photo of the day

Trampled access

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After a lovely rainfall this morning, I took a walk around the outer yard to take a closer look at the areas the cows got into.

They did a fabulous job of trampling down the grass and burdock.

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In fact, their trampling meant I could access places I couldn’t before, including the door to the old chicken coop.  It had been blocked off by burdock before.

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When my parents bought the property, this log building was the summer kitchen.  They eventually converted it to a chicken coop.

Yesterday, while walking around with my sister and our relative from Poland, I tried to open the door, but couldn’t.  There is some shifting in the building, which resulted in a board that ran horizontally across the top of the door, now running across the door itself.

Overnight, however, something has managed to pull the bottom of the door out!  It was not like this yesterday.  The other side of the door is also partially pulled out, but there’s a board in the middle that’s basically jammed into the ground.

I thought I might be able to just pull the door off, but it’s pretty stuck, at top and bottom.  I’d need to get some tools to get it done, but there’s no reason to do that right now.

What I was able to do, however, was stick my phone through the opening and use voice command to take some pictures.  These made for my first view inside this building since I left the farm, 32 years ago!

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It looks like no one mucked it out since before my parents stopped having chickens!

Also, it looks like someone started using it to dump things in.  :-(

The openings at the back are the nesting boxes.  The roosts are on the right, with stuff stacked on them.  On the far right of the photo, you can see what was a ramp for the chickens to use to get up there.

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The caged area on the left is where my parents kept new baby chicks until they were big enough to join the adult birds. We were able to set up a heat lamp in there for them.  In the wall under the window was a little door near the floor.  When we had chickens, there was a fenced area around two sides of the building, enclosing the wall with the main door, and the wall with the window. Outside this little door was a partitioned off area, so we could close off the chicks from the adult chickens outside.  When the chicks were grown enough, we would just leave the doors open for all the chickens to access.  Most times, spring through fall, we opened the door to the fence during the day, so the chickens could range freely.

After checking out the old chicken coop, I went over to the pump shack to check the power cord to the storage building.  From the outside, everything looked fine, so I went in.  I’m glad I did, because I found that when they came out of the building yesterday, the light was forgotten on!

I found the problem, too.

The cable coming through the wall cannot reach the outlet, so there is a short power cord in between.  It’s one of those power cords that, when it’s plugged in at one end, there is a light that turns on at the other end.  When I came in yesterday, I could see the light, but the cable through the wall was gone.  I guess, after I left the pump shack to find the cable, my sister unplugged the short power cord, then went outside. When I found the cable the cows and pulled out, I pushed it through the opening in the wall again.  My sister went back in, grabbed it and plugged the cable in, but didn’t plug the short power cord back into the outlet!

It was a relief to find that.  I still checked for power in the storage building, just to be sure, and it’s working fine.  No damaged cables! :-)

So while the cows did get into all sorts of things, they caused very little damage, and have actually made some things easier to get to. :-)

The Re-Farmer

 

 

Pleasant company, and learning new things.

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Today, I got to meet a couple of people in person, finally!

The first was the owner of the cows. :-D

I had expected him to come earlier, so I was a bit surprised when I saw the cows still in the outer yard.  They had gotten into the burn barrel again, so I went out with a big garbage back to pick up the mess and put the burn barrel pieces into a pile again.  I decided to put the bag into the garage and headed that way, only do see the door was more open than I left it (with no handle, I didn’t close it all the way), and stuff was scattered around.  When I came over, I found a cow inside, standing by the van! Continue reading →

Hidden in stone

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Some other photos from when we were playing tourist.

One of the perks of living on the bottom of an ancient lake bed is that the local sedimentary rock is sometimes filled with fossils.

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The fossil above is one of many scattered about some limestone columns we passed by.

There is also a fair amount of granite in the area, and sometimes you can really see the mica bits in sections of layers.

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This picture is from a big, decorative rock sitting in a park.

I’ve always loved rocks.  They often have the most interesting things hidden in them.

The Re-Farmer

Pollinators

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A couple of photos from when we were exploring the native plants garden.

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This bee photo was pure serendipity.  It was the first of several I took, in quick succession, and the only good one of the bee!

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This was in a structure near the native plants garden that I think is actually there to disguise and protect some infrastructure equipment.  There were several wasps nests in varying stages of construction, all on the shadow side of these support beams.

I didn’t see the spiders until I uploaded the photos, though.

I’ve seen many wasp nests in varying stages of construction before, but never have I seen the cells exposed like this, at this size.  The little ones on the left of the photo is usually about as big as they get, before they get covered over.  I think the high level of protection they have in these locations may have something to do with it.

The Re-Farmer

A long, but good, day

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Today we made a trip into the city to play tourist, run a few errands, then pick up some stuff for my husband’s birthday.

It made for a very long, but enjoyable, day.

We started off with an early lunch, taking advantage of being in the city.  It turns out that Le Burger Week started today (I’d never heard of it before), so I tried the burger offering at an Asian fusion type place.

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I can’t even remember what it was called, but it was SO good!  Even better after I realized it had jalapeño in it, and took it out.  I love the flavour, but don’t do spicy well at all, due to damage to my tongue. :-(  That spiral cut potato in the background was delicious, too!

It was really hard to choose from the menu, though.  I had originally intended to have a bento box, and as good as the burger was, I’m still not sure I made the right choice.

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My daughters both ended up choosing a sushi and sashimi bento, while our guest chose the shrimp one I had been eye-balling.  The only sushi we have available out here is grocery store sushi.  I’ve tried it.  It’s pretty… dry.

Choices like this is one of the things we do miss about city living!!!

While playing tourist, one of the places we visited as a prairie garden filled with native plants.

It looks a lot like our outer yard, except with all the varieties in a much smaller space. :-D  Mind you, there were a few things I’ve never seen before, but most of it was quite familiar.  I’ll post some of the better pictures I got, later on.

As we ran errands before heading out, my darling daughters found, then got, something for me.

Meet my new friend.

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I think I will call him Yorick.

Alas, he is too big for my dash.  As I write this, he sits on my printer, looking at me.

He is soft and squishy and marvelous.

The Re-Farmer

Low Water and meeting people

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Yesterday evening, my younger daughter and I were able to take her friend into town for dinner.  When we were told it would be about 20-30 minutes before a table would be open (buffet night is popular, it turns out… :-D ), we put our name on the list, then headed for the beach, which was basically across the street from the restaurant.

We had been getting thunderstorm warnings for a few hours by then.  While there were no signs of a storm, yet, the winds were incredibly high.  High enough that one of the small trees on the boulevard near where we parked came down while we were in the area!

This late in the day, the tide was very low, and people were taking advantage of it.

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I’m not sure if you can tell, but the kids on the left are lying in the shallow water, waiting for the waves to crash over them. :-D

It didn’t show well in any of the photos I took, but the high winds would, at times, pick up and blow away sand hard enough that walking into the wind meant our faces getting sandblasted as we returned to the restaurant.

The dinner was excellent, and we got a couple of pizzas to take home for my husband and older daughter, too.  I never imagined a chicken and broccoli pizza with Alfredo sauce would be that incredibly delicious!

Since we were in town, we took advantage of being there to play some Pokemon Go.  We ended up joining a group for a legendary raid, at a park near a cove.  While waiting for the rest of the group to show up, I got these photos.

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I usually come by here in the mornings, and this area is, if not completely under water, very close to it.  It looks absolutely dry in the photo, though that would be very misleading.

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Such a pretty little cove.

This evening was an example of one of the reasons I enjoy playing Pokemon Go.  For those who don’t know the game, it uses GPS and real-world maps to get you to different areas to catch Pokemon.  There are “stops” in the game that are at real-world locations (churches, public art, historical buildings, etc.) that can be spun to get things needed in the game.  Some of these stops are also gyms, where you can train your Pokemon by battling the Pokemon from people on other teams that control the gym, and take control of the gym for your own team.  A fairly new feature added to the game has giant, different coloured eggs suddenly appear at gyms, with a countdown to when they will hatch.   Most of the time, it’s a larger version of regular Pokemon, of varying strengths.  Some, a player can battle by themselves.  Others can be defeated within the time frame only when players battle in groups.  The colour of the egg gives players an idea of how powerful the hatchling will be, and how many people will be needed to “raid” the gym and defeat the Pokemon.  This is a way people from normally opposing teams can work together for mutual benefit in the game.

Then there are the Legendary Pokemon.  These hatch out of a particular type of egg, and typically require quite a large group battling together to defeat.  That is what we ended up joining last night, and there ended up 9 players battling together.  I’m part of a chat group that people use to organize this, and it’s rare that we are in town and able to take part, so we took advantage of it.

We got to the location early and just hung out at the park and statue in the area, until others started to arrive.

The first group arrives and I watch as they come out of the vehicle, realizing that I know one of them.  A woman from my home town that I’ve known for pretty much all my life, in fact, and haven’t seen in more than a decade!  It turned out she has been playing the game for less than a week, and she was there with family members who where showing her how to play.

Then, just before we started, a little family group arrives, including a young child.  I recognize the mom and daughter.  They are the daughter and granddaughter of a friend of mine from high school!  It was the dad and daughter that were playing the game. :-D

I also got to attach faces to user names that I have as “friends” in the game.

Since I’ve started playing the game, I’ve found Pokemon Go players to be the friendliest of people, and now the game is bringing me on contact with people I wouldn’t be crossing paths with, otherwise.

It’s really quite awesome!

The Re-Farmer