Last night I went down to the root cellar to grab a winter squash and ended up grabbing two. One was needing to be cooked immediately, with some of it needing to be cut away for the compost pile.
The squash was a nice round one, and there was still about 3/4 of it that was perfectly fine – it looked like it would make an excellent bowl, in fact.
So that’s what it became.
I decided to fill it and roast it.
I’ve never done this before and didn’t bother looking up a specific recipe. I browned some ground beef, adding a packet of onion soup mix for seasoning. I also added about half a cup of leftover tomato soup, two cups of water and one cup of uncooked rice. After mixing it all together, it went into the cleaned out squash bowl.
I roasted it at 350F for an hour, stirred the filling, added another half an hour, stirred the filling and added another half an hour. At that point, I just shut off the oven and let it sit for a while.
This is how it turned out, after giving the filling another stir.
It looked pretty good to me! Some of the rice at the top was a bit undercooked, but not by much.
It was past midnight by the time it was done, but I had to at least try it! So I grabbed myself a bowl, got some of the filling, then scooped out some of the squash to go with it.
I found it a bit low on salt (I did not add any seasonings out than the onion soup mix and the leftover tomato soup), but that was an easy fix. I found it quite tasty. I even had some for breakfast, and the undercooked rice was no longer undercooked. It made a great breakfast.
Unfortunately, it looks like I’m the only one that will be eating it.
The first problem is the filling.
For many years, ground beef and rice was basically what we ate the most. Sometimes with an added can of mushroom soup, sometimes with some added frozen vegetables, etc. Whatever we had at the time, but the base of many meals was ground beef and rice. It was our poverty diet, to be honest, but my husband really likes it, too, so I kept making it even when things got better, financially. The rest of us got pretty tired of it, but my husband still loves it.
My daughters, however, hate it now. In particular, the texture of it. It makes them feel ill.
While this stuffing is mostly ground beef, there is enough rice in there that they will not eat it. They might eat some of the squash, once more of the filling is gone and they can get at it.
My husband, meanwhile, doesn’t like winter squash. He won’t eat it.
I thought he’d at least still enjoy the filling, but nope. He won’t even try it.
*sigh*
I can understand food likes and dislikes or intolerances – I’m the one that can’t eat fresh tomatoes or any peppers at all, after all. As a family, however, it’s getting very hard to find things we will all enjoy! I thought most people got less fussy about food as they got older, by my family has all gotten more fussy! Add in things like me being the only one that is NOT lactose intolerant, it does make grocery shopping a challenge. It also makes deciding what to grow in the garden more difficult, too. Winter squash is a great staple crop that can store well (if the squash get to mature enough to be cured properly). The girls like them, but my husband doesn’t. My family likes tomatoes, which I can’t eat. Some of us like peas, some don’t. Some like carrots, some don’t. Some like corn, my younger daughter can’t eat it. On it goes!
So while this experiment was a success, as far as cooking goes, it was a fail when it comes to being something the family can eat.
Ah, well. More for me, I guess.
On another note, I just had to share this.
Remember the forecast for December that I posted yesterday?
This one?
Note those temperatures on the 6th and 7th.
For those in the US, we’re looking at -20C/-4F as the high, with -33C/-27F and -34C/-29F for the overnight lows.
This is what the forecast looks like, now.
They now have a forecast of 1C/34F for the 6th and -3C/27F for the 7th. The low for the 7th is still expected to be a bitter -27C/-17F. They no longer have a 8C/46F predicted for the 20th, but we’re still expected to be above freezing.
Long range forecasts can really be all over the place!
I do hope the warmer forecasts end up being the correct ones, though. I still plan to add a ceiling of rigid insulation to the isolation shelter, for when the ladies get spayed. It’s the overnight temperatures that are the main concern. During the day, the windows will allow for passive solar heat even on an overcast day, but they will little to keep the cold out once it gets dark.
She posed for a picture, but don’t let her deceive you. Tissue: Destroyer of Cars is just resting in between rampages!
Unfortunately, that usually involved chasing other cats around. Especially Tiny and Ginger. Yet, today, she was super cuddly with me. That’s unusual. She prefers my younger daughter!
It’s just a few degrees below freezing today, and just starting to snow a bit. The “real feel” or whatever any particular app calls it, is actually warmer than the thermometer says. According to the forecast, these milder temperatures will last a few more days, and then we’ll be getting highs in the double digit minus-Celsius.
The long range forecast into December is downright strange.
Check out the 20th of December! They’re actually predicting 8C/46F!
Yeeeaaahhhh…. I don’t think so. But, you never know. This is the prairies. Wild fluctuations in temperature happen pretty often.
Personally, I’m hoping the forecast for the 6th and 7th is wrong, and it will be much warmer. If things go to plan, we will have a couple of cats in the isolation shelter during that time. Even with the heat lamp in there, that’s going to get cold. If we get temperatures like that, we might want to at least put sheets of rigid insulation as a ceiling, under the roof.
I’m also trying to wrap my head around the fact that we are now into the last week of November. The month just flew by!
We’ll be doing our first stock up shops for December in a few days, but with all the holidays, my husband’s disability payments will probably both come in before Christmas. CPP Disability, for sure. That always messes up our stock up shopping for January!
I haven’t even thought of what we are going to do for Christmas. Meanwhile, messaging with the Cat Lady last night, she mentioned Cabbages had already knocked down their tree. They have their tree up already! With almost 30 cats in the house! Our first “official” day of the Christmas season is November 27, the Feast of St. Catherine. In my husband’s family, the tradition was to make pull toffee on that day, but we haven’t done that in many years. Too much cat hair drifting around!
Even my Christmas decoration progress has been slow. I’ve got four Slinglade balls stitched up, with two more to go. I haven’t quite decided how I will attach hangers on them, yet. There’s no hurry. We will be having miniature trees on the piano in the cat free zone (aka: the living room) again this year, so they wouldn’t be used for that, anyhow! We do like to hang garlands near ceiling level around the dining room and have decorations hanging off of those, so that’s likely where we’ll end up using them.
I think this year will be a lot quieter than usual. Especially for New Year’s. Last year, we decided to do a fondue, using both our oil fondue for cooking meat, and our ceramic one for a cheese sauce to dip into. It ended up being way more expensive than expected. I think this year, we’ll just do lots of finger foods again. 😄
As for Christmas, which we start celebrating after sunset on Christmas Eve, we already have a turkey in the freezer, though I’ll probably pick up another, just to take advantage of cheap turkey season. We’ll get our 1/8th beef pack in a couple of weeks, so we will have other options. A lot will depend on what we end up getting during our stock up shopping trips. As we get older and are now happily in the boonies, we’re quite content with very quiet holidays!
In fact, I’m good with quiet every day.
Like today!
Hold on… what was that noise….
*goes to grab paper towel to clean up the latest cat mess*
This morning, I headed out to meet with the Cat Lady to pick up a kibble donation. I got a message that she was running a bit behind, but that was not an issue. It takes me 45 minutes to get to our meet up location, anyhow.
I intended to get there anyhow, but as I was leaving, I did a quick sidewalk shovel. Then, when I got into the garage, I discovered the cats had knocked stuff off the wall shelves above the counter in front our truck, and I had to clean that up before I could move the truck. This stuff all predates us, and we have yet to get to the point where we can go through what’s in the garage, figure out what to keep and what to get rid of and organize it. It’s pretty low on the priority list of things that need to be done, but the cats do use the shelves to get up into the rafters, so sometimes I make discoveries.
By the time I was actually leaving, I ended up being late for the time we’d arranged, so I sent a message to let her know I was on the road and would be 45 minutes.
Well, it ended up taking more like an hour! The roads where clear, except for one section, and that one has a slower speed limit, anyhow. I think I might simply have got the time it takes to get there wrong.
It worked out, though. The Cat Lady had vehicle troubles, so she was even later than I was! Which was rather funny, since it’s a much shorter drive for her.
She brought out a bunch of bags of kibble for us. These were the ones she ordered for us on Amazon that were delivered to her place instead of us for some reason. With the postal strike, that turned out to be a good thing. These were small bags – under 2kg (5lb bags) – that she was able to get a really good deal on.
After they were loaded, I thought we were done, but nope. She came out with five more small bags of another brand! She’d gone couponing.
Then she brought out almost two full flats of canned cat food. It’s turkey, which The Wolfman is allergic to, and he’s the only one that wants to eat it. Twenty nine cats, and twenty eight of them will not eat this flavour of cat food! Not even Button, who was an outside kitten until he went to them, and used to eat whatever we could give them. It was that, or not eat at all, but now he’s become incredibly fussy!
Then she brought out a kibble bin that was almost completely full. This was kibble that had chicken in it, and The Wolfman is able to break into it, so they’re getting rid of everything with wings that he might be able to get into. Then she apologized, asking if it was okay to give us what are basically their discards.
Okay??? I was ecstatic!
As we were talking, she told me she was going to go through their “cat tree inventory”, and see what they could pass on to us, and is it okay if she doesn’t vacuum them first?
I was still processing the “cat tree inventory” concept. Cat trees are something we just haven’t been able to afford, unless they were really small and cheap or on clearance prices, and it’s a rare time when this comes up while we have a budget for them. Apparently, they have cat trees that their cats don’t use, so they’d like to get rid of them. Are we okay with that?
Yes, please!!!!
Then she started talking about a spay day in December, but I’d never gotten a confirmed date on that, so she will double check with the clinic and get back to me. If all goes well, we’ll have two spayed ladies to keep in the isolation shelter for 2 weeks, in the beginning of December.
With the donations gratefully accepted, we parted ways. Since I was so close, anyhow, I popped into the Walmart for a few things I didn’t realize we were running out of, the last time I was there – and one 7kg back of cheap kibble, because we can never have too much kibble!
That done, my next stop was the town closest to us, to hit the pharmacy with my daughter’s prescription. I was able to fill it, though they didn’t have it in the dose my daughter was prescribed, so she will have to split them. She is to take them “as needed” for up to three times a day. The question becomes, what does “as needed” mean, since she is now dizzy, all the time. At which point, it would just be morning, afternoon and night. At three times a day, she has enough for 10 days, so she’ll have just enough to last until her follow up appointment.
After the pharmacy, it was home to unload. I didn’t feel like dragging a wagon through what snow we have, so I backed into the yard to unload. The stuff for the outside cats went straight through the sun room to the old kitchen, while my daughter took care of the few groceries and the inside cat stuff for me.
It was while I was unloading the outside cat stuff when my right patella suddenly popped. Thankfully, I was next to the open tailgate and could use that to keep from falling. I was able to get the last load in, then had to hobble around, putting kibble out to get the cats away from the truck, so I could park it in the garage. Then I limped my way back to the old kitchen and filled the kibble bin with all of the bags I brought home, including the 7kg one.
It’s a pretty big bin!
That gave my knee a bit of a break, but it was still a struggle to walk through the house from the old kitchen.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: I am SO thankful this house has arm bars all over the place!
After catching the family up on things, my daughter took care of making cat soup for the inside cats while I pain killered up and sat down.
Not before getting a picture of our little voidling, though.
The camera on my phone hates, him, though. It has the hardest time being able to focus on him, instead of what’s around him! At least this time, it could focus on his eyes!
Soot Sprite is such an appropriate name for him. When it’s darker, he’s just a black shadow with eyes moving around. 😄
I’m am so glad that I was able to meet up with the Cat Lady. She and her rescue have been helping us out so much. I don’t know what we’d do without her! She and her entire family are just so awesome. The world needs more people like them!
I’m also glad we managed to get together today, since it’s supposed to start snowing tonight and continue through the next two days. Not a lot, but enough that I wouldn’t want to drive in it, if I don’t have to. There’s going to be a lot of driving starting next week, so I’m hoping to hibernate at home until then!
This morning, I was expecting to meet up with the Cat Lady to pick up some donated kibble.
That’s going to happen tomorrow.
In our area, it wasn’t too bad. We had quite a bit of snow coming down in the morning, while my daughter was doing the morning rounds and feeding the outside cats.
This picture is their afternoon feeding. That’s all the snow we got.
You can tell where the heat lamp is, on the inside!
Yesterday’s forecast had gone from just an hour or so of light snow today, to snow continuing until noon, this morning. That forecast was for the whole province, though, and it was mostly the southern end of the province that got it. Our snow stopped by about 8 or 9am.
The Cat Lady, however, had gone into the big city already and, on her way home, the roads were very icy and drivers were being stupid, so she postponed. Which I’m fine with!
David is not happy with us. We’re treating the cats’ ears for ear mites again, and he does not approve of the daily cleaning and treatment! Four more days to go, Buddy. 😄😄
So far, so good, with the new shelter! We do still need to find something to put around the entrance to protect from the south winds, which would blow straight into the main opening. When I look out the kitchen window, I can see a melted spot in the snow above where the heat lamp is hanging, so we know that is working, too.
With three sheltered heat lamps going, the cats aren’t all crowding into the sun room anymore. Even in the sun room, they prefer the platform the heat lamp is hanging off of, rather than under the lamp itself, though there’s always a few curled up under it. We get maybe a dozen in the sun room at a time, at night – it’s hard to tell, when they’re all piled on top of each other, when we used to see far more, before. They are using both the cat house and the isolation shelter, though some of the more feral ones have their hidden places in the outer yard and only come to the house to eat. When I did their afternoon light feeding, I tried to do a head count. I think I got 40, but I’m not sure. If so, we haven’t had a count that high in a while.
Tomorrow is supposed to just be cloudy, then we’re supposed to get some snow over the next two days, so rescheduling with the Cat Lady to tomorrow works out better.
It isn’t a lot of snow so far, but it does seem like it’s going to stay, though the long range forecast actually has us going above freezing in the week before Christmas, for a few days! If that turns out to be accurate, we might still end up with a mostly green Christmas!
It seems so odd, having my daughter doing the morning rounds so I can sleep in. 😄
I still wake up at first light, just out of habit, but I at least got another hour or so of sleep in after that. I do miss seeing all the kitties first thing in the morning, though!
Today was my mother’s appointment in the city for eye treatment, and I needed to be on the road by 10:30am. Knowing that we’d be on the road at lunch time, and that it would be hours before we could eat, I made sure to have a late breakfast before heading out.
I was a bit surprised to see actual snow on the ground. I suppose this is technically our first snow.
It was still there, sort of, when I got home. We had so much rain, I wasn’t expecting to see any.
Unfortunately, that rain did cause another problem – it froze the lock on the gate! I lost a few minutes, warming it up so I could unlock it and open the gate. Thankfully, when I work out times to get places, I try to factor in extra time, just for stuff like this!
Also for stuff like stopping for gas. Usually, I would do that before picking up my mother, but I told her when to expect me and the delay had me running later than that, so I went to her place first. We left pretty much right away so I could stop for gas, then continued on.
The drive in went really well. The roads were clear (unlike other parts of the province, where highways were still closed due to icy conditions), traffic went smoothly, there was no construction or accidents or any delays. We actually got to the clinic an hour early!
Which worked out. By the time my mother was checked in and we went to the waiting room, it wasn’t long at all before she was called in for the first part of her appointment, at least 40 minutes early!
The first thing was to check her eye with the eye chart – she couldn’t see even a single letter with her right eye, just dark – then dilate the eye so they could get pictures. After a few minutes to dilate, she was taken to another room for the scan.
Thankfully, they didn’t have to try and get video this time, because it was hard enough just to get a clear still shot. The poor guy kept trying to find a way to get her to focus in one spot and stop moving her eye, but she kept trying to look for something to focus on. How do you focus on something you can’t see? Her eye was darting all over the place. Then she started cranking her head to one side, trying to find something she could see, which put her eye outside the machine’s frame. We both tried to find a way to tell her to just try and look straight ahead to where the thought the green X she couldn’t see was supposed to be, and not move.
He did eventually get the shots he needed, though, and then it was off to a different waiting room. After a while, the doctor swung by and told my mother she could go into the next room, but in the time it took use to get her up and moving with her walker, he was gone. We didn’t know which room she was supposed to go into. So she sat on her walker while we looked around to see if he’d come by again which, unfortunately, put my mother in the way in an intersection of hallways.
We were next to a room with an open door that had the computer monitors up and running, though, and the eye images looked familiar. So I went in and looked around on the screens for a name. Sure enough, it was my mother’s file, so that was the room she was supposed to go into.
I told her this, but she wouldn’t move, because the doctor wasn’t there to tell her to go into there.
We waited a few more minutes until a door in the next room opened. The doctor was there with another patient. He was surprised to see us, so I quickly told him, we didn’t see which room he’d indicated and, while I saw her name on the screen in the one room, my mother was refusing to go in. So he came out and assured her that it was the right space before returning to his patient. He was very apologetic when he came back later. He said he had indicated which room and I told him, we simply missed it. I did actually see his arm wave, but couldn’t tell where he was waving us to.
At this point, he went over the images from the past two visits, plus the new ones, for comparison. He asked how my mother felt and she said, she saw no change. Which is actually a good thing, since it means things are not getting worse. The scans show improvement, but she’s not seeing a change because of the scar tissue. There is nothing that can be done about that.
He gave her the option of not getting the treatment at all today. There is still some blood in her eye, but very little. All they can do is keep it from getting worse. At this stage, if she skipped the treatment, he couldn’t say, one way or the other, if the bleeding would come back or not. She would have to come back for monitoring, but not for a couple of months. At the same time, he didn’t want to put her through the treatment, she didn’t want it.
My mother’s response was, we’re here, so we may as well do it!
Once that was decided, he then took care of the freezing and antibiotic drops, then the freezing injection, which needs 7 minutes before the final injections. While we were waiting, we kept talking, and the doctor was trying to explain again that all he could do right now was try to keep things from getting worse.
Then my mother asked if getting new glasses would help.
*sigh*
There’s two problems with her question. One is, she isn’t understanding that the problem is scar tissue. No prescription lens is going to make a difference for her right eye. Her left eye, maybe, but that’s it. I told her, if she wanted to, she could wear her new glasses, which would make a difference for her left eye, but no glasses will help with her right eye, which the doctor confirmed.
Which leads to the other problem with her question. She’s been refusing to wear her new glasses because they didn’t make her headaches go away. Her macular degeneration had not started when she had her eyes tested and got her new glasses, but it must have started very soon after. My mother simply decided that the problems with her vision were being caused by the new glasses, which she decided was because the eye doctor gave her the wrong prescription – and she’d already re-written her memory about how they treated her when I brought her to pick up the new glasses. She had also been angry about how much the glasses cost, thinking they should still cost as much as glasses did decades ago. Add in that the eye doctor was female, which my mother views as even worse that her being Asian, and my mother was quite ready to blame the eye doctor, even though it’s entirely possible my mother had messed up her own prescription. I was in the room while she was being tested, and I could see that it’s possible she started giving answers because she was tired and not able to actually tell one setting from another, or not giving herself the time to see. The doctor that referred her to this clinic, however, was a male, so in her mind, he would get it right, because males are better at such things than females. 🫤 The specialist treating her is Asian, but he’s male, so that sort of makes up for it, in her mind. 🫤
After the seven minutes where up, the doctor moved on to the next steps. Unfortunately, the doctor was having the same problem the tech was. My mother couldn’t stop moving her eye. Or moving in general. When asked to open her eyes wide, she would raise her eyebrows, but that did nothing to open her eyes any wider. At one point, she moved her eye during an injection, resulting in a scratch. That got the disinfectant drops right away. Then with another injection, he had it all ready and was about to do it when he stopped and left the room. He’d spotted that my mother had managed to breathe, possibly spit on, the freshly exposed needle just before he moved it to her eye. He wasn’t going to take any chances, and got a new needle.
This was the first time the treatment hurt for my mother, and that would be because of the movement during an injection. Every time she blinked her eye after that, she felt pain, even with the freezing.
Besides that, everything went smoothly and quickly. The doctor said for her to come back in 2 or 3 months, but there would be no injection. They would just need to check her eye.
After asking my mother about it, we went with an appointment in three months. Of course, if there is any pain that might suggest a possible infection, she is to come back right away, or if the clinic is closed, to go to a specific ER in the city that can deal with eye issues.
Overall, the whole thing went well and smoothly. My mother didn’t try to get out of the appointment. She seemed to be in good spirits and feeling stronger than I’ve seen her in a while. No sudden changes in behaviour or strange rants. Even while driving, there was only one time when she suddenly screamed because she didn’t like how close she thought I was getting to another vehicle, as I was maneuvering into the disabled parking spot. I had plenty of space, but her exclamation was enough to potentially cause an accident, all on its own. Thankfully, it was in a parking lot, not in the middle of traffic. I had to remind her of my number one rule in the vehicle: no distracting the driver!
Not only did she seem in good spirits and was having one of her good days in behaviour, she actually expressed gratitude and complimented me, without any passive aggressive criticisms at the same time. Which is actually quite out of character for her, most of the time.
I’ll take the good when it happens, and be thankful for it!
After the appointment, it was straight back to her town with only a stop at the gas station to pick up fried chicken and wedges for a very, very late lunch. Plus milk, the only thing she was out of at home! With Meals on Wheels coming by three times a week, her groceries are lasting a lot longer.
While we were having our very late lunch, it was still too early for her to take her supper time medications. She’d gotten a call this morning from the home care scheduler, saying they didn’t have anyone who could come by this morning. They are supposed to come in between 7 and 9 am – and my mom got the call at 9! She’d already gotten up and had them with her breakfast, at 6am. When she had her medication assist before bed last night, she mentioned that she was going into the city today and wasn’t sure if she’d be back in time for the supper medication assist, which the scheduler did have in her notes. In the end, my mother told them not to come in for both remaining visits today. She knew she would be tired, and the timing of their visits have sometimes been disruptive for her. After telling me this, I made sure to get her supper medications ready in the miniature tagine pinch pot I brought for her for her medications. She can see how many pills are in there, and it has an adorable little cover.
As we were talking, however, she noticed something on her table and picked it up – and it turned out to be a half pill from her morning medications! She hadn’t used the little pinch pot first, after taking them out of the blister pack, and put them straight into her mouth. She had dropped one without noticing!
Oops.
At least she did find it again.
I didn’t stay too much longer after that, as I was feeling pretty tired, too. I also left early enough to stop at the post office on the way home. Canada Post is on strike right now, but that doesn’t stop the junk mail from being delivered. 🫤🫤 There did turn out to be a Purolator package waiting for us, though.
When I got home, I had a whole crowd of yard cats waiting for me! It was time for their evening feeding, so I took care of that, while one of my daughters took care of the inside cat feeding.
I tried to do a head count, and I might have counted 36, but they were moving around so much, I may have counted some, twice.
I also found a collar on the sun room floor. Nosy keeps managing to get his off. This time, I spotted a cat I thought might be Collin. After checking his ear for a tattoo, I put the collar on him, instead. He’s the one fixed cat that is the hardest to tell apart from the other white and greys! Nosy and Stinky at least have distinctive markings.
The Cat Lady had ordered some kibble for us from Amazon, but it got delivered to her place instead, for some reason. We missed being able to meet up during my trip to pick up kibble after my daughter’s doctor visit yesterday, so I messaged her about possibly meeting tomorrow. She’ll see what her schedule is like and message me back in the morning.
All in all, everything went really well today. We’ll just need to monitor my mother in regards to how her eye is feeling.
I like it when things are nice and smooth and boring. I’m at a stage in my life where the less excitement there is, the better! 😄😄
I’m also really appreciating our lack of snow right now. I’ve got a lot of driving around to do in the last week of November and the first week of December, between medical appointments and stock up shopping trips. I don’t mind the colder temperatures we’re going to be getting. I just want the roads to stay clear! Looking at the long range forecasts, into December, it’s almost looking as if we’ll be getting a green Christmas! When we lived in the city, we had quite a few of those, even though we lived further north than we do now. Granted, we also would get snow in June or July, so it’s a trade off I’m okay with! 😄 Still, this old body could do without snow for the rest of my life, if I could manage it! 😄
Ah, well. It is what it is! I’m just going to be thankful for what we have now. 😊😊
I was able to get out with the chainsaw and work on that dead spruce tree.
It was still damp out, but more because it’s not warm enough for things to dry than because of any rain. We’re under a weather watch right now, as a large system is being blown almost straight North from the US, so the southern and eastern parts of our province are expected to get a storm. Locally, we’re expected to start getting rain at about 7am tomorrow morning. It’s then expected to continue to rain, off and on, through to the next morning, when it is supposed to become a mix of rain and snow.
Based on the current forecasts, today was pretty much my last day to get this done.
The first two pictures were taken before I got started. That’s basically how it has been since my daughter was last able to work on trimming away branches.
Which was the first part of what I had to do. I had my baby chainsaw (electric pruner) for most of that job. This part took the longest, because I took the time to break down the branches to fit into the wagon, then dumped them on the big branch pile in the outer yard. A lot of these were branches from the diseased crab apple tree, so they need to be burned. Previously, we were able to get the branch pile chipped, but this year we’ve been piling up diseased branches as well as things like squash plants that had powdery mildew on them.
While cleaning up the branches, I found the remains of an old bird’s nest.
When I finally got things clear enough to start using the chain saw on the crab apple tree, Syndol decided that would be a good time to climb the tree! I even cut away a broken section while he was up there, hoping the noise would have him jump down, but nope! In the end, I dumped another load of branches and came back before he finally made his way down.
Then it was more cutting and clearing and cutting and clearing. Crab apple tree branches are so bent and twisted, they took a remarkably long time to deal with. The wood is so much heavier, too. The difference is quite noticeable when I had pieces of apple tree cut quite short to load into the wagon and haul away, then tossing them on top of the pile, then started working on the spruce tree. I cut sections that were much longer than the apple tree trunk pieces, and the spruce tree’s trunk was at least twice as think at the top section of the tree, yet were so much lighter!
In the end, I had to stop because it was getting too dark. I left a section of the crab apple trunk alone, so that we could easily see it when we can finish cleaning it up later – likely in the spring. I was able to load three sections of the spruce tree’s trunk into the wagon to haul away (my apologies for the very fuzzy picture!) – that will NOT be going onto the burn pile, but will be stacked near the old garden shed – while a couple of larger pieces were left for later. The main thing is that there is now a cleared land that we can walk through – or drive through, if necessary.
Once the cut pieces of trunk are cleared away, the rest of the tree can be left for the spring. It’s going to take a lot more effort to clear that out, since it is in between other trees and in underbrush in the spruce grove.
In the end, I messaged a daughter to come out and help me put things away, because I was losing the light so fast, so the remaining logs have been left where they are until tomorrow. Hopefully, it won’t be raining too hard, and we can haul them away and stack them. We may be able to use these pieces for when we make a new garden shed as our cordwood practice building. We’ll need a lot more, but the walls for the practice building will probably be only about 8 inches wide, instead of the 12 – 16 inches more typical of cordwood building. I still want to use the method for when we build an outdoor bathroom (NOT an outhouse over a pit), but we need to clear some very large dead trees before we can work in the area I want to build it in.
We still have lots to do to collect and prepare before we can start building, but these logs could at least be a start, if the wood is in good enough condition.
All in good time.
For now, I’m just glad I was able to get that tree cleaned up and cut up enough to get that lane open again.
The long haired gene showed up a few years ago, and now we have so many handsome babies!
These ones will likely need to be trapped for spays and neuters, though. One of the fluffballs does allow pets, sometimes, but the other two are not quite there yet.
At times like this, we could just close up the ramp door of the isolation shelter to keep them in place for an overnight fast before getting fixed. Getting them out and into carriers, though, would not be so easy!
The tabby on the shelf on top is Rabi, Kohl’s brother, from the oldest litter. He’s getting so big, yet he’s only about 6-7 months old!
Good grief, it’s just past 10am as I start this, and things are already done!
As we were expecting the septic company to come out this morning to fix the expeller on our system, my daughter and I headed out together to do the morning rounds. Today, that included opening the main gate, as well as moving the chain and electric fence across the gate by the barn, for the equipment to get through.
Syndol did, too, but they were both moving around so much, I barely managed to get one decent photo of Judgement!
I just realized; one of his eyes looks more dilated than the other. I’ll have to monitor that.
Once the gates were done, my daughter went on to to the inner yard routine, while I went around to check some things in the outer yard. I’m glad I did! One thing I found was one of the missing cat collars. This time, the break away buckle was actually open. The last one I found, it turned out the stitching can come loose at one end and slipped off the buckle. The buckle itself is still together, so no missing parts. I’ll just have to sew it up.
As for the one I found this morning, I spotted Nosy in the sun room as I was coming back in and was able to get it on him.
After checking things in the outer yard, I made my way back into the inner yard through the gate by the fire pit, and started checking the maple grove for fallen branches.
The winds finally broke two of the three rotting trunks on the ancient willow. They’re hung up on other trees, still. My daughter joined me while I was checking it out. As we were going over it, we could hear popping noises and, every now and then, another branch would break off and fall down.
How it is right now is quite dangerous. We’ll have to find a way to safely pull it down the rest of the way. One of the trees that’s holding it up is another willow with a rotting trunk, and it may well pull that one down with it, too.
It was just a matter of time for this to happen and, to be honest, I’m just surprised it was this part that fell, and not the trunk with a super long branch extending horizontally over the fence.
While we were checking it out, my cell phone started ringing. We get a better signal outside than in the house!
It was the septic company, asking about where we were. Turns out, they drove right past us. I’d told him, “first driveway on the right” – and he even had that written down on his printout – but he was looking left, instead!
There are no driveways on that side of the road, other than into hay fields!
So I went to meet him at the driveway while my daughter quickly went inside to use the bathroom before they started work.
As I was talking to the guy (the company owner), I brought up about not using water in the house, and he said it should only take about an hour or two.
?!!!?
I was expecting at least four to six hours, based on what the other company had said.
As we were talking, the truck hauling the excavator made its way over, but parked on the road to unload.
I went along to show them where the expeller was, and explain to them what direction the pipe was running underground. Normally, it would have had a pipe going straight to the house, but this pipe followed the water pipe to the cattle fountains and barn, first. Which meant it was basically at right angles from where they would have expected it to be.
The job was a repair by replacement. The leak would have been at the bottom of the expeller pipe. How the pipe was leaning back like it was, instead of being straight up, would had contributed to the damage. They then dug a hole about ten or so feet away from the existing expeller.
When I mentioned, I thought the pope would be maybe twelve feet down, the owner said it was more likely about six feet. That would have been typical, I guess, and with how much of the original expeller pipe was showing above ground, that would have been a logical conclusion.
After the guys got started, the owner left them to it.
It was definitely more than six feet down.
There were also a LOT of rocks.
The excavator was able to pull a few larger ones out, but there was one huge boulder that was not going to move.
Every now and then, the excavator would stop, a ladder would be put down, and a guy went down with a metal tool to poke around in the clay and gravel, trying to find the pipe. Then he’d climb out, and the excavator would dig some more.
That process got repeated a couple of times before they found the pipe, and then had to dig more to access it.
Watching the excavator operator was truly amazing. He was making that thing dance! It was beautiful to watch.
By the time they found the pipe, there was water on the bottom of the hole. I asked one of the guys about it, and if he thought they’d just hit water, or if he thought it was from the leak.
He said it was most likely from the leak.
The guy that went into the pit was eventually able to clean the pipe of clay residue and start cutting it.
There was a whole lot more water after that!
The excavator went back to work, clearing space for the water to drain away to. Then the guy went back down and finished cutting the pipe. The new expeller’s end was lowers, and he used a torch to soften the plastic of the pipe, so he could insert the brass fitting before tightening it with screw strap bands.
Then he got to hold the expeller straight while a couple of guys started shoveling clay down! The guy in the hole ended up taking one of the spades and digging clay and gravel from the sides while a guy on the surface used a tool to hold the expeller straight. Once there was enough clay and gravel around the base to hold the expeller, the guy climbed out and the excavator took over.
The first of the photos above is how it looks right after the guy climbed out.
This is an excellent visual cross section of what our Dark Grey Zone soil is like. There’s just a few inches of top soil, and the rest is a mix of clay, sand and gravel.
This is why we do raised bed gardening!
Filling that hole back again was when the excavator operator truly showed his skill! He had to carefully lay the soil around the expeller without pushing it aside. There was still a guy using a tool to hold it straight, but there’s only so much that can be done from a distance like that.
When it got close to the top, the excavator pulled down the old expeller, breaking the pipe and pulling out the venturi pipe inside. He then leveled that area and covered over the old pipe in the process, filling an eroded hole near it, while filling and building up the soil around the new expeller.
Which is much lower down than the other one was! I’m guessing the old expeller was on top of a vertical pipe, for it to extend that far above ground. These expellers only come in one length.
Once the hole was filled and leveled, the excavator operator moved aside some of the bigger rocks he’d pulled out. Then the guys put the sheet of metal roofing back and weighed it down, while turning the nozzle so the water would be expelled towards the low area it’s intended to drain into.
I checked the time stamps on the photos and video I took. From the time they started digging to when they were done filling the hole and leveling around the new ejector, was only about 45 minutes. From the time of arrival to when they left was maybe an hour.
I can’t believe how fast they were! It was amazing!
And here we were worried about having to set up the diverter, so we could use our plumbing and the septic pump could empty the tank into the maple grove while they worked. It wasn’t long enough to be even a slight inconvenience!
As for the bill, that will be sent to me by email, which I’ll pass on to my brother. Between him and my mother, it will be covered. The total, before taxes, was even a little bit less than the estimate I got over the phone. After taxes, is should total under $2300.
Getting this done is SUCH a huge weight off our shoulders! Especially getting it done now, before winter. We might have been able to make it through the winter, if this didn’t get done now for some reason. The pipe is well below the frost line, so the saturated area around the pipe probably would not have frozen, and the expeller did start working again, somewhat. The fact that at least some of the water was being properly expelled is the only reason they weren’t digging a hole in a quagmire.
I’m just so happy – and thankful that my mother offered to pay for it, or we would not have been able to get it done at all!
As for me… well… I’m going to be taking a nap. I woke up somewhere between 3:30 and 4am, and wasn’t able to get back to sleep. A couple of hours sleep, and I’ll be heading back outside to get some work done!
This morning, my younger daughter took over doing the morning rounds for me. I was really appreciating it, as I’d had a sleepless night.
Mostly because of cats.
I don’t know what’s gotten into Ghosty, but she has been trying to get into all of the places she is not allowed. It got to the point that, even when I did finally doze off, I would hear something and immediately wake up saying “get out of there!” before I even knew which cat was getting into what. It was usually Ghosty digging under my monitor again, or Clarence launching himself on my craft shelf, chasing ladybugs. Or Shadow doing the same thing.
There are a lot of ladybugs in the house right now, and they are driving the cats insane!
Then there was Ghosty deciding that my face is delicious, and repeatedly trying to lick it, or Butterscotch and Potato Beetle, both wanting cuddles at the same time. Plus Cheddar, who has a thing for slamming himself against my back as he settles down for the night.
Then there are the mystery noises in other parts of the house that I end up having to get up and check. I was not impressed to discover a ball of fine yarn in the dining room, half unraveled and tangled up. I honestly don’t know how they got it. I have several balls of this yarn that I hid away long ago, to protect it from the cats. I honestly can’t remember where I hid them; it’s not where I thought I had put them.
As much as I appreciated my daughter doing the morning rounds so I could sleep, I’m afraid I didn’t actually got more than maybe an hour.
I did head out this morning, as I needed to go to the post office before the store it’s in closed for the afternoon, as they always do on Wednesdays. As I was going to the garage, I spotted this adorable scene.
The way things have been going these days, I’m enjoying the outside cats more than the inside cats! 😄
I’m happy to say, I got quite a lot done outside today. There is still more to do, of course, but I should be able to get most of that done in the next couple of days.
This Big Boi was loafed in a sun spot against the old garden shed. To get the photo, I had to zoom in through three layers of glass and Lexan in my window. I’m actually surprised I got as good a photo as I did! 😄😄
I don’t know that I recognize this cat. We have a lot of similar tabbies, which always makes is harder to tell, but this particular beast seems unusually chonk for an outside cat!
There is that distinctive slash of white fur through the black line running along the side of his nose. That’s the only thing that seems at all familiar to me. This may be a cat that has returned for the winter. Chances are, if I go through my old photos, looking specifically for that distinctive marking, I might find him there.
I just got back from doing the last outside feeding of the day, and did not see him among the other cats, though. Perhaps he is a visitor from one of the neighboring farms.
In other things, I’ve had a pretty non-productive day. I had a very interrupted night, so very little sleep, and was in a lot of pain in the morning. I got the outside cats fed with their warm, softened kibble, then took some pain killers and tried to go back to bed.
That didn’t work any better than last night.
I did eventually get some inside stuff done, at least. We have another batch of mostly San Marzano tomatoes that are ripened, so I went through those to pick out any of the damaged ones that started to go bad, then set the rest to soak in some vinegar water. I’ll set up the slow cooker for the night to make another sauce. We have plenty in the fridge right now, so this will be for the freezer. There are still green tomatoes in the old kitchen, and I’m still regularly picking out the ones that are starting to show a blush and setting them in one container. Once it’s full, I’ll bring them to the living room to finish ripening.
Mostly, though, today has been another enforced day of rest. Which, I suppose, is not a bad thing. Today was a bit cooler, and there was a smattering of snow on the ground in the morning. The next two days will be warmer, so that will be a good time to get outside and get some more stuff done before winter really sets in.
All in all, we’re having a very lovely and mild November. Last year was a mild fall, too, but around this time last year, well…
The Re-Farmer 