We have a trailer… sortof

August 19, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

Yesterday, being Sunday, my daughter had a short shift and I was planning to stay in town again. I ended up meeting with my older brother and his wife, and we were able to spend a couple of wonderful hours together.

They are such great people!

At one point, we got to talking about how useful it would be for us to have a trailer, and how expensive new ones are. Apparently, there had been a small trailer by the garage, but it disappeared before we moved here.

Then they remembered.

We do still have a trailer.

Sort of.

They told me where it was, so when I did my evening rounds before it got dark, I went looking for it.

There it is!

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Clean up: old wood pile, progress

August 17, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I was able to get about an hour of clean up in the old wood pile area. I made sure to check the temperature before I headed out, and it was only 22C. Thank God it wasn’t any hotter, because even that felt way too hot.

Y’know, I’ve always wanted to travel, and go vacation on some tropical island. I still want to do that, but I am realizing that I’d just die in the heat! :-D

So this is where I left off, yesterday.

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Clean up: old wood pile progress

August 16, 2019August 16, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

Today has been a very unproductive day. I felt exhausted all day, to the point of falling asleep at the computer. I even tried to nap, but that was a failure. Mostly because I’m a suck, and I didn’t have the heart to move the sleeping pile of cats on my bed. :-D

It was my turn to do the cat litter tonight, and I headed out a bit early to do the sun room litter pans. It seemed cooler, so I stayed out and worked on the old wood pile area. I didn’t get very far. Again, I was feeling exhausted, and was dripping with sweat. This is not usual for me.

Then, just before starting this post, I checked the temperature.

27C – feels like 30C.

Which means it was even hotter while I was out there, even though it was about 7pm at the time.

That might have something to do with how I was feeling!

This is what I managed to do, in the short time I was out.

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Not what I was looking for

August 14, 2019August 13, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Last summer, while going around the property with my older brother, we had gone into an area filled with rocks and blocks of concrete and all sorts of bushes growing among them. My brother remembered that there were hazelnut bushes there. We didn’t find any, but I decided to check it out again, in case something managed to grow this year.

I didn’t find any hazelnuts.

I did find other things, though!

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Chokecherries, ready to freeze

August 13, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

The chokecherries I picked this morning are all done for now.

Nice to see my colander so full of berries! All clean and ready to pick over.

I got all the stems (of course, I found one I missed after I took this photo!) and the ones that were damages or whatever. I filled two 9×13 jelly roll pans with berries when I was done.

They are now in the deep freeze, to be transferred to freezer bags when they are frozen solid. After that, they can wait until we decide how we want to use them this year. :-) The freezing will help them release their juices later, too.

So… what shall we make? More chokecherry vinegar? Or try a jam or jelly this year?

The Re-Farmer

Bitty Baby Gooseberry

August 13, 2019 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

While picking chokecherries, I also checked out one of the gooseberry bushes.

This is the biggest of the gooseberry bushes, and the one that got the most water over the summer, since I had the sprinkler going on the raspberry transplants. It has a fair few berries on it, while the others have either no berries at all, or almost none. The really dark berries I am holding are “ripe”, but so small, they’re practically inedible.

Note for future: transplant the gooseberries out from under other trees, and put them somewhere where they will get both sun and rain!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: around the outhouse and moving the debris pile

August 12, 2019 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Ah, what a perfect day to work outside! This morning, it was cool enough that I actually wore…

*gasp*

…long sleeves!

:-D

The goal was to move the debris pile from where I’m clearing in the old wood pile to the area behind the outhouse. Which meant I first had to clear around the outhouse.

Here is how it looked before I started.

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Making mead, part 3 – one last stir

August 9, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

Part 1
Part 2

This is what the must looked like this morning, before I did the first stir of the day.

Bubbly bubbly!

I love me some CO2 action!

At the time of this writing, we’ve done the second stir of the day. The instructions we are using as a guide said to stir it twice a day in the first 48 hours, so this was the last one. We now leave it, loosely covered and untouched, for the remainder of 10 days. After that, we siphon it off into the carboy, leaving behind any sediment, set up the airlock, then tuck it away into the basement for a minimum of 4 weeks. After this second fermentation, it should be ready to bottle.

We will, of course, have to taste it first, and see if we’ve got mead. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning on the beach

August 9, 2019 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I was able to swing by the beach after dropping my daughter off at work.

What a glorious morning!

I love these marks the waves left behind, as the tide receded.

Those squiggly whiter lines are tiny ridges of sand, left behind by waves.

The rocky part of the beach is always so much more interesting than the sandy parts!

You never know what you might find, too.

Unfortunately all the pictures I took focused on my dash in the background, instead of this amazing rib bone I found. The size of the fish this belonged to must have been impressive!

Yes, I kept it – for my other daughter’s collection.

The Re-Farmer