While putting the kibble out this morning, Rosencrantz was actually letting me pet her, and not attacking me at the same time. I think that made a big difference, because this little guy seemed more relaxed beside her.
What a little cutie! He (she?) even let me pet him when he wasn’t eating. Not only that, but his tortie sibling came closer than ever before, without running away. Not close enough to touch, but still progress.
This entire litter is getting more exploratory and bold. I’m seeing them at the kibble house, and even inside the cat shelter. I think the pump shack kittens are starting to come closer to the house, too, but they run off so fast, I can’t tell for sure.
We still don’t know how many yard cats we now have in total! 😁
My original plan for the day had been to go into the city for our second stock up trip, but that just didn’t happen. Not only was I very tired from being up so late making and canning the tomato paste, I was in a load of pain. Arthritis sucks at the best of times, but everything else was hurting, too!
By the afternoon, I was feeling a bit better, so I went outside to do some clean up. I figured I would give the water bowl shelter a quick scrub down, and tomorrow we could start painting it.
Ha!
That worked out well enough until I went to flip it upside down to scrub the bottom.
The first time I flipped it on its roof, two floor boards fell off.
Most of the boards are nailed in place, but this salvaged wood is pretty warped and starting to dry rot, so they don’t hold well. I did have 1 3/4 inch screws in a few of them, and those ones held, so I flipped it back again, nailed the boards that fell off back in place, then added some screws.
Then I flipped it upside down, and a different board fell off. And that one did have screws already!
I fixed that and added more screws, flipped it back and…
That board has several screws in it, and it still fell off. It’s basically too warped for the screws to hold. I need longer screws, but the next size up I’ve got are 3 inch screws, and those are just too long. Especially since I’m doing this by hand.
So tomorrow, I’ll pick up some 2 inch wood screws and get those back on. It only has to hold long enough for us to paint it. After that, it won’t matter.
I let the girls know the status of things, including that I was unable to scrub the inside back wall, because I couldn’t reach it, then moved on to something else.
I did some chop and drop around the haskap berries, now that my mother’s flowers are past their prime. I’ve never bothered to do this before, leaving the stems to clean up in the spring, but this year they got SO tall, the completely covered the haskap berries. So now they will be a mulch, and the haskap are finally getting some sunlight.
I had lots of company while I worked.
I like this baby. He spends most of his time just hanging out nearby.
We had haskap
We had no berries at all this year. The male plant bloomed, but I never saw flowers on the females. Hopefully, next year will be better, but I think I just need to move these to a better location.
While I was working on that, one of my daughters came out and worked on the water bowl shelter.
She tacked the floorboard back on, crawled in and got that back wall scrubbed.
If we’d had the paint earlier, we would have scrubbed and painted all the parts and pieces first. That would have made things much easier!
Ah, well. We’ll manage.
That tuxedo really likes the water bowl shelter. He’s always hanging around in or under it!
Once the shelter is dry, it’s going to need another brush down to get the stuff currently stuck in place because it’s damp. With the condition of the wood, we don’t want to use a hose on it any more than we absolutely have to. It’ll be good to finally have it painted and set up in its spot by the kibble house and cat shelter. We’ll be creating a sort of U shape with them, which should help reduce drifting, too.
Y’know, when we first brought David into the house, because his eyes were so bad he needed so many treatments, he had a different title. We called him F’d Up David, because… well, he really was pretty f’d up!
Now look at him. Isn’t he just…
… magnificent!
We had been using these bins to carry around tomatoes or crab apples, with the shredded paper on the bottom to keep them from falling through the openings on the sides and bottoms, and to absorb any moisture after washing them. While working with the crab apples, I’d set one said on a shelf to get it out of the way until I finished, only to discover a cat in it.
It has become David’s favourite place to sleep. He can turn himself into a pretzel, and not fall off the shelf.
I had such a slow start to the day today. Not a lot of sleep, and when I tried getting up this morning, I lost my balance and almost fell. My husband was up and I ended up asking him to take care of feeding the cats this morning so I could lie down again. Considering it’s because of his own pain levels that he’s up (or not) at odd hours, it takes a lot before I ask him to take over like that. I have a theory on what’s going on and will be testing it over the next few nights. If I don’t follow up on that later, it will be because nothing changed.
When I finally did get out, the kitties had full bellies, which means I had company during my rounds!
Especially as I went up the driveway to check the gate and switch out the memory card on the gate cam. The new camera, with its direct solar power and battery backup, has the batteries still at 100%! The other two trail cameras are at about half, and both have had their batteries changed at least once, since we got the new camera.
I’m not actually all that happy that the kittens follow me to the gate. I don’t want them wandering to the road, so I try to pick them up if I can. At one point, I was carrying the three amigos, all at the same time. Interesting that the three most socialized kittens like to stay together the most, too. I can’t say it’s because they are all from the same litter, because the fourth one of that litter is more or less indifferent to its siblings, while the muted calico, from an older litter, still likes to hang out with these three the most. That one is a lot more socialized now, too. It still runs off at time, but more often than not, we can pet it and even pick it up for cuddles.
I worked on the garden bed I intend to plant the garlic in last night, but didn’t get very far.
This is where I left off when my back started to give out.
I really look forward to when we have more high raised beds!!!
I removed the grass clippings mulch and loosened the entire bed with a garden fork first, then started working my way around, pulling out as many crab grass rhizomes and other weeds as I could. The job was made much more challenging, because the kitten in the earlier photo decided it absolutely had to be on my back while I worked! When I straightened up, she would climb up to perch on my shoulder until bent down again.
I managed just over half the bed. I found the soil to be much improved, easy to work into with the garden hoe – though I’m still hitting rocks – and filled with worms. Compaction, however, is still a problem.
Once I’ve got more of the roots and weeds removed, I’ll use the soil sifter to get more out. I plan to dig a trench down the middle. The summer squash bed is right next to it. I’ll be pulling those up and burying them in this bed as a soil amendment. After the garlic is planted, the grass clipping mulch will be returned. The summer squash bed will be ready to work on next.
Things are going much more slowly than I expected, and it’s basically because of pain. Yes, I pain killer up before I start, I’m just taking your basic painkillers. They’re not particularly strong. I’m the sort of person where pharmaceuticals tend not to work as expected to begin with, and typically need double the dose to maybe get the same effect as a regular dose on someone else. It’s the same thing with the painkillers dentists inject before working on a tooth – something I discovered the hard way when I was in 5th grade. I still remember the dentist working on a cavity. I had my eyes squeezed shut in pain and was clutching the arm rests when the dentist made a snarky comment about opening my eyes, it’s not that bad. I did open my eyes, glared at him – and broke one of the arm rests. I was an adult before I dared go to a dentist again. As an adult, the dentists would actually listen to me when I told them there was still pain.
So… yeah. I do have an extremely high pain tolerance because of this, and can typically just keep working through all sorts of pain. That’s getting harder and harder to do as I get older. The problem is, there’s really no one else to take over. My older daughter has joint problems that has lead to injuries that just won’t heal, so there’s only so much she can do, and both of them have back problems that won’t go away unless they both get reduction surgery (as I did, more than 20 years ago: best thing I ever did!!!), but neither of them trust doctors. At all. They’ve seen the BS my husband and I have put up with over the years. Since we’ve moved back to this province, we’ve found health care has gotten even worse during the almost 15 years we were away. So while they can help, all four of us are just really gimpy. Plus, my older daughter has her commissions to work on, so she gets paid, and isn’t available as much. They both also take care of the inside stuff for me, so I’m free to work on the outside stuff – an arrangement I am quite happy with. Still, the way things are going, I’m going to have to ask them to help me with the outside stuff more. It’s frustrating. When we first moved here, I was able to get much more work done in much less time. I did not expect my body to give out that much in so few years!
Ah, well. It is what it is.
I’ll be taking pain killers and heading back out soon.
On another note, we had another small harvest this morning.
I decided it was time to pick the Little Finger eggplant. I actually found one more little one, after I took this picture. These are all from just one plant. None of the others matured enough to produce anything. I had intended to leave them for longer, but last night we dropped to 2C/36F. We were only supposed to drop to 6C/43F, so I didn’t try to cover them for the night. They don’t look frost damaged, but with how messed up the forecast has been, I figured it was time. This variety is meant to be picked while still relatively small and glossy – maybe a bit bigger than the largest one I’m holding.
In talking with the girls about what to plant next year, we are thinking of trying 3 varieties of peppers, and I’d like to try this variety of eggplant again. However, we will need to work out better protection for them. My older daughter is wanting to save up for a type of greenhouse that is specifically designed for our extreme temperatures. Something like the polycrub that Stone Croft Skye has. Before then, I hope to pick up a decent sized portable greenhouse, or maybe a smaller one to use for our seedlings. We have GOT to come up with something better for starting seeds. We had to spend way too much effort to protect them from cats, making for less than ideal growing conditions.
That is something to think about later, though. For now, we need to clean things up and get beds prepared for next year, first.
It’s a good thing we normally keep kibble, water and a litter box in the sun room. When I closed the door last night, I made sure to check for kittens and saw none. This morning, I discovered I’d closed the three amigos up in there overnight!
I was able to get a picture with Rosencrantz’ tortie! It is the shiest of the bunch. I was able to pet the one at the pack a little bit, at least. Rosencrantz herself acts like she wants to be petted, will stretch out to sniff my fingers, bump her head against my hand – then try to bite and scratch me, too! She used to be much more friendly.
While doing my rounds, I kept hearing cows and calves, very loudly. The renter has rotated his cows out and took away the power source for the electric fence to use in the other quarter he’s renting, so if for some reason there are cows in this quarter, there is nothing to stop them from getting into the outer yard – and we’ve opened up the gates to the inner yard.
For all that I could hear them, I couldn’t see them. I decided to do a walkabout, though. I haven’t gone beyond the outer yard since last year, and I really wanted to see how the gravel pit was looking, after the renter hired someone to dig it deeper during the drought last year.
Wow. What a difference!
September 2022
I couldn’t even go to where I had tried to consistently take pictures last year, because it’s under water. You can see a whole bunch of ducks swimming around, too!
Just for comparison, this was last year.
August, 2021
That was the most water it had all of last year. The clay held what little rain we finally got.
September, 2022
Only the deepest part was dug deeper; it extends quite a bit in one direction, and forms a sort of marsh in the other. Last year, this part didn’t even really get muddy.
This is what it looks like in July of last year.
July, 2021
If you look in the trees, there’s one that is distinctively bent up. If you look in the photo I took this morning, you can find that tree, further away. The spot I stood in to take the picture in July of last year is underwater now, too.
I wish I’d thought to head out and see how high the water was when things were flooding in the spring!
I followed along the marshy bit to where it ends at a sort of roadway, with a pond on the other side.
It has water, too!
When I was a kid, I remember there being enough water in here to float makeshift rafts in, but it has filled in a fair bit over the years.
I was surprised to see this, not too far away.
This tree is still alive! The trunk is even more split open, with the middle rotted away, than when I first found this tree broken after high winds.
Since I was in the area, I decided to head towards the field, which the renter has prepared for next year already, so check on things. There’s an old junk pile there, too. All during my walkabout, as much as possible, I was picking up junk and scrap pieces of metal the cows had scattered around, and put them onto the nearby piles of junk.
I really look forwards to being able to get a scrap dealer to clear away some of this stuff!
I found more pieces of junk scattered about near the fields and cleaned them up a bit.
And found this.
It’s completely intact. Not even a chip, though it was full of dirt.
I brought it home and added it to the table of other found objects. 😁
My daughter came by as I was working on this post, and I showed her the photos I took this morning. She was happy to see the cup! She’s found it last year and had intended to bring it back, but her hands were too full of other things. It’s now sitting exactly where she’d wanted to put it, herself! 😊
I found another surprise in the area.
More water!
Normally, this area has water only during spring melt. There is a sort of “river” that heads off to the right in the photo, all the way to the road, where there is a large culvert, and continues north in someone else’s property. To the left, it goes into the field and joins up with the municipal drainage ditch. The group of trees in the middle become an island, but right now, we have another pond!
While chatting with the renter, I’d commented on how glad I was that they were able to get the gravel pit dug out. He mentioned that, in this quarter, getting enough water for the cows has always been difficult. Not this year, that’s for sure! And with how deep the pit was dug, and the heavy clay bottom, it should not be a problem again, even in dry years.
While heading back, I spent some time checking out the car graveyard, which has all sorts of old farm equipment as well. In the process, I think I found a solution to a problem.
One of the things I want to get built this fall is a chicken coop, so we can get chicks in the spring. We can’t get away with the basic chicken tractor that is so easy to find plans for all over. We need something suitable for our winters, so a lot more substantial. However, I still want to be able to move it to different locations, so that we can incorporate chickens into our garden plans. I’ve been doing some research and have seen mobile chicken coops that are more or less what I have in mind. Basically, they are build on a wagon chassis. I’ve looked around, and even second hand, those can be pretty expensive.
I think I’ve found one.
Among the junk is an old, wooden wagon of some kind. It’s got sheets of aluminum in it, and the wood walls are rotting away. It has all steel wheels and, as far as I can tell, the chassis is completely intact.
As soon as I have the opportunity, I want to go back out there with some tools, pull out the metal sheets, dismantle the rotting wood portions and see what’s there. Once clear, we should be able to just roll it home. We should be able to build a pretty decent sized chicken coop on it, if it’s intact enough!
It’s remarkable what we have been finding among the junk, that can be salvaged. It’s a shame so much of this stuff was left to rot away in the first place.
It would be really awesome if we can salvage this!
I think the outside cats are getting to that point where they are starting to build up some winter fat. When I come out in the mornings, all the places we leave kibble don’t even have crumbs left, and they are all acting so hungry. We put out quite a bit of food for so many cats, twice a day, but this morning, before heading inside, I actually had to top up one of the kibble trays!
This one.
Rosencrantz and four of her babies were so hungry, I was actually able to pet all four of them! Just briefly, and they acted a bit confused about the whole thing before moving out of reach, but they were far more interested in food than running away.
The tortie was at the kibble tray by the spirea, along with a couple of calicos.
I noticed something about the litters this year. This is the first time since we moved here, that there are NO orange tabbies. Not a one. When we first moved here, it was almost all orange tabbies. The males would all disappear in the summer, but there would be more orange kittens the next year. Right now, the only ones left are the ones we brought indoors.
I spent some time on the bench with the rope toy I made for the kittens and have several of them playing at my feet, including the tuxedo. I was able to touch him, too, though he would move out of reach when I did. Its black and white sibling was curious about the toy, but would not come any closer to play with it. Instead, he put himself on a pedestal to watch me from a safe distance!
Our yard is just infested with furry adorableness.
I turned up the thermostat, so the furnace would turn on.
We’re still stuck with a hose draining water from the washing machine, running through the storm door window. The gap in the window is covered with duct tape, to keep the insects (and tiny kitties) out, but we can’t close the inner door. Right now, there is a sheet of rigid insulation in front of the door, so we’re not losing heat quite as badly. The entryway has no heat vents in it, anyhow. Nor does the kitchen. They both have built in electric wall heaters, but the breakers for those are shut off. They haven’t been used for so many years, I’d want them checked by an electrician before I try turning them on! The kitchen one has a shelf in front of it now, so we still wouldn’t be using it.
We had covered the eggplants and two of the apple gourds last night, as the forecast had been for a low of 1C/34F, however by the time I checked my app before bed, it had changed. Our low was only 6C/43F. So covering them wasn’t necessary, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt them, either.
My pain levels have been pretty high still, and I had a rough night. I ended up sleeping in – as did everyone else in the household! – so I was later than usual for feeding the kitties outside.
They were very happy to see me!
I was happy to see Rosencrantz’s babies this morning.
Here are four of her five kittens. Later on, I was able to pet and pick up the one that’s fully inside the food bowl, though it wasn’t too sure about the whole thing. The other three still run off.
And where is the fifth one, you may ask?
Why, right here!
Yes, the kitten with the orange head was at the kibble house! In fact, we saw it running around by the house yesterday afternoon, too.
I’ve even started seeing some of the kittens from the pump shack, creeping around under the spirea to the kibble tray we have out there. I do still have a tray at the pump shack door for them, too.
It won’t be much longer before we have to set up the extension cord to plug in the cat house, with its light sensor on the timer set to turn on the heater between dusk and dawn. We’ll need to test the battery on the smoke detector, too. There are a lot of very small kitties this year, that will need all the help they can get to stay warm!
Well, I’m certainly glad we made the preparations we did, yesterday. We did, indeed, hit 1C/34F by this morning, and got frost.
The roof of the cat house still had quite a bit of frost on it, when I came out to feed the babies. Clearly, it isn’t stopping them from enjoying kibble in what seems to be a favourite place for quite a few cats!
As expected, the frost killed off all the squash. We did leave the ozark nest egg and dancing gourds. From what I’ve read, they can handle a light frost, in that it triggers them to start drying. I’m not completely sure that was the right decisions, but I’ll know better as I check them later in the day.
The apple gourds got covered, but they still seemed to get hit with frost. It’s hard to see in the photo, but this largest of the developing gourds does seem to have some frost damage, as did a lot of the leaves, though not as much as those that were exposed in places.
The eggplant, however, looks just fine!
We’ve got one more night with colder temperatures, and then the lows will increase for a while, so we will repeat the process again tonight, and will hopefully be able to at least keep the eggplant going for a bit longer.
There’s lots of work to do over the next while, to get things ready for next year.
Last night, I discovered that the new water bowl house, which is awaiting a paint job before we start using it for its designed purpose, works well for something else entirely. The floor is high enough for me to sit on without hurting my knees to much, and have a roof to keep me out of the bit of rain we started to get!
Which meant, I got to play with kitties.
Some sisal cord tied to a stick made an excellent lure, and I was actually able to pet this brown tabby! I’ve been able to touch him before, but usually he’d run off as soon as he realized what I was doing. This time, I was able to start skritching his ears. Between the toy and the ear skritching, he was torn between obviously wanting to run away, and loving the attention! 😄
Today, I was able to confirm he is male.
This little guy much prefers to just be on a human and go for naps. He is very insistent about it, too!
While I was playing with the kitten, Caramel came by, followed by one of her babies. One with the very distinctive Beep Beep orange splotch on its forehead! You can tell who Grandma is, that’s for sure! It would come any closer, but it was good to see she is bringing her babies to the kibble house.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen Rosencrantz’s litter today, nor did I see Junk Pile’s babies come out of the pump shack after I left food there, even though she came over to eat. I read they both moved their babies further from the house. Right when they need access to more solid food, now they are going to be getting only whatever the mamas manage to hunt for them. 😟 The further from the house the kittens are, the more in danger they are from predators, too. Wherever the mamas took them, I hope they will be okay. I do realize having fewer yard cats is actually a good thing, but I can’t help rooting for them to make it!
The Re-Farmer 