Critters

We have access!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Not quite to everything, but pretty close.

But first, check out this adorableness.

Collin is a hungry boy!

Also, I caught a tongue blehp in the background!

As I write this, we are currently at our expected high of 8C/46F. Things will cool down more over the next while, and we might start getting rain today and tomorrow.

We have standing water in all the usual places, like this low spot by the trail cam stand. I really want to dig a trench along that fence line to collect the water more, so it doesn’t spread out like this. All in good time.

The areas around the garage do still have standing water, but it has receded even as the snow melts, which means the ground is actually absorbing it.

After doing my rounds, I headed into town to refill our water jugs for drinking water and pick up a few fresh groceries. I filled the gas tank on my mom’s car, too. When I was last in the city, gas prices were around 160.9 cents per liter. The Esso station in town I had been going to was at 159.9 0 but the Husky station next to the grocery store was at 148.9! Ever since they reopened after getting some work done, they’ve somehow managed to keep their prices a lot lower than everywhere else.

When I got home, I was actually able to drive into the yard and back the car up to the house to unload! First time this year. Much better than trying to drag a wagon filled with heavy water bottles through mud and water.

We can’t quite get to everything yet, though. The outer yard in front of the barn is all snow, still, except for a “river” opened up by water draining from the moat near the garage. The storage warehouse has a lake in front of it, but I could access the pump shack and the old chicken coop. I was even able go get through some less water filled areas and check on the Korean pine.

It’s still too early to tell if they actually survived their first winter. With two of them, their protective cages were smushed to one side, but the saplings themselves were still protected, and I was able to straighten out the wire. One sapling was still completely covered with snow, but I could see its green needles through the snow.

With things cooling down for the next while, we decided to hold off on planting the carrots we made seed tape with. The plastic covering the bed they will go into is still on place – since it’s just held with duct tape, and the yard cats have a habit of jumping onto our garden protection, there is always some doubt! We will leave it to keep acting as a little greenhouse over that bed as we continue to prepare others over the next while. In particular, I want to get the bed along the chain link fence ready to do our first sowing of peas. The high raised bed in the main garden area no longer has snow on it, but the ground around it is still covered in snow, including the bed the garlic is planted in, so there’s nothing we can do there quite yet. We do need to start gathering the materials to make the permanent trellis tunnels and portable trellises, though, so once the ground is ready, we can get those started right away.

With the ground in the spruce grove now mostly free of snow, this would be a good time to start cutting down some of the dead trees, too, along with the ones I’ve singled out for the permanent trellis tunnel. I should probably get our electric chain saw checked over for service and maintenance first, though.

The to-do list is long! The challenge is prioritizing what needs to be done first, rather than what’s easiest or fastest to start.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Morning finds

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

What a gorgeous, gorgeous morning! I can’t believe how much of the snow is gone! Better yet, the ground seems to actually be absorbing a fair amount of it, and the “moat” around the garage has actually receded a bit. We didn’t even reach freezing temperatures overnight. There’s a section of snow built up by our neighbour plowing that got washed away like a river by the accumulating water, draining into the outer yard towards the barn, and there is hardly any water in the exposed grass. Water has accumulated along the fence line from the garage to the gate, where it is lower and drains into the ditch, and the snow around the gate cam’s post – even the gate itself, on that side – is completely clear of snow. The other side of the driveway at the gate is shaded by a huge spruce tree, but even there, I could probably access and close the other half of the gate.

This beautiful boy followed me around the entire time I was doing my rounds. He even let me get a burr out of his fur under his neck. He still won’t let me get the ones on his tail, though, and there are quite a few of them. I’ve never seen burrs being this much of a problem before. Even Rolando Moon showed up with burrs stuck on her tail and back. She wouldn’t let me pull them out, either. At least with her short fur, she has a better chance of getting them out herself.

Snow around the house is disappearing quickly. Yesterday evening, I went around picking up the long plastic strips from the shingle adhesive that got missed in the snow. This morning, however, this was uncovered.

This was not there last fall, before the snow fell. It’s not far from where groundhogs had dug a tunnel behind the mock orange tree, next to the steps to the dining room door that I kept trying to fill in. The groundhogs weren’t as much of a problem last year as the year before – I think too many of their dens got flooded out – and I eventually stopped trying to fill in the hole when it looked like it was no longer being dug out and used. It’s still there, but partially filled, hidden behind the mock orange. There are no fresh signs of digging there. This hole, meanwhile, has the ground around it undisturbed. Which suggests to me that it was dug out from the inside, perhaps as a “back door” to the den below.

Talking to my brother and his wife yesterday, they mentioned that their sump pump is going off more often. When I was doing my evening rounds yesterday (that is something I can start doing more thoroughly now!), I made sure to check, and the hose from ours is now clear of snow, but so far, it has not gone off. The reservoir has been slowly accumulating water, but as of last night, the concrete is still dry. I even checked the floor drain on the other side. If there was water being diverted by the weeping tile under the new basement to the septic tank, I would see it there. There is no new water there (though the thinnest of roots are growing under drain cover!). So for all the snowmelt and accumulated water I am seeing outside, we are still actually quite dry!

Something else I checked while doing my rounds.

Last night, I noticed the three low raised beds near the compost pile were mostly uncovered. This morning, two of them were completely clear of snow, while the third still has only a small amount. I checked on of the open ones, and found I could dig my fingers into the soil. I’m even seeing some weeds starting to grow, and could pull up the ones with shallower roots.

This means that I could actually plant in these beds.

I have a few things that can be direct sown “as soon as the ground can be worked”. It doesn’t matter if the ground it still frozen and inch or so below, and they can even handle a bit of snowfall. This includes things like peas, carrots and beets. From what I’ve read, I could even transplant our onions and shallots out in these conditions!

Which I’m not going to do. At least not quite yet. I want to break up the soil a bit more and pull up and weeds and roots in the low raised beds. Later today, I will check the new beds I finished last fall in the old kitchen garden and see what condition they are in. There are two more beds in there I want to raise a bit higher, too, but I’ll need the ground to thaw a bit more, first.

Then I have to consider what I want to actually sow first, and where. The high raised bed in the main garden area is almost clear, but the snow around it and on the low raised beds is still too deep.

I can’t believe I’m actually thinking about sowing and transplanting outside, and we’re just reaching the middle of April!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The wee hours of the morning!

As usual, I had a whole lot of cats crowding me during the night. Cheddar likes to lay where I usually do, and does NOT like to move, no matter how much I disturb him. Still, it was a surprise even for him to not move when Nosencrantz came over for pets, and lay right on top of Cheddar!

When I had to get up to let out a cat scratching at the door, I discovered this had been beside me.

This is HUGE progress! Cheddar is so chill, he’ll cuddle with any other cat. Nosencrantz, however, is a bundle of stress and anxiety around other cats. At best, she will lay down next to Butterscotch, or share the shelf table with her. For her to be curled right up against Cheddar like this is a massive step forward.

I didn’t get a head count while doing my rounds, as the cats were running around too much. It’s been so warm, they aren’t spending as much time in the sun room, and with so much snow melting all over, they aren’t running out of water in their bowls. Kibble, on the other hand, has been disappearing. I don’t think there are a lot of hunting opportunities right now, but we’ve got the cats, deer and skunks all cleaning the trays out! The cats, at least, eat most of it right away, so the other critters that we really don’t want to be feeding just clean up what’s left. My only concern is that if there is a cat that comes around later, such as one of the visiting strays or a mama that couldn’t leave her litter right away, they won’t have much food left for them.

Spotting this was a funny surprise.

Some of the cats are enjoying the new roof! I think this is Sprout, but it might be Phantom. She was stalking something at the peak of the roof!

Also, it has been so great to not have any leaking as the snow melts! The sun room is nice and dry, and the girls haven’t had to deal with leaking at one of the windows next to their computer desk. I’m so glad my brother was able to get my mother to finally follow through on her promise to get this done! That has taken a huge weight off our backs.

The dump is open today, so I started the van to see how it is. It’s making a noise I don’t like; I think it might be from a belt, but I can’t tell for sure. To be on the safe side, we used my mother’s car, instead. We have a mat in the back of the van to protect the floor from any leaking garbage, so I moved that over to the back of my mother’s car. Her car is narrower, but I don’t mind the mat going up the sides at the wheel wells a bit.

The down side was having to go through the “moat” with a wagon load of garbage bags. It’s a lot wider and deeper, now. Enough snow has melted that I was able to go around on one side through the snow, but the wagon can’t get through that.

My boots are set aside to dry now. 😄

Since I didn’t want to slog through water any more than I had to, I made sure have what I needed to head out right away – though I did have to turn around and come back when I realized I’d forgotten our pass card for the dump in the van. After going to the dump, I went to the post office. It’s been more than a week since we’ve been able to get to it while it was open. I got there too early, though! Just a little while ago, my husband let me know that a package had arrived. It would have been there while I was getting the mail, but it hadn’t been processed yet. Ah, well. It’s just more Lysine for the outside cats, and we still have plenty unopened containers waiting.

I did get something else in the mail, but that will be in my next post! 😊

The Re-Farmer

Life goes on

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I just got back in from feeding the outside cats for the evening. I counted 26 or 27 – I wasn’t sure if I’d already counted one of the tabbies. It’s a higher than usual count, with several of the “old timers” around. Rolando Moon was there, as well as Junk Pile and the other tabby that looks so much like her.

The Distinguished Guest made an appearance, but there were so many cats around – plus one skunk! – that he backed off to wait his turn. Rosencranzt was there and she kept chasing cats away from different food trays in between scarfing down kibble and running from tray to tray. I think she has had her kittens. Possibly even the ones I think I heard from the pump shack.

Broccoli was there, too, and she is starting to look pregnant, too. Maybe. Of the three kittens she had last year, they are all female – Brussel and Sprout, we just assume female because they are calicos – and a grey tabby we can’t get close to, but has short fur, so I did get a chance to see and confirm female. She seems to be the only female tabby among last year’s kittens. All the others are male. So far, I can’t tell that the new females are pregnant, but the oldest of them are still not even a year old, so I hope not.

We’ve already found an early litter of five that succumbed to the cold, and now Pointy is gone. That’s a high rate of loss for the year already. Wherever those little ones I think I heard are, I hope they are safe and warm.

I imagine we’ll be seeing more skunks, soon, too!

The Re-Farmer

Saying goodbye

/ Re-Farmer / 9 Comments

Sadly, Pointy Baby took a turn for the worst last night. In the wee hours of the morning, he passed on in my arms.

This is where we found him, yesterday.

You can see where we cut the whole to free him.

Of course, I’m constantly thinking how I should have found him, earlier. I didn’t think to look for him, when he didn’t come out in the morning. That’s not unusual for yard cats, though rate for him.

I had gone out and back to meet my mother and brother for Easter, but heard nothing.

I’d gone out to clear more paths and wasn’t that far, but I saw and heard nothing. It was only by chance that I heard him in the evening, and kept trying to find the source of that strange meow.

That poor baby boy.

I’m going to miss him.

The Re-Farmer

Poor Baby!

/ Re-Farmer / 11 Comments

Oh, my poor Pointy Baby!

While doing the evening cat feeding, I heard a strange meow in the distance. I went to the outer yard to investigate, but could see nothing, and the meowing stopped.

I heard it again when I topped up the water bowls. It was such a strange meow, I went looking again. This time, I slogged through the snow to the pump shack, thinking one of the mamas had her kittens there. There was no mama, though I did hear tiny kitten meows. Oddly, they sounded like they were coming from just outside the wall. The only thing there is an old, collapsing mini she’d with no roof, and some old junk appliances. I stomped through the snow, anyhow, but could no longer hear kitten meows.

I did hear the strange meow again, though. From another direction.

Looking over, I could see one of the white and grey cats in the “basement ” window of the storage house that keeps falling off. When I heard the meow again, it seemed closer. So I headed towards the chain link fence.

That’s when I could finally see him.

There is a spot along that fence where the yard cats (and skunks) squeeze under to get through the fence. Even in winter, they wear the snow down to access the space.

Pointy Baby was there, but something was wrong.

It wasn’t until I slogged through more snow to reach him, that I could see his head was stuck through the chain link fence.

As soon as I saw him, I realized he had to have been stuck there at least all day. When I did the morning feeding, he wasn’t there, which was a first. How much longer he was stuck there, I can’t guess. The poor thing had been struggling for some time. He had worn out an area around him in the snow, and his lower body was all wet with mud.

I lifted him slightly to look, but could see there was no way I could get him out. I ran to the house to call the girls for help, saying we would have to cut the fence. My younger daughter remembered the bolt cutters, so whle she got shoes on, I ran to the garage to get them.

Between the two of us, we were able to cut him free without adding injury. While I cradled him to warm him up, my daughter did a quick check. One eye was dilated, and she could see where skin was rubbed raw under his chin, but no open wounds.

We headed to the house, where my other daughter brought a towel to wrap him in.

Pointy Baby, meanwhile, snuggled into my arms.

We brought him to my room, where we can keep him isolated. The girls started cleaning him up, checking him over and tending to him, while I called the vet.

It’s Easter, so they were closed, but the message included a number for a vet for emergencies. I called it and spoke to the vet, describing what happened, and how he looked.

She advised to to keep him warm, offer him soft food, and monitor him for an hour. If he got worse, to call her back.

During that time, my daughters kept cleaning his lower body with warm water, and looking him over. His mouth looks like he was somehow managing to bite the chain link. The corners are red and swollen.

We was completely placid the hole time. Even when my daughter started trying to brush out mats for fur.

Aside from the redness from the fence wire, there was a spot I saw before that was getting red because of his fur starting to mat so much. We started cutting the mats out, too.

He purred, even as multiple people worked on him at the same time.

He has shown no interest in food and water yet. In fact, he fell asleep while my daughter and I carefully sheered the huge mat that started under one ear and wrapped around the front of his neck.

It’s entirely possible that mat prevented worse damage to his neck.

Other mats we cut out still had burrsstuck in them.

After a while, he seemed to loose patience a bit. We got the worst out and cleaned up.

We have the baby jail set up for him, which means closing it to keep Marlee out.

For now, though, he is sleeping in my arms.

He’s wrapped in a towel, but I wanted to use my own body heat to keep him warm. I am using my phone to make this post, because I can’t use my desktop right now.

He seems to be sleeping peacefully right now. He would be recovering from shock. My only concern at the moment is that his dilated eye won’t close all the way. Every now and then, I have been gently holding the lids closed, so his eye won’t dry out.

Poor, sweet baby boy!

I will feel much better when I see him eating and drinking.

The Re-Farmer

Snow kitties, and that’s how far I got

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The outside cats are quite enjoying the warmer temperatures.

I snagged this picture through our bathroom window. The cats have knocked everything off that shelf, except for an organizer box in the corner that’s too heavy for them to casually push around.

They love this shelf!

They are also loving the paths to the electric meter and burn ring, now clear of snow.

Now that our angel of a neighbour cleared the driveway for us, that’s going to melt clear quickly, too. I just finished going through the trail cam files and took note of the time stamps. He showed up almost exactly an hour after I started clearing the end of the driveway.

This is how far I got in that hour. About 6 feet or so. Maybe 7. Granted, a lot of that time included having to use the ice scraper to break up the plow ridge before I could shovel it away, so it would have gone faster clearing ordinary snow. Still, it would probably have taken almost 2 more hours, just to clear up to the gate, where it was slightly deeper due to drifting. My daughter working at the other end with the little electric snow blower would not have been able to go much faster. It definitely would have taken us all day to get a path just wide enough to drive through, clear.

Which means we both would have been in a world of hurt, today – and we are set to drive to the city this afternoon!

Today is Holy Saturday, After I finish this, we’ll start assembling and blessing our baskets. We’re making a second one as a gift to bring with us this afternoon.

Time to get at it!

The Re-Farmer

Digging out

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, the storm has passed, and everyone is starting to dig their way out.

This is me, on my way to switch out the memory card in the gate cam.

No, I’m not standing in a drift. The snow reaches almost to me knees. Taking into account what was already on the ground, we definitely got at least 10 inches/25 cm in total.

I didn’t walk all the way to the road, as the end of the driveway is drifted over, so not only is it deeper, but harder packed. The road has not been plowed yet. I’d already seen people posting in local Facebook groups asking about the plows. Apparently, our new council members have not sent them out yet. Whether that’s for budgetary reasons or because they decided to simply let it melt was the question.

Of course, we couldn’t get out of our driveway right now, anyways, even with the van.

I found a whole train of cats waiting for me when I got back to the inner yard!

This path is now shovelled clear again. I also cleared the path to the garage, wide enough for walker or wagon, and enough space in front of the garage to open the side doors.

We can now open the doors on the storage side, and there’s room enough to maneuver little Spewie out. That little snow blower is going to get a work out, today!

I cleared the path to the burn ring, too. We need to do another burn. I’d like to get more paths dug out, so that they will melt clear faster as things warm up. I’m not going to bother digging a path to the sign cam, though. There’s lots of space on the memory card, and the batteries were still good the last I checked, so it should be fine until I can get to it again. At least I can be confident our vandal isn’t going to fight his way through the snow to wreck the sign or something.

For now, I’m going to have myself another cup of tea before heading back out again.

The Re-Farmer

Snow cats!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It’s feeling a bit surreal right now. The snow is still falling and it’s bright, if overcast, outside, so I keep thinking we’re in the middle of the afternoon in winter. But it’s spring right now, the days are longer, and it’s actually past 7:30 in the evening as I write this.

I headed outside to top up the kibble for the cats and had to push the sun room door open, because of the snow drifted against it. I ended up shoveling it clear, along with the space between the cat shelters, and just kept on going.

I didn’t do all that much. I cleared the path from the sun room door to the main entry, which was also partially blocked with snow. I cleared the steps, but only part of the patio blocks. There is a pile of snow at the “corner” beside the elm tree and I kept having to push the top of it further into the yard, because the snow I was shoveling was falling back onto the path I was clearing.

From there, I just cleared the path to the gate. The rest can wait until tomorrow.

The cats clearly liked what I was doing . Every time I cleared a new spot, I’d turn around and find a cat in it!

Except Gooby.

Gooby actually climbed my back while I was shoveling, then clung to my shoulder like a monkey! When I stopped to take the other picture, he crawled around between my phone and my face. That boy does love humans!!

The snow on that path to the house is not drifted. Plus, with how much the older snow had melted away from the path, it is also not accumulated snow. That’s all fresh along the edges of the blocks. It looks like we got more snow than was predicted for our area – that’s looking like 8 or 10 inches (20-25cm). I’ve heard that one area got as much as 35cm (almost 14 inches) today!

Thankfully, we are well stocked and don’t have to go anywhere for a few days!

The Re-Farmer

Spring snow, TDG status, and comparing power

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, that predicted snow started falling last night, and will continue to fall for most of today!

We’re going to have a lot of clearing to do when it’s over.

I wouldn’t call our current conditions a storm, but other areas of the province are getting hit with more snow and higher winds than we are. No complaints, really! Even closer to home, others are getting things worse. I’m glad I was able to pick up those prescriptions and antihistamines yesterday. This morning, I got a call from the pharmacy, letting me know there would be no deliveries today. She was glad to hear I’d already picked them up. Being right on the lake, town would be getting a lot more snow and wind than we are, even though they are only about a 15 minute drive away.

Also yesterday, I spotted The Distinguished Guest in the sun room and managed to get a picture before he disappeared.

When I first looked through the window, he was fully inside the box we use as a kibble tray, picking over the last little bits of kibble he could find. I was able to see his left paw a bit. That was the paw he was limping on so badly, not that long ago. It definitely looks misshapen, but then, so do the rest of his paws that I could see. It could be from an injury, or it could just be full of matted winter fur. I made sure to put food out soon after I got this picture, even though it was earlier than usual, just to make sure he got something to eat.

As for this morning…

Most of the cats were inside the sun room when I came out, but a few still prefer to be outside. I wasn’t going to put kibble on the roof, but when I saw some jumping up and looking for food there, even though the trays we filled (one of the trays under the water bowl house had been pulled right out and ended up buried in the snow!), I shoveled the snow off, then got another container of food, putting some on the roof. I doubled their food this morning, putting most of the extra in the sun room, and more than usual in the entry of the cat house, where there is another tray, to encourage them to stay inside as much as possible.

Three of these trays are the baking sheets I bought to carry our transplants around. I’m going to have to reclaim them soon, which means I’ll need to find something to replace them with!

One of the things I had to do this morning was get a meter reading. After submitting the reading, I decided to check our data.

This is our electricity usage over the past year, compared to the year before.

You can really tell that February is when we had our cold snap! Spring of last year was when we had a heavy blizzard followed by flooding, so not only did we use more electricity for heat in March but, once it all started melting, our sump pump and septic pumps (the septic tank is where the new basement weeping tile drains into) were running very frequently.

Here is our usage for the last year, with weather overlay.

With an electric furnace, it’s pretty clear how much the temperatures affect our electricity usage!

It should be interesting to see how things change, if at all, over the next year, now that we have the new roof. We picked the lightest of shingles available and, hopefully, that will help keep the upstairs from overheating over the summer, at least a bit. The girls have fans running all summer, and my older daughter had to switch to working nights because it became too hot to use her computer during the day. The previous shingles were a dark brown, and would have warmed things up quite a bit.

As for now, the weather system that’s over us is quite large. but it doesn’t look like the worst of it will come anywhere near us. It’s expected to clear late tonight. We’ve got a high of -6C/21F forecast for today. Starting tomorrow, things are supposed to warm up and keep warming up. In a couple of days, our highs are supposed to go above freezing and stay there. By next week, we’re supposed to have temperatures in the double digits! (10C/50F and up) For the areas that are supposed to be getting up to 25cm/10 inches of snow in this storm, that will bring on the spring flooding in the river valley regions. I can’t say I’ll be complaining about any spring flooding we get. For all the massive flooding we got last year, our water table still hasn’t completely recovered from years of drought conditions. This spring snow will be a boon to for farmers and gardeners.

Speaking of which, I made a tray full of toilet paper tube pots yesterday evening. One of my goals for the day is to make space in the big aquarium greenhouse for new seed starts. I’m happy to say that some of our peppers have finally started to sprout, so we’ll be able to move that tray off the heat mat. I just need to set up the space next to it, so they will still be close to the warmth of the lights.

Snow days are a great time to be working on our future garden!

The Re-Farmer