They are quite liking the new set up. The kittens will wobble their way all over, then go back to their little bed for cuddles with Mom.
So far, it looks like all the kittens are male. There is only one, mini-BeepBeep, we haven’t been able to see.
While doing my rounds, I noticed these other babies.
This is a chokecherry. As the leaf buds unfurl, they reveal baby future berries! Those little clusters will eventually bloom and, if we have a good year, we will have lots of berries. This little tree is just sort of by itself in the middle of a grassy area on the North side of the garden. There are two more, among the lilac hedge. In the last couple of years, those ones produced berries, but this little one, not really. It looks like this year, it has reached production maturity!
So it looks like my plans to plant the potatoes today is not going to happen. We were expecting rain, but it has turned out to be colder than forecast. While the rain has been light, it has been pretty constant. Which is fine. It just means we have to spend less time soaking the area we’ll be planting the potatoes in, tomorrow.
It might be cold and dreary outside, but Sarlac, the aloe, is enjoying things just fine. That flower spike is just inches from the ceiling!
Of course, one of the first things in my morning routine is to check on the kitties. We’ve been talking about how we wanted to change things up for them, as they get bigger and more active.
In the top right corner of the photo, you can see the crate we’ve been using to put their little nesting box in.
You can also see the dampness, under it.
With the rain today, and more forecast here and there over the next week, this will only get worse. While the crate keeps the kitten’s box from being directly on it, the increased humidity is making the basement feel noticeably colder. We do have a heater down there, but it’s not something that should be left on, unattended, for long.
We had already considered using one of the large boxes my husband’s new computer came in, to make a sort of “play pen” for the kittens. On seeing how much larger and wetter the damp spot is, I started thinking of alternatives. We had intended to place the box itself over a sheet of rigid insulation, which would have prevented any sort of damp puddle from forming at all, in the first place. However, the larger space would be harder to stay warm. The current little nest is well wrapped and small enough that Beep Beep’s, and their body heat alone could keep it nice and snug. Not so, in a larger space.
So…
They are now upstairs. Just a couple of feet from me, as I type this!
We’ve got two boxes set up, one inside the other, so half the space has a “roof” over it. There’s lots of padding on the bottom to keep them soft and warm. Beep Beep wasn’t sure what to make of things when we walked off with all her babies, but once we showed her the new set up, she settled right in.
The babies were very quick to explore their new space, which is about triple the size of what they had before. Then they went right back into a pile on their familiar little bedding. :-D
So far, the other cats have been curious about the new set up, but easily discouraged away, so they won’t jump in. With the box set up between my desk and my crafting table, I can keep a close eye on them.
This means we can start leaving the new part basement door open all the time, and slowly start moving all the litter boxes, food and water bowls, downstairs. There’s plenty of space to store the cat food and litter, too.
I’m looking forward to not having cat litter and kibble tracking all over the house… :-D
Since working in the garden was out, I went into town to run some errands. Since I was in the area, I stopped at the garage to see if they’d been able to look at my mother’s car.
Yes, they had.
Yes, it does need a new differential.
*sigh*
The owner was in the process of trying to track down a second hand one for me. Until then, though, I booked an oil change for Saturday, then asked about tires for our van. Being May, we should be able to safely rotate out of our winter tires by now. ;-) I have our summer tires bagged and waiting, but I would kinda like to get new ones, so I asked for a price on that.
It turned out to be quite out of budget, so when I bring the van in for the oil change, I’ll also bring our summer tires, and get those switched over as well.
One of my other stops was at the hardware store. I was hoping to find replacement hinge kits for the gates in the chain link fence. I was showing a photo to one of the staff when the guy who’d helped me get what I needed to fix our sump pump hose walked by with another customer, and paused to ask how the fix went, and I was happy to tell him what a success it was. He then took a quick look at the photo I was showing the other staff member, who was new enough to not know they don’t carry anything for fences and gate, and was able to recommend other places in town I should be able to find them, then continued on with the customer he had been helping.
With that question answered, I went into the paint section. We have decided to go ahead and paint or stain the old picnic table. It’s not in the best shape, but we could probably get quite a few more years out of it, if we treat the wood. After talking to the lady in the paint department, I decided to go with paint, rather than a stain. My daughter and I had been talking colours, so with that conversation in mind, I chose a bright teal blue. While a quart would probably have been enough, I figure we’ll be painting other things, too, so I got a gallon. It was funny to see how excited the lady who was helping me got when she saw which colour I chose. Apparently, bright colours are not typical choices people make, but it’s something she prefers herself. She asked to see pictures of the table when it’s done! :-D
I got a business card for one of the managers, and have already emailed her to tell her how great the staff has been. I know stores get complaints all the time so, if I can, I try to make sure to give credit and commendations, whenever I can!
While there, I was also able to pick up some peat and composted manure. I want to put some of that down first, then put the potatoes on it, add a thick layer of straw, then add some peat on top, more to keep the straw weighted down, but also help retain moisture. None of the videos I’ve seen about this way of growing potatoes has suggest this, but we have definitely noticed that wind can be an issue and figured, it at least couldn’t hurt!
Hopefully, I will be able to get this done tomorrow. We now have rain forecast for tomorrow afternoon, but it’s also expected to be much warmer – and staying warm – than today, so the potatoes should be fine.
Over the next day or two, I hope to get those carrots and parsley seeds in, too.
Today I took my husband into the city for a medical appointment, but of course I had to check the kitties, first!
They are getting more and more active! We’re going to have to put them in something deeper, soon, so they don’t start crawling around the basement. At their size, there are too many things they can get into, that we couldn’t be able to get them out again! :-D
My husband and I left early enough to hit the post office, first, and ended up swinging by home again to drop things off. My husband had finally got his retroactive disability tax credit, and he used some of it to get a much needed new computer. Not something we wanted sitting in the van while we were in the city!
His appointment went well, though the drive was quite painful. It was for some tests in Nuclear Medicine, in the same hospital as the cardiac clinic. I was not allowed to come in with him, though. We arrived early, as is our habit, and I expected to have lots of time to walk around on a beautiful day, playing Pokemon Go. They must have taken him in early, because he was done much faster than I expected. Which is a nice change, even if the reasons for it are not to nice. :-/
His computer was not the only thing to arrive in the mail. I got a parcel I was expecting to come in tomorrow.
My Yukon Gem potatoes have arrived!
Which means I need to get them planted right away. Looking at the forecasts, tonight we’re supposed to reach 0C (32F), and that’s the coldest it’ll get overnight from now on.
I had been thinking about where and how we would plant the potatoes. With our rock hard soil in most places, I decided to go with a completely new and different method from what I’m used to. Here are some videos about what I am going to try.
The only thing is, I don’t have hay, nor was any available. I just have straw. I hope it will do as a substitute. I’ve seen other articles and videos that used straw, so I think it should.
With this in mind, I made use of the frames from the goat catching pen we’d made. The long sides are roughly 8 ft x 4 ft. A perfect garden bed size. So I am using them to mark out where I want to put the potatoes.
I will remove them, after I’ve finished covering the seed potatoes. For the 6 pounds of potatoes I have, this should be enough. I soaked the areas thoroughly, and will soak them again tomorrow before we start again. We are expecting some rain tomorrow (I hope!), but it won’t be much. By Sunday, we are supposed to hit 21C!! (70F) so I want to make sure it’s all thoroughly covered and watered before the heat hits.
We are also going to have to watch out for the Potato Beetle!
He kept us company while we started on the future potato beds.
I had considered setting them up where we’d covered with straw last year, as I am sure we won’t be having as many squash to transplant as I had hoped. There’s still a possibility that more seedlings will come up before the end of the month, so I figured I may as well just go off to one side, instead.
How well this works will help us decide what to do as we increase the amounts and varieties of potatoes we grow in the future. If we can get a good crop, without having to plow or till this hard, rocky ground, that would be really awesome!
The kittens have been noticeably more active, and I’ve been finding one orange one in particular, at the furthest end of their little nest box, looking out into the rest of the basement.
They are still very quick to bunch up again, though!
Lately, when I got downstairs, I have been leaving the basement door open. Beep Beep goes upstairs to explore, while other cats follow me downstairs. To explore.
Including Keith.
We’ve put the twin size bed frame against the wall for storage, and they quite enjoy climbing up to the top, to check things out from on high! :-D
While doing my rounds outside this morning, I spotted something new on one of the crab apple trees.
It looks like a fungal disease. It seems to be only on the one branch, so I hope that pruning it off will do the trick, but this tree has already had quite a few branches removed due to infection, and trees on either side of it have as well. It might be better to remove the entire tree, to prevent it from infecting the others. I will also be working on the areas we spotted a potentially deadly (to apple trees) fungus, so I might do it all at the same time.
Quite a few of these trees are just not doing well at all. I don’t know that the type of crab apples are particularly prone to fungal disease, or if it’s more a matter of their age making them more susceptible.
The important thing will be to prevent the spread of the fungus, and that means burning the wood. As some of the infections are in stumps already cut level with the ground, I plan to bring one of the metal rings we’ve got lying about to put over where these stumps are, and making a small fire on top of them. We are already under fire ban right now, but it’s not a complete ban, so contained fire pits and burn barrels are still okay.
Something else to add to the to-do list for outside!
Before I head out to visit my mother (outsider her window… :-/ ) for Mother’s Day, here are some adorable, furry worms to make you smile!
I’m glad Beep Beep used this cardboard nest we set up to have her kittens in. The box is the base from a case of cat food tins. Not only did it turn out to be the prefect size, but it makes it easy to slide in and out of the crate (which is on its side) to check on the babies.
The concrete floor is pretty saturated this spring. Under the crate, there is a puddle of moisture. A bit like condensation created by the warmth of cat bodies above. The crate keeps the cardboard from contacting the floor, so it stays nice and dry.
As I was petting the babies, this little mini-Beep Beep (right down to the orange spot on her forehead!) grabbed my hand…
… and started licking my fingers!!!
Yeah, I melted into a puddle of goo over the adorableness of it.
Then it was time to tend to the outside cats, and we had quite the crowd this morning!
At the top left is Rosencrantz! She stared showing up again very recently. I wonder where she goes, when we don’t see her for weeks at a time?
In front of her is Pump Shack cat and in the top middle is Junk Pile cat. While I was able to pet Rosencrantz this morning, these two just won’t let us near. :-(
Butterscotch and Creamsicle are eating on the right of the photo, and Potato Beetle was with them, but he found me more interesting than food!
Why?
This is why.
He just HAD to fling himself bodily across my feet and start rolling! He eventually slithered his way across my feet, around my legs, to eventually end up sitting at my other foot, looking up at me, as if to say “why haven’t you picked me up yet?”
He did it one time while I was looking at something else, and I did end up stepping on his tail a bit. At some point, this guy is going to have to learn that moving feet are not a place to drop in front of! :-D
Today was a day to work on a whole bunch of little things that needed to be done or started – and a surprise breakage. Rather than do one huge post, I’ll split them up into a bunch of little posts.
But first, here’s something that cheered me up this morning.
Of course, there was checking on the babies.
It’s going to be interesting in the basement, when these guys start getting more mobile!
While doing my rounds, I had my furry escort, including Creamsicle…
He’s about 10 feet above my head in this photo! Of all the cats, he seems to be the one who loves to climb the most. :-D
When I opened the door to the basement to check on Beep Beep and the kitties, I found Beep Beep sitting in the basement window at the stairs.
She immediately bolted through the door.
She had to go through the several cats that were trying to bolt down the stairs at the same time! :-D
It’s a good think I was intending to leave the door open for a while, anyhow.
The babies are definitely getting more curious and mobile! Beep Beep is getting more comfortable with leaving them for longer periods, too.
The girls are calling Butterscotch’s baby “Nickypants” because his fur pattern makes him look like he has white pants, just like Nicky the Nose. :-D
After a while, I had to go hunting for Beep Beep to bring her back down, so I could close up the basement again. I found her on the kitchen counter! Bad Beep Beep! ;-)
We’ve been having some very chilly nights lately, so I’ve been keeping a close eye on the seed trays. I was happy to see some new growth.
More pattypans/sunbrust squash are emerging, a few more of the zucchini surprise mix are showing, too.
It’s funny how there is this one large sunburst squash that showed up next to the zucchini mix. If I hadn’t put those straws in to mark the different groups, I would have thought it was part of the mix!
Still no sign of gourds, though. There were no new seedlings emerging in the other tray.
I was supposed to presoak the carrot seeds a while ago, but things got busy and it just didn’t happen. Now I’m glad it got delayed, and I think I will delay a few more days. We’re supposed to get a couple of centimeters of snow tomorrow evening! It looks like things will warm up and stay above freezing, even overnight, by Tuesday, so I will aim to start the seeds soaking on Saturday. The video I’m using said it should take 3 or 4 days for roots to show, so we’ll see how that goes.
When I was doing my rounds last night, including the outer yard, I got some company.
Though we made a point of closing the gates in the chain link fence, the truth is, the goat could have gotten out at any time, if she wanted. And this time, she wanted to follow a cat!
As I did my founds this morning, she followed me for the entire circuit!
We were having no luck closing her up in the pen we threw together, but maybe… just maybe…
Would she follow me if I walked over to her owner’s place?
I figured it was worth a shot. After having breakfast (and taking some pain killers!), a grabbed a bit of feed in a bucket and started walking.
She enjoyed a bit of feed while I locked the gate behind me. :-)
For the first while, we were being followed by Creamsicle and Butterscotch. The goat was happy to come along with all of us.
Also, I spotted these ahead on the road. I zoomed in, and it’s hard to see, but…
… can you see those shapes on the road?
There was about 4 or 5 of them, all in a row, when I first spotted them.
They’re cranes!
I often hear their calls from that direction, and had a good idea of where they were, and this has been confirmed.
This is where the cranes were. When I was a kid, we used to all this area the Three Ponds. In reality, it was more like one pond and a couple of marshy bits, but we didn’t care!
I spent many happy hours slogging around in the water, spotting mysterious creatures among the underwater plants and observing them.
This area is so full of water right now! The last couple of years, even the deepest part here was almost completely dry.
For a while, I thought leading the goat wouldn’t work. I almost reached about a third of a mile when the goat started going back the other way. She was following the cats. Butterscotch and Creamsicle were following, but they reached about the quarter mile mark and didn’t want to go any further. I ended up back tracking quite a bit, before the goat was willing to turn back to me. What I ended up finding was that if I walked my normal pace (which is a brisk walk), she would actually run to catch up with me, and follow along more diligently, rather than wandering off to the ditches as she did when I walked slowly. Especially after we had to pause to let a truck drive by. I think it spooked her a bit, and she kept up with me a lot more after that.
I’d posted earlier about the flowing stream I’d found that was a surprise to me. This is where that water reaches the road.
We are past the farm’s property line at this point. The photo on the left belongs to the guy who owns the goat, I think. That quarter section has been split up since we last lived in the area, and I don’t know where the new lines have been drawn, so I can’t be sure.
This is part of the municipal drainage system, and one which takes advantage of a low area that was already there, naturally. In one of the photos, you can see some piles of dirt from when it sometimes gets dredged. This is more what I was expecting, at our place. Basically, a big ditch of slowly draining water. Not a fast flowing stream.
It’s hard to see in the photo, but the markers are warnings for the dip that runs across the road. When I was a kid, this section of road would get washed out, every spring. Sometimes, so much would wash away, the school bus couldn’t get through. The driver would have to reverse the bus for about 2/3 of a mile, before he could use our driveway to turn around in. Eventually, the municipality cut down all the trees that were growing along the ditches on either side. After that, the road no longer washed away. It wasn’t until after I moved off the farm that the drainage ditch was dredged out, and a culvert placed under the road. It’s at this culvert that the road is sinking!
We turned at the 1 mile intersection, then it was another 1/4 mile or so to the driveway of the owner. It was at this point that I think the goat started to really recognize things. She perked right up and started going ahead of me, instead of following behind.
When I started going down the driveway, which is closely bordered by trees, it took a bit to get the goat to go down the driveway, too – but soon we were walking past a goat pen, and she went right over!
Just look at the size of those bucks!
The other milk goat is in there with them.
As I continued down the driveway, I was greeted by three BIG Great Pyrenees dogs, wagging their tails, furiously. I didn’t know he had dogs! I’d seem them before, but in other people’s fields, and had no idea who they belonged to. Such gorgeous animals!
As I went around, I saw the other goat pen way beyond the house. The owner, however, was not home.
I didn’t expect that. With the lock down, pretty much everyone is home. I didn’t even think that he might not be.
So I sent him a text right away, letting him know the goat had followed me over, and was at the pen near the rams (he called them rams, but male goats are called bucks).
The response was not what I expected.
I thought, at the very least, he would be happy for relieved the goat was home again.
Instead, he was all stressed out that she was there and not in a pen.
Long story short, he told me he was going to get a buddy to go over and put her down.
I tried to reassure him, saying the goat would stay near the other goats and be fine, but nope.
At that point, I was most of the way home again and just stopped responding. She’s his goat, and he can do what he wants with her, but what the heck? Why such an extreme response?
I find myself wondering. He could have been having a lot more problems with the goats than he’d hinted at before, and maybe he had been counting on us taking the two milk goats off of his hands. He had still wanted her back to breed with the bucks, though, and would have kept her until we had a pen ready. Maybe he thought that if he said this, he expected me to turn around and take her back? I don’t know. I’m only guessing.
Whatever his reasons and motives, I can’t help but feel ticked off that he was so eager to just shoot her. I didn’t want or even expect any sort of thanks for bringing the goat back, but I did expect him to at least be happy to have her again. Not immediately have her put down.
Whether or not he’ll follow through with this, I don’t know. I don’t know what circumstances he’s going through with his goats, it’s not up to us, and we are not in a position to take the goats ourselves right now. There is just no way we can set up the fencing needed right now. A few months from now, maybe, but not right now.
In hindsight, I probably should have contacted him before I headed over, but I hadn’t planned on doing it, and didn’t even know it would work. Now, I kinda wish I hadn’t.
It has, however, been a learning experience for us.
I still think we will be getting milk goats, but will go back to our original timeline. We’ll take a couple of years to get ready for them, while continuing to clean up around the property. Then, when we do get them, we will buy them from someone I know, who raises goats and works very closely with them; these will not be untamed goats!
Meanwhile, we can dismantle the pen we threw together, then put together the stuff that is his, like the chicken wire and food containers. I might end up using the wood to build squash trellises, instead. I should probably be outside already, working on that, but…
The Re-Farmer 