Holidays

First Sunday of Advent: Hope

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Normally, we would have started more decorating for Christmas by now, but none of us it up to it, yet. As of now, I’m the least sick person in the household!

I did want to get our Advent wreath set up, though.

Normally, it would have tiny decorations added to it, and a white candle in the middle, but the ornaments are still in their boxes. So I added its mini light string, and stuck our miniature nativity scene in the middle.

We also usually set it up on a counter between the dining room and kitchen, but for now, it’s on the dining table.

We’ll catch up on the rest, later!

May this first Sunday of Advent see your heart rise up in Hope.

The Re-Farmer

Morning head count!

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First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to my friends in the US! I hope you have a wonderful day today. 😊

My goodness, this group really loves it when I put kibble on the cat house roof!

It’s mostly the older kittens and adult cats. I even got to pet Broccoli! But only because she didn’t want to leave the food. The kibble I leave up there gets inhaled pretty quickly!

The younger kittens mostly prefer more ground level food. The kittens under the cat house take “ground level” to the extreme. 😄

Altogether, I counted 29 heads this morning – and I never had a chance to peek into the entry of the cats’ house. Usually, there’s at least one more in there, eating at the tray just inside, but not always.

Meanwhile, the self-sequestered cats in my office are very obviously happier, now that Bitty is gone. Amazing how such a little fuzz ball could stress the other cats out so much. Butterscotch, I can sort of understand. By the time we got her fixed and discovered her uterus was “tattery and falling apart”, kittens must have meant nothing but pain to her. But Nosencrantz? Why was Nosencrantz so freaked out? But then, everything seems to freak Nosencrantz out, hence her alternative name, Anxiety Bear.

We need to find her a home with no other cats. She likes people. Oddly, most of the other cats don’t like her, either. When even David will suddenly up and attack her – David!!!! – while she’s just up on her favourite perch by the ceiling, minding her own business, there is something odd.

We’ve got some very nice weather happening for the next while. Today, we’re supposed to reach a high of 1C/34F. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to reach 4C/39F! Then 3C/37F the day after.

My brother heard back from the roofing company. Because the weather is so good, there’s still a chance they’ll be able to get a crew up here. Fingers crossed!

In other things, I’m feeling somewhat better today. Some pain killers and lying down for a couple of hours yesterday helped. I even went to bed “early” and got almost 7 hours of sleep. Which is about 3 hours more than I usually get. 😄

Still, I’m going to be taking it easy today. When visiting my mother to do errands, we talked so much, my throat was sore by the time I left. I’m not used to talking much, so that didn’t take long. 😄 Now, that sore throat is worse, and I’m starting to feel like I’m coming down with a cold. A good day to stay inside, and drink lots of hot drinks with lemon and honey, while getting crafty! I found most of what I needed at the dollar store to make our annual Christmas decorations, but I’m not willing to drive to the city for the stuff I couldn’t find, so I’ll make do with what I’ve got on hand.

These are my first experiments. They’re called “berlingots”, which is the name of a hard candy of a similar shape, or sometimes Dragon Boats. These were made on a cardboard form that started off as a rectangle of 2″ x 6″, but I’ll be making ones for the tree probably from a 3″ x 9″ strip. I don’t think I want to get any larger than that. Or I’ll make both sizes, with the smaller ones for the top of the tree, and larger for the bottom. We have a pretty small tree. It is currently hanging flat against the dining room door, several feet above ground, to get the cats used to it being there. I was able to bring the tree up from storage in the basement, but I had to get the girls to haul the bins of decorations up. I can’t carry those up the stairs; my knees aren’t stable enough anymore. I think I’ll be leaving most of the decorating to the girls, since pretty much all of it will involve climbing up and down the little step ladder to hang things out of cat reach! 😂

Anyhow; for the decorations, I’ll be using more seasonal yard to wrap on them, and I want to find things I can pin to the points, such as beads, or maybe I’ll make some tassels. Each one will be different.

So that will be my project for today, if all goes to plan.

For now, though, I think it’s time to get the kettle on again, and make some more hot lemonade!

The Re-Farmer

Remembrance Day

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Today is Remembrance Day, here in Canada. Since moving here, we typically have not gone anywhere to formally observe the day, since there is nothing local and, of course, no one was allowed to hold Remembrance Day ceremonies for the past two years.

Last night, though, I got a call from my mother. Her town was having their ceremonies again, starting with a pancake breakfast. She started talking about what was going on, and how she was planning to go, and I knew she was leading to a point, so I offered to drive her. Normally, she would head over with her walker, but it’s been getting harder for her to go far, these days. Plus, there’s a bitter wind out there! At least it’s not like last year; we had a long and mild fall, but we did get snow for Remembrance Day.

So this morning I headed out and went to the ceremonies with her.

They were really well done, and I was teary eyed more than a few times. The candles in the photo had a main candle for the day in general, and candles lit in memory of local people that died in WWI and WWII, another for those who passed on after the wars, and finally one for those serving now.

It was good to see my old Air Cadet squad is still around, though I did cringe for them a bit. They didn’t seem to have been well instructed for their parts in the ceremony, and were a bit lost at times. Having been on the drill team, I was disappointed to see they weren’t well trained in that respect at all – and I’m including their Lieutenants on that! The cadets did have military representatives to model, though, and that made a difference.

My mother was actually on better behaviour, though before things started, I got the story of just how badly the pianist played the last time there were ceremonies, and when speeches started, she was quick to criticise people for not speaking “well.” I told her it was great that they were up there at all, because a lot of people have a really hard time with public speaking or performances. She stopped making criticisms, so I’m hoping she accepted that, but maybe she just didn’t like my not joining her in her criticisms! 😄

Because of the weather, when things were concluded, they didn’t have a ceremonial parade of the wreaths to the cenotaph outdoors. Instead, the cadets and other military representatives were going to lay only 3 wreaths, and people were invited to join if they were up to it. Otherwise, we were invited for coffee and dainties. My mother considered staying, but didn’t see anyone she recognised, so she decided to just go home. It was a long time for her, so she was probably pretty tired, too. I’m glad I was able to drive her because, if I hadn’t, she said she would have walked the distance! It was only a few blocks, but it would easily have taken her at least half an hour to do it, with her need to stop and rest so often now, and it would have been absolutely miserable walking straight into that wind to get there! She does have the power chair my brother got for her, but she refuses to use it. *sigh*

For all the wind and cold, at least it was a bright and sunny day.

I have made sure to give the cats food and warm water before I left, but by the time I got back, the food was all gone, and while the heated water bowl still had a bit of water in it, the rest was frozen! Especially the big bowl. When I came out with more warm water for them, I had to take an ax to the ice in the big bowl. It wasn’t quite frozen solid, but it was pretty hard close!

I’m glad I ordered two 300g tubs of powdered lysine for the cats. I add about a quarter cup, maybe a bit less, to their kibble, and they get fed twice a day. Judging by how quickly the level is going down in the first tub, I would estimate we’ll go through three of these a month, so we’ll have to make sure to order more at least 3 more at the end of this month. More, if the budget allows. The cat lady says it takes 6 weeks for there to be a noticeable difference with the lysine, which means we’ve still got a couple more weeks or so. We are still seeing/hearing cats coughing and sneezing, and a few still have leaky eyes, but they do all seem to be improving. Whether it’s because of the lysine, or because they were already improving without it, I really can’t say. The lysine should act as a preventative, too, though, so if it’s working, and we keep using it, this should mean the end of their outbreaks. The only problem is, there’s no way to measure doses for individual cats. We just toss the kibble in the powder, and hope it’s enough.

I saw the bitty baby this morning, but I couldn’t see it when I came back. The sun was in just the right position to light up inside the cats’ house through the small south facing window in the entry, giving me a good view of the inside from the east facing window. I didn’t see the bitty baby, but I did notice a sheet of aluminum out near the litter box (which I’ve seen kittens using!) that shouldn’t have been there. The heat shield for the ceramic terrarium bulb was torn off! It should actually be okay, given how the fixture is positioned, but that’s not something I want to take a chance with, so we’re going to have to lift the roof and a daughter will have to climb in. While we’re at it, I want to add something to better support the timer for the heat bulb, because it keeps getting knocked loose from the top and ends up facing the floor. Without the light sensor facing a window, the heat bulb will stay on all the time, rather than being shut off during daylight hours. With the windows, there should be enough passive solar heat during the day, and it would not be good for them if things get too warm in there.

Hmm… I wonder if we have a thermometer we can spare to hang in there? Someplace in the middle, to get a sense of the ambient temperature, while still being visible from one of the windows. I don’t think we have a spare anywhere, but I might be going into town tomorrow, so maybe I can pick one up at the dollar store or something.

In other things, we’ve been finding water pooled in the entry way lately. That means that water from the kitchen sink is backing up the laundry drain, for all the care we are trying to take to not pour too much water down the sink at once. The block is getting worse. I was going to wait until the end of the month’s pay before calling a plumber, but we just can’t wait anymore. I don’t know what it’ll cost, but we do have this month’s payment to the tree company that chipped our branches for us. There is no formal arrangement on paying them back, and I think they’ll understand if we have to miss a month, or make a smaller payment, because we had to call a plumber. Who knows. It may not cost as much as I fear, and what we’ve been able to set aside for the plumber might be enough on its own. We were really happy with the guy that brought his auger to clear our pipe to the septic tank, so we will hopefully be able to get him again. This being Remembrance Day, I didn’t phone him, but I did sent a message through his website’s contact form, explaining our problem.

I hope to hear back from him soon. It’ll be nice to not have to run the hose from the washing machine through the front doors in the winter!

The Re-Farmer

Happy Thanksgiving!

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It’s Thanksgiving weekend, here in Canada. Thanksgiving is officially tomorrow (the second Monday of October), but we had our dinner today.

We did pretty much everything different this time! Including the turkey. I had hoped to brine the turkey overnight, but didn’t have the energy for it. Well. Mostly, my hands were hurting too much. Either way, we normally would just roast the turkey, covered in bacon. To keep the turkey from sticking to the bottom of the roaster, I would put a layer of some vegetable under it, depending on what I have at the time. An onion sliced into rings, long stripes of carrot, pieces of celery, that sort of thing.

Turkey takes a long time to roast, though, so I decided to try something different.

I spatchcocked it. Something I’ve done with chicken, before, but not turkey.

It’s surprisingly easy to cut that spine out, even with the pain in my hands.

Once spatchcocked, however, it no longer fit in my roaster. Using a baking sheet meant I could use a rack under the turkey. I still added some thick slices of the Tropeana Lunga onions we need to use up first, under the turkey.

For the bacon, I would normally weave the sliced right on top of the bird, but tried something different there, too.

In another baking tray, lined with a silicone baking sheet (parchment paper would have worked, too), I wove the slices from an entire package of bacon. That got topped with another silicone baking sheet, and then I used a heavy marble rolling pin to flatten it out. After removing the top sheet, I used the bottom one to transfer the bacon mat to the top of the turkey. The final step was to add some water to the bottom of the pan.

I forgot to take a “before” picture, but this is how the turkey come out after it was done.

It took a lot less time to roast it, too.

After the turkey was in the oven, I got the mixed vegetables prepared, then spread out on another baking tray and added to the oven about 40 minutes into the turkey’s roasting time.

The mixed vegetables included some Uzbeck Golden carrots (I didn’t want to use the Black Nebula carrots, as they’d discover the entire dish!), more Tropean Lunga onions, the last of our own potatoes, plus a few store bought potatoes, some Red Kuri squash, sweet potatoes and, of course, the sunchokes. That all got tossed with some salt, pepper, garlic granules, paprika and olive oil. It turned out awesome.

When the turkey and vegetables were getting close to done, we made a soup as well. Something else I’ve never done before…

Peanut soup.

When I was able to visit my brother not long ago, we had peanut soup for lunch. I’d never tasted peanut soup before! My SIL had spent a long time trying to recreate one that she’d had at a restaurant. A recipe for West African Peanut Soup was the closest recipe she found, and she modified it to get the flavour she was after. I was able to take a picture of the recipe she used, along with her own notes for the things she changed.

What we made was a mix of the original recipe, plus some of her modifications, and it turned out really well. Among the optional ingredients was shredded chicken, which we skipped this time. The instructions also suggested one way to serve it was over rice. My younger daughter helped me make it, and we both found it funny when, after her sister had some of the soup, she commented on how it seemed a bit like a curry, and that she was tempted to put it over her turkey, adding that it would probably be great over a bed of rice!

Once the idea was brought up, both girls did use the last of it over their turkey, and decreed it delicious.

This is definitely something we will make again!

By the time we were done our dinner, none of us had room for desert, so that waited a few hours. For that, we just had a purchased pumpkin pie and some butterscotch swirl ice cream.

Meanwhile, I’ve also set aside a turkey dinner, including the soup, to bring to my mother tomorrow. She should have enough to last her a couple of days. 😊

If she’s willing to eat it, of course. No mashed potatoes and gravy, this year. 😉

The Re-Farmer

Happy Easter!

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My daughter was sweet enough to take photos of Easter brunch from our basket for me to share.

She even used a couple of the Lavender Rose China we inherited from my late MIL as part of the display. She made it all look so pretty!

Unfortunately, my husband had an unusually bad pain day and was not able to join the girls. In fact, I don’t think he even ate at all until shortly before I got home. :-(

As for myself, I left early for my mom’s to make sure I had time to fill her gas tank first (gas prices have gone down a few pennies to 169.9 cents per litre). We had a short visit before walking across the street with her walker to her church. Having the church so close is one of the main reasons she chose to move to where she is! :-D It was an excellent service, and I quite appreciated the homily. After church, we headed out to my brother’s place.

There are two routes that I’m familiar with to get to their place. Normally, I’d take a more straightforward route on the highways, bypassing the city, to get to the town my brother lives in. My mother, however, insists on a route that takes us through a smaller city, where we have to cross an insanely narrow bridge over a major river. Which isn’t too much of a problem in my mother’s little car, but every time I take that bridge with our van, I feel like I’m either going to hit oncoming traffic, or scrape the guardrails! My mother is so insistent on taking the “right” route (which she thinks is a short cut), that when I got distracted and turned towards the city (my usual route) instead of the other direction to take a cross road to another highway, she actually got furious and started shouting at me for going the wrong way.

It took half a minute to circle around, and I was able to calm her down, but even for her it was a bit much to get so angry, so fast.

There turned out to be an irony about this.

Things were more pleasant as the drive continued. We got to the smaller city and drove through it to the bridge and…

It was closed.

Which… of course it would be. With the snow we’ve recently had, and the bridge being so narrow, now that I think about it, yeah, it would be. In fact, I would not be surprised to learn it was closed through most of the winter.

So we bypassed the bridge and got onto another highway towards the bigger city. However, in taking this route, we were passing through a more populated area, so the speed limits were all much lower. Which means that we probably ended up taking at least half an hour longer to get there than if we’d gone the route I almost took out of habit that she yelled at me for!

The irony was not lost on her!

When we realized the bridge was closed, I pulled over long enough to message my brother to let him know about the bridge, and that we would be a bit longer. As I was getting back on the road, I noticed it was just starting to snow.

The weather forecast for today was for either isolated flurries, or up to 6cm/2in of snow, depending on which app I looked at. Until then, the day had been completely clear. Within minutes, we were driving into ever heavier snowfall. Thankfully, it was warm enough that it melted as soon as it hit pavement, but visibility got quite poor in places.

When we finally got to the last leg of the journey, approaching a road I could have taken for a shorter route to my brother’s, we kept on going because it was blocked by a train! It was quite a while before we finally passed the end of the train, and I was actually starting to wonder if it would be clear of our next possible turn off when we got there. Thankfully, it was, so there were no more delays in getting to my brother’s.

The visit was absolutely fantastic. We had a fantastic time seeing each other, a wonderful dinner and, best of all, I got lots of baby snuggles!

So many baby snuggles.

Unfortunately, the snow did not lessen any and we left far earlier than we wanted to. It’s a good thing we did. While the roads were still good, they were very wet, and would have soon started to freeze. As it was, the further north we got, the snow was less, but I could see it starting to freeze over in places.

After dropping my mother off and continuing home, the highway was actually much better and almost dry, until I got about 5 or 10 minutes from home, when I drove into snow again, but it was just snowy enough to impact visibility a bit, not road conditions.

One thing we did see a lot of was deer! Not often. Just lost of them. On our way out, we passed a field that had maybe 20 deer scattered around it. On my way back, just as I was slowing down to turn off the highway, I saw what had to be at least 30 deer in a field. A group of at least 10 were just lying in the snow! I’ve seen some fairly large herds of deer in the area over the years, but this group was easily the most I’ve ever seen of white tail deer, all at once.

The girls were sweet enough to set aside portions from our basket for me, which was much appreciated by the time I got home.

I did notice that, by the time I got home, the kibble was all gone, so I topped that up before going in.

I saw very few outside cats this morning. As I was leaving, I startled a skunk, and it ran under the cat’s house. As I walked by, I could see it’s adorable, pointy little nose poking out, as it watched me leave. When I got back, there was another skunk – or maybe the same one – poking around the kibble house trays, trying to find something to eat.

Potato Beetle, meanwhile, remains in the sun room, and has his very own bowl of food that he doesn’t have to share with any other cats. Or skunks… birds… deer… When I got home, he actually made a “dash” for the door to get outside. He can’t dash very quickly right now, with his injured leg, so that wasn’t much of a problem.

What is more of a problem is the fact that the litter box remains completely unused. Which means he’s found a corner in the sun room somewhere that he’s using, instead. *sigh* It’s a good thing the sun room has a concrete floor!

Rolando Moon was following me around while I was doing my morning rounds, and enjoys running ahead, then rolling on the ground. I couldn’t resist sharing this picture, when I realized her tongue is sticking out!

What a silly kitty!

As I write this, we’re now heading towards 10pm. It’s still snowing a bit, and gotten cold enough for it to finally start accumulating. It’s not the first time we’ve had snow for Easter, of course, but usually that’s been when Easter was earlier in the month! Last night, we hit lows of -17C/1F, that I know of, and the sun room thermometer actually dipped below 0C/32F. Potato Beetle made use of the warming lamp and was just fine. Tonight, the low is supposed to be only -7C/19F, though the wind chill is supposed to be -14C/7F. Starting tomorrow, however, we’re supposed to reach highs above freezing, and stay there from now on, with lows barely dipping below freezing over the next few days. In a couple of days, we’re supposed to get a mix of rain and snow, but today’s snow should be our last blast of winter.

But then, we thought we were getting the last blasts of winter a couple of times now, only to have the forecast change, quite a lot, over and over! However, looking at our 30 year average, and record, highs and lows, I think we’ll be leveling off and warming up from now on.

Even with the snow, however, today was a fantastic Easter!

I hope you and yours also had an excellent day, filled with food, family and fun!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 Easter basket

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Today, we assembled our traditional Polish Easter basked and blessed it. If you wish to learn more about the symbolism of its contents, you may wish to visit this site. (link will open a new tab)

Over the years, we modified, dropped or added items with complementary symbolism. In the tiny jars, we have salt (traditional) red wine vinegar, mustard and olive oil (non-traditional). Normally, we’d have horseradish root, but ours is buried under snow, and we don’t use it enough to warrant a jar, however the mustard we chose this year has horseradish in it. The olives are non-traditional, and while eggs are traditional, this year we have pickled eggs, which is not. The bright yellow and white ones are the turmeric eggs we tried this year; the white spots are from being a tight fit in the jar! :-D The cheese, ham, sausage and bread are all traditional, as is the butter in a small glass. Usually, I put that in a small bowl with a cross made of cloves pressed into it, but it gets hard to fit the containers, so I melted some butter and poured it into a glass, instead. The one concession to a typical North American basket are the little chocolate eggs. The whole thing gets covered with a pretty cloth. I’ve got several hand embroidered, some antique, clothes I like to use. The one chosen for this year is actually under the basket as I took the picture. We skipped the sprigs of greenery because we usually just don’t have any fresh greenery around Easter.

Over the years, we’ve included prosciutto roses (in place of the traditional bacon), marzipan shaped into a lamb and flowers, a bottle of wine, a white candle, and fruit. An apple, grapes or figs would all by symbolically appropriate.

Normally, after the basket has been blessed, we’d put things away in the fridge until tomorrow, when it will be the basis of our Easter brunch. This year, however, it’s cold enough that we can put it all into the old kitchen, which is easily as cold as a fridge!

As I will be out for much of the day, I don’t know when I will have a chance to write a post. So I will take this moment to wish you all a happy and blessed Easter, from the Re-Farmer family to yours!