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Off topic: talking fire (video)

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Hearing what’s going on in Jasper right now is pretty mind blowing. It’s almost surreal to see, and brings back memories of Fort Mac.

The weather app on my computer includes fire maps and, when I zoom out, it’s amazing to see just how many fires there are right now. All along the west coast and the west central US states, there are fires, and the line of fire continues through BC and into Alaska. The fires spread across the north through the territories and the northern areas of the prairie provinces, reducing somewhat across northern Ontario, but increasing again in Quebec.

In other words, the boreal forest that covers much of Canada.

Of course, you’re going to hear an awful lot about why fires happen, as happens every year during fire season. This video looks at the data, and makes some very good points.

In another lifetime, before my husband became permanently disabled, he was an IT guy and part of a team contracted with Alberta’s Sustainable Resources department (I don’t even know if it exists anymore). He worked on the software used in forest management, and got to talk to a number of the scientists involved directly, to know what they needed out of their software.

They were very aware of the need for prescribed burns, and continually recommended them. That they weren’t being done was cause for a great deal of frustration.

As is mentioned in the video, it isn’t a matter of if this would happen, but when.

Unfortunately, a lot of forest management practices are not allowed because of ignorance within the powerful environmentalist lobby. In the end, they cause more problems, more damage, and too often, cost lives. Thankfully, not in Jasper. However, this is going to keep happening until the powers that be get serious about reducing the fuel levels. That is going to mean more prescribed burns, but also allowing more logging. These are incredibly important to maintaining a health forest, but also to reduce the risks of forest fires.

Where we live, we are in a transition zone between boreal forest and open prairie. It’s open though that we are more likely to be threatened by wildfires rather than forest fires, but have just enough pine trees to make forest fires a risk, too. We have a spruce grove right in our yard, and spruces are basically big resin filled torches. Clearing out the dead trees and underbrush around us it not just about aesthetics. It’s a matter of safety. Wanting to have grazing animals for the areas we can’t mow is another part of that. While we have had issues with flooding in the past, and excess rain this spring, drought is the more normal state of things.

Something we keep in mind as we work on clearing up and improving the section of the property we are responsible for.

The Re-Farmer

Testing the grass whip

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The thread lock on our new grass whip has had its 24 hours to set, and we had a lovely cool morning to test it out in. We actually dropped to 14C/57F by this morning! It was awesome!

I was originally going to test it by starting a path to the barn through the tall grass, but changed my mine. We have a branch pile started that needs to be burned, and there were some large burdocks growing around it. So I decided to make a path to the branch pile and start taking out the burdock before their burrs develop and start causing problems.

I started off just swinging it back and forth, double handed, like a golf club. Which did okay at the edge, but the further in, I had to resort to chopping with it in one direction, then the other.

I discovered a potential problem, but not the one I was warned about.

The warning was that using it was pretty rough on the hands, until you get used to it. Which I would expect, really. It wasn’t my hands that were the problem, though.

It was my messed up left elbow.

When cutting in just one direction, I could use my right hand and chop away at the tall grass – which was incredibly wet at the bottom – well enough, for it being my non-dominant hand. When I switched to my left, however, my elbow did not like it at all. I could only manage a few swings before I had to switch hands again.

Obviously, this is not a problem of the tool, but a warning for anyone else with joint issues of any kind.

The grass I was chopping through was really tall and, between how wet it was and how some of it was already pushed flat to the ground, it took some doing to cut it. I just wanted a path, though, not a clear area, so that wasn’t a problem.

The burdock was the real test. Did the whip have trouble cutting through it?

Absolutely it did. Of course! This is burdock, after all!

What I found worked best was to first use the whip vertically, to cut away the leaf stems at the stalk. It cut through that quite easily. It could also cut through the higher, more tender, portions of the stalks easily, too.

The stalks closer to the ground, though, are very woody and more than an inch thick. Those required a fair bit of hacking! Loppers would have been easier, and in the future, I’ll make sure to have them handy for that point of the clearing, but the whip did do the job eventually.

It also made short work of the other weeds that were growing with the burdock.

The larger burdock pieces got set aside, on top of the branch pile – still barely visible through the tall grass! – to be burned with the branches.

As for now, it’s just past noon and we’re at 23C/73F, with the humidex at 27C/81F. The predicted high for the day is 26C/79F, which we’re supposed to reach at around 4pm, and stay that hot through to about 8pm. It’s still damp out there, but I’m thinking of getting the push mower out, with the bag attached. We were never able to rake up the grass clippings from before, either because of the weather or other things going on. With the grass needing to be cut again, but still a reasonable height, I can use the mower to pick up the old clippings at the same time, and the wagon to haul them to the main garden area. I’ve got the black landscape cloth/tarp/whatever it is that we salvaged from around the old wood pile, years ago, laid out over where we had a squash patch last year. I want to spread the clippings out on that to dry out in the sun a bit, before using it as mulch. We may not be getting rain for a while, but with our high humidity, the ground stays wet for hours.

Another reason to mow the lawn before it gets too tall, even if it’s still wet! The taller it gets, the more it will clog up around the blade.

As for the grass whip, it was just a small test, but so far, I’m happy with it. It’ll do the jobs I got it for, and it seems it will do it well.

The Re-Farmer

The state of things, and unboxing my new toy!

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Well, the predicted thunderstorms did hit us last night! What a light show, too. Once I started seeing the lightning out my window, I went into the sun room to tie off the doors, then drop a bit of kibble around the room to attract the cats indoors. We got quite a deluge.

Some time later, I started hearing someone going through the old kitchen doors, which was rather odd for the time of morning, so I went to see what was going on. It turned out that one of my daughters heard what sounded like a kitten in distress through the bathroom window and went to check.

There were plenty of cats and kittens, but the creature in distress turned out to be a young racoon. It had jammed itself on top of the table and miter saws, which are stored between the counter shelf and the door, under a built in shelf between a pair of windows. There’s not a lot of room, there!

Thinking it might be stuck, a daughter managed to move the table saw away from the wall a bit. They also untied the doors and opened them wide. There were so many cats and kittens milling about in the doorway, the raccoon would have had a hard time getting through the tied off doors. Even when they were open, there was a lot of cat traffic. I watched on the critter cam for a while, then finally got up and put out some kibble, both inside and out, to lure the cats away from the doorway. The raccoon squished itself as small as it could, while watching me and giving the odd warning growl.

I monitored the critter cam for a while, but the raccoon was out of frame, so I couldn’t tell what it was doing. It was gone by morning, though, so that’s good.

While today is at least a little bit cooler than yesterday, we’re at 77% humidity, making our 24C/75F feel quite unpleasant, even though the humidex is only at 26C/78F. As I was coming back from the post office this afternoon, and got out of the truck to close the gate, I was surprised by the sudden fog.

Then I realized the fog was on my glasses, which were cold from being in the truck’s AC. 😄😄

As for my trip to the post office, I got a new toy!

Yes, that’s a cat’s tail under the box.

We picked up a grass whip. I’ve seen them in use in one of the YouTube channels I follow, and am quite excited to try it out.

I had plenty of attention as I attached the blade to the bottom of the handle, then used the thread glue before screwing on the top of the handle.

Then I took the blade off and put it back on again, facing the right way… 😄😄

The thread glue needs 24 hours to cure. After that, I can test it out!

This thing is very reasonably priced and has good reviews, and will be able to clear areas that are too much for our weed trimmer or lawn mower – and be much faster than working by hand or using loppers! It should even cut through small trees, like the poplars that keep trying to take over, everywhere. I should be able to clear a path to the barn with this. Just a path will be enough to allow us to mow – assuming it gets dry enough. More importantly, it can be used to clear in the main garden area, when it’s time to continue building more raised beds.

Which, given the heat and humidity and rain we’ve been having, is going to be a slow job!

It will also allow us to clear the underbrush to access the dead spruces we need to cut down, much more easily.

I’m really looking forward to testing it out! Twenty four hours from now, however, we won’t have reached the hottest part of the day, yet; that’s supposed to happen around 6pm. Which means I probably won’t test it out until the next morning. The lowest temperature of the night is actually supposed to be at 6am or so. We’ll have, at best, a 2 hour window of pleasant coolness before it starts getting hot again.

At least with this thing, it shouldn’t matter if everything is wet with dew or rain!

The Re-Farmer

Foggy morning, and another one!?!

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Last night was one of those nights where, as soon as I went to bed, I just kept getting more and more awake! I finally got up and spent time with my younger daughter, who was busy making pies. Of course, being up at 2 or 3 in the morning, I was peckish, so I made a snack in between batches of pies, then she and I watched an episode of Columbo while they were baking.

We cheated on the pies. We had some canned pumpkin pie mix. Yesterday, I made a quick trip to the local grocery store and grabbed some frozen pie shells and other missing ingredient. There was no way we were going to be making pie dough in this heat and humidity!

By the time I got back to bed, it was 4am, and even then, I was still up at 4:30!

I did get a bit of sleep, though, but was just after a nap at that point. We were looking at reaching a high of 29C/84F today, but the coolest part of the day was going to be a brief period at about 5 or 6am. My goal was to water the garden while it was still cool.

So when I woke up at 6, I got up and headed out.

The first thing was, of course, to feed the outside cats. As I was going into the sun room with the kibble, I saw several kittens asleep together in a small cat bed on the floor. One got out, another start looking around, and the third…

*sigh*

One of the tabby kittens was lying stretched out, looking like it was asleep. With this heat, I see a lot of the cats sleeping all stretched out like that, but with all the commotion, this one wasn’t moving.

Yup. We lost another kitten.

That’s three kittens in four days.

After putting the food out, I quickly buried it near the unknown kitten I found yesterday morning.

I wonder if it’s the heat and humidity getting to them? There was no sign of anything obvious. It was about 17C/63F at the time. The sun room would not have been much warmer – these days, we leave the doors to outside wide open and the ceiling fan on all the time, for maximum air circulation. If anything, down at the concrete floor, it would have been a bit cooler.

I don’t know what to make of it. About the only solace I can take is, fewer cats in the colony.

Once the sad deed was done, I started my morning rounds. It was very foggy this morning!

It was so dense that I could see the fog covering the tops of the spruce trees in the inner yard. My phone’s camera automatically clears up the image, so in reality, it looked foggier than in the photo.

It wasn’t just fog, though. It was also smoke.

That sun is red because of smoke. Again, the camera doesn’t capture it well. It was much redder than it appears in the photo!

I just checked the live fire map. There are no fires near us; they are all quite a bit further up north. However, there are currently 6 fires listed as out of control, another 5 listed as being held, 29 (!!!) listed as being monitored and another 9 listed as under control. Some of these, however, are grouped closely on the map, almost on top of each other. All of them are listed as natural causes. None are near populated areas.

So this morning, it was both smoke and fog!

Checking the weather forecast last night, it was saying thunderstorms during by around midnight tonight, but when I checked again this morning, it was saying thunderstorms starting at about 3pm this afternoon.

I’m writing this at quarter to 3 right now, and on checking the weather radar, there are no storms on the horizon. My phone’s app is now saying to expect a thunderstorm around 8 or 9pm.

We shall see.

Either way, with the upcoming heat, once I did my rounds, I did a thorough watering of the garden beds. Which was rather torturous, because I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Not so bad that I was willing to go back to the house and get the bug spray, though. Having had only a little more than an hour of sleep, I was planning to go back to bed as soon as I got inside and didn’t want to have to wash all

As I write this, we are at 27C/81F, with the humidex at 32C/90F The expected high had changed to 28C/82F, and I’m not sure if we actually reached it.

Oh! I just got a message from the Cat Lady. She just dropped stuff off at the gate for us. She didn’t message ahead, or I’d have opened the gate. She had The Wolfman with her, and she says he started going nuts as soon as they got on the gravel road. When they opened the windows at the gate, he started clawing to get INTO his carrier. He didn’t calm down until they were back on the highway.

This cat has gotten completely attached to them! More than any of the others they ended up keeping permanently!

Excuse me while I head out and collect the donated kibble from the gate.

Wow! Four 9.1kg bags of kibble were waiting for me! I’m glad I dug the wagon out of the garage to bring them over. That will be such a huge help!

Also, I am absolutely dripping with sweat. I just checked and yes, we reached the predicted high of 28C/82F in the last twenty minutes. The humidex is at 33C/72F Apparently, our humidity levels are just 56%, but I question that. Stepping outside was like walking into a sauna!

I did top up the cat food outside with some of the new kibble, and they definitely prefer it over the feed store kibble I got. They’ll eat the feed store brand, but not as enthusiastically. Not that they are eating much in this heat, anyhow!

We should have a brief respite over the next few days – meaning will be in the mid 20’s rather than approaching 30C/86F – but then we’re supposed to get right back up there again.

This is the sort of weather that breed thunderstorms, but so far, those only seem to be forming up north. If only they would get just rain to help put out those fires, instead, that would be good!

Well, the tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, melons and squash will sure enjoy the heat! We just need to keep up on the watering.

I think I’ll go to the living room and stand in front of the air conditioner for a while!

The Re-Farmer

Well, colour me not-surprised…

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Yes, I’m hearing thunder out there.

And what does the weather app now say?

Current weather 2:21 PM
Partly sunny 26°C Feels like ‎32°C
Thunderstorms will move through your area. The high will be 26° on this humid day.

That small system with storms in it that I saw to the North of us on the weather radar grew a lot bigger as it passed over the lakes closer to us.

Meanwhile, most of Western Canada, as well as both the East and West coasts of the US, are under “severe weather” alerts.

It still says only a 49% chance of rain for us, though.

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

A day of rest… and a quick storm

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It’s a good thing I’m working to get back into keeping Sunday as my day of rest. Last night, for some reason, I just didn’t sleep. I finally started to doze after 4am or so. After a couple of hours of that, I fed the outside cats, then went back to bed, skipping the rest of my morning rounds.

But I did find these, yesterday.

The Albion Everbearing strawberries are starting to ripen, little by little. For a patch with only 8 plants, there are quite a lot of berries on each of them! The deer seem to be leaving this patch alone, too. The ones with the asparagus keep getting their leave eaten, even though I have stakes around them. I have some mesh netting around part of the patch, but need to set up more flexible netting around the rest.

But not today.

This afternoon, I made a quick run into town to get distilled water for my husband’s CPAP. Just one gallon, though. They cost almost twice as much locally as they do in the city, so I’ll get more the next time we need to hit a Walmart or something. Of course, while in town, I picked up a few other things as well.

Just a little while ago, I headed out to do my evening rounds, checking all the garden beds. I’m quite impressed with how much some of the winter squash is getting. Our first Madga squash seedling appeared in one of the pots, but the stem was already broken by a cat lying on it, in spite of the stakes I have around the pot to keep them out. In the main garden area, though, I spotted our first G-star patty pan squash. So we should have at least some summer squash this year – as long as the slugs don’t get to them! We’re down to 1 Zucca melon because they got into the kiddie pool planter.

While I was outside, it suddenly started to thunder and a storm blew in before I finished my rounds. We’re supposed to continue getting these blowing over us for the next few hours. It’s so hot and humid out there, the wind and rain is welcome. It’s not a lot of rain, either; the moats around the garage and the storage house are not coming back. The power flickers, I could do without. I settled down at my computer to start this, and discovered my machine was shut down! I’m not complaining, though. Other places are being hit much harder than we are.

A reminder of why it’s a good idea to “prep”, and have at least three days of shelf stable food, drinking water and other necessities on hand.

My daughter just popped by to chat, so this post was put on hold for a while. As we were talking, another quick storm rolled through. The upstairs has been really hot and muggy, so my daughter did not get much sleep. We’ve been able to keep the downstairs cooler. The portable AC in the living room has been running almost constantly, and we have a fan blowing the cooler air to the dining room. Which means that, in a complete switch, the new part of the house is cooler than the old (log) part of the house, where the bedrooms are. With the septic issues we were having, we moved out the makeshift hardware cloth door, which is kept in place with hook and eye closures, so we could go up and down the stairs more easily. It meant having to close the door to keep the cats out of the basement, though. Now that the source of the septic issues was tracked down and the pump is working as it should, we don’t need access quite as often. So today, I moved one of the blower fans to the bottom of the stairs, facing up, then set the hardware cloth door back. We now have cool basement air being blown up the stairs and, my goodness, what a difference it has made! The only downside is, the distinct smell of wet basement. 😄

I just got some messages from the Cat Lady. The system that hit us is now hitting them. The Wolfman has been freaking out with every peel of thunder, the poor thing! They’re getting the power fluctuations, too. After this, though, things are clearing up, so we should be good for the next while. In fact, if the long range forecast is anything to go by, we won’t get rain again for about 2 weeks.

We might actually dry up enough that we can bring the truck into the yard and pull that tree off the outhouse!

Wouldn’t that be nice?

The Re-Farmer

I love our septic guy

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The septic guy has come and gone, and the news turned out to be much better than I expected.

But first, the cuteness.

The kittens are getting very comfortable around the sun room and the house, running and playing together. Even the smallest ones are rough housing with the older kittens. Then they all pile together, sometimes in one big group, sometimes in several smaller ones, and nap.

It’s so flippin’ adorable.

Back to the less adorable stuff.

We closely monitored the septic pump all night. I went to bed early, since I wanted to get up very early to drive to a bank machine and take out cash to pay the septic guy. Before I went to bed, I heard the pump start running, so I went down to keep an eye on it. At the end, it did the thing again; the filter suddenly emptied of all liquid, but the pump kept running, dry. Thinking of what the septic guy told me on the phone, about how it sounded like we had an air leak somewhere, I shut it off manually, primed the filter, and turned the pump back on again, making sure to check if anything seemed to not be sealed properly. As soon as I flicked the switch, the pump started running, drained the filter, and kept running. So I repeated the process a couple more times until I flicked the switch, and the pump stayed off. I saw no sign of any leaks, and when I opened the top of the filter, there was most definitely a tight seal.

Everything worked the way it should, for the rest of the night.

I know this because every time the pump started running, I went back down to check. My intent to get to sleep early went right out the window. My daughters were going to check on it regularly during the night, but I’m the only one that can actually hear when the pump starts running, so I ended up checking anyhow. The girls still checked on it, too. That basement saw more traffic in and out in one night than it has in years! 😄

Which means I got no sleep last night. I didn’t finally get an hour or two of sleep until past 5am.

Oh… the pump just turned on. Gotta keep an ear out on it…

Okay, so I couldn’t do that. I had to go down and keep an eye on it.

It worked perfectly.

Anyhow. Where was I?

Oh, yes.

By about 7:30, I was on the road to my nearest bank branch, in the town my mother lives in, took out some cash and put some gas in the tank, since we’ve got a trip to the vet tomorrow, with whichever four males we can get into the carriers before we feed the outside cats.

Once back at home, I made sure the gate was left open, then did some work around the house until he arrived.

When he got here, he stopped in front of the garage, then got out to check the conditions. We still have standing water at the vehicle gate into the yard. There are ruts in the entry just from driving through with our truck. Walking through where he would be backing up together, we could see there could be problems. He did NOT want to back into the yard with that super heavy truck, and get stuck!

So, he first did a visual check on the tank. The pump had clearly run fairly recently. Everything looked the way it should.

Next, he wanted to check the pump itself.

When I checked on it earlier, I remembered his questions about vibrations and the possibility of a crack at the fittings. With that in mind, I grabbed a brick and a thin piece of Styrofoam that was no longer being used for something else, and set it under the filter. The filter basically floats above the concrete, held up by the pipes. I figured the weight of the water in there might be a possible contributing factor, so it is now supported. When he saw that and I explained I’d just added it this morning, he said it was a good idea.

He checked all the fittings and connections, then we opened up the filter to check that. He examined the condition of the O ring, while I topped up the water in the filter reservoir. It was an inch or so lower than it had been, but not so low that the inflow opening at the top was exposed. We put the cap back on, and everything looked fine.

He asked me a number of questions, wracking his brain, trying to figure out what was going. Then he asked about the outflow. Did we have an expeller or a septic field?

We have an expeller.

Was the pipe white or black?

White.

That got his attention, and he wanted to see where the water gets expelled.

This is just past the fence around the outer year, in the area the renter rotates his cows over to graze. They aren’t here, yet, so the grass is really tall. Of course, the grass in the outer yard is tall, too, since we can’t mow it. We made our way through and went to where the pipe was.

Or, should I say, where the pipe should have been.

The grass was so tall, it was hard to see, but we made our way to where it should have been, and couldn’t find it! I was having a bit of a heart attack, thinking it had been knocked over some how (it would have take a LOT for that to happen), but it wasn’t even lying on the ground.

Then he spotted it, hidden not only by the tall grass, but over handing willow branches.

The willows are fuller than I’ve ever seen them!

Unfortunately, the expelled water isn’t flowing in the direction it should, as there is too much debris, so there we had an area full of water we couldn’t get through. We were, however, able to go around from the other side.

When we got there, and he was checking out the pipe, water started flowing out. The pump was running. He popped the cap off, with the narrow, inner pipe attached, and pulled it out.

I commented that I had no idea that came out so easily.

It shouldn’t he told me. !!!

He started examining the bottom of the pipe he’d pulled out. Meanwhile, the larger, outer pipe filled with water and began overflowing, as it should. He’d brought along a long screwdriver and used that to poke into the bottom of the inner pipe, and I could see debris falling out. He popped it back on place, and water started flowing through it much better than before.

This clog was most likely the source of our problems!

As we walked back to the house, he told me that gunk inside the pipe running from the house to the inner pipe he’d just cleared would be breaking loose in chunks and getting stuck at the bottom of that inner pipe. He mentioned a chemical product with enzymes that they use. I told he, we do use the SeptoBac (which is specifically for the tank), as well as a product for maintaining the household pipes. This commercial stuff they use is much, much stronger, and designed specifically to clear these pipes that run underground.

He told me that if it gets clogged again, to take that inner pipe and cap off completely, and leave it off for about a month. The water will overflow the outer pipe, like it did while we were there, and that would give it a change to wash out the gunk in the pipes. He said this is a pretty common problem, too.

We checked the pump again and everything was fine. He took off the ring holding the clear cap in place, but the seal was so tight, he couldn’t take the cap off. I’m used to it, so I was able to pop it off. The water level was just a bit lower than before, so I topped it off (I keep a bucket of water in the old laundry sink, just for this) and we closed it up again.

He said to keep an eye on it over the next few days, and if we have a problem, to call him again. With it working, he was not going to empty that tank; there was no need, and no need to risk getting his truck stuck in our yard!

I asked him what we owed him, and he said nothing! He did not charge us for his time! I know he, technically, didn’t do any repairs, but he still spent at least half an hour, figuring things out.

He is so awesome! I’m glad to be having the septic guy checking all this out, too. Normally, we would have called a plumber, but who is going to know a septic system better than a septic guy? Especially an old and more uncommon system like ours.

So we are now on monitoring duty, and hopefully things will be back to working the way they should.

Plus, a nap.

I really, really need a nap.

I might even be able to sleep through the sound of the pump running, now!

The Re-Farmer

I’m feeling totally wasted!

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It has been a looooong day!

Of mowing.

My hands are shot, so I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to write, and I’ll probably have typos all over the place. This would normally be a post loaded with photos, but I don’t feel like embedding Instagram photos.

So… this was my day.

Doing my morning rounds I, as always, checked all the garden beds after feeding the cats…

… and the kittens. Much kittens. Adam and her kittens have been in and out of the sun room all day, and I’ve seeing the four behind the garage playing around all day, too. Those ones, it turns out, are Slick’s! (aka: Octomom). I thought they were Brussel’s, but nope. I saw Slick mothering them.

I’m glad she had only 4 kittens this time, and not 8!

Also, it turns out the dark grey kitten with the white eyeliner is NOT the sunroom kitten. We have two of them!

I was quite happy to see the first scapes appearing in our garlic. We are so looking forwards to eating scapes again!

All the strawberries – the older ones with the asparagus, the ones in the wattle weaves we started from seed last year, and the everbearing ones we got as bare roots this spring – are developing berries. Now, if we can just keep the birds and deer from eating them first, we might have a decent amount to enjoy this year!

Quite a few of the first bed of winter squash we transplanted are blooming now. All male flowers for now. I even saw a few tiny flowers on some melons!

Quite a few of onions that overwintered and got transplanted into the first trellis bed are developing seed tops. I look forward to being able to collect our own onions seeds for next year!

The Crespo squash is also blooming quite a bit. There’s some sort of small weed that’s showing up in almost all our beds, but there’s a rather surprising amount around the Crespo squash . Since I was able to do some mowing yesterday, I gathered up grass clippings to mulch around the Crespo squash, leaving space where the beans were plants. There’s still just 3 or 4 beans growing on one side, and I plan to reseed them, though it’s getting pretty late for pole beans right now. The grass clipping mulch should help take care of those weeds and, with more rain on its way, get the squash vines off the wet soil.

Then, since I was gathering grass clippings nearby, anyhow, I mulched around the strawberry and asparagus bed. That one is almost impossible to weed properly. I made it to fit the spacing the asparagus needed, but that left it too wide for me to reach without stepping right inside the bed.

I did some weeding in the spinach, snap pea and carrot bed. I ended up pulling some of the larger spinach. Even the tiniest ones are bolting, but a few had leaves large enough to actually use. I’ve been using them in sandwiches all day today.

Soon after I was done my rounds, I went to town with the 20L jerry can to get premium gas for the mowers. At the last minute, I decided to hit another store and pick up a bunch of artificial flowers. Then I went to a hardware store and found small engine oil for our push mower, before finally getting the fuel for the lawnmowers. On the way home, I swung by the cemetery and left flowers by the stones for my father, my father’s uncle, my brother, my grandmother, a cousin and her baby. I’ll have to come by another time with some soap and water and give the stones a wash. Birds are no respecter of persons! Later, I want to grab the cross with a solar powered light in it, that I got for my MIL’s grave, and set it out with flowers. I’ve never actually seen her grave. When my daughter and I went to tend to is, and my FIL’s request, since he can no longer make the trip out, we couldn’t find it. We did find a sign saying a number of markers have been removed due to flooding, and would be repaired and returned. I would hope it’s been replaced by now!

Once I got home and fueled up the push mower, it was time to start mowing! We’re expecting rain starting tonight, and all day tomorrow, so I wanted to get as much done as I could. I didn’t even try using the riding mower. I tried using it yesterday, but it just can’t handle the tall, wet grass very well.

For the first while, I worked on the south yards. These were the worst, even though we’d actually been able to mow parts, previously. Unfortunately, these yards are also where all the kittens are! The area behind the garage was just brutal to work on. There is no longer standing water, but the ground still squelches when I walk on it. I scared off the garage kittens quite a few times, but after a while, they did start to get used to me and the noise, and would come out and play more often, ducking to hide only when I got close again.

The south west yard is where the kibble and water bowl houses are. That corner needs to be done with the weed trimmed, but I got as close around the cat shelters as I could.

The cats and kittens were not happy.

I even had time to do the west yard, around the fire pit area, though I didn’t even try to go behind the storage house, where there is an open area between rows of trees. It got so full of water there, so it’s bound to be really wet. However, it gets very little light, so the grass there is so sparse, being overground there isn’t really much of an issue.

At that point, I finally stopped to have lunch. It was past 3pm by then, and today the dump is open from 2-6pm Once I finished lunch, I brought the truck into the yard and my older daughter helped me load the garbage and recycling.

I had quite a nice surprise when I got to the dump. My cousin-in-law was there! He was with the attendant dealing with electronics garbage and didn’t seem me, so I just got rid of our recycling, then drove to the pit. I was just finishing up when he drove to the pit, too, and we finally got to say hello. It’s been a long time since we chatted.

After we said our goodbyes and I was getting ready to leave, I spotted something very strange on the ground beside the truck I hadn’t noticed when I first got out. It was so strange, I had to call my cousin over to see!

I found a foot.

It had just enough flesh on it to hold the bones together, but it was most definitely a foot.

Then I found another one, a few feet away.

Then I found a “hand”.

The “hand” did not have an opposable thumb.

My guess is, they were from a bear. A hunter probably processed one, tossed the unused bits and pieces in the pit, then some animal dragged them out.

Not something I ever expected to see in my life, that’s for sure!

The dump run done, as soon as I got home, it was back to mowing.

I was able to finished off the north and east yards, much to the discomfort of Caramel, who dove under the tarp covered pile of boards she has her two kittens in. I saw no sign of Broccoli’s two, around the old garden shed, though I did see them this morning.

When I got those done, I kept pushing the mowing further into the area between the spruce grove and the garden beds. This is an area we’re going to be dragging trees through, and part of it is where the trellis beds will be built, so I wanted to get as least some of it done, in the more level areas.

I also finally mowed a path through the maple grove. Just enough that we can walk through from near the old kitchen garden, around to where the main garden area is. This took me near where the old tap and its part and pieces are lying on the ground, waiting for when we can set it up again. That will happen after we get the pipes we want to run the hose through, to protect it, before burying it in a trench.

All this means we have FINALLY been able to mow the entire inner yard. Not between the trees, but at least the higher traffic areas!

Yay!!!

My next area to do was in the outer yard. I’d already cleared part of it in front of the chain link fence, between the vehicle gate and the people gate, so we could actually access the people gate again. Today, I cleared a path to access the burn barrel to the electricity meter, then back to the people gate. Once that triangle of paths was made, I worked on clearing the grass inside the triangle.

Not only had this area not been mowed yet this year, but it’s one of those areas that’s really dense and had different, tougher, grasses in it. Which means, for most of this area, even with the mower on its highest setting, I had to go forward with the wheels up first, drop the mower and back up over the same area, then go forward again normally. Basically going over the same sections, three times. I had to do this in the inner yard, too, but not as much as this one section. It was almost as difficult as going over the wet area behind the garage.

I had just a small triangle left when I ran out of gas again. It was actually worth refilling the mower to get that little triangle. 😄

And that was it. I was done. The temperatures are really nice right now, there’s still light out, and I probably could have kept going, but I was DONE. I’m going to need someone to put the bath chair in the tub for me later on, so I can shower.

I was working on that last bit when my daughters came out. The ground is finally solid enough that they can set up the ladder against the house, and it won’t sink into the ground. They were finally able to clear the eavestroughs. My older daughter just came in and updated me. Since her sister was up on the roof, anyhow, she cleared away some of the elm branches from the tree in front of the kitchen window that were overhanging the roof, while my older daughter hauled the branches away to the burn pile. That would have been quite a big job, and rather precarious in places.

I’m going to be so much more comfortable when we can get rid of that tree!

I’ve also been informed, we need to get more bug spray. The mosquitoes are insane, and we’re running out. At least it isn’t horseflies anymore. When I was moving the back hose over so I could mow, I heard buzzing like there was another wasp next back there. There wasn’t. It was hundreds of horseflies, all in that corner of the house!

I’m heading into the city tomorrow for our second shop, so I’ll make sure to add that to the list!

I definitely will need to pain killer up tonight. I’m going to be paying for all that mowing. It was worth it, though. Everything looks so much better and, now that it’s done, it’ll be so much easier to keep up. We’ll even be able to use the riding mower on it!

Plus, we now have lots of grass clippings to use as mulch in the garden!

The Re-Farmer

Costco stock up shop: this is what $808 looks like

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It was a remarkably busy day at Costco, for the middle of the week. I didn’t get everything I had on my list, and still broke $800.

This is what $808.34 looks like.

It really doesn’t look like much at all. 😞

I put the cat food on a separate bill again.

It was just cat food, too. I didn’t get their puppy pads again, as we still have more than half a case, though I will be getting more of the larger size when we hit Walmart in a couple of days.

At first, I got eight 9kg bags of the Kirkland brand, because I didn’t see the 11.6kg Whiskas bags. Those turned out to be moved to the end of the aisle. When I saw they were on sale, I put back 4 of the Kirkland bags and replaced them with the Whiskas. At $8 off, I considered replacing all of them, but decided against it, so the cats would have a variety.

I got two cases of the wet cat food, which has gone up in price by a dollar since last month.

Then there was the stuff for us.

When the cashier confirmed my butters, it turned out I’d accidentally got both salted and unsalted. I took them out of the same box, so they should have been all the same! I’m glad he caught that.

For other dairy, we got marble and Old cheddar cheese, plus cream cheese and sour cream.

I didn’t get a double flat of eggs, like I usually do, since we still have lots of eggs we got from my homesteading friend.

We got our usual Kirkland brand of TP, plus a case of facial tissue that was on sale.

Among the things we don’t always get every month was a case of toothpaste, a case of toothbrushes, extra strength ibuprofen, lactase and Vit. B12. I also got a 6 pack of baking soda; we finally got near the end of the last 6 pack I got!

In breads, I just got four packs of tortilla wraps and a 2pk of rye bread.

For meats, I got a bit of a treat; a panini variety pack of sliced meats. I got a package of large breakfast sausages, pork belly, a 3 pack of whole chickens and a chub of ground beef. I also grabbed a 3 pk of Spam for the pantry.

Then there was the mayonnaise and peanut butter, and a bag of potatoes.

That’s it.

I didn’t even finish going through all the aisles, as my budget for this shop was about $800.

Aside from this, I picked up $30 of gas on the way into the city, at $1.389/L That put me back above half a tank. I filled the tank at Costco. At $1.299, it cost me $66.22 to fill the tank.

After the truck was loaded, I swung by a Superstore to get some sort of lunch I could eat while driving. I ended up getting a ham sandwich and a bottle of water, but while looking for something more interesting to drink, I found they had Beaver Buzz in stock, and Citrus – my favorite flavour – was on a “buy three” sale, so I got three of those. I’m not sure what happened to the receipt, but that totaled $17 and change.

Which means I spent over $900 in total today.

It feels like there isn’t much to show for it.

The Re-Farmer

My new toy

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Today, I finally opened the box with our new drain auger. Given the weight of it, I just went ahead and cut the box apart at a couple of corners. The box was made of very heavy duty carboard, yet it was pretty beat up during shipping!

The auger, however, was well padded and protected, and completely unharmed.

Pretty much as soon as I lowered the sides of the box, Ghosty was inside it, checking things out!

In pulling out the various items packed with the auger, included a pair of work gloves, I found the instruction manual and paused to take a look.

The manual was for a different model. One with a different frame supporting the auger, and two large wheels at the back, so it could be pushed around like a hand truck. This one has a frame that’s more compact, and four wheels that need to be attached. Two of them have brakes on them, so those would go onto the back. There are no instructions on how to attach them. I assume that’s what the Allen key is for.

I didn’t have time to fuss with it right then, so it’s been left for now. Once the wheels are on, we need to figure out how to get it safely into the old basement. My husband suggested using a rope, which might actually work out and allow us to take it down the old basement stairs securely, instead of taking it to the new basement stairs and going down that way. The old basement stairs are oddly narrow and steep, to fit in the space, and I don’t have a lot of confidence in how strong they are. The new basement stairs, however, have a door that swings over the stairs, blocking access to the hand rail, instead of into the entry. You wouldn’t believe how unsafe that makes it. When I was a kid, I never saw a problem, but now that I’m old and broken, and have a problem with stairs, it’s really noticeable.

Ah, well. We’ll figure it out, one way or the other!

The Re-Farmer