A Beautiful Day to visit family

June 3, 2018June 3, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The predicted rains did not happen today, so I took advantage of it and finished mowing the lawn with the new riding mower (still grinning like a Cheshire cat, too!) late this afternoon. I even got to do the area around the main garden.

Unfortunately, there really aren’t enough grass clippings worth raking up to layer onto the flower garden. The grass is just too sparse in too many places, and the areas that are less sparse are comparatively small.

Tomorrow, I will have to go around with the weed trimmer to get the areas I couldn’t get into with the mower. We’re supposed to get rain the day after, so I want to get as much outside work done as I can.

Before I did all that, though, my younger daughter and I ran an errand into town. On the way home, we paused at the cemetery to visit my dad and my brother. This is the first time I’ve stopped by since we moved out here, and the first time I’ve seen my father’s memorial stone, which was installed a year after his burial. Unfortunately, it has a typo on the date that got missed before the engravers did their work. :-( Ah, well. As I understand it, because my mother included her own information on there, it will get fixed when she passes, and her date is added. Which could be many, many years from now!

Walking around the cemetery, we noticed a pair of big water jugs – the kind that go on office coolers – behind my father’s and brother’s memorial stones, with water in them!

Then we noticed this.

What a great idea. This way, whomever stops to visit will have water available for the living plants, if they need it.

I was touched to see this in front of my brother’s stone.

Though I’ve said my brother died 10 years ago, that’s actually a round up. He passed in 2010, so it will be 8 years in a few weeks. A year after his internment, the memorial stone was installed, and my younger daughter and I were able to drive out for the service that was held at the same time. After the installation, I picked up a votive holder and left it there with a candle. The candle, of course, is long gone, but the votive holder is still there, 7 years later! There is a key chain from Las Vegas there, too – he enjoyed going there when he could. Sometimes, people will leave his favorite beer or bottle of booze. :-D There are quite a few solar powered lawn decorations, too. He loved those things. There are even a few he’d put up around our yard, still hanging around. After being outside for so many years, they don’t work anymore and I will have to toss them, but it’s nice to see something that he enjoyed so much.

He had so looked forward to when he could go back to the farm. I like to think that he and my dad would appreciate the stuff we’re doing to fix up things up, now that we’re living here.

It was a gorgeous day to stop by and visit my family. The last time I visited, not counting my father’s funeral, it was quite late and fully dark. The cemetery is off the beaten path, and surrounded by trees. The solar lights were glowing, and dozens of fireflies were blinking all over the place.

Unfortunately, my plans to stay a while and enjoy the peaceful setting was cut short by the clouds of mosquitoes trying to eat me alive!

Much more pleasant today!

The Re-Farmer

I’m so thrilled!!!

June 2, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

My older brother and his wife are the best.

Awesome. Amazing. Fantastic. Fabulous. Wonderful.

They came over for a visit today, and brought me an “early birthday gift.”

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I actually started crying, when I saw them pull up with the trailer, and this was on the back.

They bought us a riding mower. Fully refurbished, heavy duty enough to handle the work we’ll be making it do AND it is fully maintainable. It can even tow a small trailer!

I am thrilled beyond belief.

Of course, we had to start it up and test it out, and before I knew it, I’d mowed an entire section of the lawn.

Apparently, I had a huge grin on my face the entire time.

They have been beyond generous, since even before we moved out here. I am so incredibly happy and grateful!

I can’t wait until I can finish mowing the lawn. Which might not be until Monday, as we’re expecting rain off and on.

When they left, they even took the push mower that needs a new carburetor, to fix. And a gas powered weed trimmer to check over and hopefully get going.

I am so incredibly happy right now!

During their visit, we went around the yard to check things out (getting our feet completely soaked in the process, so we didn’t go beyond the yard). While seeing what was done in the flower garden, my SIL spotted a lovely little surprise.

One, lonely little asparagus spear. LOL There was a second one, about a foot away. Who knows? Maybe more will show up, eventually.

Nice to know they’ve survived.

We also went looking around to see if we could find the cherry trees my mother says are in the spruce grove. It’s so overgrown with trees in that area, all about the same size, we never did find anything we could be sure was cherry.

There were a couple of other trees I’d noticed blooming a couple of weeks back, and I now know what they are.

Saskatoon berries!

Yum!

These were on the list of food trees we want to have. We might some day transplant them to a better location, but for now, I’m just happy that we have them.

So we know now for sure that we have chokecherries, Saskatoon berries, some raspberries (still need to clean that area up), gooseberries and chokecherries. Hopefully, we’ll also have cherries. Then there’s the rhubarb, horseradish and struggling little asparagus.

Which is pretty darn good, all things considered.

Me, I’m still grinning from ear to ear, over the riding mower. :-D

The Re-Farmer

West Yard; fire pit area clean up

June 1, 2018June 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Another wonderful day of yard clean up today!

And a photo heavy post to show for it. :-D

After all the clearing I did yesterday, we had a lot of wood to breakdown and move out. The rain was holding off, so my younger daughter and I started on the big pile. As I was de-branching and cutting down the dead spruces, I was thinking of where we were moving it all and how we were running out of space. With all the rain we’ve had, we could actually start burning some of it in the fire place.

So that’s what we decided to do. My daughter would get the fire pit going, while I continued to break down the spruces.

Wet as things have been, we still weren’t going to take any chances. My daughter started by getting the hose ready.

So far, we’ve got two hoses going; I found a shorter one we’d been using on the south and a much longer one I’d hooked up to the tap on the north side of the house, to use on the flower garden I’ve cleared up and started to layer.

The long hose got moved to the south side when my daughters cleaned out the eaves troughs, and as long as it is, it wasn’t long enough to reach the fire pit. Adding on the shorter hose still wasn’t enough. Is there more hose? I remembered a long hose in the side of the garage, so she went and got it.

It turned out to have several major holes and breaks in it. She tried patching it with duct tape, but two were so bad, the water just sprayed out from under the tape.

I checked the garden shed. Turns out there were two more hoses there, so I grabbed the heavier duty one.

No holes, but it did leak right at one end, where it was attached to the first hose.

We just put that part of the hose over an area of dry grass, so it could water it. :-D

We’re going to need to buy new hoses. Several of them.

All in good time!

That done, my daughter got a fire going. Then she sprayed all around the fire pit, and the trees by the fence line, and basically anywhere else she felt might be at risk from sparks.

Because we err on the side of caution when it comes to that.

As she started working on burning one of the piles of small stuff. We had one pile of larger wood, then a second pile for little branches. That one got huge, fast, so a second pile had been started of those. Which is why I wanted to start burning it. There’s just soo much of it!

In the photo above, you can see the beginnings of a pile of green wood, waiting to be broken down. My daughter and I had already removed the old awning I’d taken out from under some maple trees, and it’s now on the pile of stuff outside the yard we plan to hire someone to hall away in the fall.

After I finished breaking down the three sections of dead spruce trees – they had so many branches that needed to be cut off before I could cut the trunks shorter – I decided to stop with that pile, and start helping my daughter.

By this time, she’s almost cleared up the smaller pile of little things. As I watched the fire, I couldn’t help but feel my paranoia creeping up.

See those spruce tips in the background?

I am really not happy about how close the fire pit is to the spruce. Spruces are just big resin torches. Plus, there was all the other brush and undergrowth.

I started to break down the pile of green wood and stacking it against the back of the log cabin. These will sit to dry until next year, where they will be used as fire pit fuel. I expect that pile to get rather larger before the summer is done!

Finally, I went under the branches of the spruce tree and started clearing under it. The lowest branches were all dead, so I took them to my daughter to break down and start burning. Then I started cutting more branches for as high as I could reach with the hand saw. The branches were still hanging down to the ground, so I got the pruning saw and kept going.

What a difference just a few minutes of cutting made!

I cleared a bit of underbrush as well, uncovering the remains of an old wagon and another electrical cable spool.

After getting under the spruce tree cleared, I tackled the big dead branch by the old gate. I wasn’t sure how much I could clear of it, because the break was so high. Turns out it’s been dead for so long, I could just pull it away. You can see part if it in the above photo.

Here’s the rest of it. I’d already started to clear away some of the smaller branches when I took this photo. That huge piece of tree was just dangling there, for who knows how long.

Getting it down made us feel MUCH more comfortable with a fire. The wind was blowing towards the fence line, so any sparks would have gone right into that area.

After getting this down, we decided to really give the pruning saw a workout and get the dead branch from the maple tree on the other side of the fire pit. This branch had actually been long enough to reach over the fire pit, but I’d already broken some of it off. Still, it was rather close and low enough at the end to be a concern.

Did I mention the pruning saw is awesome?

Oh, how good it is to have the right tool for the job!

We took turns sawing at it. Because of how high it was at the trunk, and how thick it was, it didn’t take long for our arms to start loosing circulation! :-D

Much to my surprise, this branch did actually have a few living twigs on it, so part of it went to be burned, and part of it onto the greenwood pile.

That done, I just kept on clearing along the fence line.

Here’s how it looked before I got back to it.

After breaking down the big dead branch I’d just pulled down, I moved the wire spool and started clearing more under that area, then just kept working my way towards the gate, separating the living from the dead.

Most of it was dead. Dead for so long, that I was pulling bushes right out of the ground, without having to cut anything. Or even yank hard. My daughter had so much dead wood from what I was pulling out of here, she stopped taking from the main pile completely, until I was done.

Of course, there always has to be at least one surprise! :-D

This picture is from the base of the tree I’d pulled the big dead branch out of.

That is some sort of garbage.

It’s IN the tree.

That piece of garbage has been there for so long, the tree has grown around it.

I also found some old beer cans and even a juice box, but nothing else that was grown INTO a tree!

Though some saplings growing through the fence wire came close.

Here is how it looks now.

One side of the old gate is now CLEAR!! Yay!

I am at a loss, though.

The barb wire gate is still there, just like it was when I was growing up. Then that picket fence got added. I don’t know when. It’s actually attached to the posts of the barb wire gate with more wire.

Why would someone essentially block off an entire gate?

At some point, we’ll need to re-fence the yard, and I’d like to keep a gate here when we do. It’ll be much easier for the septic cleaners to get to the tank from this end, then going around the house from the other side.

Here is the mostly cleared fence line. There are still little things I’ll need to get back to, and I’ll need to decide if it’s worth keeping some of the long, scraggly bushes. (I don’t plan to cut back what’s on the other side of the fence this year.) They’re living, and some are even blooming, but now that the dead stems that were holding them up are gone, I really don’t know how well they’ll stay up on their own. It wouldn’t take much to break them.

While clearing stuff away, I found a big metal ring that would actually work well as a fire pit, if we ever needed to set up another one. It’s slightly smaller than the metal ring that makes up our fire pit now. I didn’t try to move the remains of the wagon, yet. There is more dead wood back there to clear away. The spool, I’ve just left there for now, making sure not to block access to the side of the log cabin, as there is more dead wood to clear away in that area, too. There’s also a mostly dead maple tree, but that will need a chain saw.

And here we have the green wood pile, after my clearing away of the fence line.

There really wasn’t a lot of green wood from there to add to the pile.

Though more clean up will be needed, especially of all the dried leaves on the ground, the entire area is now much less of a fire hazard then it had been!

Once we finished breaking down and burning the deadwood I’d cleared out of there, my daughter and I continued to break down and burn more from the big pile. You know; the one we’d originally started the fire to start getting rid of! :-D

It was awesome. My daughter even brought a couple of chairs and made a carafe of lemonade for us to enjoy while we kept feeding the fire.

Our first fire of the year.

By the time we wound down for the day, there was a huge new pile of ashes in there. Since we are only burning wood in here, it will be a great addition to the layers I am building up on the flower garden, when it comes time to clear it away.

I am so loving this kind of work. I missed it so much!

The Re-farmer

Maple Grove Clearing – into the trees

May 31, 2018June 10, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 9 Comments

More progress on clearing up the trees!

The maple grove behind our house has several rows of trees. I worked on only the two or three (depending on the area) southern ones.

Here is the north side of the furthest row I worked on.

20180531trees.before.north.row.north.side

This area starts to have a fair number of trees and branches already down on the ground, including some that had been cut down, cut shorter, and then left there.

This is how it looked after clearing.

20180531trees.after.north.row.north.side

Here’s a before picture from between two rows of trees.

20180531trees.before.between.rows

Note the dead spruces further along.

I’d originally intended to leave those, but they were small enough that it was practical to use a hand saw to take them down. I just had to cut away a section of dead branches, first, so I could reach the trunks and start cutting.

The first one, I cut leaving a stump about 2 feet high; I will go back to cut it to ground level, another time.

The second was actually two spruces so close together that, as they got larger, they grew into each other at the base. I trimmed branches to reach the trunks, and cut the thinner one down first, then started on the thicker.

At which point, I realized there was a LOT of movement at the base.

So I just tipped the whole thing over.

20180531trees.during.spruce.roots

Telling my younger daughter about it later, she was laughing about her mighty mom, tearing trees out of the ground by the roots. :-D

It came down quite easily.

Here is how this in-between area looked, after.

20180531trees.after.between.rows

Oh, and I found something interesting at the base of one of the maples, closest to the pile of chimney blocks. After cutting away the suckers, I found…

20180531trees.gooseberry.bush

What I believe is a gooseberry bush!

It was completely hidden by the maple suckers. Now that it’s cleared, and I’ve trimmed off the dead bits, I hope it will now have enough sunlight to grow well.

All this clearing meant I was getting a rather large pile of cuttings, which my younger daughter says she will start sorting and clearing tomorrow (the green wood will be piled separately, to dry and become fuel for fire pits next year; the deadwood will be for use, this year). Weather willing, of course. We’ve got predictions for more rain tomorrow, and storms the day after, so we’ll see.

By the time I added the second spruce tree to the pile, though, I realized I needed to stop. There just wasn’t room to add to the pile anymore, and I had to leave it off on the side!

20180531trees.pile

That tree the pile is next to, on the right? You can see the fresh cuts from the last of the suckers I’d cut away on there. Most of that tree, plus the lilac beyond it, was cleared last week.

That is a lot of trimmed wood to clear away! All of this, plus the pile from clearing the shed, is just what was cleared away today.

And finally, here is an overview shot.

20180531.overview

Complete with a cream separator basin planter, on a stump. :-D I don’t want to move it, because it ensures that no one will trip over the stump or something. ;-)

I am just so happy with this. The whole area just FEELS so much better. It’s now so open and airy! It’ll be a while, yet, before it’s safe to mow under here – there are still many old branches hidden under the dead leaves that will need to be found and cleared out, first. I should be able to get in with the weed trimmer a bit, though. Plus, as things get raked up, I can add more to the flower garden to break down and build up the soil, there.

This is starting to look the way I want it to! A beautiful, open, usable and accessible space.

After all this, I finished the evening with a trip into town with my younger daughter, to see a dear friend and his lady fair, performing in one of the local coffee shops. It has been many years since I’ve seen him singing and playing his guitar, and never together with his lady love, on an electric ~~cello~~ upright bass!

It was a wonderful way to end a wonderful day.

The Re-Farmer

Maple Grove Clearing – a big, rotten mess!

May 31, 2018June 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

In this photo from my last post, you can see part of the mess I also cleaned up today.

20180531shed.south.clear

That round thing of rotting wood is the top of a giant spool that was used for electrical cable. It was likely used as an outdoor table or something, at some point – that was a popular thing for a while. This top part, I was able to tilt up and roll away to the back of the shed.

But not before I had a very close call.

There’s a reason I stopped to clear the area around the chimney blocks instead of focusing on the trees. As I stepped towards one of the trees behind the mess, to clear away branches that had already fallen, I felt something go through the sole of my shoe.

I immediately pulled back, put away what I’d been working on, then went back to dig through the dead leaves and old grass.

I found this.

20180531mess.nails

This area became a priority clean up!

This rotten wood turned out to be part of the remains of an old pallet.

20180531mess.beginning.clearing

The above photo was taken after I’d cleared away the old pallet, and even removed a bundle of wooden stakes.

There’s a tire rim under there.

Because of course there is. There are tire rims fekkin’ everywhere around here! :-D

I’d already moved some sort of basin that was screwed onto a metal base. I have no idea what it was used for since, unlike the other basins I’ve found around the yard, it wasn’t used as a planter.

I used it to hold the rotten, some nail filled, wood I was finding.

20180531mess.basin

Then, when that was full, I used the blue … barrel? … you can see in the previous picture to hold the pieces of wood I found under the top of the wire spool.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After moving out a whole bunch of rotten and rotting wood, I tried to move the wagon that was leaning against the chimney bricks.

20180531mess.wagon1

It promptly disintegrated.

The top half wasn’t as bad, but when I moved the bottom half, even one of the wheels just sloughed off.

20180531mess.wagon2

I wonder how many years it sat there?

After I moved it, I found something that brought a smile to my face.

My stone “ostrich egg” !!

20180531mess.stone.egg

My late bother and I found this in a field somewhere, when I was a kid, and brought it home. The size and shape made us think of an ostrich egg, so that’s what we called it. It actually turned out to be quite handy. My mother used to make sauerkraut in a big clay crock (which I believe we still have in the basement!). After layering the cabbage, she put an upside down plate on it to keep the cabbage in the liquid. This rock (after being cleaned thoroughly, of course) was put on top of the plate to weigh it down.

I’m so happy to see my rock is still around. :-D

Then I moved on to the mess under the top of the wire spool.

20180531mess.wirespool.bottom

The base of the wire spool itself was completely rotten, falling apart as I pulled it up.

Then I raked up the decaying leaves and whatnot that was under it.

Whoever put the spool there took enough care to place it on bricks.

20180531mess.wirespool.bricks

With enough time, not even that was enough to keep it from rotting.

I did find another mystery, though. Can you see it? Just above the brick at the bottom, right.

Seashells.

There was a pair of seashells under there.

I just… accept mysteries like this, now. :-D

I took out the bricks, cleared away around the chimney bricks – found some more small bricks, and raked around it. Here is how it looks, now.

20180531mess.after1

The little stools had been leaning against the chimney bricks. They really should be tossed, as they’re old to the point of unstable, but they can stay here for now.

20180531mess.after2

I forget what the long clay “pipes” are for.

All cleared!

And – most importantly! – no more rotting wood with nails sticking up.

Back to clearing the trees!

The Re-Farmer

Maple Grove Clearing – the garden shed

May 31, 2018May 31, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

Today would have been a perfect day to be mowing the lawn.

If we had a working lawn mower. :-(

So, I started working on the maple grove, instead.

And I am in heaven!

I got SO much done, and it looks so much better! I took lots of pictures, though I didn’t think to start doing that until after I’d cleared quite a bit out. I worked on three different areas, all kind of overlapping each other, with a priority on clearing the garden shed door. These pictures were taken after I’d finished the shed area, so they’re all “after” shots.

20180531shed.south.clear

The items in the foreground are a mess I had to clear maple suckers away from before I could start on it, including from the dead maple, which grew out of an old maple stump, near the middle of the photo. With only a hand saw and pruning saws, I wasn’t up to taking this dead tree down yet.

Maples are almost indestructible!

I moved the picnic table to various areas so that I could stand on it to reach. In particular, I wanted to clear the two trees leaning towards the house as much as possible. Lots of dead branches on them.

20180531shed.south.overhanging.trees

I wasn’t able to get all of the dead and dying branches I wanted to. Especially on the trunk in the foreground. That one started to bounce when I started to cut farther along. It’s already touching the roof and, with the bouncing, it was hitting the roof more, so I stopped. That whole thing needs to come down, to protect the house. I’m hoping that the weight I removed so far will make it at least a little bit less of a risk of falling on the roof.

20180531shed.door.clear

Suckers from the tree on the far side of the shed had mostly covered the door. Once it was clear as far as I could reach, I dragged the picnic table over and cut what I could from higher up. Again, lots of dead or half dead branches. That tree keeps going quite a bit further, over the opening to the garden. It will need more cutting back. We’ll need to assess it to see how much of a risk of collapsing there is, to decide how much.

The shed itself has very little life left in it, and there’s a hole in the roof. My mother wants to replace it, though we could probably get another year out of this one.

20180531shed.north.clear

The north side of the shed was overgrown with maple suckers. I cut them back and discovered … stuff. Including a milk crate.

When clearing up the mess by the chimney blocks, I took out the old bed frames (or whatever they are) and those are now leaning against the shed in this space. Basically, I’m putting all the junk in one place for when we hire someone to haul it away.

Also to the north of the shed is a dead spruce tree, but it did have something growing on it…

20180531shed.north.vines

The base of the dead spruce tree is on the left. To the right of it are vines. Some were already dead long enough to just pull out of the ground, while others needed to be cut.

Even as fast growing as these vines are, it takes a LONG time for them to develop such thick “trunks”!! They may well be what killed the tree.

20180531shed.door.pile

This pile is of the stuff I cut from the shed door, and the north side, only. Most of this was blocking the door. Plus, there’s a bit of what I cut from above the shed door.

Shed is now clear and accessible again!

On to upload photos of the next section…

The Re-farmer

Morning Cats, and shopping day

May 30, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

I want to start by sharing some photos of the cats this morning. Because it’s a great way to start the day!

Like waking up to this…

Actually, I woke up to see her sitting there, staring at me. :-D The cats really appreciate the extra thickness of the window sill, thanks to the log walls in the original part of the house. They’d love to get up onto the other window, too, which is much, much bigger, but it’s the one that didn’t get replaced. Which means it still has sheets of plexiglass covering them on the inside, so there’s nowhere they can sit at. Which drives them bonkers, when the outside cats are in the trees outside the window, looking in. :-D

Speaking of outside cats…

With all the rain we’ve been having, I moved the food bowls under the little roof over the basement window. They actually seem to prefer when the kibble gets a bit wet; likely softer on their teeth. “A bit wet” is not what’s been happening, lately. Which is a good thing!

When I came out this morning, Squishum (not in the picture) was all talkative, squeaking away as if wanting attention, but still won’t let me come near. Nasty Crime Boy, Beep Beep and Butterscotch were content to ignore me to come to the food.

The Hand, on the other hand…

…would not go to the food while I was around! I took this through the screen door of the sun room, after bringing back the container I use to take food to the bowls. She would only peak her head around the corner of the shelf outside, watching to see what I would do. I was able to move my phone enough to get more than just her head, but she was not comfortable with me being there and slunk away to the clothes line platform to wait for me to leave.

I don’t want to prevent her from eating, so I left.

I so want to touch that cat! :-D

Instead, I got to touch the Butterscotch!

I even got a decent picture of her! She makes it very difficult. :-D

I wandered around the East side of the house and did a bit of weeding to free up some irises that are coming up. Looking into the spruce grove, I just had to get another picture.

Remember this?

That photo was taken on May 15. The leaves are barely coming out at this point.

This is what it looks like, today.

That broken piece of tree in the first picture is still there, in the left side of the photo. Completely hidden from where I was standing, and barely visible even at other angles.

That horseradish is coming up nicely, too.

In time, that underbrush will be cleared mostly away, and the dead tree will be cut down. Likely not this year, though. I think we will focus on cleaning up the maple grove, first. At least as much as we can, until we have a working chain saw.

My goal is to have both the maple and spruce groves open under the trees, park-like and mow-able. I would like us to, at the very least, be able to walk through the trees without having to skirt dead branches, dead trees and other detritus. Including my husband, with his walker. Maybe set up a picnic table or something in the shade, so we can enjoy the spaces more.

Little by little, we will get there.

Late this morning, my older daughter and I made the trip into the city for our monthly bulk shopping trip. Our usual routine is to stop at the town we drive though on the way, to fill the tank. The gas station we stop at is a co-op we have a membership with, which will translate into a check at the end of the year, so we make it a habit. When we got there, however, I got the nasty surprise of seeing the gas prices had gone up 10¢ per liter. !!! Our tank was lower than I normally let it go (we drove over 1800km since I filled it and reset the trip counter at the end of last month), so I kind of had to put something in. I ended up putting in $30, which didn’t even bring it to half a tank. While paying for it, I asked when the big jump happened. Turned out to be a mere 2 hours before we got there!

When we finished our Costco shopping, I filled the tank there. The price was 14¢ per litre less! Plus, since it’s Costco, that will also be included in the check we’ll get at the end of the year. Even at the lower price, and having already put in $30 of gas and bringing it to just below the half way mark, it still cost over $60 to fill the tank. That’s almost half our gas budget for the month, right there. Thankfully, our van does have good mileage.

The increases in gas prices are really going to be a problem. The politicians can talk about how we should be using alternative transportation all they want. Even in the city, that’s not always feasible. For anyone living in the country, what choice do we have? It’s not like there’s a bus we can hop on, and we certainly can’t bike to the city to do our monthly grocery shopping. Or even to the next town. Plus, most people have multiple vehicles, because they are work tools, not just transportation. Heaven help those who make the commute to the city! When we last lived out here, my husband had a 70 minute commute, one way. That’s highway driving, for the most part, so it wasn’t affected by traffic until the last 10 minutes or so. I know others who have longer commutes. Back then, it was a big deal when gas prices went higher than 60¢ a litre. Now we’re looking at $1.309 (there are about 4L in a gallon, for those of you in the US. That works out to about $5.24 per gallon), and other areas are even higher.

That’s going to make life more difficult for a lot of people. :-(

We got the monthly shopping done, at least. $600 later. :-/ My splurge of the month was new wiper blades for the van, to replace the ones being held together with electric tape. :-D Tomorrow, we go to the regular grocery store to get the things we don’t need to buy in bulk.

It feels good to have well stocked cupboards, fridge and freezer again!

The Re-Farmer

More progress

May 28, 2018May 28, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Since the ladder was out anyway, after my daughter caulked the screw holes from the previous satellite dishes on the side of the house, I decided to tackle one of the Chinese elms.

There was a large branch overhanging the vehicle gate into the yard. With the power pole being replaced in a few weeks, I figured I’d better get it down now. I don’t know what kind of equipment will need to be brought into the yard, but it needs to be done anyway, so may as well!

Since we don’t have a (working) chain saw, it ended up taking all three of us, taking turns sawing, until our shoulders got too sore.

20180528.elm.branch.down

And it’s down!

The next while was spent breaking it down and adding it to the pile I’d started with the saplings I’d cut away, earlier.

20180528.elm.branch.down.after

The remaining log was a bit much to manhandle alone – the wood is remarkably heavy, compared to other types of trees – so it’ll wait until there are two people available to toss it on the pile.

20180528.elm.after

This is so much better!

There is still a higher branch that should probably come down, as it’s half dead, and there’s another that’s completely dead, but that will wait for another time. At least the one big one is now down.

20180528.days.work

Not bad for a day’s work.

The Re-Farmer

Another Mystery

May 28, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

This afternoon, while my daughters broke down the pile of branches I’d trimmed at the back of the house, I got the ladder out to caulk the holes in the wall left from the original internet satellite dishes. Hearing the noise, my younger daughter came around to help. Sweetheart that she is, she braved the incredibly bouncy ladder to fill the holes while I held the ladder for her.

My older daughter came around to see what was going on. In the process of looking at her sister caulking the higher set of holes, she noticed something very strange, under the eaves of the second floor roof.

20180528.linoleum.soffit

Yes. That’s right.

Linoleum tiles.

Why?

Why is that there?

The Re-Farmer

Trimming, clean up and… NOT mowing the lawn?

May 28, 2018May 28, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

With predictions for rain tomorrow and storms the day after, I decided that this was my day to try and mow the lawn.

Of course, nothing is quite that simple around here.

When I got outside, I was greeted by…

20180528.seed.drifts

… a reminder of one of the reasons I stopped liking Chinese elm. There are millions of these seeds, being blown everywhere. They’re starting to drift in places, and they’re coming off the trees like rain with every breeze.

Ugh.

Before I could mow the lawn, I needed to clear the back door into the garage of trees. This will be needed for when the power pole is replaced, but also to get the mower in and out.

Let me find a before picture…

20180429doors

Hmm. Apparently, I don’t have a picture that includes the fence, as well.

You can see that there are saplings growing in front of the door and along the garage walls. More were growing along the fence to the gate. Most of is was poplar, but I also found some raspberry canes and vines, and along the fence was an unintentional coppice of maple.

I had noticed a metal pipe in the middle of the maple, but had left it until I could start cleaning up the area. So while clearing the saplings away, I pulled it out and…

20180528.surprise.hoe

… it’s a hoe. Someone replaced the handle of a hoe with a length of heavy pipe.

Well, it’s certainly not going to break. :-/

This is the after picture.

20180528.garage.cleared

I started stacking the saplings I cleared outside the yard, alongside the garage, which you can see part of on the right of the photo. I cut away poplar towards the outhouse, too. There’s more that needs to be cleared, there, but it will wait for another time.

Leaning against the garage and half buried in tall grass and dead branches, I pulled out three lengths of … hmm. I don’t know the name of them. They’re used as ramps to drive a vehicle onto a trailer or something like that. Two were longer and the same length, plus there was a shorter one.

I ended up using the shorter one to cover the hole in front of the outhouse. It will do double duty in keeping the door from coming open on in the wind again.

I found other stuff in the grass and leaves.

20180528.concrete.blocks

Along with more branches, some plastic margarine tubs and what might have been a metal tobacco tin, I found these concrete blocks.

I’ve left them for now.

20180528.tire.planter1

Ah, yes. Another tire planter.

You can see part of the remains of the maple I cut away in the bottom right corner. I had some concerns about accidentally hitting the remains with a lawn mower, so I decided to take advantage of wanting to move the planter and cover it with the soil.

Flipping the planter over, I heard an unexpected noise.

20180528.tire.planter2

Metal on brick.

Not sure why the bricks are there. It’s not like they could support anything under there.

20180528.tire.planter3

I don’t know what was planted in there, but it was amusing to see a perfect mold of the rim in the root systems and soil.

Since there was this handy hoe nearby, I used that to move the dirt over the remains of the maple.

Once it was all cleared away, I got the lawn mower out. Finally!

It didn’t want to start, but my brother did tell me it was finicky. It didn’t help that the part that held the throttle cable to the handle frame kept popping off. Nothing a zip tie couldn’t fix.

I finally got it going, but it didn’t have a lot of oompf. Still, I was able to mow along the fence line and around a few trees before I started working on a section in front of the house.

Then it puttered and died.

I checked the fuel. There was still some in there, but low (I’d started with about half a tank or so), so I topped it up with the gas my brother had left for me with the mower, when he did maintenance on it in the fall.

I got it going again, but it kept stalling. It ran as long as I was going over areas where there was hardly any grass, but as soon as I hit slightly greener areas, it would stall again.

And again.

By this point, it was getting too hot to be working outside, anyways, so I finally just put it away.

So frustrating.

I did some research to see what might be causing the problem, and the only thing that seems to make sense is the fuel didn’t handle the winter well. Yet, it was stored properly. It shouldn’t have gone bad in so short a time.

I just don’t have the spoons to fight with it.

It will have to wait. Not after all the clean up I’d already done.

Ah, well. There are other things that need to be worked on.

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

photo of the day

A Beautiful Day to visit family

I’m so thrilled!!!

West Yard; fire pit area clean up

Maple Grove Clearing – into the trees

Maple Grove Clearing – a big, rotten mess!

Maple Grove Clearing – the garden shed

Morning Cats, and shopping day

More progress

Another Mystery

Trimming, clean up and… NOT mowing the lawn?

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