photo of the day

Critter count and April fools.

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

First the cuteness!

We had visitors yesterday afternoon. Three of them!

They were very curious about that cat, too! They hung around for a while before coming into the yard and checking out the compost heap.

This morning I counted either 28 or 29 yard cats. I’m not quite sure.

It’s not actually the black cats I loose track with. It’s the “printer babies”. All the white and greys!

Here, you can see the one cat’s messed up eye. That inner eyelid is making it harder to tell, but the pupil has a cloudy spot on one side that seems to be clearing up, while the other side is still looking brown.

On the topic of messed up eyes.

We’re going to have to change focus for when my tax return comes in. We still have to get the pill switch replaced on our septic tank, but we’ll have to wait on the pipe clearing. We need to get the Wolfman to a vet. After talking with the Cat Lady and showing her pictures of his eye that looks like it got scratched by another cat, we treated him with the last of our Metacam and monitored him. The rescue’s donations had run out, so even though Wolfman is on the list for adopting out, there’s nothing for vet care. Any donations they do get are quickly used up with spays and neuters.

I have the hardest time seeing the condition of the Wolfman’s eye, but he was opening it more often and blinking, so I thought it was getting better. The inner lids are still pretty swollen, but we can’t get more Metacam without a prescription, we can’t get a prescription without an exam, and we can’t get an exam done until we have funds. The girls seem to have better luck with seeing the eye, and this morning, they told me it was looking deflated.

*sigh*

Which means when we go bring him in, most likely the eye will need to be removed. I have no idea how much that will cost. I don’t think it’ll be as much as an amputation, of course; those both cost in the $1300 range. Still, it is a surgery, and that’s always expensive.

Damn.

Today, I got a call from the tax preparer. They just had one question for me, and then our files were done. I’ve already made the drive over to pay the bill, brought my husband’s form home for signing, and got it back right away. I didn’t even look to see what the final numbers were until I got home. Mine was exactly as I expected. I have no income, so I’m getting my caregiver tax credit, and that’s it. My husband qualifies for the disability tax credit, but his private disability and his CPP Disability combined bumps him into a different tax bracket. Without the disability tax credit, he’d be owing. Instead, he typically gets less than $20 back. That changed this year, though, and he’s actually getting more. Not much more, but enough to be helpful.

What isn’t helpful is that as of today, appropriately on April Fool’s Day, yet another Trudeau carbon tax has kicked in, which will make the cost of everything go up. I’ll let Quick Dick McDick explain it, as only he can. Language warning.

Not only is the idea that taxing “carbon” is somehow going to make the weather gooder laughable (keep in mind that we are carbon based life forms on a carbon based planet, so taxing “carbon” is taxing life itself – oh, and if you take into account Canada’s vast Boreal forests, we are actually CO2 negative), but we keep getting told that we will somehow get back more than we paid in.

Our Prime Dictator has openly admitted that he can’t do math, but you’d think even a trust fund baby born with a silver spoon in his mouth would know better. Which I’m sure he does, but the psychologist in my recognizes a narcissistic psychopath when I see one.

We’re told that we are supposed to be getting these quarterly rebates to make up for the new tax. My daughters get them, along with the GST rebate. Paltry sums, really, considering how expensive everything has become because of these taxes. My husband and I don’t get either. Apparently, he makes too much money on disability, which is insane. Since we’re a married couple filing our tax returns together, that means neither of us get any federal rebates. Sometimes our province will throw out a bone, but even then, I get it but my husband doesn’t. No doubt there are plenty of other families in our position that will keep seeing our costs increase, but never see any of these “getting back more than you pay” rebates. Then the powers that be will and their propagandists blame the eeeeeevil capitalists and the Conservatives for everything, right on script.

For those of you who have been following Karlyn Borysenko, who has been deep diving into the “woke left” for years now, you know that this isn’t really a politically left or right thing, but the result of decades of neo-Marxism.

I don’t want to go too far into this sort of thing on my blog, though, but this is something that affects all of us directly. Even us, in our little corner in the boonies, and the choices we need to make, so I feel I have to talk about it at least a little bit.

Looking at just the past few years, on top of the carbon taxes, they’re also punishing the use of nitrogen (which makes up almost 80% of our atmosphere) to grow food, they’ve declared that home gardeners are actually causing more “climate change” damage than large scale agriculture, and cow farts are heating up the globe, so they’re trying to get rid of cows in favour of ultra processed “plant based meat”, even though they know this stuff is worse for both our health and the environment, and so on.

What it comes down to is that people like us – people who just want to be as self sufficient as possible, and produce as much of our own food as we can – are going to have a much harder time of it, unless there are massive changes in the next few years. Having homeschooled our daughters, we’re already used to autocrats either trying to make what we were doing illegal or, failing that, making it so they control what, when and how we did it. During our final homeschooling years, we came very close to losing so much in the province we lived in at the time, as the NDP and the teacher’s union tried to push legislation that would have literally controlled what parents could talk to their kids about at the dinner table. They tried twice, actually. They learned from the first time, so the second time, they framed it as a way to “fight hate” and “homophobia”. A remarkable number of homeschoolers fell right in line, and they succeeded in pitting homeschoolers against each other. I don’t think people realize just what a disaster it would have been, had the proposed legislation passed, it was so broad and ambiguous. It’s just another step to see the same thing being tried to control our ability to grow our own food and live self sufficiently. I mean, it’s already illegal for a lot of people to grow food in their yards or keep a few chickens in their back yard. Hell, the mayor of Toronto is pushing to tax rain, for crying out loud.

Of course, we’re already seeing the effect of this new tax, and it just kicked in today. When I was in town to see the tax preparer, I saw gas prices had gone up another 4 cents per litre. Honestly, I expected it to jump higher than that.

Meanwhile, the price of groceries is going to keep going up, tradespeople like plumbers and our septic guy are going to have to increase their prices again, and the value of our dollar is going to keep going down due to this artificially created inflation.

Which makes what we are trying to do here, just to feed ourselves, all the more important.

At least while growing and producing our own food is still legal.

The Re-Farmer

I love our truck!

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Today is relatively mild, as far as the temperature goes. It’s only -8C/-18F as I write this. The windchill, however is at -24C/-11F and honestly, I think around our house, it’s actually feeling colder than that!

The historical records for today are pretty wild! Our record high was 23C/73F set in 2012, but the record low for today is -26C/-15F, set in 1974.

I well remember my childhood winters here in the 70’s. There’s a reason the “experts” were saying we were heading into a new ice age back then! It was brutal! Of course, as a child, I didn’t know any different and thought it was normal. It wasn’t.

Our earlier long range forecasts that said we were going to have highs above freezing through the rest of March and into April have been completely reversed. Now they say we’re going to have highs below freezing for at least another 10 days. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for that bloody wind!!!

One thing about the cold and wind; we’ve got more yard cats!

I got a different number, every time I tried to do a head count, but the range was still between 31 and 33 cats! And at least one – Sad Face – was “missing”. I haven’t seen more than 30 cats here in weeks.

I was happy to note that the matt of burrs in Adam’s fur seems to be almost all gone. At least the ones on her hip and side. The burrs on the tip of her tail are still there. I’m also still keeping an eye out of a printer baby with an injured back leg, but have seen no sign of a limping cat, so that’s good.

Which reminds me; I reached out to the Cat Lady about the Wolfman and his eye, sending her a picture. It was a long shot, but I was hoping donations to her rescue might be available, as we have zero vet budget right now. I wasn’t surprised when she said there was none left; she’s taking care of the rescues out of pocket again. However, she was able to give me advice, as she’s dealt with this before. She agrees with my husband, that it’s most likely a scratch from another cat. She asked if we still had some Metacam left, which we do, so we’ll be dosing him for three days. It’ll get the swelling down and reduce pain, and help it heal faster. We had to weigh him, first, to calculate the dosage.

He did not like that. 😄

Along with the Metacam, we’ll continue using eyedrops and carefully dabbing around the eye. She described the treatment regimen they did with their cat that had an eye like this. With their cat, it took about a month to heal completely – but it also turned out to have a piece of claw stuck under a lid that finally came out on its own! I don’t think we’ve got anything like that, but it’s hard to see. They ended up self treating because, when she called the vet about it, treatment would have cost at least $600. As it is right now, she’s making weekly payments to cover their bill with her usual clinic, because they still owe them thousands! They have a good working relationship with this clinic. This is the one that wouldn’t give up on Cabbages (which is now saving the lives of other cats), and a couple of other sick kittens from our place the Cat Lady took. I’ve actually lost track of how many cats they now have permanently that came from us! There’s at least four or five.

Which reminds me; they have an area prepared for Ginger. He’ll stay with them and get the standard vet care before being officially put up for adoption. He’s going to be sharing space with a very chill cat with no eyes (also up for adoption), so bullying will not be a problem! Right now, it’s just a matter of scheduling a day to connect.

I did get out today, and I am so very happy about it! I was able to get the truck into the yard, so we could load it up and make a dump run. There was just one drifted area I wasn’t sure about, but the snow is hard packed enough that the truck just climbed right over! We could never have done that with the van. It would have broken something! The truck made it through, easily.

Once the truck was by the house, the girls took care of loading it while I opened the gate, penguin walking the whole way. I had just asked them to bring the bags out, expecting to load the box myself, but by the time I shuffled my way back to non-ice covered paths, the girls were just closing up the tailgate!

I did have to laugh when I opened it up to unload it at the dump. Getting back out of the yard had sent almost all the bags flying to the cab end of the box.

There’s a reason we keep a long handled garden cultivator tool in the cab all the time! Very handy, to pull things closer.

I had considered continuing on to the town North of us after going to the dump, after my husband had confirmed they have the bio drain maintenance stuff that finally got our toilet going again, in stock. After unloading the garbage, though, I decided against the trip. The winds were even worse than at home! At least it was blowing in the right direction, so the bags I was tossing into the pit were being blown further in, rather than back at me! On the way home, I did make a stop at the post office, though, and picked up a few grocery items while I was there. There are a few other things we need to get, along with refilling the big water jugs, but that will wait until I meet with the Cat Lady in the smaller city. Next week, we’ll be doing our stock up shopping for April, so I don’t want to be making any special trips if I can avoid it.

I’m just glad we were finally able to made that dump run. We were way overdue! I am SO appreciating this truck!!! It’s such a good beast.

We should name it. Our previous van was named Sleipner. This truck needs a good, muscular name. 😂

The Re-Farmer

ps: Oh, my goodness! I just noticed the date and realized – today is the first day of spring! Winter is officially over!

Well. On the calendar, at least!

Change in plans

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Today is turning out to be an unpleasant day, so here is a picture of green growing things, instead!

The eggplants and hot peppers are just starting to show their true leaves.  With just their seed leaves, they all look pretty identical.  The only real difference is the stem colour on the peppers.

They are so pretty!  A real boost to the mood.  Especially on days like today.

For me, I think the shoveling I did finally caught up to me.  Not in muscle pain or stiffness  – I’m pretty used to that every morning.  No, it hit me in the innards. 

Upon my third run to the bathroom, I was definitely reconsidering going to the city today for our first stock up shop.  That would mean about an hour plus of driving, with only one place en route with access to public washrooms, before reaching the city.  As it was, I had to get the girls to take care of feeding the outside cats.

Then I checked the weather.

Wind chills of -31C??  Blowing snow advisory?

Then I checked my highway conditions groups.  Some people even posted video they took, as passengers, while on the highway. 

Nope.  Not going to the city today!

I even got a message from my SIL saying she hoped I was staying home.  I’d told her I was going to Costco today, which is relatively short drive from their place, asking if she were up to meeting for lunch.  She already had plans to do ice fishing on one of the lakes, so that was a no go.

She canceled her fishing trip.  Yes, it would have been in a fishing shack, but – aside from the drive itself – the exposure to winds on the lake ice was just not worth the risk for maybe a fish or two.

So today is a day to hunker down, stay warm, and out of that wind!

I’m starting to really hate wind.

The Re-Farmer

Not the day that was planned

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First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends in the US! I hope you have a wonderful day filled with family, friends and food!

As for our day…

Oooh, boy.

Things went pretty normal this morning, plus I had some errands to run this afternoon. The pain I was feeling yesterday has subsided, so I was able to do my morning rounds, as usual. As always, they start with bringing out kibble and warm water for the outside cats.

I did a couple of head counts and reached 34 and 35. Including this battered beast.

Sad Face was looking sadder, with a fresh wound on his nose. He may be much less aggressive with the other cats these days, but at least one of our own males is not happy with him around and regularly growls at him. I suspect that cat is responsible, but there’s really no way of knowing. Ironically, perhaps, it’s one of the white and greys from last year’s kittens, which means Sad Face here is almost certainly his daddy!

There’s a fluffy smaller kitten that looks a lot like Pom Pom I’ve been trying to get a better look at. There’s something weird about one eye, but every time I come near, the kitten runs off. Today it was in the kibble house while I was refilling the big heated water bowl right next to it, and I got the best look at its face so far. That one eye appears to be clouded. I don’t think it’s blind in that eye, but I do think it’s partially blind.

Unfortunately, so many of the cats just will not let us socialize them. Unlike this handsome boy.

Syndol quite enjoys being held and cuddled.

Hypotenose in the background is not quite there, yet. He did let me place a hand on his back, as I was petting Syndol, but only for a moment, before he moved away.

One of the goals of the day was to make a dump run. The landfill is open only 3 days a week. I’d gone there on Tuesday, only to find it was closed. That’s when I realized I was looking at the Thursday winter hours, not the Tuesday winter hours. On Tuesdays, they are open from late morning to early afternoon. With winter hours, they closed at 1pm. I thought they opened at 2pm, which is when they open in the winter on Thursdays, so I got there an hour after they’d closed. *sigh*

One down side of having a box cover on the truck instead of a cab. We couldn’t leave the garbage in the back, because the racoons could easily tear through the cover to get at it. So, back into the Old Kitchen the bags went.

Today is Thursday, so I was planning to do the dump run, then head to Walmart for a couple things, including more cat kibble. *sigh* I can’t even blame the racoons for that one. I didn’t realize how low we were on kibble for the inside cats, when I made the last Walmart run, on Monday. If we refilled the inside cat bin from the outside cat bin, there wouldn’t be enough left to last the rest of the month for the outside cats.

With the dump opening at 2, I headed out shortly after 1 to back the truck up to the house and load the garbage bags. Then I headed inside for a bit before it was time to head out. My younger daughter was going to come along, as she needed to go to the Walmart as well. Sweetheart that she is, she also went ahead to unlock the gate. With the warm weather we had recently, the driveway is mostly ice. Especially under the gate, where water tends to pool! She had to be so careful just walking to the gate, never mind opening it.

Meanwhile, I went to start the truck and…

Nothing happened.

Crud.

It started without any problem when I took it out of the garage! I even considered leaving the engine running while loading the back but decided against it, since I wasn’t sure how long I would be inside before we headed out.

Now, we’ve been talking to the garage about that battery. When we were first looking to buy that truck, he thought he’d replaced the battery, but when he checked his files, it said the previous owner had changed the battery. When we realized there was a problem with it, he looked it up and the battery was from 2019, so past warranty. The other thing that has been odd is the tire monitoring system, which keeps telling me my tires are low when they’re fine. That is most likely the battery dying in the module. I told him we probably wouldn’t be able to get them fixed until December, and may only be able to do one, not both, depending on the cost. He told me that, if I could only do one, he recommended I put a priority on the battery. He got prices for me; a new battery would be $200, while the tire monitoring system module would be only $60, though replacing that requires removing a tire, so there’d be more labour costs on top of that one, compared to just switching out a battery.

Anyhow.

When the truck wouldn’t start, I went and got our battery charger and waved my daughter over. She got an extension cord ready for the charger while I set it up, and we got that going.

While the charger was doing its job, I remembered to look for the plug for the block heater. I found the cord, which was neatly wound and secured around the engine compartment, and followed it along. The plug end turned out to be neatly tucked into an opening in the frame, right at the front. I pulled it out and found…

Oh, dear.

Clearly, no one thought to look at the block heater cord, even during the safety inspection. Why would they?

I was able to text the above photo to our mechanic to let him know it’s something else we’re going to have to eventually fix! Thankfully, there is no hurry on that. In fact, if the forecasts for this El Niño winter are at all accurate, we may not need to use it at all this winter. I’ll get an price on what it’ll cost to get it fixed, then take care of it when the budget allows.

Unfortunately, we’ve discovered that the outside cats are incredibly curious about the truck – and the higher clearance on this truck means more places they can get into, under it! We saw them climbing onto the tires and up into the undercarriage, as well as just loafing under it. I ended up having to put a bit of kibble out, just to get them away from the truck while we tried to start it.

We got it clear of cats and I went to start the truck.

Nothing happened.

We waited a while longer.

The charger stopped charging, and an error message popped up.

I checked the connections and one seemed to have slipped off. I reset them, plugged the charger back in and it started charging.

After a while, we tried to start the truck again.

Nothing. It just clicked.

We left the charger going for longer. I decided it was time to call the garage.

As I was talking to our mechanic, he asked for readings on the charger, so I went back outside. Unfortunately, the writing on the charger is so small, I can barely read it, but I did spot the button to change the display from current to voltage.

7.4

I read that to him and got a “That’s not good!”

I switched it to battery percentage, and it only said “Lo”

Not only that but, as I was talking to him, the voltage went from 7.4 to 7.3

It wasn’t charging.

So, we talked options. He suggested we take the battery out and bring it to him, using my mother’s car, and he’d sell us a new one. Unfortunately, while I know it’s a simple thing to do, I’ve never taken a battery out of a vehicle before, nor have I even seen it done. Plus, we still had our errands to run, though going to the dump was no longer an option.

I told him I wouldn’t be able to do it today, but would call him ahead when I do.

As we were putting things away, there were a couple of odd things. The hazard lights were on. I couldn’t even remember where the button for that was on this vehicle. It was behind the steering wheel, at the top of the column – not a place where it could have been turned on by accident, unless my daughter somehow hit it while she tried starting the truck. She may have tried looking through the computer display which, unfortunately, does not include a display for the battery.

As I was putting the charger back in the garage, my daughter went to close the hood, but it wouldn’t close for her. Unlike very other vehicle we’ve owned, this hood holds itself up, without a metal bar to support it, so closing it should have been just a matter of pulling it down. For some reason, she wasn’t able to get it.

Which is when she heard the ticking sound.

As I returned from the garage, she told me about it, and it was coming out of the fuse box. I tried to open the cover, which had an arrow indicating an “unlock” position… but we couldn’t get it off. I’m sure there’s something simple we’re missing, but we just weren’t in a position to fiddle with it.

This time, when my daughter went to close the hood, it closed just fine. Because of course it would work when I was there to see! 😄

We could still hear the ticking noise.

The next thing we had to do was get my mother’s car out of the garage.

Well, that couldn’t be an easy thing to do, now could it?

Of course not.

One of the things we’ve been doing is collecting aluminum separately from the regular recycling. Before we moved out here, we kept all our pop cans and bottles to take to the bottle depot and get our enviro fees back. This province doesn’t have that, so all that just goes into general recycling at the dump. Only glass gets a separate bin. However, aluminum can get a good price at the scrap yards, so we’ve been keeping that. My brother collected aluminum to help raise funds to build a local church. We don’t typically have a lot of canned food, but we do drink canned drinks, and then we started buying canned cat food, regularly.

We now have about 6 years of aluminum stored in bags the garage, in the space in front of my mother’s car.

We meant to take it in this summer, but we lost use of the van, and then got rid of the van itself. Now that we have the truck, I was going to find out from my brother where he’d gone with the aluminum, but we’ve had other stuff that needed doing, first.

Well, just a little while ago, I came into the garage to find the entire area in front, and under, my mother’s car, filled with cans. Critters – could be cats, could be racoons – had knocked several bags down from the stack and torn them apart, and we hadn’t had a chance to clean it up, yet.

I filled three bags of loose cans. And that was just the ones immediately around my mother’s car, so it could be accessed.

After we were sure the tires were clear, my daughter backed the car out, and I could reach the cans that were under it.

Once that was done, we could FINALLY start heading out.

Of course, this is my mother’s car, and I’m always trepidatious about driving it. I found out today that my daughters have been referring to it as the Car of Damocles. Which is so appropriate, given the troubles it’s had since my mother bought it, never mind just in the years we’ve been keeping it insured for her!

The drive itself went well, though our driveway was not the only area that was sheer ice. The highways may be beautifully clear, but the gravel roads near our place are shaded by trees, so the snow never fully melted away when we had those wonderfully warm days. Instead, they turned into skating rinks.

Yeah. We took it slow! Especially on the way home. Even on the highway. It was past 5pm and fully dark by the time we were heading home, and there are a lot of deer in the area! I was glad to have my daughter as an extra pair of eyes to watch the ditches for me.

As for the truck, after we unloaded, I gave it a listen, and the ticking sound had stopped.

I’ve decided that I will use our CAA and have the truck towed. The ticking from the fuse box is likely caused by the defective battery; the circuits aren’t getting the charge they need. Just to be on the safe side, though, I’d like to have those checked out, too – BEFORE we start trying to drive it after replacing the battery.

So I will arrange, probably tonight, to have a tow truck come by tomorrow. I just hope there’s enough room in front of the truck for the tow truck to access it properly!

Plus, we’ll have to really make sure there are no cats up under there!

Hopefully, once the truck is no longer a “new” thing for them, they will stop being so curious about it.

So… That’s how are day ended up. Not at all as planned!

Ah, well. Such is life!

The Re-Farmer

What a lovely day!

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It is just gorgeous out there!

We were supposed to reach a high of 4C/39F today. We’re at 7C/45F right now! It turns out we hit 7C/45F yesterday, too. The snow is melting away, and it feels like spring!

Before I go on, though, we must first have the cuteness.

Snorri is just enveloped by David! The Beast (aka: Tiny) is bigger than Snorri! He’s all fur, so he looks bigger than he really is. I have to be so careful at night. He has a thing for curling up behind my neck, or on my legs. He’s so light, sometimes I can’t feel him there at all, and I have to check if he’s on or behind me before I try to roll over.

He does have a thing for necks! If he can get at one, he’ll climb right up any convenient human and settle into a neck, purring.

Snorri’s eyes are still really leaky, but he’s most definitely getting better. I hope he’ll start getting some meat on those bones soon! He certainly has a good appetite.

When feeding the outside cats this morning, I did repeated head counts. I kept getting 37, though I did get 38 once. I think I double counted someone. All the usuals that sometimes show up later were there – Rolando Moon, Brussel and Sprout, Broccoli, the orange and white, both Adam and Driver, Judgement – plus the ones that are almost always here; the printer babies – all the white and greys – the orange tabby, Hypotenose, Syndod, this year’s lone calico and tortie kittens, etc. Then there are the black cats and the grey tabbies. We have so many gorgeous cats this year!

One of the places I put a bit of kibble is in the space the smaller cats use to get under the cat house. While trying to count, I spotted a little white face, eating at the opening. I could only see a bit more than the nose and mouth, so I couldn’t say for sure if it was one of our usuals. There is one white and grey among this year’s kittens that I thought it might have been, but when I went to count the cats in the sun room, he was there. I can’t think of any other small, white faced cat that it might have been. I also spotted a couple of tabbies that I wasn’t sure of. It’s entirely possible they’re from this year’s kittens that are just bigger, and we were bound to have kittens from litters the shier mamas kept further away, finally starting to show up on their own. These ones are adult sized cats, though.

Well, no matter. They are welcome to food, water and shelter! Even Sad Face has become a permanent fixture. The next time there’s a cheap spay and neuter day, I hope we can snag him!

How bizarre that the visiting tom we kept having to chase away because he was so aggressive to the other cats, is now more approachable than all the female yard cats. !!

With so many cats to feed, it’s no surprise that we were running low on kibble, so today I made a trip to Walmart. When I got there, I found that Black Friday sales have already started. Another bizarre notion. This is a US thing, since we have our Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October. Meanwhile, Black Friday doesn’t even happen in the US until the end of this week, but Canada has Black Friday, too, and the sales have started already.

I was able to juggle the budget a bit and take advantage of some of the sales. Along with the cat food I was there to get, I was able to get things like a case of 24 cans of tomato soup at 77¢ each – easily the best deal among the things I got, since those cans now cost closer to $2 each. One of the things on my list, however, was not on sale. Butter. Even their house brand butter is almost $7 a pound! It would be cheaper to buy whipping cream and make it.

I didn’t buy whipping cream, and got only 1 pound of butter. We’ll just have to use the ghee more often, until our next big city shopping trip. The next time we’re at Costco, I’ll have to stock up on more butter than usual. Another of their big buckets of ghee wouldn’t go amiss, either!

Once I got home and we unloaded the truck, I had to feed the outside cats early. I was just going back to park it in the garage when I saw a couple of cats under it; one jumping up into the undercarriage somewhere, and another jumping up onto a front tire!

Yes, I make it a practise to bang on the truck before starting it.

The sound of kibble was enough to get them away from the truck, though.

In other things…

I called my mother last night, and it was like talking to a completely different person. She went from yelling and raging at me the day before, to cheerful and pleasant. I asked how she was doing, and she went into her usual complaints about her breathing; this time, she tried to blame it on the macaroni she ate. *sigh* After she went on for a while, I more specifically asked about her mood. She was all ready to act like it never happened, and she was never angry or said all those horrible things to me. We talked about it for a bit, and I tried to stress with her that if our vandal starts calling her about me, it’s because he’s trying to cause problems between us. She did try to defend him again, saying he was just telling her what’s going on, and I had to tell her, he has NO idea what’s going on. She quickly changed the subject. She didn’t quite apologize, but she did seem to try and make amends, in her own way.

I told her about our plans to get the hand pump on the original well serviced, so that we can then change the well pump and have back up water if something goes wrong. It took some time to explain to her why the well pump in the house needed to be changed at all. It has been changed in the past, but that was more than 20 years ago. The foot valve in the well, however, is original and some 45 or so years old – I think it was dug in 1974, but it might have been the year before. She couldn’t remember the exact year.

So she’s happy with the plans. Her only thing was to tell me to talk to my brother about it first, and I told her, I talk to him about everything. No living person knows this place better than he does. He was old enough to actually do a lot of this stuff alongside my dad. My other brothers were still too young for much of it, and some of it was done before I was even born. My sister is older, but she wouldn’t have been allowed to be part of this stuff, even if she were interested, because she is female. My mother then started going on about how great my brother is, and what a good job he’s doing with the farm.

Just the day before, she’d yelled and hung up on him when he called her out for how she allowed our vandal to manipulate her and treat me like crap.

She was like a totally different person.

Meanwhile…

In checking the trail cam files, I could see our vandal trying to figure out what was going on. The day the guys where here to pick up the vehicles, I saw him pull into our driveway while the gate was open – but not far enough to be trespassing! – to turn around, then slowly back down the road, so he could better see through the trees to where we were. I even remember seeing a vehicle backing up on the road, while the guys were jacking the truck out of the dirt and putting tires on it. On the trail cam files, I saw our vandal go by again, later on. Then, after the guys were gone and the gate closed, I saw a different vehicle pull into our driveway and turn around. From another camera, I could see that the driver of this vehicle was a mutual friend he’d clearly gotten to check things out.

On today’s file check, I saw our vandal in the morning, slowly driving past our driveway, then slow down even more as he drove past the bushes, trying to see through them to the other scrap vehicles.

Needless to say, we are no longer fake locking the gate.

It amazes me how furious and possessive he is about the junk. Yeah, some of it was his, but he abandoned it years ago, and neither vehicle that was taken had ever been his to begin with. The ones he’d left are in such bad shape, they aren’t even good for parts. Just the scrap dealer. Which is why he dumped them here, instead of keeping them on his own property. He was using this place as a garbage dump.

So we’re going to have to keep an extra eye on things for the next while.

Something else we might be able to keep an extra eye on is the sun room critters. My SIL gave us a camera. It was a Superstore freebie for purchases over X amount of dollars, and they had no use for it. It’s one of those little security cameras you can link to your phone to keep an eye on things through a live feed. It is not an outdoor camera, but if we can set it up in the sun room, we should be able to confirm what critters (most likely racoons) are knocking things over in there during the night. If it could handle outdoor conditions, I’d want to set it up facing the cat, kibble and water shelters, so we can see what, besides cats, is eating all the kibble, and sometimes knocking the heated water bowl right out of the shelter! Having a critter cam in the sun room, however, would be a good thing! It mostly comes down to how the device is powered. If it’s USB, we’ve got nothing to plug it into in there. We just haven’t had a chance to even take it out of the box, yet!

Who knows. I might be posting critter cam pictures on here, soon!

The Re-Farmer

A much better day

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Just look at this sunrise!

I’m pretty sure we exceeded our predicted high for the day, though we were in the city at the time, which is typically a couple of degrees warmer, just from the Urban Heat Island effect.

When I fed the outside cats this morning, I was able to do a head count and got 33, several times. Then I saw two more come running, while I was setting up for our departure. When we got back, we pulled up to the house to make it easier for my husband. I fed the outside cats early so that I could safely get the truck out of the yard and into the garage. I did another head count, and got 37! Repeatedly!

I have no idea where these extra cats are coming from, or which ones they are!

Anyhow…

My older daughter was not feeling well, so she stayed home. Having someone at home was probably for the best, anyhow, with our vandal’s freak out over the scrap cars being hauled away. I got a call from my brother this morning, to check on us – no, my mother did not call to apologize, nor did I get a response from my email to my sister. He, however, checked his home answering machine and found a couple of messages from our vandal, with his usual ranting and raving. I’ll be getting copies of those, when he gets the chance to send them to me, for our records.

The drive into the city went well. Highway conditions were great. Road conditions in the city were not as good, but not because of the weather. I was told that apparently the city has fixed all the streets over the past while, but you sure can’t tell from how badly the residential roads in particular are falling apart. My husband, unfortunately, feels every crack and pothole. I try to drive gently, but there’s only so much you can avoid!

The visit itself was really excellent. My BIL, his wife and adult children have been to our place, but this was the first time in about 5 years since we’ve seen my FIL, and the first time we’ve seen my SIL since she moved back out here a couple of years ago. My FIL is having a lot more mobility issues, which but he’s looking great.

There was only one unfortunate thing that happened, and it was me. *sigh*

Their dining room is a step lower. A step my FIL has difficulty with, so they have a sort of platform that’s half a step high, making it easier for him to get down into the dining room.

I was going to help clear the table, grabbed a dish of mashed potatoes and the gravy, turned to take it to the kitchen and…

Caught my toe on the edge of the platform.

I went flying.

Mashed potatoes went flying.

Gravy went flying.

I landed hard on my left knee.

In the mashed potatoes.

Of course, everyone was concerned that I wasn’t hurt. I was more upset over the waste of food and making such a mess!

Oddly, while there is some minor swelling and I’ll likely get a bruise, it doesn’t hurt much at all. It seems I’ve landed on that knee so many times over the years – I actually don’t fall often, but when I do, it’s always been onto my left knee! – it seems to have just stopped hurting. Mind you, with the OA and bone spurs, I might just have such a high pain tolerance by now, something like this just doesn’t phase me anymore.

So that was unfortunate. 😕

That was the only down side of the visit.

My husband, meanwhile, held out as long as he could, but could only push himself so far. He hides it well, though. My daughter and I could see the signs that he was struggling to remain upright, so we called it before dessert. Which also meant we got home while it was still light out, which is always a good thing.

As soon as we got home, my husband hooked himself up to his TENS, took his evening meds and his “take as needed” painkillers, and went to right to bed. He’s going to pay for this trip for a while, but to see his father again was, for him, worth it.

Another reason to be so glad we got this truck. He could not have managed this trip at all, even if we still had the van. The seats on this truck are so much better for his back, he can handle the drive much better.

With my daughter coming along, we had to put one of the back seats down, so the walker had to go into the back of the truck. We were able to secure it so it wouldn’t slight around. Before we left, I grabbed a crate and started returning some of the stuff we used to keep regularly in the van. Booster cables. Tire iron. Stuff like that. We’ll need to look for some sort of storage box to install on the back for this stuff. The typical truck box I see that is mounted behind the cab is too tall; we’d have to remove the cover, and we like the cover! There are storage boxes that fit over the wheel wells that would be more ideal, and easier for short people like me to access! 😁 We were also talking about getting things like straps and tie downs and other things that we would find useful with a truck that weren’t needed with a van. Little by little, we’ll get the tools and supplies we will need!

Another thing we talked about was our next fix. My brother has told me to keep the money from the sale of the cars, so that’s going to go back into the property. For the amount we have, there are a few things we could do, but there’s what feels “urgent” vs what needs to be prioritized first.

Among the things we need to do is get the well pump replaced. My brother has already bought a pump and all the fittings he could think of that would be needed to install it. The problem is, shortly after we moved here, we noticed issues that might mean the foot valve is starting to be a problem. One plumber came out and actually went into the area above our well – the concrete well cap is about 12 feet down – to look at the pipes to pump in the basement. This well was dug in the mid 70’s. Since then, the standard size for well pipes has changed. If there were any issues, we couldn’t simply replace the pipes. We’d have to find and special order that size, or have a new well dug. At that point, we’re looking at many thousands of dollars.

So no plumber dares replace the pump. The risk is low, but if that foot valve goes, we have no water until we can afford to get that fixed.

Water is our one weak spot. If we lose power for an extended period, we are okay with everything else. We can cook, stay warm, use the outhouse… the only thing we have no back up for is water.

But we do have that original well with the hand pump.

So that will be our priority fix.

I just talked to my brother about it, and he’s quite on board with the idea.

Over the next while, I will look for a company that can service a hand pump. I’ve been able to pump water, but it took a long time for it to start flowing, and if I slowed down pumping, the water would stop. So it does seem to just be a matter of replacing the leathers and getting a proper seal again. I’ve watched videos on how to do this but none of them involve a pump like what we have. I’ve looked up suppliers for the leather gaskets, and they’re pretty cheap, but I have no idea what size or type we need. Once we get someone to do it, we will probably be able to do it ourselves after that, though new leathers should last for years.

Once that is done and we have back up water, we can look at getting that new well pump installed. It should be just fine but, if things go wrong and we lose water, we will have that back up. We might end up hauling water for an awfully long time, but that’s preferable to not having any water at all!

It will probably be a while before I find someone, but that will be what the funds will be set aside for.

*sigh*

I suppose I should phone my mother and see how things are with her. She and I talked about the old well, and she was quite thrilled when I said I wanted to get it going again. So she should be happy to hear that this is what we’ve decided to do next, but she also wanted me to get rid of those old cars, only to become furious when I actually did get rid of a couple, thanks to our vandal.

*sigh*

We’ll see how that goes. Hopefully, she’ll have calmed down, and the day will end as well as it began.

The Re-Farmer

Need to decompress for a while!

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First, the cuteness!

The cats just love this upper level set up! Here we have Hypotenose, Syndod and the unnamed tortie. When I fed them this morning, I think I counted 35. Or it could have been 32. I never got the same number twice, and it’s way too easy to double count!

The day started out well. It was lovely out, and I think we exceeded our predicted high of 3C/37F.

Today was the day the guy, and his son, who wanted to buy some scrap cars from us was to come over and pick them up. They arrived with a couple of trailers and four trucks altogether, as his son’s friends came along again, as did the guy’s neighbour, to help out.

It’s a good thing they had three big strapping young men along! What a job it was!

Their first goal was to get the pick up truck. They had to cut trees away first, then jack it up out of the ground it had sunk into, replace the two front tires, and put tires on the back, which had no tires at all. They were then able to use one of the trucks to pull it out of where it was parked, so they could load it onto a trailer.

That’s when things got considerably more difficult!

All four tires were seized up.

They dragged it far enough out, though, then brought the longer trailer around. Unfortunately, the ramps on the trailer turned out to be too narrow.

As all this was starting, we could hear cows. We’d had to go through the “gate” by the barn (it’s just an open part of the fence with a chain and the electric fence across it; I eventually found the barbed wire gate, mostly fallen apart and buried in tall grass). This meant taking down the electric fence, which ends at this gate, so that was easy enough to do. When the renter’s cows are here, that fence is live, of course, so when I heard cows that sounded awfully close, I went to the gravel pit, where there is water, in case a neighbour’s cows got in or something.

I found 3 cows.

But I heard more.

So I kept walking and could soon see the rest of the herd.

The renter’s cows are still here! I haven’t seen them – or even their tracks – in a while! He leaves feed for them out by the gate he brings them in by, so I guess they had no reason to go any further than the water in the gravel pit.

As I walked back, I took a closer look at where the renter sets up the battery and solar panel for the electric fence. I’d looked on the way out, but didn’t see anything.

It turned out the solar panel had been flipped upside down, on top of the battery, and was covered in snow. I’d say, high winds caught it. I’ve no idea how long it’s been out of order, since I didn’t even know the cows were still here!

Well, I guess it worked out, since we had to go through there, anyhow.

Yes, I have since let them know. At least I hope so. I sent direct message, but I might have to find their phone number and call them, if those haven’t been seen.

Anyhow.

On finding the truck could not be loaded onto that trailer, they took it across to the car graveyard. That car was also deeply sunk into the ground, but it did have all four tires and – amazingly – they were able to pump them up and they held air! Long enough to move it, at least.

The guys were so excited by this little car. I think it’s going to end up restored and driven again, rather than just used for parts! Its interior was largely gutted, but it still had its engine.

Mostly.

So that got loaded up rather quickly.

Next, they went to look at a third vehicle over by the storage shed. After cutting their way through the forest of burrs, they were able to open the doors and look inside.

Unfortunately, it turns out things are badly rotted out in there. After talking about it, it was decided they would not take that one. It was good only for scrap.

The other two next to it caught their attention, but they instead went looking at the tractor. The son still wants to buy that, but that won’t happen until spring. He did pay half as a down payment, though.

Then it was back to the truck. It took both the winch on the trailer, plus another truck with a tow strap, to drag that thing up the ramps and onto the trailer. The truck is so long, it barely fit! But, they got it.

So that was done, and the guy was saying he might be interested in some of the other vehicles, too. We shall see.

Now, with all this noise and commotion, I knew our vandal would be wondering what’s going on, since he tried to sue me for this stuff, among other things. The only reason I could even consider selling anything is because the judge threw it out. I know that wouldn’t change his mind that he is somehow entitled to all this junk, even though he had plenty of time to remove things if he wanted them, while the place was empty for two years. He certainly removed all sorts of stuff that wasn’t junk, long ago, so it’s not like he wasn’t able to. I wasn’t sure if he would suddenly show up and start screaming or something, but I didn’t see him. He’d still have heard things from our place and gone looking, though, so I knew I’d have something to deal with something, eventually.

Once everything was squared up and I was settled back inside, I started messaging my brother to let him know, and ask him how he wanted me to get the money to him. The vehicles are paid for, but the guy is going to look up the VINs and make up proper bills of sales for them, which my brother will have to sign, since he’s the owner. The truck actually had its old registration papers in the glove compartment!

While I was messaging my brother, which would take a while, since I knew he and his wife were on the road at the time, my phone rang.

It was my mother.

I knew it was going to happen, but I wasn’t expecting it that quickly!

I barely said hello, when my mother was yelling, what’s going on? What’s going on?

Yup. Our vandal had phoned her already. I don’t know what he actually told her – he would have been making things up, anyhow, since he wouldn’t know anything – but boy, did he have her wired up! It took some doing to calm her down but, as short as I can make it, my mother seems to have thought that this was some instant thing. As if some guys showed up, out of the blue, with trailers today, and I just let them haul stuff out. When I told her this was over a week in the making, she was incensed that I hadn’t told her earlier. I said, there was nothing to tell until it was done, and I was planning to phone her after I finished talking to my brother. Well, she just kept on yelling, going on about how we’re only after her money, she paid for the roof, and she is never going to pay for anything anymore… ???

As near as I can figure, going back to when she called a scrap guy to come out and look at the stuff, our first summer here, she is thinking that the money from selling the scrap would have paid for the roof, but she paid for the roof, so… we’re after her money? The thing is, when I told her the roof was leaking, she kept arguing with me, saying that they already replaced the roof (25 years ago), so it was fine. Perfect. Just like she thought everything here was perfect, as she tried to talk us into moving out here. It took years just to convince her it really did need replacing.

I eventually calmed her down and told her I needed to finish talking to my brother, and then I would call her back.

So I finished messaging him, telling as much as I could, but I knew they were probably driving and wouldn’t be able to see it right away. I even sent some pictures. I also told them about the call from my mother and the terrible things she was saying. Then I called my mother back.

*sigh*

It took some doing, but I was able to get it through that I had already talked to my brother about all this, because I can’t do anything here without him. We don’t own anything here, other than things we bought or brought ourselves. I would never do anything like that without talking to him about it first, anyhow. She made a big deal about how I wouldn’t know the value of things (because I’m female), and I had to explain to her that, by selling individual vehicles for parts, we’d get more money than selling them to a scrap dealer. I also reminded her that she’s been after us for years to get rid of all those vehicles. So that’s what I’m starting to do.

She went into some real mental gymnastics in both calls, constantly going back to how we’re just after her money (clearly, our vandal said that to her), how she was entitled to know what’s going on (she no longer owns own the property so no, she isn’t; we keep her in the loop out of respect), and demanding that the money goes towards fixing the place, because she paid for the roof, and she gives us more money than other parents do, and… on and on it went. She even tried to guilt me about how letting us live here was a kindness. I had to remind her that she begged us to move out here for years before we finally agreed, so our being here was helping both ways. She did, at least, agree to that!

I then told her I needed to let the renter know their electric fence isn’t working and got off the phone. Once I was done messaging them, I updated my brother.

His wife answered, telling me he was furious at her behaviour and was going to call her.

I ended up getting a call. He’d tried calling her several times and her line was busy, so he wanted to check if I was talking to her. I think she was probably talking to our sister.

Some time later, I got a call from my brother again. They’d actually pulled over on the side of the road to try calling our mother again. He got through to her and tried telling her she’d done the wrong thing by yelling at me and letting our vandal manipulate her, that she needed to apologize to me, call me and make it right. She, however, just kept yelling at him, then when he said she needed to make it right, she hung up on him.

Our vandal really made a mess of things with her, and she’s doing exactly what he wanted her to go; he’s trying to turn her against me and my brother (maybe my sister as well, but she’s not involved with the farm), and she’s letting him.

What chokes me is how she goes on about how badly we’re treating her, or how we’re just after her money, but is completely oblivious to her own part in all this. Like our vandal, she takes no responsibility for her behaviour, and if people actually stand up to her and call her out on her behaviour, they’re the ones that are treating her badly, and she’s the victim. She has also tried to control me, and our finances (including my husband in this) for as long as I can remember. The one person who actually does want all her money is our vandal.

You’d think my mother was rich or something, with all this going on. She’s got next to nothing, and the only reason she has what she has is because my brother has been taking care of things for her. She also goes on about how she just wants us all to get along, but plays us against each other, every chance she gets.

Which reminds me. I need to email my sister and tell her what’s happened, thanks to our vandal.

*sigh*

I guess I should get that over with now.

The Re-Farmer

Upside Down Strawberry Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread

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It’s been a long time since I posted anything recipe and cooking related!

Not long ago, I took advantage of an excellent sale, and picked up a whole bunch of fresh strawberries. A couple of clamshells needed to be used up quickly, as they were starting to get past their prime, so I decided to experiment.

I took our basic cast iron skillet corn bread recipe and modified it to make an upside down strawberry cornbread.

It turned out rather well!

First, I’ll give our basic recipe, then explain the modifications. We rarely make it without some sort of modification, so I’ll include those as well.

Basic Cast Iron Skillet Corn Bread

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup cornmeal
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1Tbsp baking powder
  • 1 1/4 cup milk
  • 4 Tbsp butter, melted, plus extra for the pan

Optional:

  • add seasonings to the dry ingredients, such as paprika, garlic granules or whatever herbs you feel like, to taste.
  • there is no salt in this recipe, but I sometimes like to add a small amount of course or rock salt that would normally go into our salt grinder, which leaves some nice little crunchy chunks to discover while eating it!
  • add savoury ingredients like a semi-soft or semi-hard cheese (mozza, cheddar, gouda, havarti, feta, etc.) cut into small cubes (shredded cheese will just disappear), or leftover ham cut into cubes, to the dry ingredients.
  • instead of butter, you can use oil or melted ghee. We like using ghee quite a bit!
  • substitute part of the milk for an equal amount of cream, sour cream or yoghurt. You could also try using buttermilk instead of milk, or even use reconstituted powdered milk.

Instructions:

  • preheat oven to 425F
  • place cast iron pan with some butter in it into the oven until the butter is melted. Spread the melted butter evenly around the pan, including the sides.
  • combine dry ingredients into a medium bowl, including any optional ingredients
  • add the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.
  • pour the batter into the pan
  • bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown and pulling away from the sides, or a toothpick stuck into the middle comes out clean
  • flip onto a rack to cool. Can be served warm with melted butter.

Modification: We start the oven preheating, prepare the cast iron pan, mix the batter, pour it into the pan, place it into the still preheating oven, then set the timer for 25-30 minutes. Basically, it’s because it takes a long time for our oven to preheat to 425F and we’re impatient. It has always worked just fine.

Upside Down Strawberry Corn Bread modifications

Extra Ingredients:

  • fresh strawberries, cleaned and hulled
  • butter
  • brown sugar
  • Place the clean cast iron pan on the stove and melt a generous amount of butter into it. I used a couple of tablespoons, maybe a bit more, for our 10 inch pan.
  • After the butter is melted, use some to oil the sides of the pan
  • Add enough brown sugar to cover the bottom of the pan evenly
  • Cut the strawberries into enough slices to cover the bottom of the pan; lay them on top of the brown sugar
  • Chop more strawberries into small cubes and add them to the dry ingredients of the corn bread batter.
  • Once the batter is ready, gently pour it over the strawberry slices, so as not to disturb them. If there is a chance that the butter and brown sugar might bubble up the sides of your pan, place it on a baking sheet in the oven, or have a baking sheet on the rack below.
  • Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the cornbread is golden brown and starting to pull away from the sides
  • When done, turn off the oven and let it rest in the oven for a few minutes, then remove and cool, still in the pan, outside the oven for a few minutes more. The heat from the cast iron pan will continue to crisp up the edges and caramelize the brown sugar base.
  • slide a knife around the edges of the pan to make sure it’s not sticking. Take a plate larger than the top of your pan and put it upside down over the cornbread. Carefully flip the pan upside down and remove the pan.
  • can be served served warm with a touch of cream poured over the top, or completely cooled – if you’re willing to wait that long!

As I wrote this post, my daughters made another batch. It’s out of the oven now, and I can’t wait to have some!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: root vegetable harvest, plus a first longer drive with the new truck!

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Things started out a bit rough, this morning. While I was in the kitchen, my husband opened the door to my room to let some of the bigger kittens in/out (usually we get both happening at the same time), when Soot Sprite dashed out.

The littles are still too little to be let out.

Unfortunately, my husband couldn’t catch him, but he also thought it was kinda cute, so he started following the Sprite around to keep an eye on him.

Right on down to the basement. The one place that we absolutely did NOT want him getting into. At Sprite’s size, there are too many places he can squeeze into that are not safe or healthy for him. We learned that when we had Beep Beep and Butterscotch have their kittens down there.

I put the food I was working on aside, protected from cats, then went down to see if I could catch him.

I could not.

Worse, I ended up losing sight of him entirely. I was pretty sure he’d squeezed under a counter shelf, but couldn’t be sure. That is one of the worse places (though not the only one) for him to be hiding in. When cleaning up in that basement, we weren’t able to move that shelf. We did clean out stuff inside it, though, which included things like pain cans that had spilled or leaked – it was a long time before we were able to clean out enough to finally get rid of whatever it was that was making the basement smell like a chemical factory! It’s very likely things leaked under that shelf, but we really don’t know.

I ended up messaging my daughters to see who was available to help out, and my younger daughter came down. Part of the problem was that, wherever Sprite ran off, the bigger kittens would run after him and tackle him, like it was a game, which it partly why he ended up disappearing entirely. My daughter had brought a toy to lure him, while I ended up going up and down the stairs with arm loads of other cats and kittens that were causing problems.

Have I mentioned that stairs and I do NOT get along?

My knees are just not stable enough. It isn’t too bad going up the stairs, but going back down is something else entirely. Basically, I have to take one step at a time and hang on to the door, the wall, the window ledge and finally the rail, to get to the bottom.

It took toys, wet cat food and finally letting Clarence (formerly Tweedle Dum) down to finally lure Soot Sprite out. He could barely squeeze his way out from under that counter shelf!!!

That done, my daughter could finally take a shower before heading out. She and her sister had a grocery shopping list and were thinking of going to town, but I took advantage of that to get one more bag of kibble before our stock up shopping, so we went to the nearest Walmart, instead. They carry a 10kg size that costs less than the 7kg sizes that are available locally. Not enough to drive all that way for just a bag of cat food, but worth it if we’re buying other stuff, too.

I made a point of not getting gas on the way out. I’d put some in on Wednesday, before taking the truck home, and got it to just above half. We’d had another trip into town for my husband’s medical appointment, but didn’t go anywhere yesterday. This is our first city trip, enough though it was to the smaller, closer city, so just a 45 minute or so drive, one way. After we did our shopping, we took a different route home so I could get gas at the same station I got gas at a few days ago.

The trip ended up taking just over a quarter tank of gas – I can’t see the odometer to keep track, because we still can’t find where we can cycle through the computer display, and we’ve got that “service tire monitor system” warning. (Which should just be a battery change on the module.) Our model just doesn’t have the computer display buttons that are in the owner’s manual diagram, and there’s nothing else we can find.

The gas station in town we normally go to now has just switched to full service today, which was a nice surprise. Happily, the prices have also dropped a bit again. We are currently at 154.9¢/L When I added gas on Wednesday, it had dropped to 155.9

It cost $102 to fill our tank from the 1/4 mark – and that’s after my CAA discount!

Ouch.

As for mileage… it’s hard to say, considering the substantial difference in tank size between the truck and my mother’s car, and not being able to see the odometer, but I’m pretty sure it’s better for gas than my mother’s car. Probably about what the van did.

I’m glad to have a full tank of gas, but that was painful.

Once at home, I pulled up to the house to unload, then left my daughter to take care of putting things away while I parked the truck in the garage. I even managed to get it in far enough to close the door behind it.

Except….

Well, when I opened the door before we left, I had a bit too much momentum and opened it all the way. The pull strap broke off long ago, so I usually leave it down a few inches, so I can reach to pull it closed again.

Ah, the joys of being short! I could barely touch it with the tips of my fingers, never mind actually grab it to close it!

So I texted the family to let them know, then went to feed the outside cats. My husband, sweetheart that his is, came out to close the door for me. He’s probably the only one that can reach without jumping or standing on something. My older daughter might have been able to reach. Maybe.

We really need to replace that pull strap.

As for the drive itself, it was fantastic. It was a smooth ride, without any of the shuddering or creaking that my mother’s car does, that drives me bonkers. Also, it’s so nice to be driving a larger vehicle again! I can see!

Once we were home and settled in, I headed out to do some clean up in the main garden area. All the stakes and supports needed to be gathered and sorted and tied into bundles, along with tools and supplies. All those feed bags used as grow bags had to be bagged up for the dump, the tree roots growing through the felted fabric grow bags needed to be pulled out as much as possible – they didn’t dry out as much as I’d hoped, given the off and on rain we’ve been having – and everything put away in the old garden shed.

It was also time to harvest the last of the Uzbek Golden carrots, and see what there was among the turnips, beets and radishes.

Would you look at the size of some of those carrots! I am quite happy with this variety.

Much to my surprise, I also found a few yellow onions that got missed, including one fairly larger one.

In digging up the turnips and beets, I honestly did not expect to have anything worth harvesting, but there were a few little turnips of a useable size that weren’t all chewed up by slugs. This variety is meant to be harvested at about golf ball size, if I remember correctly, and these are pretty close to that.

The beets were a complete loss.

There was also one really big radish that I thought was actually the root from one of the two blooming radishes, but it turned out to be next to one of them. Only one other radish was big enough to harvest. I left the two that are still blooming alone. The bed cover I’d set over them got moved to the new trellis bed for storage for now.

What I found interesting about the turnips and radishes, though, it that most of them had lots of fresh new growth. The greens on both had been pretty damaged. Whatever insect has been eating them – I never did see what it was – seems to have gone away with the frost and cooler temperatures, and the greens were actually starting to grow and recover!

This is the last of what was in the main garden area, and as I’ve been writing this, my family has been enjoying the carrots as a snack while making supper! After this, we have the sunchokes to harvest, and the Red of Florence onion bed. The orange carrots will be left and harvested as needed, until it starts getting cold enough to deeply mulch them for winter storage. Beyond that, it’s just preparing the beds for the winter, and hopefully making more beds before the snow flies and the ground freezes. The garlic, saffron crocuses, strawberries, asparagus and the Liberty apple tree will all also need to be given an insulating mulch, but not too early. It’s a balancing act between covering them early enough that they don’t freeze too much over the winter, but late enough that they don’t stay too warm and start growing before the real cold hits.

Which, if the long range forecast is to be trusted (ha!), won’t be for a little while. We’re expected to be consistently below freezing, including daytime highs, in the middle of November. For now, though, we’re supposed to get heavy rains this evening and into the night, and we’re under a weather advisory, as the first Arctic air blast of the season is expected to hit us later this week. We’re still supposed to get days above freezing, though not by much, and we may even get a mix of rain and snow on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

I am so glad we have the truck NOW, before the weather turned! Thank God!

The Re-Farmer

Rough night, and … do I dare say it?

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Before I get into things, I just want to share this adorable photo I got last night.

Nothing like a bowl of kittens to brighten your day!

This is a picture from yesterday, because I’ve taken none today. I haven’t even gone outside, and I don’t know if I will get to it. A daughter took care of feeding the outside cats, and I am skipping my morning rounds entirely. All because of a very long and strangely painful night.

Quite a long time ago, I started feeling a strange pain in my left side. I thought I might have pulled a muscle, but it never went away. This started about 6 months after I’d had a large cyst remove, and thought maybe there was a connection, since it was in the same general area, but the doctors couldn’t find any. It got worse to the point where I had difficulty standing up straight – which could be a real problem while driving! Since moving here, I’ve gotten more tests done, and still, no cause could be found. There comes a point with doctors where, if they can’t find a cause for something, they start looking at you askance, and you can tell they think you’re just making it up, or that the problem is psychosomatic. Eventually, I just stopped trying to find a cause. The pain, if I can even use that word, is just there, now encompassing an area from my hips to under my ribs. It’s just a constant presence, but after a while, I no longer got that escalation, where I couldn’t stand up straight anymore. At least, it became more rare. Instead, something else started to happen.

I would lie down in bed, on my right side, because my left hip is more arthritic than my right. As soon as I started to relax, my left side would start cramping. Perhaps spasming would be the better word. The only way to alleviate it was to tense up and twist into a pretzel. As soon as I tried to relax again, it would come back. Sometimes, if I lay on my left side, that would help. Sometimes, I had to get up. Usually, I just went through several bouts of these contortions before I could finally relax my muscles, and then finally be able to sleep.

Well, last night, it happened again, except this time, it was both my sides, not just my left. I was jerking around like a marionette, trying to get it under control and to the point where I could relax. I’m still feeling residual pain from that.

That, on its own, was bad enough. Things didn’t end there. At about 3 – 3:30 in the morning, I rolled over, and instantly my right thigh started cramping viscously. I couldn’t stay lying down, but I couldn’t straight the leg, either, or the cramping would get worse. Of course, I had to go to the bathroom, right? I managed to hobble my way to the bathroom, but even just sitting on the toilet triggered more spasming. I even tried massaging the affected muscle, but just touching it cause more spasms. I was able to do my business, then hobbled to over to get some ibuprofen, because my extra strength arthritis acetaminophen that I take very night before bed doesn’t touch this. Ibuprofen helps with Charlie horses, and this was kinda like that, so I thought it was worth a try.

I’m still feeling residual pain and weakness in my leg from that.

It would have been nice if that were it, but nooooooo. Then my feet had to get into the action.

My feet are wrecked, so it’s not unusual for me to have a metatarsal suddenly dislocate, or for there to be shooting pains, etc. One of the things that happens pretty regularly is sudden cramping if there is a change in temperature. The temperature itself doesn’t seem to matter; it’s how quickly it changes. So, for example, between the time I come out of a nice warm shower and the time I can put on socks and shoes, my toes can start cramping, and it takes a while for them to warm up again enough for the cramping to stop.

Which means that sometimes, if my foot comes out from under the covers, my toes will start cramping instantly.

That started happening last night, too. With both feet – and they weren’t even out from under the covers.

I don’t even know how long that went on for before I finally passed out, until I was awakened by a kitten deciding to curl up against my face, neck and shoulder. That was when I realized I had all the big kittens on my. One on my neck and face, one in my arm pit, one on my chest, and two around my legs. If any of the tinies were on me, I wouldn’t have known, because they weigh nothing! 😄

I managed to get out of bed and do their morning feeding (including Butterscotch, who has rediscovered my pants shelf as her favourite bed), mostly because I needed them distracted so I could go to the washroom. That’s when I discovered I was still feeling the effects of all the cramping and spasming of the night. My daughter was about to feed the adult cats and saw me hobbling around, so she was more than understanding when I asked her to feed the outside cats, too.

Thank God we have a narrow hallway and arm bars all over the place. I needed the walls and the arm bars to hold myself up!

I’m better now, after a few more hours, but definitely still having issues.

I have considered why this might have happened, and if it was because of the work I did in the garden yesterday, but I’ve done that much and more before, without reacting like this. I mean, I’ve ended up stiff and sore to the point that walking was very painful, but no muscle cramping and spasming like what hit me last night. Especially not with so many parts of my body affected, not to mention all of them in one night.

Whatever it is, I’m currently in recovery mode for the day.

After all that, though, I do have some good news. I’m almost afraid to say something so soon, as it’ll be a few days before it follows through. Still… here it is.

We’re going to be getting that truck.

Last week, I’d stopped at the garage to talk to our mechanic, checking out some of his other vehicles at the same time, letting him know we were able to increase our down payment to $1000, thanks to my daughter. At this point, I’d pretty much given up on the truck, but he had a couple of SUVs that would have worked out, for my husband’s needs, at least. One was sold and the other wasn’t prepped for sale yet, but it gave him something to keep an eye out for.

Well, yesterday, I got a call from him.

He had been talking to the financing lady. He told her the new amount we could give for a down payment, and he was willing to drop the price on the truck even more for us. At this point, I suspect he’s actually taking a loss. He doesn’t just buy used vehicles and resell them right away. He’s a mechanic. He makes sure they are completely sound, first, so any work that needs doing, he does. Unlike the dealership that sold us our van, he doesn’t sell vehicles that turn out to have major damage on them. That has to be factored into the price, too.

As for the financing lady, she tried taking off the warranty, and that also lowered the final cost. Between the three things, that brought the payments down to $162 bi-weekly. Our max budgeted amount was $300 monthly. We would have another $100 or so per month for registration and insurance we have to consider as well. This still put us just over our budget amount. Since bi-weekly payments means having at least a couple of months a year with three payments instead of two, this put the monthly budget amount at more than two payments totalling $324. We’d have to budget closer to $400 per month.

However…

Just the night before, my daughter told me she would soon be able to transfer more over to contribute to the damage deposit, having been paid for more commissions. She has also said she will help with the payments.

I gave him a tentative yes, and mentioned we might be able to increase the down payment. I just didn’t know by how much. He told me to talk to the finance lady once I knew. Depending on the amount, if it would only save us a couple of dollars a month, it might not be worth adding it on.

So I went to talk to the girls, and my daughter said she would able to bring our down payment up to $1500.

I emailed the financing lady with the new amount. I also asked about having monthly payments instead of bi-weekly. It’s just easier for budgeting, since my husband’s disability comes in at the end of the month.

I got a quick response with some new numbers. The increased down payment would make a difference. We would have to make a bi-weekly payment for the first payment, but after that, we could call the lender directly and arrange for it to be monthly, instead. The monthly payments would be $331.

We accepted the deal.

Which is kinda scary.

First, taking off the warranty is a risk, but considering who we are buying it from, I consider that risk to be very low.

Next is relying on my daughter being able to make regular payments. Yes, she has consistent commissions, her Patreon supporters and even a few sales from her digital shop, but working freelance like she does means the monthly income is inconsistent. I know she’ll be good for it. I just don’t like it having to rely on it.

The final thing is, where in our budget these payments will be coming from. Some is what we’ve been squirreling away into our contingency fund. That’s going to drop. Most, however, will come from that part of our budget that pays for things like getting the septic tank cleaned, or hiring plumbers, or fixing my mother’s car…

But with the truck, there will be some reductions in the budget. We will no longer have to do as many trips to the city to stock up, because we can fit probably four times as much in the back of the truck as we can in her little car, and not have to worry about how heavy the load is. That doesn’t even count the space available in the cab if we fold up the back seats. My mother’s car, even with the work we had done recently, is not good on gas. At least it’s not getting worse anymore, but with fewer trips to the city, even with a relative gas guzzler like a truck, we will be spending less on gas per month. We would go back to using my mother’s car just to drive my mother around again, and as an emergency back up vehicle.

Best of all, we’ll have a reliable winter vehicle before the sow flies – with new tires, too!

It will take a few business days for my daughter’s transfer to come through. Once we’ve got the down payment all together, I’ll head over to finalize the purchase and get the truck insured. If all goes well, we’ll have a truck by the end of the week.

I just pray that nothing goes wrong between now and then!

The Re-Farmer