I found quite a surprise at our gate when I checked the trail cam files!
Four deer, hanging out on the driveway and road! They stayed there long enough that I found about a dozen files (stills and video) of them!
Looking at the time stamps, they came to the driveway after visiting the house.
They weren’t very nice to each other!
One of them stayed in the trees and never came to the feeding station. What I found interesting as I watched it, is that it completely avoided the area closer to the feeding station and went around to the side.
They definitely prefer to go through the cleaned up areas in or under the trees, rather than out in the open.
This next image from the trail cam isn’t very good, but it is dramatic!
I almost didn’t see it at first!
In the next few files, I could see that there were actually two deer out there, just on the edge of the infrared flash.
Very cool!
Also very cool was having Rolando Moon show up yesterday, and still being here this morning when I went out to feed the outside kitties. It almost gives me hope that Nostrildamus and Potato Beetle might still show up again, though I realize the chances of that are very low.
Their food bowls were completely empty again – even the heated water bowl was completely dry – which suggests the skunks came to visit, too.
They tend to show up near the end of the day, when the light makes is hard to get good photos! You can still see, at least a little, the growing antler nubbins on the deer on the right.
If all goes well, this will be the last bag of feed for the deer that we buy until the fall. Looking at the long range forecast, we’re expected to dip below freezing again, with snow on Monday (three days from now). They’re predicting 3-6cm. After a couple more days, the temperatures will be back above freezing during the day, though we’ll have below freezing temperatures overnight for a while longer.
I’m hoping we actually get that snow, and that it slowly melts. The deer should have fresh growing things to eat after that. We were supposed to have rain over the past couple of days, but once again I watched on the weather radar, as the system moved right past us. We didn’t even get a sprinkle.
Yesterday was a very lazy day for me. There is something about it being overcast that leaves me feeling like I’m ready to fall asleep, all day. Plus, with the cooler temperatures and hopes of rain, I didn’t want to be working outside with power tools. ;-) I did make a trip into town, though. Our darling daughter treated us to pizza for our anniversary. My husband and I celebrated 33 years together this month. :-) While driving into town to pick it up, there actually was a bit of rain, but it was nothing but a tease!
Today, I finally made the trip to the smaller city to pick up the last few things I wasn’t able to get during my Costco trip. They were actually sold out of cat litter, of all things! While there, I started chatting with another customer, who is also feeding a lot of cats. Mostly outside cats. He estimates he spends about $3000 a year on cat food – and spent another $5000 to get 40 cats fixed. !! That’s through some sort of program, where getting a female done is only about $80-$100, instead of the $350 we’re paying. I’ve had all sorts of organizations recommended to us, but either we can’t get through to them, or they don’t operate as far out as we are. :-(
(Oh, just got a phone call. The people who are adopting Two Face are on their way to pick her up. :-) )
While talking to the other customer, he mentioned using wood pellets instead of litter. I’ve heard of people using them, and talking about how much better it is, so I asked him more about it. It turns out that these are just the wood pellets sold as fuel for pellet stoves. He told me that when the cats use the pellets, they absorb all the moisture and break apart into sawdust. They also absorb the odor, so the only thing you smell is wood. When cleaning the litter pans, you simply dump out all the pellets in the pan and replace it with fresh – and the old pellets can still be burned. !! I don’t know that I’d want to do that. At least not in the fire pit (or a pellet stove, if we had one!), but we do still have a burn barrel. Or compost them, while burn bans are in effect. That would save us from having to haul those heavy bags to the dump. He told me the pellets are a lot cheaper, too, and they come in 40 pound bags, so they last a long time, too.
I think it’ll be worth trying it out. Maybe start with just a few litter pans, first, and see how the cats like it.
The conversation got me thinking about just how much we spend on critters. With the cats, it’s about $350-$400 a month in wet and dry cat food, plus litter. So, about $4,800 a year, on the high end. Plus the deer, which we do only for about 6 months, which works out to about $300 a year. Then there’s the bird seed, which we do all year, and works out to about $1000 a year.
Which we’re doing my husband’s disability payments.
Thank God for private health insurance!!
There are a lot of things we are doing without, to keep the critters fed. We include it all in our grocery budget. If, however, we were just setting that money aside, we’d have been able to save enough to replace the roof in only 2 years.
Now, we’re not going to stop feeding the animals, but we really need to find a way to address that expense. This is not sustainable. The problem goes back to my not simply being able to go out and get a job, since any income I would make would get deducted from my husband’s disability payments. If I ever made enough to bring that replace my husband’s disability payments, he would lose his insurance entirely (since he would no longer “need” it) – and he’d no longer have coverage for his prescriptions. So it’s a lose-lose situation. That’s why we had to be so careful when fund raising for Ginger’s vet care. We can accept gifts. We can’t have additional income.
*sigh*
Reducing the costs will help, which is why I want to try the wood pellets instead of cat litter. Cat food isn’t going to get any cheaper, though. It’s another reason why we want to grow and preserve as much food for ourselves, as well.
Slight interruption in writing this, as the people adopting Two Face arrived. As a thank you for Two Face, we were gifted with a bag full of brand new, still in their wrappers, Tupperware! Looks like the lady is a distributor. :-)
I hope Two Face is happy in her new home. We’re going to miss her!
Well, with the weather getting colder again for the next while, we’ll be slowing things down as well. At least, outside. Not so much, inside. The tray of bulb onions are now in the sun room. It’s warmer in there, but with the cooler temperatures coming, we’ve got them heated from below. By the time things warm up again, we should be ready to move more seedlings from the aquarium greenhouses to the sun room, then use the aquariums to start the summer and winter squash.
If all goes to plan, we should be ready to start direct sowing some things near the end of May, then do the final direct sowing and transplanting after our last frost date of June 2.
With the temperatures staying warmer, and the days getting longer, I’ve been starting to bring back my evening rounds. I was all ready to head out the door yesterday evening, when I saw three deer, running and jumping through the outer yard, from the direction of the barn!
Then they stopped and seemed hesitant.
I had a suspicion as to why.
I was right.
There were other deer!
These two were already hanging out at the feeding station.
I was able to open the inner door without startling them, so I could see them better. I could tell they saw me and were watching me, but they didn’t run off. So awesome!
The three made their way into the inner yard, but eventually left rather than joining the two at the feeding station.
There they go, all in a row! :-D
I was losing light fast, so I took the chance and went outside. They actually watched me for a bit, before running off.
As I was checking things out in the outer yard, and making my way to the back gate, I had to pause to take these photos.
I was in the path I mow to the back gate, half way between the fences for the inner and outer yards. The line of snow is what was hard packed from so many hooves, it left their mark in snow that’s taking longer to melt away.
Last winter, they seemed to prefer to jump the gate by the old garden area, where it is more open, but this winter, they definitely seemed to prefer going through the maple grove, then jumping the fence near the massive old willow.
Every time I see them making their way through the trees, or along the spruce grove, it makes me glad we were able to clear the trees out so much. It’s not only much easier and more pleasant for us to be able to go through the trees, but the deer prefer it, too!
While doing my rounds this morning, my daughter joined me as I took a closer look into the spruce grove, where we have SO much clearing to do. I had earlier identified 6 dead spruce trees that we’d like to cut down, on top of the 3 that are closer to buildings that we plan to hire someone to take down. We were able to go further into the grove and look more closely.
It’s not 9 dead trees. It’s a full dozen.
And that doesn’t include any others further into the grove, but just along the Western edge, where we need to work on cleaning things out first. It also doesn’t count the dead trees that have already fallen, and are either on the ground, or leaning on other trees, that need to be cleared away.
Looking in the area behind the garlic beds, it’s almost all little poplars, and those cherry trees that aren’t right for our climate. They bloom beautifully, but produce almost no cherries. They’re all relatively small, so I will be taking them right out. The little bendy poplars will be used to build trellises and arches, among other things. The cherries… they don’t look all that good. They have been killed off by late frosts, then regrowing, so often, none of them are particularly big, and are growing in clumps around whatever parent plant had died off in the middle. They might just end up being really nice wood to cook over.
The size of this area that has no large trees in it is pretty significant. Any spruces that used to be there have died off long ago – I expect to uncover more stumps as we clear back there. It also gets quite a bit of sunlight, so this will be a good area to plant some of the food trees and bushes we are planning on.
Once it’s all cleaned up and cleared away, I expect to see a lot more deer cutting through the spruce grove, rather than skirting around it!
As for the additional trees we identified as being dead and in need of removal, I noticed a couple of groups of three. Depending on the condition of the stumps, they might work well to use as the supports, to make a table with a bend on each side. We are wanting to create pleasant little seating areas throughout, where we can sit and enjoy the wild roses and red barked dogwood that we plan to leave as undergrowth, along with the Saskatoons we are finding (we’ll be taking out the chokecherries, though), and the other trees and bushes we intend to slowly plant in the area.
Like the mulberry tree that will be shipped late in the spring, so we’re going to need to get those dead trees out sooner, rather than later!
Plus, in other areas of the grove, we intend to transplant more spruce trees, into the spruce grove!
This whole area is going to be completely transformed over the next few years.
If all goes well, it will be a haven for both humans and deer. :-)
Today has been one of those days of getting things done that were also enjoyable. Like a morning spent converting feed bags into grow bags while watching/listening to videos about crossbow safety. More listening than watching, since I was, after all, hand stitching the bag bottoms into shape. :-D
I also got to enjoy watching deer through my window, making their way to the feeding station.
I saw a couple, earlier, but that early in the day, our East facing living room window is so full of reflections, I can’t get any good shots, but I could get some shots with my phone through the North window. At one point, I was seeing 4 deer, and I think there was a fifth hidden away in the maple grove.
I made a quick trip into town to refill a couple of our 18.9L water bottles, then pick up prescription refills. I timed it so that I could hit the post office on the way home. My husband had been expecting a parcel all week, and today we found out why it hadn’t come in earlier. The padded envelope it came in was sealed in a plastic bag with “apologies from Canada Post” on it. I had no idea what my husband had ordered, so seeing oil stains on the package was a bit alarming.
It turned out he’d ordered honing oil, and the bottle leaked! No harm done, thankfully. :-)
I was excited to see a catalogue I’d ordered had arrived. This is from a company I had included in my list of cold climate seeds sources, which also included nurseries. Whiffletree Farm and Nursery. They specialize in “Cold hardy, disease resistant, fruit trees, shrubs, vines and canes.”. I love how the back page includes phone numbers, a physical address (in Ontario), a map, plus their latitude and longitude!
How very… rural Canadian. :-D
I actually went through the Irrigation Instructions insert, first. They’ve got add on kits designed for new plantings, mature plantings and tree plantings. I found it a lot more informative, both textually and visually, that most of the kit sources I’ve been looking at. Though we don’t plan to plant our fruit and nut trees for a while, yet, where we are extending the garden to this year is well away from the house, and an irrigation system would be well worth the investment, even if we have to McGyver something cheap for the first couple of years.
As for the catalogue itself, I was very impressed.
First off, it’s just plain beautiful. It is printed on the heaviest paper of any catalogue I’ve seen. More than sturdy enough to withstand cats clambering all over it, demanding my undivided attention! Even how the photographs are lined up with the write ups is the best I’ve seen. There is a also LOT of extra information included.
The range of products they have available is amazing. After just a few pages, I started over again with a highlight marker, marking off everything that was Zone 2, Zone 3 or Zones 2/3. I didn’t bother marking Zones 3/4 or higher, because there were SO MANY Zone 2 and 3 choices, it wasn’t necessary. The only exception I made was for a mulberry tree that was Zone 3/4.
Did I mention how informative it is?
I learned something new that really caught my attention. There is a section on Buffaloberries, Peashrubs and Autumn Olives.
I was curious about what Peashrubs were, but it turns out that we already have some! They are caraganas! In our clean up, I’ve had to cut away and cut back a lot of caraganas that were either dying or overtaking other trees and shrubs. It’s been a balancing act between clearing them away and keeping them.
Though I am familiar with the shrub, I discovered that the seed pods are actually edible! At least the Siberian Peashrub (caragana arborescens) are. They have two other varieties. The Siberian variety is “A multi-stemmed upright growing shrub covered with delicate yellow flowers in spring, followed by small edible seedpods which can be eaten as a vegetable. By late summer the dried seedpods snap open, dropping the seeds which are 36% protein and make good chicken feed. So it is sometimes planted in poultry yards.”
Who knew?
I also learned that they are good nitrogen fixers, and wind breaks. We should see if we can figure out what variety we have here!
The catalogue also displays an excellent sense of humour. As an example, in the section on edible lilies and high bush cranberries, there is this write up for the Common Snowball.
“Okay, we admit it – this plant is neither edible nor medicinal to the best of our knowledge. In fact, it produces no fruit at all, not even for the birds. Our only excuse for offering it is for the nostalgic memories is evokes for many folks. Every year in early summer, these old-fashioned, carefree bushes become covered with fleecy, white pompoms. The ‘snowball’ name is visually very fitting, but that’s not all. Perhaps we should market it as a weather prognostic – according to a local, time-honoured adage, there is always a brief, unseasonably cool spell when the snowball bush begins to bloom. Like many weather maxims, you can count on it, it always holds true – except when it doesn’t!”
Ya gotta love it! :-D
While we are not in a position to start ordering food trees for this year, we are shooting to do so as soon as possible, given how long it can take for trees to mature enough to start producing fruit. And let’s face it; at my age, pretty much any fruit or nut tree we plant is for our daughters and future generations, because my husband and I will probably be long gone by the time some of them reach maturity!
There is so much information in this catalogue, we can use it for planning purposes. Especially when it comes to their orchard growing equipment and supplies.
With that in mind, these are some of the things that interest us, that also grow in Zones 2 or 3.
Apples: there are many varieties suitable for our zone, including larger eating apples, edible crab apples and cider apples. They have columnar varieties, dwarf varieties and varieties that are good for espalier training. When it comes to apples, they are not something we tend to eat a lot of, on their own, but we would be using them for things like apple cider vinegar, hard apple cider, or freezing them to use for baking later on. We will have to take into consideration that we need to cut down a lot of our crab apple trees due to fungal disease. It may be worthwhile to get rid of the diseased trees, then wait several years before planting new varieties, or planting new varieties in locations well away from where the diseased trees are.
Plums: This is one of those things that we almost never eat, but if we had them, we would eat them. We do have plum trees, but they are not an edible variety – more stone than fruit – that my late father used to make wine, but having larger, fleshier plums that can be eaten fresh would be really nice.
Pears: I remember we had a pear tree when I was a child. It was a variety that produced small, hard fruit that needed to be exposed to frost before they could be eaten. They are another type of fruit we rarely buy, mostly for budgetary reasons, but would eat more of if we had our own trees, so having cold hardy varieties that can be eaten fresh would be enjoyed, and this catalogue has several such varieties that can grow in our zone.
Cherries: the variety of cherry are from a tree from Poland, which has a warmer climate than we do. They bloom wonderfully, but in the time we’ve been here, produce almost no fruit. Their bloom time doesn’t match when the pollinators come out. So getting a variety or two that is good for our zone is something I would like. They do tend to spread through their roots, though, and can become invasive, so we would have to carefully plan where they would go. Some varieties make good hedge trees, wind breaks and privacy screens, so that’s an option, too.
Nuts: there are only two types of nuts suitable for our zone; several varieties of hazelnuts, and butternuts. We are still looking into planting other varieties. They may not have a long enough season to produce edible nuts, but the trees themselves are an investment.
Rugosa Roses: we already have wild roses growing in the spruce grove that we will be encouraging, as other types of underbrush will be cleared away, but these varieties are specially noted for their large hips, and high nutrient contents. These are for the “apothacary” plants we will also be adding, over time.
Kiwis, grapes, gooseberries and currants, saskatoons, haskaps, raspberries and blueberries: we already have some of these, but will be adding more over time. Some are poorly situation and need to either be taken out, starting over with new, or transplanted.
Companion plants and wildlife packages: they’ve got a number of different plants that are beneficial to plant near trees, for various reasons. Some because they attract pollinators, or attract predator insects that will eat nuisance insects. Others because they are good to plant in paths instead of grass, can handle foot traffic, but don’t need to be mowed. There are even seed mixes to provide grazing for deer and other wildlife, and even have wildlife tree packages, made up of a mix of excess trees, or trees that didn’t make the grade for orchard/yard use, which may not even be labelled. They would be useful for a food forest or permaculture set up to feed both humans and wildlife. These are all things that fit in with our long term goals.
All in all, I am very excited by this catalogue, and look forward to being able to order from this truly unique company as soon as possible!
First, I wanted to share with you a photo of some visitors out our living room window last night.
There were actually five in total, but they were chasing each other around. The mama of the two in front chased the one you can see behind the cross, who chased another deer out of that spot before I got the picture. The fifth one that I saw making its way long the edge of the spruce grove disappeared before reaching the feeding station, and I missed what happened with that one.
The deer are definitely getting feistier as the weather warms!
It’s not quite warm enough, though!
I hadn’t received a call about the garden soil over the weekend, so I called them back this morning. The woman who answered seemed at a bit of a loss with how to help me, and ended up giving me the cell phone number for a particular person (since I want someone to come here in advance to see where the loads will be dumped), but there was no point in trying to call them until after 7pm, because they were in a cell phone dead zone. It ended up not being necessary. She called me back not long after.
Their pile of garden soil is too frozen.
She suggested I call back in about a month. Hopefully, it’ll be thawed enough for the equipment to be able load the truck! It would have been nice to get the soil well before we actually need it, but as long as we get it before we need to actually start planting, it should be fine.
I also called the garage to follow up on the van, and we’re now booked to bring it back tomorrow morning, so he can clean out that new EGR valve.
My husband got a requisition for blood work some time ago, but between the polar vortex, van issues (my mother’s little car is far too painful for him to ride in, and his walker wouldn’t fit in it, even folded up, anyhow) and pain levels, we just never made it in. I called the clinic to make sure the form was still at the reception, and that was confirmed. We had planned to go in today to get that done, but my husband’s pain levels were too high. We’ll try again on Wednesday.
On the positive side, my husband’s tax return came in. We had plans for part of it that I tried to take care of last night, only to discover we couldn’t use our debit Visa.
With no trip to the clinic today, I was open for making a trip to the city.
This is what we picked up.
Yup. We got a crossbow kit.
More specifically, we got a Killer Instinct Boss 405.
It’s an early 33rd anniversary gift. :-D
Now, what we really wanted to get was a rifle, but we have not been able to get our PALs yet, and with certain political activities going on right now, we were seeing our window of opportunity closing fast. However, having a gun on the farm is needed, if only to ward off the coyotes and other predators. Plus, I want to be able to hunt.
My husband and I both know guns (me from growing up on the farm, him from his time in the military), and bows. I used to shoot recurve, and my husband shot compound. We were both rather good at both guns and bows, too. However, with age and injuries, anything with a draw weight suitable for hunting is getting beyond our levels of mobility.
We decided that a crossbow would best meet our needs, while still being something we can actually get. Plus, the archery hunting season is much longer than rifle hunting season. As a bonus, a crossbow is quiet. I like quiet!
With that in mind, we did our research and decided on a crossbow at Cabela’s. It’s not high end, by any means, but it’s hardly bottom of the barrel, either. It will meet our needs.
Then, since I had to drive well over an hour to get to the store, I took advantage of the situation, asked questions, and picked up a few other things. (Happily, they accept medical mask exemptions, too!)
One of the things I’d tried to buy on the website was a crossbow rated target. I called ahead, and the crossbow and target were both waiting for me when I got there. After seeing it in person, I decided to get a larger target. I didn’t take pictures, but I ended up getting a Morrell Yellow Jacket YJ-425.
I also got these.
The crossbow kit comes with 3 bolts with field points. Bolts will get lost or damaged, so I picked up a 6 pack of extras. The spares do not come with points, so I picked up a 12 pack of field points. They are slightly heavier than the ones in the kit, so we won’t be using the kit points at all. I also picked up hunting points that need to be assembled, but they are the same weight as the field points. I also got a de-cocking bolt, which can be safely shot into the ground.
After taking this picture, I had to hide everything in a closet, because the cats were ALL OVER everything.
Susan tried to chew on the fletching of the de-cocking bolt.
Tomorrow, the bow will be assembled, but I don’t know when we’ll be able to test it out and start practicing. Not only is it very wet and messy right now, but we’ve got rain in the forecast tomorrow, and snow in the forecast a couple of days later!
And for those who are wondering, no, we don’t plan to hunt the deer that come to our yard.
Over the next while, I’ll be searching out local crossbow groups and hopefully be able to find a hunting mentor. I will still need to take the hunter’s safety course to get a hunting license, and while it would be nice to have a freezer full of venison next winter, I don’t expect to be ready to hunt this year. While all of us can practice shooting with this, it is likely that I will be the only one that will take the course and get a license to hunt.
At least, that’s the plan for now. Plans have a terrible habit of changing at the last minute, but it’s a goal we are shooting for.
What a huge difference between yesterday and today!
At a time when we were at -28C/-18F yesterday, we were at -8C/17F this morning!
When I changed out Potato Beetle’s water bowl yesterday, which was up close to the heat bulb, I ended up with a shell of ice. This morning, there was no ice at all. In fact, when I let Potato Beetle out, I unplugged the heat bulb and took the water bowl back outside. There’s no need for him to be kept in the sun room anymore. The Potato is free again!
Oh, I managed to snag a photo of some visitors yesterday evening.
This herd has been coming by regularly! That group is the back is four deer, bunched together. :-)
With the temperatures warming up 20C in 24 hours, I was able to do my full rounds before heading to the city with the van, to finally try and do a Costco run.
The van was running well and I had no problems, and yet, shortly before I reached the city (after about a hour of driving), the check engine light came on.
Crud.
I kept going to the Costco parking lot, then plugged in my OBD II reader. I got two error messages this time.
The first error code, I’d had the last time I checked, but the second one was new. The app allowed me to look it up.
I got this:
SPECIAL NOTES: OBD II code with the definition “IAT [Intake Air Temperature] – B Circuit Malfunction / Exhaust Gas Recirculation Closed Position Performance” is mostly relevant to some General Motors (and a few European) products from the late 1990’s to the early / mid 2000’s, and is therefore no longer in common use by most manufacturers. Starting in the mid-2000’s, the “IAT [Intake Air Temperature] – B Circuit Malfunction” component of the definition was dropped, largely due to improved PCM programming, even though it still appears in many sources, including online lists of OBD II code definitions.
However, the transition from the definition “IAT [Intake Air Temperature] – B Circuit Malfunction / Exhaust GasRecirculation Closed Position Performance”, to the definition most commonly used by many manufacturers for OBD II code P1404 today, “EGRValve Closed Position Performance”, has NOT been smooth and/or uniform across all manufacturers, and it may still be encountered on older USDM applications and some European imports. The General Motors TSB below that describes a potential cause of this code on some older GM applications with the definition “IAT [Intake Air Temperature] – B Circuit Malfunction / Exhaust GasRecirculation Closed Position Performance” is reproduced from official GM sources. Note that the “electronic noise” referenced in the TSB often originated in the Intake Air Temperature sensor.
For our specific vehicle, it means “Exhaust Gas Recirculation Closed Position Performance (Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GM, Pontiac, Saturn)”
I also found this:
If the Check Engine warning light turns on or your vehicle fails an emissions test, have the powertrain of your vehicle undergo a diagnostic scan. If the scan provides you with trouble code P1404, then it means your EGR valve is stuck in the closed position. This will ultimately raise the combustion temperatures in your engine cylinders. The temperature gauge on your dashboard may even reflect this too.
The engine control unit constantly communicates with the EGR valve and will know whenever it is in the wrong position. Once you know that it gets stuck in the closed position, you must either replace the EGR valve or figure out if another component is causing the problem. Sometimes you may just have a clogged EGR valve which must be cleaned out. But this isn’t a treatment which you should perform alone. It requires someone with the proper knowledge and skills of automobiles to make it happen.
I ended up texting a screencap of the error codes to the garage, then called him to let him know I’d sent them. He checked them out, then got back to me. After confirming that the van is otherwise running fine, and this is the first real trip I’ve made since the EGR valve was replaced, it is likely some carbon he couldn’t reach to clean out came loose. For now, I’m to keep an eye on it. If the van starts acting up, bring it in. Otherwise, it should just clear itself out.
*sigh*
So I went ahead and braved Costco.
I almost didn’t. The entire time I was in the van, I was watching the line that extended almost the entire length of the building. It was moving, but not very fast. I finally decided to go for it, instead of going to a Superstore or something.
Thankfully, this location is still somewhat sane. There were signs all over for “face coverings”, but even the ladies at the door were wearing face shields, not masks. They didn’t even blink at me with my Mingle Mask. So that was a relief.
This being Costco, I grabbed a flat cart. With so much to stock up on, I only got half the cat kibble and litter I normally would have – not only for the space on the cart, but also because I didn’t want to fully load the van with heavy stuff like that, quite yet.
I still got pretty much everything from the Costco part of my list; just not all in the quantities I normally would have. Still, the whole thing came out to about $750 – part of which went towards renewing our membership, which lapsed back in November. We’ve got an Executive membership, so I did have the rebate check on that. It didn’t quite cover the renewal fee, but that’s okay.
One thing I was able to find was a three pack of storage bins. I was on the look out for a bin to store our canning supplies, which are currently scattered about in various places in the kitchen. When it came time to pay, I told the woman that was going to repack the cart that she could use the new bins to hold things, if she wanted. She liked that idea and was going to, but the bins were Zip tied together. After seeing them struggle with the bins, I asked if she needed a knife, which she did, so I grabbed my little pocket knife out of my coat and went to cut the ties.
Behind me I hear a customer saying “It’s a good thing we’re not at the airport!” LOL
It worked out very well. When I got to the van, I repacked the cold and frozen items into insulated bags. All the other smaller stuff fit in the three bins, and with their lids, it made for a very efficiently packed van!
During the drive home, I paid close attention to the van, and it was running fine. If there was anything out of the ordinary, I’d say that the gas mileage was somewhat worse. That was it.
Once at home and everything was put away (so good to see everything well stocked again!), I went over the list and made up a new one for non-Costco shopping.
I’ll be going back to the city tomorrow for the rest, just to get it over with. One of my daughters will even be coming with me, as they have their own shopping list. Once that’s done, we will be fully stocked for the month, and need to only make trips into town for fresh stuff.
If that check engine light is still on after tomorrow’s trip, I’ll see about bringing the van back to the garage.
I am so looking forward to not needing to go anywhere again.
We never took him to the vet, because we couldn’t find him!
I did see him this morning, and should have locked him up in the sun room, but I didn’t want him have him locked up like that for almost 6 hours. A couple of hours before we were planning to leave, we went looking for him. He was nowhere to be found!
So I called the vet and explained the situation. Whenever we manage to snag him, we are to give them a call and they’ll fit him in. Unless, it turns out not to be needed. I took some photos this morning, and offered to email one in, and they were good with that.
I still couldn’t see his wound this morning, but I can often get photos at angles that let me see more than I could manage otherwise, so I took a bunch of shots while he was eating.
You can tell from this first one, why the wound was so hard to see. If it had not been so matted and had dry blood in the fur, yesterday, I would not have noticed it. Today, it looked much cleaner.
This is the best look I’ve had of the wound itself, ever. It’s not actively bleeding, and does not appear to be infected. In showing the photos to my older daughter, she told me she had seen what she thought were puncture marks on either side of his leg, where the fur goes white, but I could see no sign of anything like that. Likely, they are small enough for the fur to hide completely.
He was chipper and active enough to follow me as I did my rounds, when he helped me demonstrate perspective on some tracks in the snow.
My brother’s dog has huge paws! :-D With yesterday’s warmth, followed by the overnight freeze, there were a lot of his tracks sunk deep into the snow during the warmth of the day, then frozen overnight. :-)
There were lots of other tracks. Mostly from deer. Probably including these ones!
I spotted them outside our north facing window. Only one of them went to the feeding station by the living room window, though from the lack of feed on the ground, I think the herd was leaving rather than arriving.
When my daughter and I went outside to try and find Potato Beetle, and he wasn’t in the usual places, we decided to do some noisy chores. If he were at my younger brother’s place, or the empty farm yard across the other road, he would likely hear us and come over.
He didn’t. Which tells me he went further afield. I suppose that’s good news, since it would mean he was feeling strong and healthy. My daughter, of course, was fretting that he might be hurt in a ditch somewhere.
We never saw Potato, but I did get this job done.
When the girls shoveled snow off the roof, before things started melting, the snow covered my path to the feeding station, and no one had a chance to clear it until today. After the melt and freeze we had, I ended up having to use a metal garden shovel, instead of our plastic snow shovels, because it was the only thing strong enough to break through the hard packed top layer. My daughter, meanwhile, used the ice chipper to clear the sidewalk. As things warm up, the paths will melt away and clear faster.
With all the chopping and scraping, we were making more than enough noise to attract curious kitties. Just not the one we were after!
I was thinking that, tomorrow morning, I could put him in the sun room with some food and water – I’m just not sure what I can use as a litter box – and we can keep him tucked away. I won’t be able to take him in to the vet tomorrow, because tomorrow I will be doing a big shopping trip. Not quite our monthly shop, since I will be using my mother’s car, but enough to stock up for at least a couple of weeks.
And why will I be using my mother’s car?
Well, I ran the van today, and it’s still making that whining noise that I thought was the serpentine belt, but now think is the power steering pump, next to the belt. I checked the fluid level, and it’s full.
So when I had the chance, I called up the garage and left a message about it, asking him to call me back.
Which he probably tried to do, but would have gotten a busy signal.
You see, I did something else today. I purchased and downloaded this year’s TurboTax and started the tax returns for myself and my husband. Because of our internet connectivity problems, I made sure to get the desktop version, not the online set up, like we used last year. Our returns are pretty basic, so I finished them this morning. Tax returns are easy when your incomes are “nothing” and “better than nothing”. I was able to file mine electronically, but when I tried to file my husband’s, I got a message saying I’d used up all the available returns and it wanted me to buy more. Considering the software I bought allows for up to 20 returns in total – and the checker even showed I still had 19 left – it should have worked. After several failed attempts, it was time to contact TurboTax!
After not being able to find contact information of any kind on the website (they route people to the community, instead), I finally went to their Facebook page and sent a message briefly explaining what was happening. While my daughter and I were outside making noise to try and attract Potato, I got a response with a phone number to call.
I made that call after calling the garage.
I ended up on the phone for about 2 hours.
Among the problems we had was the software simply not opening. It kept “not responding”. We were using a sharer, so the tech person I was talking to could see my desktop, and my computer decided that today was the day to get all sluggish on me. I ended up reinstalling the software and trying to open it again, and it still wouldn’t. After several more failed attempts, we tried restarting my computer.
Which stalled during the restart. I ended up having to do a hard shut down and trying again.
Once I finally got the computer itself started, I tried opening the software before linking up with the tech, only to have it want to restart the computer again, because changes were made.
*sigh*
Eventually, we did get it going. I was able to open the software, our tax returns were still there, with my husband’s ready to be sent, and the tech person could see my desktop. I tried to file my husband’s return, and it sat there, spinning for a while. On that one, I did assure her that it was our unstable internet that was the problem, this time!
The screen telling me I was out of returns popped up and she finally got to see what was happening. She got me to check a few things for her, she asked all sorts of questions, before finally settling in on her side to find a solution.
I was not at all surprised when she told me it was passed on to someone in Tier 2, and she was waiting for a response.
There was a lot of waiting. She was very apologetic. I told her I didn’t mind the wait. I just needed it fixed. Particularly since we have to more people who need to file! So I didn’t have a problem with the wait.
I ended up being put on actual hold a couple of times before we got to the end, and it was pretty much what I had suspected would happen.
The problem is going to the next level.
It’s a bug, and there’s nothing that can be done about it at our end. Someone will get back to me, possibly within 24 hours, as they fix the bug. I should be able to file my husband’s return tomorrow.
Well, I won’t be holding my breath on that, but we’ll see.
By the time I got off the phone I had no doubt that, if the garage had tried to call me back, he would have given up rather quickly.
So, tomorrow morning, I will try calling him again, before I head out. Hopefully, he won’t be too booked and I’ll be able to bring the van in, soon. Depending on how early I can get the shopping done, who knows. Maybe we can still get Potato Beetle in to the vet! Unless they look at the photo and say not to bother. It’s possible, I suppose.
As if all that wasn’t enough, I got a quick phone call from my older brother. He had just talked to my mother but was about to start a meeting, so he wanted to let me know that our vandal had called her today. Three times! She let it go to message, thankfully. So while he went off to his meeting (which will be 3 hours long!), I called my mother to see if she was okay. She did sound upset. Our vandal had said “the usual”, but I had to clarify that. There are several “usual” things he says. He had been ranting at her about “giving” the farm to me and my brother (why he still thinks I have any ownership of the farm, I have no idea), apparently brought God into it (he knows she’s deeply religious, so one of his things is to tell her she won’t go to heaven to be with my late father and brother, because she’s not doing what he thinks she should be doing). There was a new one in there – at least new to me, though it’s possible he’s used this before and my mother never mentioned it. Basically, he was telling her to talk to him – as in pick up the phone, rather than letting it go to machine. Of course, anytime she does try to talk to him, it’s very much a one way conversation, as he doesn’t let her get a word in edgewise. Then she ends up hanging up to him. We’ve been working on getting her to let calls go to the machine, unless she can see who is calling. If that means my siblings and I ended up talking to a machine and calling her back later, we’re good with that. Better this slight inconvenience than her being verbally abused.
I have no idea what triggered him to call her today. Especially three times! It does remind me that I should call the court office this week, and see if a court date for the restraining order I applied for will finally happen. It’s already been pushed back three times because of the shut downs. :-(
So… It’s been quite the day, today!!
If I were a drinking person, I’d be pouring myself a stiff drink right now! But I’m not. So I will brew myself a pot of tea, instead. :-D
It’s easy to get excited about things today. As I write this, we are at a balmy -18C !!
Okay, the wind chill is at -27C, but that’s okay. We’re at -18C! And our predicted high is -15C! It’s feeling like spring out there!
For my friends in the US, -18C is 0.4F, -27C is -16.6F, and -15C is 5F.
Last night, we did hit temperatures of -33C/-24F with a wind chill of -37C/-35F, so this is a huge increase in the space of about 14 hours. Not only that, but by the 22nd, just 5 days from now, we’re supposed to reach 2C/36F
I don’t know how we’re going to handle all that heat. LOL
Even the deer are happy. I took these shots, after I’d done the morning rounds.
I had seen two deer at the feeding station, but by the time I came back with my phone to take pictures, there were three!
Cabbages was watching them – and didn’t run away when I came close to take pictures!
When I headed out this morning, there wasn’t a yard cat in sight, which concerned me a bit. With the increased temperatures, I expected to see them all over. Then I saw the fluffy white flag in the outer yard! :-D My brother’s dog had come to visit the kitties, and they were all in hiding. They did eventually come to the kibble house, and indulge in some warm water, though.
I’m starting to think that the terrarium heat bulb inside the cat’s house has stopped working. I can see by the red light on the timer that it is still getting power when the light sensor is triggered. However, that spot on the roof where the snow would melt is not clear, even after I shoveled off most of the snow and things have warmed up in general. We have no thermometer inside (something we intend to add, later in the year), so the only way to tell would be by lifting the roof and manually checking the ceramic bulb.
Which is not going to happen, any time soon! Unless the heated water bowl gets unplugged again, we are not lifting that roof. :-D
I ran our van while I was switching out the memory cards on the trail cams. The coolant levels are where they are supposed to be, which is good. It’s still making a whining noise, but I no longer think it’s the cold serpentine belt. I think it’s the power steering, right next to it. Something else to get checked. *sigh*
Trading the locations of the trail cams seems to have worked. When I switched the memory card in the new camera, the display screen inside activated without my having to warm it up with my hands, first! We had a busy day at our gate, yesterday. The older camera, which is set to take only short videos, had 44 files for me to check. The new camera, which is set to take 3 stills, then a short video, had 233 files waiting for me! It did have a hard time with night shots, but it was taking stills with an internal temperature of -25C/-13F before stopping completely. The other camera was still recording, and I finally saw what has been close enough to trigger the motion sensors, but too far for the infrared flash to light up. I could just barely see the shadow of a deer walking though the far end of the driveway, by the road.
So the camera set up is working better now, which is the important thing.
And now for the thing that I’m really excited about!
As the girls and I were pouring over the diagram of the property, our need to buy soil – and a lot of it – is something we just can’t get away from. It’s not even that we don’t have the years it would take to build up the soil, as we originally planned, but that we don’t have the organic material to do it. We just don’t produce enough compost, don’t have enough yard waste, and don’t have access to the amounts of manure and other amendments we need, in the quantities we’ll need.
I’ve tried to find out how much it would cost to get a dump truck load of garden soil through various sites, but I don’t know how much a dump truck would hold in the first place. We don’t plan to have a load spread onto the garden area. We just want a pile that we will spread ourselves, where we need it, as we need it. Most of where we are planting this year is going to be temporary, anyhow, so we will be very selective on where we put purchased soil.
Then there are all the different mixes you can get. Some sites I found offered a basic 3 part mix of soil, compost and manure, while others offered up 4 and 5 part mixes, with additional amendments. Of course, the more in the mix, the higher the cost, but without knowing how many square yards I’m even after, there was no way to figure out how much it would cost. The only thing I really had to go by was how much my older brother paid for loads of soil, but he wasn’t buying garden soil. He was buying things like fill and gravel. Still, it gave me the closest thing to a ball park figure I was able to find.
Today, I decided to call a local company. They have a yard just a couple of miles away from us, and we pass it every time we go to town. I knew they did gravel, but in passing the yard, I could see they had soil, too. Was it fill? Topsoil? Garden soil? I had no idea.
So I called them up and asked if they had garden soil, and was told, yes, they did. Then he began rattling off four of the five part mix they have! He couldn’t remember the last one, but it includes both cow and sheep manure, as well as a type of sand, to make it lighter. I’m guessing the one he couldn’t remember was compost. With the companies I found online, this would be their high end premium mix, but for this company, it’s the only mix they have!
I asked about load sizes, and their truck holds 10 – 12 square yards of garden soil, and we would be charged only $25 a yard.
And because we are so close, that would include the cost of delivery!
A load of 12 square yards would cost about $300. I’m assuming there would be taxes on top of that.
That is about half of what I was expecting it to be.
My older brother happened to call not long after, and when I told him about it, he was astonished at the price. He also wondered if a single load would be enough, but at this price, we’ll be able to get two!
I’ll be calling the company back to arrange delivery around April. That gives us time to figure out where we want to have the soil dumped. If we’re getting two loads, I’m thinking maybe get one for the inner yard, and one for the outer yard, but I really can’t think of where we can place a truck load in the inner yard.
We’re already looking forward to what we’ll be able to plant this year. That we’ll be able to afford the soil is just icing on the cake! We were talking about waiting until we get our tax returns to do this, but the cost is so much lower than expected, we could even be able to do it from our normal budget, even if we’d have to split it between two months – so long as we don’t have anything break down! :-D
I just realized something.
We can get a dump truck full of premium garden soil for less than the cost of getting a cat spayed.
After adding more water and letting it soak overnight, we were left with a sort of peat slurry! :-D No fear of the seeds not getting enough moisture, this time!
To contain any potential mess, I set up inside the under-bed storage container that will eventually be used to hold the beer cups that I will be using as larger pots, when it’s time to start the squash seeds. It won’t be needed for some weeks, yet, and it was the perfect size and depth for this job.
It’s a bit hard to see in the photo, but you can tell why having something under the trays to support them was so essential. The first tray I filled is the slightly darker one on the left. It’s darker, because the cardboard is completely wet! Which means it’s also very floppy. There is no way these trays could be handled, without something solid under them.
When I planted the bulb onions, I was left with about half a package of unused seeds.
Not the shallots! I had just enough seed to put two in every cell, minus 1 seed. :-D
Though the peat was well saturated, I still sprayed the tops, more to settle the surface than for actual watering. When it came time to move the trays, I tipped them side to side a bit, to allow excess water that had soaked through the cardboard to spill off.
To get the trays into the tank, I had to take the light fixture off completely. All the trays fit perfectly, from end to end. If I wanted to, I’d be able to fit pots or egg cartons (dozen size, not 18’s) in the space at the front. That isn’t needed now, but when it’s time to start other seeds, we might find ourselves crowding the space as much as possible.
We freed up an 18 count egg carton this morning, so I checked out the fit in the smaller tank. One carton fits, of course, but only in one direction, and it’s long enough that we would not be able to fit in a second one. So I went back to my stack of flats and picked out two. The trays are 5 x 6 cells, and I cut them down to 5 x 5. That will allow two trays to fit in the smaller tank.
I will be adding a bit more peat to the container to absorb some of the excess water and leave it overnight. Tomorrow, I’ll be able to use the cut down trays and start the bunching onions in the small tank. :-)
Between these and the onion sets we’ll be getting in the spring, we should have enough onions in total, for fresh eating and for winter storage, to last us a year, if all goes well. With the bunching onions, I plan to dehydrate a lot of them, but will probably freeze some, too. We do use a lot of onions. I stopped to figure it out, and estimate we use about 200 yellow cooking onions a year, alone. Those are the ones we buy regularly. On top of that are the red onions, bunching onions and leeks we get more irregularly. We don’t usually buy shallots at all, because they are a fair bit more expensive. So it’s well worth the time end effort for us to grow a lot of onions! We won’t be trying this year, but I am hoping that by next year, we’ll be able to try growing leeks, too.
By the end if this year’s gardening, we’ll have a better handle on whether it’s worth it to keep growing from seed, or to go with buying sets. Growing from seed, for the amounts we’re after, takes up a lot of space, but there are more varieties available in seed than in sets. Either way, it’s going to be a trade off.
As a side note, we had company while I was working on the seeds.
I love that they’re coming around during the day now, when we can actually see them! :-D They are so beautiful!
This morning, for the first time in a while, I did my morning rounds in temperatures warmer than -30C/-22F! :-D
Granted, it was -29C/-20F, and the wind chill was -36C/-33F, but… I’ll take what I can get!
As I write these, we are at -23C/-9F, with a wind chill of -31C/-24F. We’re still getting “extreme cold” alerts, but we’re expected to reach -21C/-6F with a wind chill of -29C/-20F. It seems the polar vortex has finally released it’s grip!
I had a lot of cats to greet me when I came out, eager for warm water, and generally playful. Nosy was looking better today, as he settled into a sun spot in front of the door.
Yes, that’s him looking better!
I picked him up for a while, and he just settled into my arms and started to knead the sleeve of my parka. I saw Junk Pile, and she was looking much better, too, and Creamsicle Jr’s eye is looking good. He seems to even be managing to clean the fur around it a bit more.
As bitterly cold as it has been lately, our winter has been mild overall. This really shows in the deer that visit our feeding station.
The past two winters were bitterly cold throughout, and last winter had us bludgeoned by waves of polar vortexes. By this time of year, when the deer showed up at the feeding station, they were very thin, and we could see the ribs on many of them. The deer in the above photo was the fifth one I saw yesterday. We had two show up, including the three point buck that is in today’s photo of the day. He was the smaller of the two! After they left, two others came by that I think are a mother and her yearling, then this one showed up on its own. All of them were looking hale and hearty, with plenty of meat on those bones. There was almost no feed left by the time this last one showed up, but she does not look like she is going to be too hard done by, without the little snacks they get in our yard. It has been an abundant and relatively easy winter on them, for a change.
At some point, we are hoping to build a deck with a wheelchair ramp at the door of this side of the house. Something with enough all season shelter that will allow us to store things like feed bags, or even my husband’s walker. Currently, his walker is in the sun room, where it is easier for him to get outside, since there are no stairs at that door. Heck, if we design it right, a deck on this side could be a green house, too. It wouldn’t get as much sun throughout the day, but there should be enough sun in the morning to be able to grow some salad greens.
If/when we do get it built, I think it would be great if we could find a way to include a feed trough for the deer. Maybe something with a hopper that can be filled from the deck side. If we can keep the deer coming to the house, hopefully they’ll be less interested in our garden beds!
The Re-Farmer 