Author: Re-Farmer

Well, that didn’t work out the way we expected

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This afternoon, I headed out to drop our tax stuff off at the preparers, late enough that when I got back, I immediately started feeding the outside cats.

When I feed them in the mornings, I try to see into the cat house, but at that time of day, there is a lot of reflection. Plus, they get pretty dirty on the inside. Yesterday, I could see there was… something… in the cat bed next to the larger window. So while feeding the cats this afternoon, I made a point of trying to see what it was.

It was a dead kitten.

*sigh*

The cat house roof needs two people to open it, so once the cats finished eating the kibble on the roof, my daughter came out to help me open it. The counterweight is supported by two milk crates. The bottom one is embedded in ice, so we couldn’t move it. My daughter, however, was able to hold up the roof for me while I got the kitten out (there was just the one) and wrapped it in paper towel.

As I was going back and forth, however, I noticed Caramel in the larger cat bed on the bottom of the shelf shelter. I don’t usually see her there.

And was that a squeak I heard?

After we finished with the cat house roof and I set the little body in the branch pile for later cremation (the ground it still too frozen to bury anything), I went past the shelf shelter and heard it again.

Sure enough, Caramel had just given birth.

If you click through, you’ll see a brief video.

There was just one kitten, but she was clearly still in labour, so while my daughter went inside, I hung around. I did ask her to bring a cat bed from my room that the cats don’t like to use. I set it up in the cube of the cat cage next to Brussel – with her growling at me the whole time – but I wasn’t sure how that would work out. It is meant to be drawn closed at the top with a rope, but it always collapsed, so we folded the sides down to turn it into a big bowl. We used it with Decimus and her kittens that way, but that was when the cat cage was in my bedroom. In the sun room, it’s a lot more open. Plus, the sides tend to collapse. Still, I thought it was worth a try.

I kept checking on Caramel, and even tried to pet her. Much to my surprise, she not only let me pet her without trying to bite my hand, but when I moved away to switch hands or adjust my position, she actually reached out to grab my hand, trying to pull it back for more pets!

After a while, I figured it might be better to just try and take the entire bed, with mama and baby, into the cat cage. I took the other cat bed out and, with the help of a daughter tried to move the big cat bed with Caramel.

Caramel, of course, got off, but we put it with the baby into the cat cave. It started crying for Mom loudly, and it wasn’t long before Caramel started coming back into the sun room.

Then we heard a cat fight in the outer yard, so I went to check on that, while my daughter monitored things through the old kitchen door.

By the time I came back, Caramel was in the cat cage – and in the cat cave with Brussel! Caramel’s baby, however, was still in the other cube, on the cat bed.

So my daughter moved the baby over, and things became quiet again.

There’s no way this was going to work out, though. I was hoping Caramel would still use the other, larger cat bed. Especially since she was clearly still in labour. There just isn’t enough room in there for them.

Okay, as I was writing this, I had the live stream for the critter cam going and saw a couple of skunks. I went to chase them out, then checked on the mamas. I could only see Brussel and her babies. I could see no sign of Caramel and her baby.

Except…

I have the live stream up right now and Caramel is in the sun room. I see her milling about, eating a bit, milling around some more. Now I’m wondering if maybe her baby is still in there with Brussel, but I just couldn’t see?

Oh, Caramel just left the sun room. You’d think she’d be staying close to her own baby, and with how actively she was still milling around, I don’t think she’s still in labour.

I’m at a loss.

While all this was going on, I updated the Cat Lady. She was very apologetic. She’s been trying to get us in for spays and neuters for weeks. We’re not the only ones she’s helping, though, and donations only go so far. I told her about the dead kitten, too, which I’m pretty sure was a stillbirth. We have no way of knowing which cat that was from.

After much messaging back and forth with the Cat Lady, she now has us booked for next week. We’re shooting to bring in 3 pregnant females. It won’t be easy, but that’s the goal. She wants to get us for 2 more younger females and a male in May. I don’t know how she managed to get us in so quickly for 3 pregnant females!

She and I will also be meeting up tomorrow. She has some donations of canned cat food for us. That will be a big help!

In the middle of all this messaging back and forth, I finally was able to get to that drain pipe in the basement. I ran the big auger bit through and, while I did hit a spot where there was definitely something hard on the inside of the pipe, I was able to get past it easily. I was even able to get through the bend under the bathroom and push through quite a bit further. I did this several times. There wasn’t anywhere near as much gunk stuck to the auger parts as there was before.

I think it might actually be safe to hook up the washing machine drain again!

Once I got someone to run water to test for leaks and everything was cleaned up and put away, the only thing I wanted to do was take a shower!

I most definitely needed to use my husband’s bath chair, though. I even made sure to take pain killers before I started.

We can test the washing machine tomorrow.

I must say, nothing about today has been at all like I expected it to be! 😄

The Re-Farmer

Signs of spring, and an adorable girl

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While doing my morning rounds, I checked a few of our trees and bushes.

I’m happy to say, the silver buffaloberry is waking up!

There are lots of tiny little leaf buds showing.

I couldn’t see any fresh growth on the sea buckthorn, mulberry or Liberty apple tree, but they all seem to have survived the winter. There’s still too much snow covering the ground to know if the snow crocuses or grape hyacinth are starting to come up. The saffron crocuses seem to be okay – something was digging around them and in the mulch around the Liberty apply tree, and some of the saffron crocuses got buried. Whatever did the digging – likely a skunk – clearly wasn’t after the bulbs, but probably found some insects or grubs to snack on. I haven’t seen any sign of tulips, yet. This section is now free of snow, so we should be seeing them pop through the mulch soon enough.

There were plenty of hungry kitties when I did the morning feeding, and some of them were still hanging around, looking for pets, as I was heading back to the house.

Like this beautiful lady.

She really likes to lick my hands. The poor thing’s fur is so badly matted, and there are even burrs now stuck in her tail. At least she is socialized enough that, once things are warm enough, we should be able to use the new clippers to cut them off. Some of the other puffy cats, like Patience, are friendly, but getting any burrs or mats cut out might be too much for them.

Oh, dear. It just occurred to me.

I didn’t see Adam this morning. At all.

Which means she probably found some hiding place in the outer yard to have her litter. It would have been good if she’d used the sun room, but she doesn’t really go in there often at all. Even the cat house would have been good but, while there are cat beds at the windows in there, we had to take out the remains of boxes that had been in there, so there are no longer any more enclosed “nests” in that mamas have used in the past. Any time a cat has had a litter in there, though, they tended to disappear within days. I think it’s just too busy and active with other cats and they are quick to move their babies elsewhere.

If all goes well, I might be meeting up with the Cat Lady tomorrow. She has a whole bunch of wet cat food donations for us, and she said something about having more cat beds as well. We shall see. Tomorrow is looking to be a really nice day, too. Today’s high is supposed to be 8C/46F, but we’re supposed to reach highs of 16C/61F over the next two days! Even the overnight lows are supposed to stay above freezing for those two nights. We might be able to start removing the mulch from some of the winter sown beds, so the soil beneath can thaw out faster. If the long range forecast is to be trusted, we might even be able to sow cold tolerant things early. I’ll have to go through my bin of seeds for direct sowing and go through the most cold tolerant varieties to decide while ones can be planted first. At the very least, the peas will be able to go in, and we have two varieties of sugar snaps, and one variety of shelling peas we can plant as soon as the soil is workable. Those would be going into the main garden beds, though, and those are still covered in snow.

It’s slow going, but we’re getting there!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: tomato seeds potted up, melon seeds pre-germinating

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Okay, so working on that pipe is not going to happen today. Pain levels are on the upswing and I know if I try to work on it now, I’ll mess myself up for days.

So, instead, I worked on garden stuff!

The tomato seeds were all showing radicals, with some even starting to show seed leaves. It was time to get them into the seed starting mix.

The first image has the Black Beauty on the left, Spoon tomatoes on the right. Those Spoon tomatoes were really doing well! It’s hard to see, but all the Black Beauty seeds had radicals showing.

The next image has the Sub Arctic Plenty on the right. As a short season variety, it’s no surprise that they germinated so quickly. On the left are the Chocolate Cherry. I was a bit surprised that these were the slowest to germinate. I would have expected the Black Beauty to take the longest, considering they have the longest growing season needed.

I had to moisten more seed starter mix for this job, and I made sure to use hot water for that. By the time the cells were filled and the seeds were being transferred out of their trays, the damp mix was still warm. Warmer than the damp paper towels the seeds were on. Now they’re in the tray along with the Turkish Orange eggplant (there’s 6 visible seedlings there), the luffa (all three have finally emerged) and sweet bell pepper mix (no sign of any of those, yet). The bottom of the tray got warm water, too – I wanted to make sure those square peat pots had plenty of moisture to absorb, so they don’t try out the seed starting mix.

That done, I went through my next batch of seeds and decided to go for it with the melons. The White Scallop seeds were set aside for now, as they can wait until May to be done. I got the containers all prepped and labeled ahead of time, and even got some markers labeled for when it’s time to put them into seed starting mix.

For the watermelon, I used my older Cream of Saskatchewan and Kaho seeds. The Sarah’s Choice melon seeds are also older, but the Green Flesh Honeydew packet is new seeds.

Then there are the Zucca melons. Which are the giants. These seeds, which I made a point of scarifying by scraping their edges with a utility knife, are also older seeds, so I made a point of choosing the plumpest, most solid feeling seeds. Which could have been any of them, really. They were in quite good shape. I started 4 seeds. These are the ones that started out so well last year, only to be decimated by slugs, so any transplants we get out of these are going to require extra protection.

Four seeds each was what I was shooting for; we over did it with melons last year, and I want to cut back. With the Cream of Saskatchewan, there were only 5 seeds left in the pack, so I set them all out. With the Kaho watermelon, there were only 3 seeds left in the pack, so I guess that balances things out!

They all got covered with dampened paper towel, and are now set up on top of the aquarium light fixture. At this stage, they don’t really need light, but they do need warmth. I didn’t want to set up the other heat mat yet, and the light fixture is ever so slightly warm. Not as warm as a heat mat, but warm enough. Once they germinate and get transferred into trays, they’ll get a heat mat. It should be interesting to see how many germinate. Especially with the older seeds.

After this, the next things we might start indoors are some herbs and a few back-up White Scallop squash. Those can be started towards the end of April or beginning of May. I’m hoping we’ll be able to start using the portable greenhouse at around the same time. It really depends on those overnight temperatures inside the greenhouse, as we have no way to heat it. We won’t have the option to use the sun room this year, as the space is pretty much all set up for the cats now!

Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.

It felt good to be able to do some garden related stuff on such a dreary day.

The Re-Farmer

Squirmy grublings

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Brussel’s babies are getting a lot more mobile. I’m starting to regularly see them peaking out the cat cave opening.

Brussel, however, is not a happy camper.

I noticed as she went past me to return to her babies that there was a wad of fur hanging off her hip. It looks like a mat was coming off. After giving her some wet cat food, I tried petting her babies. They were okay with it, though Mama snarled. I then tried to touch her hip to feel what was going on. I couldn’t feel anything that could have been an injury, but she did NOT like being touched and all out attacked my hand. It makes me think that her undercoat is getting pretty matted, and she might be in pain from it. Unfortunately, she’s still too feral for us to be able to check her out or help her with it. I’d hoped, with her in the cat cave with her babies, and getting special food and treats, she would start to become more socialized but, in the last few days, she seems to be getting more snarly and agitated, not less.

Well, we do the best we can for her. It’s not like we have any other options right now!

The Re-Farmer

Rough night

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I tried to go to bed early last night.

The cats had other ideas.

So did my hips.

Ah, well.

This morning, I stayed in my pjs, popped on some rubber boots and did my short rounds. Which is just as well. It was snaining – snow-raining – at the time. You could even hear a continuous almost crackling noise as frozen rain hit. In fact, you can hear it in the video I took this morning.

It was -1C/30F, with a wind chill of -4C/25F at the time. The thermometer in the portable greenhouse was reading 1C/34F. Not a lot of difference.

The holes in the roof probably didn’t help.

Yup, I found a couple of tears in the plastic this morning. Best guess is, a cat tried to jump onto it from the kibble house roof.

Thankfully, there was no other damage. For now, I used clear duct tape to close them up from the inside. Once everything is warm and dry again, I’ll at more to the outside.

I had a lot of hungry cats this morning, including Brussel, but she was nursing her babies and wouldn’t leave the cat cave. She waited for me to deliver her wet cat food breakfast, instead. I’m glad of that, as it is more assurance that she and her kittens won’t simply disappear one morning, to some hidden location.

Last of all, I gave her a squeeze treat. It was harder than usual, as there were other cats around, and they can smell it. They want some, too, but we don’t have enough for all the cats. They’re just for the mama.

Once again, as I moved the tube away so I could squeeze the rest out, she got angry at me. She did wait, though, as I squeezed the last of it onto my finger and put my hand in. There was no hesitation as she licked the last of it off – but when I pulled my hand away, she attacked it, trying to pull it back!

Sorry, Mama. You ate it all up!

Once I was back inside, I headed to bed pretty much right away. This time, the cats let me sleep – as did the pain killers. Somewhat. I got at least a couple of hours of sleep out of it.

Meanwhile, my daughters got the drain from the washing machine set up out the storm door and started laundry day. Later on, I will be opening up the drain pipe in the basement and working to clear it out some more. We’ve done the hot water/detergent flush from the kitchen sink a few times, but I can still hear from the laundry drain, what sounds like water backing up the pipe a bit. Not a problem at all for the kitchen sink, but a potential problem for wash cycle draining, as it drains so much faster than the kitchen sink, and is at least 6 feet closer to that first bottleneck. As good as that drain auger tip is for clearing the pipe, what we really need is a heavy duty bottle brush type pipe cleaner that can really scrape off the inside of the pipe. I’ve been looking and the closest I can find is up to 30 feet long (you can add sections to it) and can be attached to a drill, but it’s designed to clean dryer vents, so the brush is a LOT larger than the inner diameter of the pipe I am trying to clean out. The bristles may be flexible enough to bend and fit, though. I’ve found another version that includes a narrower bottle brush end for the lint trap that looks like it would fit much better, but the rod is only a maximum of 2′ long, and costs almost a much as the 30′ version.

*sigh*

I hate having to shop for this stuff online. I’ve never even seen anything like these at the hardware stores. Perhaps, however, I was just not in the right sections. Something to keep an eye out for.

Meanwhile, we’ll try to clear the pipe out as best we can, with the tools we’ve got.

It’ll be so nice to not have to run a house out the storm door window to do laundry again.

The Re-Farmer

Slight change in plans…

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I got a phone call from home care this morning.

No one was available to go my mother’s med assist this morning.

Hmmm…

I was already planning to go to town today, but not for a few more hours. Instead, I arranged with the girls to take are of feeding and watering the cats outside, while I quickly took my meds, got dressed, grabbed our empty water jugs (the main reason I was going to town today) and headed out to my mothers. Since I had three water jugs to take along, my older daughter came down to help me with the doors before feeding the outside cats. She wasn’t impressed that I got another call to cover a no-show (nothing was said about why, this time, and I didn’t ask). She asked if the med assists were being done by volunteers, or if my mother was paying for the service. I told her, it’s covered by our health care system, so they are being paid. My mother has a list of names for all the home care aids she can expect to see. there are ten names on that list. It does seem odd that, with so many aids just for the scheduled route my mother is on (there would be many others), there isn’t someone who can cover when one can’t do the scheduled rounds.

Ah, well. It is what it is. At least the weather is better!

I did remember to phone my mother, first, to let her know I was on the way!

When I got there, my mother was not at all impressed. She’s angry that I have to drive aaaaall that way (it’s about 20-25 minutes of driving time, so not that bad) to do her meds. At least she didn’t start yelling about how we need to get rid of the lock box because she can do her meds herself.

She did, however, get upset over how I was taking the meds out of the bubble pack, and where the lock box was sitting, and where I put the note pad…

She began telling me how the home care aids would pop the pills out of the bubble packs “in the air” (meaning, not over the table, but right into their hands), and pills would go flying all over. Which may have happened a couple of times but, as far as I know, this was before she went to the hospital. It’s why I brought over the tiny dish so the meds could be put into it and double checked.

There was a different reason I was having issues with the bubble pack, though. I was opening the last bubble in this particular pack – and discovered it had been taped shut. I mentioned the tape and my mother said one of the aids did it because she had opened up the wrong day’s bubble.

I got the pills into the little bowl, then checked on the printout inside the cover of the bubble pack to count how many there supposed to be for her morning medications.

One was missing.

A few days ago, while digging for the lab work requisition form, I found a loose pill on the bottom of the lock box.

Now we know where it came from.

When the next aid came to do the med assist saw the pill and my note, she got a tiny envelope for it, labelled it and put it back in the lock box, so I was able to open that up and include it with the rest of the pills Mom was to take this morning.

I then made out a detailed note about when my mother got her medications, what I found and what I did, including putting a new bubble pack into the lock box.

My mother also has an inhaler to take morning and night and I asked her about it, but she said she hasn’t really been taking it. It was a test to see if it would help any with her breathing issues, and it made no difference that she could tell. So we skipped that.

Since I was there anyhow, I did some other stuff for her. The aids are supposed to have extra time booked to help my mother with things like a meal assist (she usually has food ready before they arrive). Some they ask if she needs anything done. Some of them never do. For her morning visit, this includes emptying the bucket in her commode, but they’re also supposed to be available to help her get dressed if she needs it.

I stayed with her to visit for a bit longer, basically waiting until the pharmacy in town opened at 9am, so I could phone them. When my mother started to complain again about my coming out – she is convinced the aids are cancelling simply because they don’t want to do their jobs – I told her that my being able to come out, and having a reliable vehicle to do it, is a blessing. That seemed to take her aback a bit, and I think she liked the idea of thinking of it that way.

After saying my goodbyes to my mother, I spent some time in the truck to update my family and my siblings before calling the pharmacy. With the meds my husband takes, I wasn’t sure they’d even be ready so quickly; he’d called in his refills just yesterday. As we were talking, she asked my time frame, so I told her where I was (which gave her an idea of how long it would take) and why. We deal with this particular pharmacist often enough that she remembers our names and most of my husband’s medications. When I mentioned that there was no one to do my mother’s med assist this morning, she completely understood. They had been in the same situation with her own mother – they even had a lock box. She said they often had home care cancelling visits for them, too. Being in another town, they had their own home care office and staff, but the issue was exactly the same. Last minute cancellations that the family had to cover, frequently. It seems to be a pretty universal problem, and not just in our province.

As for my husband’s refills, they wouldn’t be able to have them ready today, so that’s still scheduled for delivery in a couple of days. Which is fine. I still needed to make the drive to town. I just wasn’t going to go to the pharmacy as well.

Once in town, I got the water jugs refilled. I have a “frequent buyer” list where, after getting 10 refills, I get one free, so one of my refills was free today.

While there, I picked up a couple of things for home, as well as things for our Easter basket. I think we have everything we want to put in it, this year, except for a small ham, which we might simply skip this year.

That done, it was just a quick stop for fuel before heading home. After unloading the truck to my daughter in the house, I left her to put things away while I parked the truck and closed up the gate. I had noticed the plastic on the cover over the raised bed in the old kitchen garden had some gabs fluttering in the wind, so I got the clear duct tape to secure it more.

Before finishing up and heading inside, I spotted Brussel with her babies and decided to give her a squeeze treat. She was really nervous today, though.

I found myself wondering if other cats had been bothering her and her babies – or maybe a skunk or a raccoon! In the two videos above, you can see how agitated she was.

Once I started giving her the squeeze treat, she was right in there – still agitated and somewhat aggressive, but very quick to start eating the treat! When I had to move my hand out so I could use my other hand to squeeze out what was left in the tube, she actually snarled at me and attacked my hand, trying to pull it back! I ended up squeezing the remaining paste onto my fingers (it didn’t start out on purpose!) and let her lick the treat off. She was okay with that, even as she continued to snarl at me.

It should be interesting to see if she has calmed down any, when I do the evening feeding.

I’m glad I was able to go into town for errands today, though. As I write this, we’ve reached our expected high of 6C/43F We’re actually supposed to stay above freezing overnight, but in the wee hours, we’re supposed to start getting a combination of rain and snow, which is supposed to continue through tomorrow. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 2C/36F, but if the long range forecast is at all accurate, that’s going to be the coldest high we have from now on. We’re even expected to reach 15C/59F in a few days! Things are supposed to cool down again, and we’re even supposed to get more mixed rain and snow later in the month, but daytime highs are no longer expected to dip below freezing.

Not including wind chill. That’s a whole other animal!

I will continue to monitor the temperatures inside the greenhouse. While it gets colder overnight, it still maintains at least some warmth. I might decide to try starting seeds inside there, rather than in the basement, when it’s time to start the next batch.

As it is now, I am expecting to start potting up the pre-germinated tomato seeds tomorrow. I could do some tonight, but I want to be able to do all of them at once. Maybe not all 4 varieties, but at least all the seeds in a couple of varieties, just because of space issues.

With how chilly it is in the basement, they should handle the cooler night time temperatures in the greenhouse fairly well! My younger daughter has made a point of working on things while in the basement, so that the heater can be left running. She’d been down there for a couple of hours when I joined her for a bit, and the thermometer was still at 12C/54F. Meanwhile, the thermometer in the greenhouse was reading 19C/66F!

With the combination of rain and snow we’re getting tomorrow, I’m not going to uncover the raised bed but, by the day after, it should be thawed enough that we can take the mulch off the winter sown seeds.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what manages to germinate.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: we have light!

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Yes!

Finally, I have replacement bulbs for the aquarium light fixture that has a built in timer. The package came in today’s mail.

I was a little alarmed when I saw it, though.

In the first image of the slideshow above, you can see a very distinct bend in the packaging!

Thankfully, in the next two images, you can see that the bulbs were well protected. The angled packaging the bulbs were taped into is very solid. In fact, I will be keeping it, as it will probably come in handy for something!

In the next photo, you can see the bulbs next to the fixture laying upside down on the table.

Not that there is a cover over the bulbs.

That was my first problem.

When we got the fixture, years ago, and assembled it, we were never able to get that cover completely on, so about a quarter inch of it was sticking past the end of the fixture, which you can see in the next photo.

Not a lot to grab on to, but it shouldn’t have needed any at all.

After removing the legs at that end, I fought with that thing for at least half an hour. I ran a utility knife blade between the cover and the tracks. I used WD40. I even found an angled tool that I used to try and lever it from the far end. Nothing worked.

I figured if I had some pliers or something to grip the bit sticking out, that might help. After looking around the basement, I found our old pair of vice grips.

Perfect!

I just needed to close the jaws more and…

…

…close the jaws…

…

…turn the adjustment screw to close the jaws…

(apply WD40 liberally)

Just turn that adjustment screw…

Nothing. It would not move.

Well, I’ve got a handy vice at the table. I’ll just get the vice to hold the adjustment screw and I should be able to spin the vice grips to tighten and loosen the jaws.

Yes. I put vice grips into a vice.

I made that vice as tight as I could. Tight enough that it was actually starting to damage the grip texture on the adjustment screw. I still ended up spinning the screw in the vice instead of the screw itself moving.

Okay, that wasn’t going to happen.

Well, if I found something thick enough, I could put that with the bit of cover sticking out and grip both. It just needed to be at least thick enough for the vice grips to close onto it. Maybe some wadded up paper towel.

Nope.

I tried a piece of leftover wood that almost worked. It was thick enough, but too wide for the vice grips to reach the bit of cover I was trying to grab.

More searching around the basement.

I ended up finding a small scrap of wood in the garbage can I have just for wood, sawdust and other burnables. It was uneven on one side, but that didn’t matter as much. I was finally able to grip the edge of the cover and pull on it.

It took several tries, getting it to move, little by little, before it finally came loose, and I could pull it out without the vice grips.

Once it was clear, I wiped it down along the edges, partly to get the excess WD40 off, but also to wipe off whatever was making it stick. There really wasn’t anything, so I used a utility knife in the track it slid into, to scrap what anything that might have been in there. There were two spots, one on each side, that seems to have something stuck in the track. One spot seemed to be plastic; when we got the fixture, the cover had a protective layer of plastic on it, and not all of it seems to have come off. The spot on the other side might have had some plastic in it, too, but there may also have been some mineral build up from when this was set above the big aquarium. The hinges on the glass covered broke, which is why we got a fixture with legs at each end, in the first place. The other one sat right on top of the glass covers.

So, that was finally off and the tracks cleared up.

I did not put it back on again.

Okay! The bulbs are uncovered. I just needed to rotate the bulbs to removed them.

Just… rotate those bulbs.

Rotate.

Is there a trick to this?

They simply would not rotate, and there was very little room to work with.

Looking closely at the connectors, I could see some black plastic that appeared to be some sort of lock? But how would I move those so the bulbs could be rotated?

I never did find out.

While fiddling with them at one end, I ended up breaking off one half of the black plastic.

At which point, I was able to rotate the bulb. The other end rotated fine; the black plastic rotated with the bulb. Which didn’t happen at the end I was working on.

Okay, that’s out, time to try the second one.

Once again, it would NOT rotate – until half the black plastic piece broke off!

After that, it rotated just fine.

*sigh*

No matter. I could now install the new bulbs. They fit just fine, and even rotated fairly easily into position.

*sigh*

Then I plugged it in to test it out.

I even remembered to flip the fixture onto its side, so I wouldn’t blind myself.

It worked!!! Yay!

It only took me almost an hour to do something that should only have taken a few minutes!

That finally done, I got it set up. I decided to take the other fixture out completely, and that’s now stored under the work table. The light with the new bulbs was set up, with bricks removed to make it lower. The shelve section I’d brought out earlier was set up over the whole thing. The tray with the winter squash was moved off the heat mat and is now under the shop light. That allowed me to remove one of the heat mats and center the tray with the eggplant, peppers, luffa and pre-germinating tomato seeds onto the other heat mat.

You can sort of see the new set up in the last photo. Instagram wouldn’t show the whole image, so the new light fixture looks like another surface over the seed pots.

This light fixture does put off some heat. When we were still allowing the cats in the living room while we had seeds started, we would sometimes see Fenrir, in particular, sitting on the light fixture, keeping warm. It isn’t much, but that will provide at least a bit of warmth to the winter squash tray above.

I had the heater running the entire time I was working on this, and it didn’t seem to make much difference to the room at all.

So that turned out to be a much bigger job than expected, but we now have more light for the seedlings.

If it weren’t for the temperature down there, the basement would actually be an excellent place to set up a plant room. Ah, well. We make do with what we can!

Meanwhile, I peaked at the tomato seeds, and I think I could actually see radical emerging on a couple of them! I’ll check again tonight, before I shut the lights down. If I really was seeing radicals, that would sure have been fast – they were set out to germinate only yesterday!

Not too shabby, that’s for sure!

The Re-Farmer

For when it’s warmer…

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Today, my husband and I went on a very romantic anniversary trip to the lab for bloodwork, followed by a breakfast date. 😂

It was supposed to be a lunch date, but we were done too quickly, and the place we went to only had a breakfast menu. Ah, well. It was accessible, in budget, and my husband got to enjoy a rare time out of the house.

We were done early enough to stop at the post office before it closed for several hours over lunch. I knew the bulbs for my aquarium/grow light fixture would be in, but it turned out we had another package in early.

Part of it was more reflective cat collars (I’ve already removed all the bells) with breakaway collars for the fixed outside cats. We still have lots, but some of the cats have been losing theirs. While we’ve sometimes been able to find them again, undamaged, we’ve had to replace others completely. I want to have plenty available to use as we get more of the cats spayed and neutered.

The other part of the package was this.

I’ve had this brand of cat trimmer recommended to me, as something that is very quiet, so the noise doesn’t scare the cats. It was also highly rated on Amazon. Plus, it’s cordless. When it came on sale, I was finally able to pick it up.

The cat graphics on the packaging are rather terrifying, though. Yikes!

If you scroll through the images, you’ll see the contents. It’s got quite a range of clipper guards.

For our uses, though, we will probably have no guard at all, or the shortest one. This is to get rid of mats in the fur of some of our long haired cats. David, for example, will NOT let us brush him. We have mat cutting combs and have managed to pin him down at times to get some of the mats out, but with some of them, there’s just no way to hold him down in a position to reach and comb out the mats without hurting him. If we’re just trimming the fur right off, though, we’ll be able to get them.

So David in particular is slated for a hair cut!

Kohl, the lovely little long haired calico outside, has developed some serious mats. Her back feels some solid. When we brought Decimus in, she was badly matted, too, and we don’t want Kohl to get as bad as Decimus did! We had to snip so very carefully to get a huge mat off, and it wasn’t even the only one.

Other cats have smaller mats that we can tell, but they’re not as socialized as Kohl is. I’m hoping that, with some of the, at least, we’ll be able to quickly trim off mats as we are able. They might wind up looking very blotchy, but that’s better than having mats in their fur, pulling at their skin.

There’s no chance of doing this until things get – and stay – warmer, though! Especially overnight, when it comes to the outside cats.

For now, though, we’ve got the clipper on its charger, so it’ll be ready for when we finally get to try it out on David. Hopefully, it will work out!

The Re-Farmer

Wow

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Dude… take a chill pill.

I just found this in my notifications.

insightfultenderly49ada0b8ed
7h ago
I have tried every possible way to stop your emails.  REMOVE ME FROM
YOUR LIST. UNSUBSCRIBING DOES NOT WORK.  How long do you sit on your
butt and write about your AMAZING crazy world.

Well, to however this is, I don’t have a “list”. People subscribe themselves. I don’t add anyone to my subscriber’s list. I didn’t even know you could do that. If you were getting notifications from this blog, it’s because YOU subscribed yourself. I even checked, and you’re not an email subscriber anyhow, so I’ve got no clue why you’re getting emails from this blog. I don’t send them. WordPress does.

Any problems with trying to unsubscribe is a WordPress issue, so being a jerk about it to me isn’t accomplishing much, other than getting you a place on the Wall of Shame.

Congratulations.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: pre-germinating tomatoes and monitoring temperatures

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So… this is me, taking a day of rest.

I started tomato seeds pre-germinating.

What I was really wanting to do what get the heater going in the basement for a while, and heaters aren’t supposed to be left unattended. I’m not one to just hand around watching videos on my phone, my hands are too messed up to do my usual things, like crochet, and my eyes are too messed up to read, so…

Tomatoes it is!

Towards the end of the video, I included pictures I took of the thermometer in the portable greenhouse today. I was really impressed!

While I was starting my morning rounds, it was about -6C/21F shortly after 8:30am outside. At that time of day, it is just starting to get out of the morning shade. The thermometer inside was about -2C/28F or so.

When I checked again before going inside, shortly before 9am, the outside temperature was much the same, but the thermometer had already warmed up 4 degrees to 2C/39F.

I came out in in the afternoon and, at roughly 1:15pm, it was about 27C/81F in there. By about 4:10pm, it had warmed up to about 38C/100F in there! At least, that’s what the thermometer read. It didn’t feel anywhere near that hot to me.

This would be a good place for a high/low thermometer!

On a completely different topic, I have potential good news.

I was able to get some photos and short video of Brussel and her babies that I sent to the cat lady, joking that if she sent them to her circle, maybe someone might be interested in adopting a kitten in 6 or 7 weeks.

Much to my shock, she responded almost right away, saying someone was interested in the little calico!

I won’t be holding my breath on that, considering how many times people have backed out at the last minute, but gosh, it would be awesome if the babies could be adopted out right away! There is some progress in socializing Brussel, too – I was actually able to sneak a pet as she was walking past me and she actually stopped and let me pet her more!

In other cat news, there’s potential good news about Button. The Cat Lady and her family have adopted him permanently and, while he started growing again and is at normal size now, after being treated for worms three times (!!!), he also became both blind and deaf. His eyes were permanently dilated. Well, they’ve taken him to a cat eye specialist, and they think it might be a hereditary type of glaucoma. He’s now getting treatment for it. She sent me a photo, and his pupils are almost normal again – you can see his electric blue irises again. It would be nice if he could regain at least some of his vision!

All in all, it’s been a very good day. 😊

The Re-Farmer