Today the girls and I headed into the city for our monthly shop.
I know that there are people out there who actually enjoy shopping. I don’t get it. I really don’t!
Okay, so today turned out to be a more complex shop than usual, but still… Ugh. It’s just so draining!
So here is a picture of a fungus. Because it cheers me up!
Today turned out to be too cold and damp to do the mowing between the trees I cleared last year, that I hoped to do today. I thought I might be able to at least use my reciprocating saw to cut some of the smaller stumps of trees I took down last year to ground level, so I could mow over them. In the end, I decided it was just too damp to drag out the extension cords and use electric tools.
Instead, I worked on an area I left partly unfinished last year; a double row of elms leading to the garden gate at the west fence line.
Here is how it looked before I started.
Continue readingToday started early for me, as I had to drive to my mother’s to take her for an appointment to get her CT scan. She had a requirement to drink a litre of water an hour before her appointment, then restrictions on going to the bathroom shortly before, so I wanted to make sure she got there early enough to not have to worry about the restriction. Given how long it takes to drive from her town to the city where her appointment was, that meant she had to start drinking her water while we were driving.
She also had to fast 4 hours before the scan, but my mother went a bit overboard and, aside from eating some crackers with her morning medications, she had fasted since the supper! So as soon as we were done, I made sure to take her to lunch somewhere fast.
By the time I got home, it was mid afternoon. The weather was holding, so I decided to break out the push mower and get as much done as I could. (I only got rained on a tiny bit! :-D ) I was going to start working in the trees, but then decided to do the old, overgrown garden, instead.
When my brother brought the mower back, he walked me through what he had done. It started fine when we tested it, but he mentioned that he felt the prime pump wasn’t doing its job. So, just in case it wouldn’t start, he showed me where to open up the side of the engine, where there is a filter and an opening behind it, and told me I could basically just splash some fuel into it, and that should be enough to start it.
I’m very glad he told me that, because it wouldn’t start. I ended up having to do it twice! The second time was after I ran out of gas, but I found that if I filled the tank before it was completely empty, I didn’t have to do it again. Except I didn’t just splash it. I tipped the mower onto its side and poured a tiny bit, using the cap of the jerry can spout to hold the tiny bit of fuel I needed. After that, it started just fine.
Mowing the old garden ended up taking about 4 hours.
It is not a small garden.
It was also incredibly rough. Plus, I had to look out for stuff like this.
Thankfully, it wasn’t sticking too far out of the ground, but that’s something we’re going to have to dig up at some point. Maybe. Depends on how big it is, underground!
Here are the before photos.
Right now, the garden area is split by the section we covered with straw to mulch it, used some RoundUp when things started to grow through the mulch, then covered with tarps, that I worked around. That is where we are hoping to be able to start planting something next year. I also tried to get into those trees my mother left growing when she transplanted her raspberry bushes, as much as I could.
Here is what it looks like now.
Did I mention it was rough in there?
This picture barely begins to show how rough it was! It’s hard to grasp from the photo, just how big that hill in the foreground is. When this area was last plowed, this is where the tractor turned, so there are huge ridges all over.
If the weather continues to hold tomorrow, I want to work on mowing between the trees in the maple grove, plus the area leading from the big garden to the gate. My mother said she planted elms in there, so the area had not been mowed, but I see no signs of them.
And now I have to try and get the burrs out of my pant legs.
The Re-Farmer
Despite a very foggy, moist start to the day, it dried up enough that I got to use my new toy; the push mower my awesome brother fixed for me.
I love his work-around for the seized throttle cable.
Continue readingHave I mentioned before, that I have the most awesome brother?
Maybe just a few times.
Because it’s true!
After spending about 6 or 7 hours working on the garage door, while packing up his tools, he remembered he also wanted to fit the headlight on my van.
We burn lights out on the van rather quickly; there seems to be an electrical problem in the system. My driver’s side low beam bulb was burnt out again, but the passenger side low beam light would sometimes be on, sometimes be off.
When I bought a new bulb, I got a pair of them to replace both bulbs. While changing the bulb on the passenger side, I discovered why it was doing the flicky thing.
A wire was breaking. While changing the bulb, it finally broke completely.
There was not a lot of wire to work with there, but when I sent a photo to my brother, he said he thought he could fix it.
And he did.
After stripping, cleaning and tinning the wires, he slipped a piece of shrink wrap over one wire, then soldered the exposed ends together. There wasn’t enough wire available to twist them together, as I would normally have thought to do. I couldn’t even help him, other than to hold a light for him, because there was just no room for more fingers in there! He managed to hold the wires together, while also holding the hot soldering iron in one hand, soldering wire in the other.
The shrink material has adhesive on the inside, so after using a heat gun on it to shrink it, it formed a permanent, water tight seal.
Which didn’t stop him from also adding some electric tape around it, too!
There used to be a both soldering irons and soldering guns here, and while packing things up and looking around, I have found soldering wire, but that’s it. I do have my own soldering iron; just a tiny thing that’s part of a wood burning kit. This is one thing I might have been able to do on my own, and now that I’ve seen it done, I know I can. I don’t have the shrink wrap or a heat gun, so I couldn’t do that part, though.
The main thing is, I now have two working headlights again! :-)
The Re-Farmer
The last couple of days have been very, very wet! :-D First, we had a series of thunderstorms that lasted all day Friday and on through the night. On Saturday, we were no longer getting thunderstorm warnings, but we were still getting weather warnings for heavy rain.
As usual, the weather systems were more to the north and south of us, but we did still get quite the light show, and a lot of rain.
Oh, and our internet cut out.
Repeatedly.
So I have some catching up to do!
The rain and damp did not stop my amazing, fantastic, wonderful brother from coming out to fix our garage door!
I honestly thought it wasn’t going to happen, and we’d need to get a new one – something we certainly cannot afford – but he found a way!
Have I mentioned my brother is amazing?
Continue readingYesterday, after picking the crab apples, I had time to start working on the old dog houses, as part of our winterization plans for them. We were getting severe thunderstorm alerts and, looking at the weather radar, it looked like these ones were not going to miss us, so we rushed to get a bunch of things done outside. The girls put the sheets of metal roofing back on the old garden shed that had blown off from the last storm, but there was no way to nail them in place, so they strapped them down, instead. Then they helped me move aside the dog houses, so I could work on the space under them.
The main issue was that the ground is not level, resulting in one of the dog houses tending to rock back and forth.
This was part of why that was happening.
Nothing like a big ol’ tree root to mess things up!
To try and level it, I first used a garden fork to dig things up and loosen the soil. After that, I used a garden rake to try and level the area as much as I could.
Which the kittens absolutely loved.
I then put the sheets of Styrofoam insulation back, but lay them out differently this time, after noting some issues from how we had it before.
I happened to have a sheet of dollar store tarp in the garage, so I used it to basically hold the 4 sheets of insulation together – and I hope it will serve to protect it a bit from the cats, who like to use the foam to sharpen their claws! LOL
Then I snagged a daughter to help me move the dog houses back again.
The kittens love it!
I have a couple more sheets of insulation that I plan to slide under the dog houses, so the kittens aren’t going to be able to play under there for much longer. :-D Later, when we get a straw bale to cover our septic tank, I plan to add start around the dog houses. We are also looking at ways to use the sheets of black tarp that I cleared from the old wood pile to further shelter and winterize these for the cats.
Not long after this was done, we did get hit with a pretty wild thunderstorm. We promptly lost our internet, and even the power flickered off and on several times, though we never lost it completely. I later saw photos taken in town, where there was some flooding in the streets.
Looking at the long range forecasts, we might get storms throughout tomorrow and into early the next morning, before things clear up. We’ve had enough rain that I might actually have to mow the lawn one more time before putting the mower away for the winter!
The Re-Farmer
Catching up on stuff that I intended to post about yesterday…
I finally got a chance to pick some crab apples.
I had help.
It was starting to get pretty late in the season to pick these. A lot were already on the ground, other had signs of being eaten by birds. There were some I could not safely reach, even with the ladder, but that’s okay. The birds will enjoy them.
The one tree that was giving larger, sweeter apples this year resulted in about 2 1/2 gallon buckets of apples.
There is one other tree that had larger, sweeter apples last year. Though the apples are much smaller this year, there are lots of them. When I do my rounds, I have been tasting them. As the season progressed, the apples on this tree did start to develop that sweet-tart taste crab apples are known for. There are a couple of other trees with lots of apples on them, but they are pretty… unpleasant.
I decided to pick some from the one tree with good apples. Just a bucket full, I figured. So I dragged the ladder over and went to set it up under the most apple laden branches.
There… weren’t any?
These apples have been getting a very deep red as the season progressed, and there had been lots of them, but suddenly, there were hardly any at all.
Of course, my first thought was to check the ground, to see how many had fallen, but the ground was clear of fallen apples.
I finally went to pick some. Most were already too far gone and starting to rot at the stems. This is all I got.
Barely enough to cover the bottom of the bucket!
You can see one with a hole at the stem that I accidentally picked. Most of the remaining apples I saw had much larger holes like that.
I am guessing that the apples were eaten by something. I’m good with feeding critters. What I found interesting, though, is that it was just this one tree. There are trees on either side of this one that are full of apples, and I can see apples on the ground beneath them.
I guess whatever has been eating the apples from this tree found it tastier than the others, too!
Anyhow.
For the larger amount of apples, I am planning to make jelly. For the smaller amount, I’m going to try making apple cider vinegar.
We shall see how they turn out! :-D
The Re-Farmer
A bit of an update as to how things are going with our budding mead. Visit here to catch up on the process.
Continue readingToday was one of those days when I was able to visit the beach after dropping my daughter off at work.
This time, twice!
I got these shots this morning.
Continue reading
