Critters

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

So many cats… and a bit of a hang up

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I was talking to my daughter a little while ago when she happened to mention the current indoor cat count we have right now.

Eighteen.

I … really hadn’t thought about that. We’ve now got 8 cats upstairs, plus the 2 mamas and their 8 babies in the basement.

That is insane.

Two Face has changed noticeably after her surgery. She is so much more cuddly now. Lately, this is what I’ve been waking up to.

She now likes to lean hard against me while I’m sleep. Cheddar also likes to do that, so I woke up book ended in cats.

Then there are the boys outside. I think they’re lonely! All the ladies, except Rosencrantz (who didn’t make an appearance this morning) are now indoors.

Potato Beetle was funny this morning.

He wanted SO much attention!

One of the things I started to do this morning is dismantle the shelter we made with the old dog houses, so I can use the black tarp to help warm up the soil in one of the areas we want to plant.

There was a bit of a hang up.

The snow had accumulated in one area, enough for the cloth to touch the ground. Of course, that created a puddle when the snow melted.

Freezing the tarp to the ground.

I used a metal bar that was one of the weights keeping the tarp from blowing away to bash apart the ice, then left it to weigh down the tarp. The ice should melt away faster now.

But not today.

We’re barely above freezing temperatures today. Starting tomorrow, and for the next 14 days, according to the long range forecasts, we will finally hit double digit temperatures.

The dog houses were well used over the winter, I was happy to see.

I could see tamped down paths in the straw around them, the insides were flattened, and there was a hole leading under one of them. I even found a flattened spot on top of one of the dog house roofs, where something had curled up and made a nest in the straw, directly under the tarp.

The straw will be left here for now, though wind might be a problem.

In some places, it already is.

It’s been quite windy for the past couple of days. This tarp is being torn to shreds!

I would love to have someplace I could properly store this old post pounder, but the one shed that I could pull it into has a roof full of holes and is starting to fall apart. Like way too many other things around here! :-( If I could clear enough space in a section of the barn, we might be able to store it in there, though at this point, I don’t even know how we would pull it. The hitch damaged, and both tires are flat.

We’ll figure something out.

I am really looking forward to the warmer temperatures. I’m just itching to get to work around the yard! Tomorrow, though, I have the rest of the seeds I have waiting to get started indoors.

Then I have to start scavenging around the various sheds and the barn, to see what’s available to build trellises out of.

I’m looking forward to the work! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Babies, bills and pills

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This afternoon, one of my daughters and I brought our inside mama cat to the vet for a check up. She has been acting very ornery and out of sorts, and my daughter, sweetheart that she is, wanted to get her checked out.

They did some blood tests and even a quick ultrasound to make sure she wasn’t pregnant (ha!), and everything checked out okay. As she is an estimated 10 years old (we’re guessing she was about a year old when she first found us), it is most likely she is in pain from arthritis. My daughter got 2 weeks of pain killers, one every 24 hours, to try her out on and see if she improves.

They’re supposed to taste like cat treats, but she did not want to take it! Normally, I’m able to get the cats to take pills fairly easily (we just gave all of them worm pills, not long ago), but she was pretty upset and fought us off. We gave her more time, then tried giving her the pill in with a piece of meat.

She ate it right away.

Hopefully, this will make a difference. We were instructed to stop giving them to her immediately, if she starts to throw up. I don’t know how long it’ll be before we should be noticing a change, if any. After these are gone, we will know whether or not this is something to continue.

Thankfully, the bill wasn’t as high as we feared it would be. The vet recommended getting her fixed, even at her age, as apparently females that aren’t have a higher risk of urinary tract infections. With my daughter’s reduced hours at work, it’s going to be a while before she can afford to do that.

I really, really appreciate that she’s doing this, because we sure as heck can’t. :-(

Later in the day, my daughter and I disturbed the kitties. I wanted to give them clean bedding, which meant we had to take the babies out of their nests, then persuade the mamas to follow. We had a crate with one of the cat mats I’d crocheted at the bottom to put them in, which meant I could get a good photo of both litters in the process.

Butterscotch babies!

Here are Butterscotch’s babies. We now have a soft bed in the old radio she’s made a nest in that is large enough to cover the entire floor, plus go up the sides a bit. The babies will have softness and warmth around them, even when they start getting more squirmy and moving around in there.

Getting them out was a challenge. Two of them were attached, and did not want to let go of the nip! Butterscotch, at least, was fairly easy to lure out after the kittens were taken out.

Beep Beep, on the other hand, needed more persuasion! After taking her babies out, she stayed in the box her next is in and would not come out. The box is under a chair, and I ended up having to take the chair away, then we had to upend the box to get her out. I moved the box aside, as even the floor under it was damp, but as soon as I put it on the floor, she was right back in it!

Beep Beep babies!

We don’t have another box the same size, so we flipped it so the damp cardboard is now at the top and able to dry out, put a new clean bed inside, then shifted which chair it was under, so it was on dry floor.

The good thing about concrete floors; we’ll be able to clean and sanitize any messes much more easily!

As soon as the box was set up again, Beep Beep was right in there, and happy to get her babies back.

I think they were all glad to have new bedding, too!

Those furry little worms are so adorable!!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, cold damage and more thinking ahead

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Let’s play “can you spot all the kittens?”

I had to dig one of them out from behind Beep Beep’s head. :-D

Butterscotch’s kittens are much harder to get pictures of.

I finally just stuck my phone in and used voice activation to take some photos, hoping it was angled right.

I got one shot that managed to include all the babies. :-D

We want to move the kittens and mamas out of their nests so we can put down fresh, clean cat beds, but don’t want to disturb them so soon after birth.

In other areas…

I took a closer look at one of our surviving blue spruces, of a group of three that had been planted way two close together, some years ago.

Most of the remaining branches have cold damage like this at the tips. It should be okay, but might take a while to recover from having its newest growth killed off.

Yesterday, I posted a photo of one area we will need to address, when the time comes for us to plant the fruit and nut trees we are planning to do in the future. Here is another area we’ll have to figure out.

Among the trees I hope we will be able to plant are Korean pine. This is a tree that needs to have a “shade shelter” for the first couple of years, and this location naturally provides that for most of the day. However, as you can see, this is also where water pools in the spring. That shade also means the snow takes a lot longer to melt away, and the ground stays frozen longer.

What we eventually want to do is get this package of hardy nut trees. It will be some time before we can afford that. In the shorter term, I hope to slowly acquire a good variety of fruit trees and bushes from this site, that can survive in our growing zone. They even have a variety of apricot that can grow in a zone 3!

This is one of the reasons I want to expand the inner yard to include the outer yard. I see no point in replacing the old and broken fences around the inner yard. If we just get rid of those (the chain link fence is still sturdy, and can at least be used as a trellis), we’ll have easier access to areas we can plant food trees and bushes.

We just have to make sure the fence around the outer yard doesn’t have any gaps or weak spots the renter’s cows can break through, if his electric fence gives out again. :-)

We still need to finish clearing and cleaning the inner yard, but if all goes well, I hope to get started on the outer yard this summer, too. Especially if we want to start salvaging some things we’re finding to use for gardening and so one. I can foresee a time when we’ll even have greenhouses in the outer yard area. But first, we need to do a lot of clean up out there – including cleaning up a collapsing log building, and figuring out how to salvage the log building that we used to use as a chicken coop, when I was a kid. That one still looks solid.

Little by little, we’re making progress! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning surprise, and checking things out

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My morning routine now includes checking on the mamas in the basement. I wanted to see how Butterscotch and her babies were doing inside the old radio she decided to give birth in.

Unfortunately, we never thought we’d need to clean the inside of it.

I’m glad one of the cat beds I crocheted fit in there, because the rest of it is really dirty and gross.

Also, this old radio also has a record player in it. I didn’t realize that until I noticed a piece of it sticking out like a drawer. Turns out there is a pullout turntable. Gutted, of course, but the drawer is still there.

While I was checking out Butterscotch, Beep Beep was in the cardboard box we’d made a cat cave out of that fits under a chair. She was curled up in the back, but I could still reach to pet her. Both of them were purring furiously, too. Then, since I was taking pictures of Butterscotch, I decided to take a picture of Beep Beep, too.

It wasn’t until I saw something odd in the picture preview that I realized, she was not alone!

Two little wormy babies!

I’m pretty sure she wasn’t done, either. I expect to find a couple more, the next time I head down to check on them. :-)

While doing my rounds outside, I have been making a point of checking various areas we haven’t been able to get to throughout the winter and assessing things.

The Potato Beetle assisted me in checking out the deer damage on one of the birch trees.

This huge lake of a puddle still had a sheet of ice on the surface. We’re supposed to reach 9C this afternoon; the warmest we’re expected to get for the next week or so. I expect this is going to either get bigger, or finally start to be absorbed into the ground. When it comes time for us to plant the fruit and nut trees we are planning on, we will have to take into account areas like this that flood every spring. This area may puddle in the spring, but in the summer, all of this area gets very dry. The north-east corner is the area that is the worst. Even grass and weeds have a hard time growing in that corner.

I also took the opportunity to extend my rounds into the outer yard. If we were to do a burn, this would be the perfect time for it, as the ground is still quite wet. It would be really good to get rid of the years of dried grass built up, as it becomes a major fire hazard by summer.

With future plans becoming more solidified, I have been looking at the stuff lying about with a new eye for salvage or other usefulness. There are, for example, two really good saw horses outside the storage shed. The ones I have currently in the garage are in much worse shape, so I want to bring these ones over to the house.

Once they are no longer frozen to the ground.

There are some other things, like metal… balcony rails? … that could be set up as temporary fencing around some garden areas. There are a lot of things that have been shoved under the storage shed itself that I’ll want to take a closer look at.

Inside the shed itself, there are things that we could definitely find uses for. If we can get at it. As we cleared out my parents’ stuff from the house, we’ve shoved so many things into here, it’s going to be hard to get at things. We will have to get into there and re-arrange things, though. Some of the stacks of boxes are collapsing, as bottom boxes have given out. This shed was my late brother’s workshop, and I’m sure there are all kinds of useful things hidden away in there. I’d love to be able to reclaim it as a workshop some day, but what do we do with all my parents’ stuff? My mother is adamant that we keep it all, though she has said I could sell some of it off, if I want. She keeps suggesting holding a garage sale, which I have no interest in doing. I’ve done these in the city with little success. What good is having a garage sale this far off the beaten path? I might try using eBay or something, but am in no position to sort through things and take pictures right now.

It would be a good way to try and raise money for a new roof, though. We’ve got to come up with some way to raise the money, because we sure as heck won’t be able to save up for it with our current fixed income. Not with so many other things making demands on every spare penny. I most definitely am not complaining; that fact that we have spare any pennies at all is something I am grateful for. The reality of it is, if we’re going to keep this place up just in the basics of maintenance and repair, we’re going to have to come up with other solutions.

Any suggestions?

The Re-Farmer

I see four

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Before heading into town, I paused to say hello to the mamas. Butterscotch was content to stay in her cave and just stick her head out every now and then to accept scritches, purring away. The opening is not that big, and it’s dark in that old radio, so I tried the technological method.

Sticking my phone in the opening and taking a picture.

Butterscotch was not too keen on that whole “flash” thing! :-D

I did, however, manage to get a picture of the kitties!

Unless there are others hidden somewhere, it looks like she’s had 4 kittens again; three orange tabbies and one grey and white tabby.

They. Are. So. Cute!!!

Judging from how active Beep Beep is, she might not be due for another week or two. :-D But who knows? We might have more kittens sooner than that.

I’m glad we have the mamas inside. Today has been an odd day, weather wise. When I did my rounds, it was rather pleasant. After dropping my daughter off at work, it was a combination of rain and snow. By the time I got to the dump, it was snowing, then when I got home, it was raining one moment, snowing the next. Well. More snow than rain.

This turned out to be not very pleasant for my daughter at work. They’ve had to close down the staff lunch room, because it’s too small to maintain physical distancing. For most of the staff, that didn’t matter. They live close enough that they could just go home for lunch. My daughter picked up lunch at a nearby grocery store, then ate outside. Which meant she was sitting on a concrete sidewalk in the cold for almost an hour, because there is no indoor public place anyone can sit and eat anymore. :-( Thankfully, she’s one of those people with a built in furnace and isn’t as bothered by the cold.

Also, it’s a good thing we still have my husband’s disability income to live on during the current lock down, because she’s down to just one shift a week. Her employer is actually adding a bonus to people’s wages to make up for some of the loss of hours, but of course, it isn’t much. Who knows how long any of this can be sustained.

I headed into town very early, because as far as I knew, the hardware store closed at 4. As I was approaching the doors, I saw a staff member putting away the outside displays already, so I made sure to look for the hours. I found the sign saying they closed at 3. It was 2:55! I commented to the guy, apologetically, about how they were about to close and was about to leave. He stopped me and asked me to go ahead in, assuring me I they wouldn’t lock the doors on me! :-D Thankfully, I knew exactly where I needed to go to find the sandpaper I was looking for. Normally, I would have looked around for anything else I might need, but not today.

As I was paying for it, more people were coming into the store, and no one was telling them the store was about to close. Normally, this would be one of those times you’d read about in Not Always Right, and the rude customers forcing staff to stay long before their shifts have ended because they came in after closing. I did not get that impression today. I got the sense they would love to have stayed open longer, and wanted all the customers they can get right now! Even a large, national franchise like this one can only take so much loss. :-(

The grocery store nearby, however, had no such time restrictions. Happily, I was able to find a large box of cat litter (the last one, hidden way in the back of the shelf) and a large bag of cat food. If we’re careful (and keep the kibble bin in the house, instead of the sun room for the skunks to get into), we should be okay for the rest of the month.

So we are well stocked and, aside from a trip to the vet with another cat on Monday, and my daughter’s 1 shift a week, we can be homebodies for the rest of the month. If the weather co-operates, I hope that means I can start cleaning up all the fallen branches in the yard, now that the snow is almost all gone, and get some black plastic over some of the areas we are planning to garden in this year, to help the soil warm up faster. :-)

There is certainly no shortage of things that need to be done. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning

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One of the things I’m appreciating about doing my morning rounds earlier, is our longer days. Along with the increased light is the increased critter activity.

Along with my feline followers, I was hearing all kinds of cranes and Canada geese calling. Sometimes, I can see the geese out in the pasture behind the barn, or watch the geese and cranes flying overhead. Every now and then, I hear the thrumming of prairie chicken wings as they drum up their presence, and the staccato knocking of a wood pecker getting at some grub. :-D It’s fantastic!

The temperatures fluctuating above and below freezing so much (more below than not, lately) had an unexpected result this morning.

One of the icicles from the cracked bird bath created a hat of ice on the gnome! :-D

This morning, my daughter and I took my mother’s car to bring Two Face for her appointment with the vet. Since they are just blocks away, I dropped my daughter off at the vet and continued on to the garage to get a status on our van. Parts have been ordered and are on their way from the city. It will be ready by the time we return to pick up Two Face.

I am so looking forward to having our van back!!!

I just don’t like driving my mother’s car. I don’t like how it feels. I don’t like the noises it makes (and I don’t mean the noise from the differential that I will be getting checked; just it’s normal car noises). I don’t like the small size. There is so little leg room for the back seats, it may as well be a 2 seater.

It actually is a good little car. It does have a decent amount of space under the hatch, and the spare tire is easily accessible. Also, the front seats have butt warmers. :-D I’ve just been absolutely spoiled by minivans. Living here, having two vehicles is more necessity than luxury, but if I had any choice in the matter, our second vehicle would be one of those big, ostentatious, jacked up trucks.

With a plow attachment and a trailer hitch.

Funny how priorities change when you’re living in the sticks. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties

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So many kitties!

Of course, I visited the mamas first thing this morning.

They are much more comfortable in their new surroundings, and quite eager for human attention.

Just look at those round, round baby bellies!!

I’d kept the cardboard box from the hot water tank, and it’s now serving as a rug on top of the concrete. :-D I’m also finding Beep Beep on top of the chairs, and she’ll even go up on the table. Butterscotch, likely because she if farther along that Beep Beep, makes no attempt to jump up onto anything! :-D

Going into the sun room, there was little sign of the skunks. They’d been in there, but I don’t think they stayed long. All the kibble was gone, but it was already low in the evening and we didn’t top it up, so there was not much left for them to get into.

It did mean, however, that the outside cats were quite hungry.

I was happy to see Big Jim hanging out in the sun room. The blood I’d seen on his face previously is dried up and disappearing – he is such a filthy boy! – and I was unable to spot where it came from. It may have come from a scratch on an ear, near the head. Wherever the wound is, it’s too small to be seen through his fur.

Also, Rosencrantz! We’ve started to see her a bit more often of late.

The kitties were hungry enough that Junk Pile cat almost came inside while I was there.

Usually, when I add food to the outside bowls, Junk Pile and Pump Shack cats are pretty skittish about eating until I leave.

They were still skittish, but hungry enough to tolerate my nearness more than usual.

The only outside cat I didn’t see this morning was Potato Beetle. Even Nicky the Nose was hanging around.

Waiting for me to leave, before he comes to the house to eat.

In the sun room, I started to take the rigid insulation off the south facing windows. We’re at a point were the passive solar heat would be more beneficial than the insulation We’ll take the rest down when we can finally start emptying the room out to clean it.

I also removed some of the insulation around the base of the house to uncover a couple of windows to the basement. This way, Butterscotch and Beep Beep can have natural light. When we can start hauling stuff we removed from the basement to the barn, we’ll take all the insulation around the base of the house to the barn for storage until next fall.

One of my goals for today is to start some cucamelons indoors. :-) They apparently take a very long time to germinate, compared to other things. I’ve worked out the timing of when to start different seeds, and even those I plan to start 2 weeks from now might actually start germinating sooner than the cucamelons. It should be interesting to see how these all turn out.

Time to get back at it! :-)

The Re-Farmer