfect for the job. It’s way too loud.

Lilac wood, I am discovering, is a surprisingly hard wood! It may have been quieter, but it was a lot longer to do it by hand.

Since I’m just experimenting right now, I only cut two slices, then used a brush on the edges to take off any dirt or loose bits of bark.

Then I sanded them smooth. Here’s how they looked, after I finished with the finest grit of sandpaper I have.

Then I applied a light coat of mineral oil.

I am really happy with how these look! Those purple rings are really something.

The next question is, what do I make with them?

The Re-Farmer

Good news so far!

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I am happy to say that Butterscotch’s remaining kitten is doing very well with her adoptive mom.

I wasn’t able to get a photo today (I didn’t want to bug Beep Beep too much), so this is one I got last night. Butterscotch’s baby is the second from the left, happily nursing.

On the one hand, this is very encouraging. They are lively little squirmy worms. I even had quite a surprise when checking on them this morning. That kitten on the far left? I could see its face peeking out from under Beep Beep’s arm, when suddenly it blinked at me. It’s eyes are starting to open already!! Just barely – if it hadn’t blinked, I wouldn’t have noticed.

On the other hand, it’s kinda depressing, as it likely means Butterscotch really did smother her own kitten yesterday. :-(

As for Butterscotch, when I headed out to feed the critters and do my rounds, she was already meowing outside the sun room door (there are no longer any food and water bowls in the sun room. She also joined me and her boys while I continued my rounds.

While she was willing to rub against my legs, she didn’t really want me to pet her, and certainly didn’t want to be picked up. She has shown zero interest in going back into the house.

I think putting her baby with Beep Beep, and putting Butterscotch back outside, was the right call. :-(

Today turned out to be a day of driving. After dropping my daughter off at work, I headed home just to load the van up with stuff for the dump. We finally included the containers of mystery liquid we found while cleaning the basement. Unfortunately, I think one of them leaked. I ended up having to do the drive with the window open, because of the smell, which persisted, even after I unloaded.

When I dropped my daughter off, I offered to come back for her lunch break. With their lunch room closed off because of the physical distancing requirements, she had her lunch outside again. Yesterday was a lovely day, though, right?

In town, it rained.

My daughter had deferred, since I would be making and extra trip, but I decided to go, anyhow. The problem was, I didn’t know when she was going for lunch. After heating up some leftovers for my own lunch, I asked my other daughter if she knew, and the best she could figure was 11:30. So I figured I would leave at 11 and just meet her.

Then I checked the time and realized it was 10:59. LOL

So I packed my lunch up and headed into town.

Driving with the windows partly open, because of the smell from whatever leaked in the back. :-(

Once in town, I just parked near the pharmacy and had my lunch while I waited. I couldn’t see through the reflective glass, but it turned out my daughter had door duty again (apparently, she has a calming affect on people who might otherwise be upset over having to wait to be let in), so she could see me. While in the van, I realized I should have taken some antihistamines before I left. I have no idea what I’ve developed an allergy to, but it seems to be something that’s only around outside in the early mornings. So I went in to pick some up and got to talk to my daughter. She didn’t know when she was going to be getting her lunch.

It ended up at 1.

I didn’t mind the wait. It meant I could play some Pokemon Go during Community Day. I was also able to pick up some lunch for my daughter, so she just needed to join me in the van. We were able to head over to a park and play Pokemon Go together while she ate. :-D

Normally, I would have just staying in town after she went back to work, rather than drive all the way home and back again. Unfortunately, with so many places closed, there is a lack of open public washrooms, nor places to just sit and enjoy a beverage out of the weather.

Which means I’ll be heading back into town again, fairly soon, to pick up my daughter.

This did allow me to start on a project I had in mind, as an excuse to be in the basement with Beep Beep. It turned out rather well, and I will be sharing about that in another post.

While I was working, Beep Beep came out a couple of times to eat and drink, but otherwise stayed in her nest with the babies.

She is such a good mama.

The Re-Farmer

Another one gone. :-(

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So… we seem to have a problem.

Butterscotch’s third orange kitten died today.

I checked on them this morning. Beep Beep’s kittens were sleeping in a pile, and she had even come to the stairs to greet me when I came down, before dashing back into her nest.

Butterscotch was in her nest, sitting like a loaf. I couldn’t see her kittens, so I felt around and found them. They complained a bit at being disturbed, and I was a bit concerned that they seemed to be under Butterscotch. Once they started complaining, she lay back and nursed them, and all seemed well.

One of my daughters had a shift today (one extra day this month, then nothing but Saturdays on the new schedule), and while I was in town, my other daughter checked on the kittens. They were all looking fine. She did have to dig the orange one out from under Butterscotch, so she continued to check throughout the afternoon, and again when I went back to town to pick up her sister.

Which is when she found the orange one, unresponsive.

At that point, she took the grey and white one and put it with Beep Beep, who had no problem nursing an extra baby.

I checked again when I got home, and there was no question. The kitten was gone.

We’re now left with a couple of possibilities.

Either these babies all had some sort of birth defect, and we’ll have to watch the last one carefully. Or Butterscotch smothered her own kitten.

The box we’d made a nest in that Beep Beep was using was starting to get kinda damp, so I ended up moving her and the babies into the crate that Butterscotch was using, and made up a new bed in an old laundry basket. It is too open for the moms’ preferences, though, and Butterscotch ended up trying to climb into the crate with Beep Beep and the babies.

She is now outside.

I noticed as I picked her up, she did not seem to be full of milk, either. When I had picked up Beep Beep, I could feel she was quite full of milk. This could be another part of the problem.

We will have to make a point of checking on Beep Beep and the babies often. The last I saw, all five kittens were nursing and wriggling around.

Hopefully, there will be no more losses.

The Re-Farmer

Starting more seeds

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My goals for the day changed significantly, with our sad dealings with kittens, but I did manage to accomplish one main thing on my to-do list.

I got the second round of seeds started, with the hopeful expectation of transplanting 3 weeks from now. Weather willing.

I was surprised by how many gourd seeds there were in the packet. I figured I wouldn’t plant all of them, though. Even just 5 plants would be enough for starting out the things I have in mind for them.

It… almost worked out that way.

The bent straws show there the different seed types are. The squash packet with the most seeds were the sunburst squash, which are planted on the left. In the centre are the summer surprise mix. I had somehow expected more of those, but that will still be lots for our needs.

Then I just finished off the tray with the birdhouse gourd seeds. I ended up with only 2 seeds left unplanted!

This is a LOT of squash to be planting. We’ll see how many germinate, and how many survive transplanting. Conditions are not exactly ideal here, and I just sort of assume we’ll have losses. If not…

I’m going to have to find lots of ways to preserve summer squash! :-D

As for the birdhouse gourds, this is something that we can’t even use for a year. The gourds need that time to dry out before they can be scrubbed, sanitized (everything I’ve read mentions having to clean mold off the gourds first) and be ready for various projects.

Between the gourds and the giant sunflower heads we’re planting for bird seed, we’re going to have to find a lot of space to store these over the winter!

With the mama cats indoors, I am thinking that, over the next few days, I should move the cat bowls out of the sun room, then move the mini-greenhouse and the planting trays into there. With the doors fully closed, it will be much warmer in there, plus they will get more like 8 or 9 hours of direct sunlight, compared to the 4 hours in the morning they get in the living room. Plus, it’ll be easier to harden them off from there.

This is all new stuff for me so, at this point, I’ll be happy with a 50% success rate! :-D

The Re-Farmer

More sad news

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My daughters and I went into the basement maternity ward to set up a new “nest” for Butterscotch and her babies, and block off the old radio so she wouldn’t go in there again.

As we took her babies out, however, we found another of her orange babies was struggling.

We spend the next while tending to it, and it did seem to be getting stronger again. Butterscotch is not particularly maternal, so we even tried to put it with Beep Beep. Eventually, it seemed strong enough to possible latch on and nurse, and I put it back with Butterscotch, as close to a nip as I could get it.

Even in this photo, you can see that it’s smaller than its siblings.

Sadly, after about an hour or more, the little guy passed away.

It’s hard to know what happened, since we were unable to monitor Butterscotch’s kittens as well as Beep Beep’s. Both kittens that passed were noticeably smaller than the remaining two, both of whom are strong, active, vocal and nursing enthusiastically. Both of the ones that passed also had irritated and messy rear ends. Given that they are only a few days old, I would guess that they had not been strong from the start.

If we had not been able to bring the mamas indoors to have their babies, we would never have known how many they’d had to start with. A sad downside to bringing them indoors is being there when there are losses.

The old radio is now stuffed with packing material and blocked off, so Butterscotch can’t move her babies into there again. We tried to make her new nest as cave-like as we could, so I hope she won’t feel the need to try.

Thankfully, the other kittens all look healthy, are nursing well, and becoming more active already.

With Butterscotch and her babies now right next to Beep Beep, Beep Beep has been showing an interest in her babies, too!

The Re-Farmer

Sad news

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It is already turning out to be a very warm day today. We’re supposed to hit a high of 15C/59F this afternoon!

While doing my rounds this morning, I had a Potato demanding cuddles the whole time. :-)

It was warm enough that I went to try and move the saw horses by the storage shed. The ground was thawed enough that I got one of them loose, but the other turned out to be in worse condition than I expected. Instead of breaking loose from the ground, it just broke. !!

Of course, I checked on the babies before heading out this morning.

Beep Beep and her brood are easier to check. They are even right in a sun spot, in the morning. :-)

Butterscotch’s babies are harder to check on, since she tends to block the opening with her own head. I’ve been using the camera on my phone to try and see the babies.

Which is the only reason I was able to see a problem this morning.

In the photo, I could see one of her babies was pushed off to the side. I’d noticed this same kitten had been pushed off to the side yesterday, and had brought it closer to mom, but when I saw it this morning, I knew it was gone. Judging from the state of its hind end, something had gone wrong with it. My guess is, Butterscotch sensed it was not doing well and had been pushing it away from her healthy babies. It may well have been weak from the start.

My daughter and I have been talking about how we can set Butterscotch and her remaining babies up in a new nest, and block the inside of the old radio off completely. It’s just too difficult to see them in there. It’s unlikely it would have made a difference, to be honest, but at least we’d be able to check on them more easily.

A sad way to start the morning. :-(

The Re-Farmer

Spring clean up started

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I finally got to get outside and start doing some dedicated clean up around the house.

But first, I must share this adorableness.

Two Face is getting all of the love from her siblings as she recovers from her visit to the vet.

Speaking of visits to the vet, we discovered our inside mama cat has been throwing up, so we are stopping the pain killers the vet gave us to try with her.

Dang.

My goal for outside had originally been to go around with a wheelbarrow and pick up all the little branches scattered all over the yard over the winter. Once out there, however, I changed tack completely. Instead, I removed all of the rigid insulation we put around the bottom of the house for the winter, removed the straw from over the septic tank area, and cleaned things up around the house.

When our septic failed earlier in the year, and we had to get the tank emptied, I had moved the straw covering the lid over to the side, on top of snow and other straw. As I cleaned away the straw, I uncovered a snow drift! :-D

That’s okay. The straw got moved over to the old kitchen garden, and the straw that was stuck in clumps of snow and ice will just add moisture to the garden. Plus, some of it was already starting to decompose quite nicely. Bonus! :-)

This is all just the straw that was covering the septic tank area. Later, I plan to cover the rest of this little garden with more straw from the bale we still have in the old big garden area.

The sheets of insulation around this side of the house were held in place with whatever was handy. Bricks, chimney inserts that will never be used (now that is an electric furnace) and little benches we found while cleaning up in the maple grove. They all fit quite nicely together to make a little seating area. :-)

In the future, we plan to make a path along the house, and a small garden of shade tolerant plants in this area.

On the topic of planting things, I was able to cover a future planting area with black tarp this morning.

The ground here is soft enough that I could actually use tent pegs to secure the corners. Unlike pretty much everywhere else, which is still frozen hard.

One of the things I want to do in this area as soon as the ground is thawed enough, is dig through it a bit more to make sure I’ve cleared out as many roots as I can. There were so many cherry roots running through there, it’s very likely we’ll end up with some trying to grow through our plantings, if I’ve missed any! Of course, we’ll have to be on the look out for any rusted nails and whatever else may have been missed when we cleaned this area out.

Also, the Potato Beetle decided to be part of my “found object” display. :-D

Him and his filthy, filthy nose! :-D

My other goal of the day was to start some seeds, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. It’s time for me to pain killer up again and take it easy, so that I’m not too wiped out to continue tomorrow.

Ah, the things you need to think about when you’re broken. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Recommended: The Curd Nerd, Gavin Webber

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Welcome to my “Recommended” series of posts. These will be weekly – for now – posts about resources 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!

When I was a kid, I was pretty indifferent to cheese. For commercial cheese, we got your basic cheddar, processed cheese slices, and I even remember the odd block of Velveeta (yeah, I know…). I honestly don’t think there was much else available. Some Mozzarella, cream cheese, marble cheese and grated Parmesan in a shaker. The odd triangle of expensive blue cheese. Our choices were limited.

Even as an adult, there really wasn’t a lot of variety available. I liked cheese, certainly, but it wasn’t really a thing for me. The one major discovery for me was commercial cottage cheese. My mother made cottage cheese, and I really didn’t like it. I recently asked her how she made it, since I only remembered bits and pieces, and it was far more convoluted than I expected. It took two days, and included the addition of baking soda, but no cream.

The end product was very, very dry.

It was, of course, used as a filling in pierogi. I loved my mother’s potato pierogi, but never liked the ones with cottage cheese or sauerkraut stuffings. So very un-Polish of me. :-D

Then one day, I tried commercial cottage cheese and realized that yeah, that stuff is actually good!

Over the years, I regularly bought cheddar, but every now and then I’d get adventurous and try some Havarty or Montery Jack. Discovering Brie was an eye opening experience for me. I’d never had anything like it before, and it’s still one of my favourite cheeses.

Then, a few years back, one of our local grocery stores added a new cheese section.

You know you’re getting old when something like that is exciting. :-D

Suddenly, there was the wild and crazy selection of cheeses available, at pretty much every major grocery store. Then we found a local chain that specialized in European imports, baked their own bread in wood fired ovens, and had a deli consistently rated as the best in the city, year after year. It was thanks to this store that I discovered charcuterie platters, which became a much enjoyed treat, any time we could. We began to try new cheeses every time we could squeeze it into the budget.

I’ve long been interested in making as many things myself as I could, including making yogurt and yogurt cheese.

I definitely was interested in making other cheeses, and never really thought I could do more than make something like mozzarella or ricotta – cheeses that don’t require any aging. Then we moved provinces, and I discovered that apparently, cheeses just aren’t as popular out here. The specialty cheese sections in grocery stores don’t have anywhere near the variety, even in the city, that we’d become used to. But, what are we to do? It’s not like we could make any of these, ourselves, right? I mean, it’s not like we had access to raw milk in the first place, never mind the equipment, space, access to cultures and so on. I knew people who did make cheeses like Gouda at home, but they were farmers with cows or goats they were milking.

Then I stumbled upon The Curd Nerd, Gavin Webber, and his YouTube channel.

Talk about inspiring!!

Gavin Webber is an Australian who has been doing cheese making tutorials and “Ask the Cheesemaker” live streams and podcasts since late 2009. You’ll find videos on the making of MANY different types of cheese, followed up later with taste tests. He talks about what equipment is needed (much less than I expected), how to sanitize them, how to age cheese in a fridge, how to wax cheeses, and more. All done in his own home.

He even talks about the failures.

There are even videos on how to clean your cheese cloth, and other topics, like making mead, and the construction of his cob oven.

It was these next two videos – especially the taste testing one – that won me over.

We need to start making our own cheese.

I just love how enthusiastic and excited he gets about cheese!!! Oh, how I want to be tasting those cheeses with him!

Inspiring indeed!

I now feel we actually can start making a wide variety of cheeses at home. We are looking to convert the old root cellar into a cheese cave, but even if it turns out to not have the conditions needed, I now know we can work around that and still be able to make our own ages cheeses – in varieties that are not available locally, or well beyond our budget to indulge in.

After finding this channel, I’m downright excited about the possibilities.

Who knows. I might even become a Curd Nerd myself!

The Re-Farmer