I was able to finish mowing the East yard, which is where the lowest part of the inner yard is. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but through the short grass, you can see the water extending well beyond the little pond in front of the outhouse. The moat around the garage is back, and I’ve been watching the driveway on the garage cam slowly fill with water.
While we have reached 7C/45F out there, we still have a wind chill of -4C/26F It’s gotten cold enough in the house, I turned the furnace back up again!
Amazingly, we still have three fires going in our province! All well to the north of us. Two are under control, and one is “being held” – that one is what’s left of a much larger fire that burned out of control for some time.
The rain, however, is now supposed to continue through to tomorrow evening, instead of ending around noon.
Thankfully, we got those errands done yesterday, don’t need to go anywhere in this. I feel for the people who have to be out there right now!
There is one disconcerting thing, though.
When I’m at my computer, I’m basically right above the septic pump, so I’m basically the only one that can hear it go off. Especially now, when we’ve got both of the new blowers, plus fans, running to try and keep things drier in the old basement. Since we had the pill switch replaced, only once before did we have a situation where it wouldn’t shut off again. It basically fixed itself, though.
Well, as I was working on this post, it happened again. I could hear a change in the sound that immediately got my attention – I’m pretty paranoid about that, these days! I went down to check, and the pump was running, but I could see now water flowing through the filter. It was empty. So I shut off the pump manually, primed the filter, and tried again. The filter emptied, no new water started to flow, and the pump kept running, dry.
So for the last while, I did things like switch out the filter basket (it didn’t seem clogged, but I changed it anyhow). We keep an old hose that’s missing its female connector down there, permanently hooked up to the cold water tap from when the washing machine used to be down there. It makes refilling the filter very handy, but I even sent water running into the inflow opening, at the top of the filter, in case there was something blocking it. It seemed fine. Each time I did something, I tried turning the pump back on again, and it would empty the filter and keep running dry again.
Finally, I opened up the floor drain and sent the hose through, all the way to the tank. That meant fighting to get it through the bottleneck that’s somewhere between the wall and the tank it keeps getting caught on. I suspect that bottleneck is the source of quite a few of our problems. After I got it through, I turned the water on to flush things in the pipe, then ran the hose in the other direction, towards the weeping tile under the new basement, then back to the septic tank again.
Then I turned the power to the pump back on and…
… it stayed off.
After I got back upstairs, my older daughter, who is getting up for her night of working on commissions, checked with me. She could hear that something was going on, and she wanted to know if it was safe to shower! Which is was. Once I heard the septic pump turn on again, I went into the basement and watched the water flowering through the filter. Everything seemed fine, and the pump turned itself off, as it normally would.
This makes me think that there is something the float is getting hung up on every now and then, so it’s not dropping far enough to tell the pump to shut off. Whatever it is, running the hose through seems to have cleared it.
At times like this, I wish we had a gravity system, instead of a pump one! We would just need to make sure the septic field gets insulated every winter. No pumps to worry about, and no electricity needed. I do understand why my dad set up the pump system. There really isn’t anyplace in the inner yard to have a septic field. Too many large trees and their roots to mess things up.
Ah, well. Dealing with this stuff just comes with the territory!
No different than having to deal with moats around the garage and sopping wet driveways! 😄
Thankfully, we have a full size, brand new, spare tire.
Thankfully, we have CAA!
So I phoned CAA, rather than trying to use the app or their website. With reason. I gave our address and, of course, it didn’t show up, because according to the online maps, we don’t exist. Which meant she had to fight with her system to get it to accept the address given, plus the directions to find us. This was all done by maybe 2:30. She then gave me a time of arrival of 4:25.
!!!
If it was going to take that long, by the time the tire was changed, the placed I needed to go to would be closed!
From past experience, though, I found they would get to use much quicker, so I gave the phone to my husband, then went back out to unlock the gate, then go back to the truck.
I had no clue how to get the spare tire.
After going through the owners manual, I found where the jack, which comes with tire blocks, and tools were stored. We keep the back seats up, but even so, we never saw the parts and pieces! Then I found where the tire was to be lowered from, which had a lock on it. The only key for the truck is the ignition key, and I was quite happy to find it fit the lock.
By the time the guy got to our place, I had all the lock out and the tools on the cover of the box, so he could get right at lowering the spare tire. Which was absolutely covered in gravel road dust!
Then he set to using his own much better jack to lift the truck and start changing the tire. He had a cordless driver, but the lug nuts turned out to be over tightened. That would have been Canadian Tire. When I had the oil changed, the package included a tire rotation. Which means they used an impact driver rather than a torque wrench to put the tires back on, and over did it. He had to fight with it to get them loose enough that he could finish up using his driver. Things were rusty, and no… oh, I can’t remember the name of it now…. something that keeps them from seizing… I’ll probably remember later. It wasn’t used. Later, before putting the lug nuts back on, he knocked the lug nuts against a hard surface, and I could see the rust falling out. He also showed me how the covered on the lug nuts, which are basically decorative, were starting to crack from being over tightened. Something to get taken care of before the become loose and start spinning, instead of turning the lug nuts and damaging them!
The tire was replaced in excellent time, and I was still going to be able to go to town. So I got in and started the engine…
Only to get a warning that the tire that just got changed was low on air.
Okay. It’s been sitting unused for about a year, so that’s not too surprising. It didn’t seem very low on my gauge when I pumped it up, but I guess it was low enough to trigger the sensor.
Then I started the truck again…
… and got the same warning, for the same tire I just topped up.
Which tells me the spare tire doesn’t have a sensor, so the computer has noting to read and gives this automatic response.
I’ll just have to ignore it for now.
I headed out and first stopped at the post office to pick up a parcel, then kept going to town. The CAA guy had put the flat tire into the box of the truck for me – we both looked it over but could see no obvious cause for it to be flat. My first stop was at the garage. The owner happened to walk outside just as I got there, so we chatted for a bit, and I told him about the tire. My guess is, I ran over something when I did the dump run on Tuesday. As soon as I said I’d done a dump run, he basically said the same thing.
He’ll take a look at it and text me when it’s done. Hopefully, it’ll just need a patch, and not replacement. If all goes well, I’ll be able to book an appointment to have it put back, and the spare returned where it belongs, before I head in to the city to do our stock up shopping.
Once that was dropped off, I made the pharmacy run and took advantage of the trip to run a few more errands. While I did that, my daughter was busy at home and got another 18′ log for me. We just need to get it dragged out of the spruce grove. I now have enough to frame out one of the prepared beds in the main garden.
Then it was time to head home and unload the truck, have a very late lunch, then head back outside to continue mowing.
It was while I was doing that, when I got a video call from an old friend from high school. It was only last night that I saw her share something on Facebook that absolutely stunned me, about another friend from high school. She had passed away a few days ago, but I’d heard nothing about it until then. So she called me and we talked for quite a while. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to go to the funeral. Not only is it two provinces away, but it’s on a date we’ve already made arrangements to connect with a friend that’s back in Canada from South America. I was updated on the circumstances, which made the whole thing even more shocking. Basically, the hospital killed her, by assuming treatment before doing a CT scan. Which is something that I’ve seen happen – or almost happen – way too many times. My husband is very lucky to still be with us right now, since they almost killed him three times when he developed his heart condition, as just one example.
So we’re all kind of reeling about the circumstances.
It does make you think how important it is to stay connected to the people you care about. To not put off that phone call, or that email, or that visit. Any one of us can be gone in an eye blink, regardless of our age or health or whatever.
As much as I love that we live out in the boonies and don’t have to deal with so many people all the time, it does make it harder to stay connected with the people I want to stay connected with!
Anyhow. That’s the biggest reason this day was on the rough side.
Things still need to be done, though, so after the call, I finished mowing the section of yard I was working on. The inner yard is now half done (not counting the garden area). Unfortunately, the forecast now says we’ll be getting rain starting in the wee hours of the morning, and continuing on through to Saturday morning. We’re still getting heavy rainfall warnings from the weather services. Overnight temperatures are also expected to drop, with a low of 2C/36F on Saturday night, which makes frost a possibility. The cooler overnight temperatures will just give us more time to get those low raised beds cleaned up and shifted over, and ready for planting after we pass our last frost date in June – and get the rest of the lawn mowed before it turns into hay!
We’ll see how it works out. I’m certainly not going to complain about getting rain.
Yesterday was a pretty wasted day. I wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to use the day to rest and recover.
I’m still feeling like crap, but not as bad. So I just pain killered up and headed out.
Unfortunately, we just can’t set aside mowing the lawn anymore. The grass is getting too tall, and I don’t want a repeat of the spring my brother and his wife had to come out with their mowing equipment to get it done. This time, the problem is how wet the yard has been.
Still, it needs to be done.
When I last mowed in the outer yard, I broke an attachment on the lawnmower. This was the diverter shield on the side that sends the grass clippings away. The grass was so tall and thick that it kept getting knocked out of position. Well, one time I wasn’t paying close enough attention, it got knocked off, and under the mower.
It is now in several pieces.
The side of the mower where it attaches has a permanent cover over the opening that it attached under. Without it, the opening is well sealed, so that the clippings can either go out the back and into the lawn bag, or if the back is closed up with its plug and cover, the clippings supposedly get mulched into the ground.
That mulch setting doesn’t work very well, and the mower really struggles if it is used.
So that means I need to use the mower bag, whether I want to or not. To set that up, I lifted the back cover and removed the plug.
Where I found evidence of squirrels! Grass clippings still manage to get into it, and squirrels took advantage of the “nest” to store acorns!
With so many cats around, I hardly ever see squirrels anymore, so this is a surprise, indeed!
Once that was cleared out, I started on the east lawn.
I didn’t finish it.
First, the grass it so tall, I’m constantly stopping to empty the bag. Second, the grass is still pretty damp, so the opening into the bag gets clogged up very quickly. Third, because the grass is so wet, the bag is heavier to lug around than usual!
It’s a good thing I enjoy mowing the lawn!
I’ve got a nice pile of grass clippings going, but we won’t even be able to use it as mulch. Sections of this part of the yard are infested with Creeping Charlie. If I use the grass clippings as mulch, I’ll just be spreading the stuff. 😢
In the end, I had to stop mowing, even though I didn’t have very much left to do. I was getting into the lowers – and, therefore, wettest – parts of the yard, plus I was just getting too tired and too hot.
And by “hot”, I mean it’s 11C/52F out there, with a humidex of 13C/55F Yes, I find that hot. I’m not acclimated to spring temperatures yet! It certainly didn’t help that the sweat on my face seemed to attract some sort of flying insect that would get caught in my glasses, or under the visor of my hat!
Anyhow. I’m taking a break for now. Once the post office reopens for the afternoon, I’ll head out to get the mail, and pick up some sour cream, so my daughter can make her rhubarb cake with our first harvest of the year! Hopefully, by then, the grass will have dried a bit more.
We are currently getting weather warnings for potentially heavy rainfalls, but at the same time, our area isn’t expected to get rain until about 5am.
We’re also getting low enough overnight temperatures that, in some places, they are getting frost warnings. We might be getting frost on the weekend, from the looks of it.
We shall see!
For now, I just need to hydrate, run some errands, then get back to mowing before the rain hits! I hope to be able to finish the inner yard, but I don’t expect to be able to mow around the main garden area, or finish the outer yard. That will have to wait for another day. The old garden area is yellow with dandelions right now. I hope to get that done before they all go to seed, but… we’ll see!
I knew we would need to pick up some more kibble before the end of the month, so I took advantage of today being a rainy day to make the run to the nearest Walmart. It’s worth the gas to drive that far, if we need to get enough stuff.
Which is saying something, since it costs roughly $30 in gas to drive there and back – and this is the closer Walmart in the smaller city!
I got a whole 13 individual items, and it came out to over $100. *sigh*
The “extras” I got were a drink for the ride home, a couple of containers of gum to keep in the truck, and a mini garden claw to make life easier on my arthritic hands.
The two bags of kibble were the 9.1kg size; they didn’t have any of the 11kg bags in stock again. The distilled water my husband needs for his CPAP humidifier has gone down in price, and I got 4 of those, plus a couple of 2 for $11 blocks of cheese. I also got a 10lb bag of potatoes; the first we’ve bought since having our own potatoes.
That’s it. The whole shopping trip – and the grand total, after taxes, was $104.54.
The disturbing thing is, even with the cost of gas, I still saved money by driving further to get this stuff, and even then, that’s only because our province has temporarily held back a gas tax to keep prices lower for now, so we’ve got some of the lowest gas prices in the country. Once they stop doing that, the cost of gas for a trip like this would be higher than anything saved by making such a trip, except that once the gas prices go up again, so will the cost of everything else.
Very disheartening. Especially knowing that it’s all due to our federal government’s actions. Aside from the taxes on top of taxes, the value of our dollar keeps dropping. At least we can still afford to buy this stuff, for now. The local food banks are really struggling to meet the increased needs, and I’m starting to see ads asking for donations for what is basically a pet food bank, so people won’t be forced to surrender their pets.
Yes, we can grow our own food, to a certain extent, and we can work towards keeping small livestock. Our goals include being able to produce our own animal feed as much as possible, too, but of the stuff on this list, the only thing we can do ourselves right now is grow potatoes. Meanwhile, I’m already hearing proposals about how home gardeners should be registered with the government, or even prevented from gardening at all because, “climate change”, thanks to that laughable “study” that found home gardening was worse for the environment than large scale (government approved, of course) agriculture – along with wanting to end the beef industry and, eventually, all meat production, for the same reason. But hey, there’s a cricket farm for human consumption in the city, and it’s been ramping up production!
🙄🫤
I must say, I’m really glad to be living in the boonies in these times.
My younger daughter and I started talking about what we wanted to do over the next while, both shorter and longer term. We got so into it, we ended up walking around the outer yard to talk about it more!
One of the stops we made was in the pump shack, where we tested out the old hand pump.
Much to my surprise, we soon had water flowing! I took video while my daughter started pumping. This confirms to me that all we need are new leathers for it to work properly. It shouldn’t take that long for water to start flowing again, once it had already started. It should stay primed and water should start flowing almost immediately.
Yes, the whole pump moves as the handle is pumped. It spins in place. I asked my brother about this, and he tells me this is because it is designed to basically float, allowing for the rise and fall of the water table. A neighbour of ours had the same system, but when they dug a new well and got indoor running water, they closed off the old well – I can’t remember how exactly that was done, but in the spring, when all the snow was melting and the water table rose, their pump ended up going through the roof of their pump shack!
After we ran water for a while, I even gave it a taste, and it tastes better than our household tap water. We really need to get our house well water tested, but we would need to do the full testing to find out what’s going on with it, which is out of our budget. Plus, once the samples are collected (full testing needs 2 samples in different sizes), we’d have to get it to a lab in the city within 24 hours. The sterile containers to collect the samples are, I believe, available in one of the larger towns in our municipality, but I’d have to confirm that. A fair amount of logistics is required for us to get the water tested, simply because of where we live. The full test, however, would include coliform, E. coli, HPC, Nitrogen-Nitrates and Nitrogen-Nitrites, total dissolved solids, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, manganese, zinc, iron, Chloride sulfate, pH, hardness, conductivity, arsenic, boron, barium, fluoride, uranium, lead and copper – and the cost for all that has almost doubled since I first looked into it, 5 or so years ago. The basic test for just coliform and E. coli is just $30, but there are 7 different levels of testing available, including the total testing for everything.
Anyhow…
The important thing, though, is knowing we do have back up water, if something ever happens to our household water.
My daughter and I went through most of the old shacks and outbuildings, and into the barn, looking at the various materials strewn about. There are SO many old doors and windows, it’s mind boggling.
What started this all was my daughter asking what we needed before we could get some sheep or goats, and where we would set them up. We also talked about the trees that need harvesting, and the old shed with the collapsed roof that still needs to be dismantled. My daughter, it turns out, really dislikes working in the garden, doesn’t feel she’s good at it, and would much rather do other stuff. So for the next while, she’ll focus on harvesting and processing the dead trees and dismantling the old shed. The lumber from there can be used to build an animal shelter. The lumber used to frame it is still good, and the old cladding, which is very weathered and rotting, covers wider boards, protecting them enough that those should be useable, too.
I had originally thought we’d build our outdoor kitchen where the shed with the collapsed roof is, or right in front of it, but we now know that area is lower, collects water and the ground gets really soft. The other area I considered was next to the pump shack, facing the “driveway”. The old fuel tanks are still there, and we have no reason to move them. The outdoor kitchen is going to be 20’x20′, and those tanks would be in the way. There is, however, enough space behind the pump shack, between it and the old chicken coop. We just have to get it cleaned up of old tires and appliances still sitting there.
We also looked at the old chicken coop. This is a log building that still has its roof, though that is damaged. The original roof is wood shingled, and it had been covered with … tin? … corrugated sheets. I don’t think corrugated is the right word, but I don’t know what it’s actually called. Unfortunately, as with so many other areas, trees were allowed to grow right against the building. One had branches that scraped across the roof in the wind, which eventually tore off several of these metal sheets, destroying them and damaging the roof beneath, which now has holes in it, and the weather gets into the “attic” portion. We have other metal roof sheets like this that we can salvage from another collapsed shed by the barn, but have no way to safely get up there. We would need scaffolding, but the scaffolding my brother remembers being here is gone.
Still, we want to salvage this building. The log walls are still pretty solid. This building had been used as a summer kitchen, before my parents bought the property converted it to a chicken coop. It had electricity wired to it for lights, and heat lamps for the chicks. When my parents stopped having chickens, no one cleaned out the coop, so it’s quite a mess in there, and there are some things that were tossed in for storage, too.
We could potentially clean it up and fix it up. The whole building is slowly sinking. Instead of being on a concrete or rock foundation, it’s on giant wooden beams, and those are both sinking and rotting away, but they are also why the building is sinking evenly, and not twisting. The roof, however, is also dropping, to the point that the door had to be taken off entirely for us to be able to get in.
So that’s a project my daughter will work on as well; clearing up around the old chicken coop, first, then working inwards. Mostly, though, we have to cut back the trees some more – I’d already done some of that a few years back, but these are maples, so they’re growing back.
We’ll have to do the same around the pump shack, but one old stump has been sending out useable suckers. It’s basically been accidentally coppiced. We can maintain that. More material for wattle weaving! 😁 We also talked about what we can do to fix up the old pump shack. The exterior cladding it starting to rot and pieces are falling off – and on this building, there is no inner layer of boards the cladding is covering. It’s directly attached to the open wall joists, as you can see in the Instagram video. The concrete floor is cracking, but the bones of the structure are still sound, so we’ve got ideas on how to fix and maintain it.
We also went around the warehouse, which used to be my late brother’s workshop. We could seriously use that building for a workshop ourselves, but it’s completely full of my parent’s stuff. There’s basically two short paths among the stuff, and we can’t get to the back of it at all. My mother is still obsessed with her stuff in there, and is so worried someone will steal it. At the very least, though, we need to get the old mattresses to the dump, as well as the bags and bags of old clothing. She had suggested we have a garage sale, which I will not do, but she did approve of my suggestion that we could try selling things online, instead. That would be one way to help pay for the things that need to be done around here! That, however, would require going through all those boxes and seeing what is actually worth selling, and what is just junk.
But I digress!
It was around the warehouse that we decided on a place we could build animal shelters. My daughter is interested in sheep, for their wool (she wants to process and spin yarn). I would like a couple of milk goats, partly for their use in permaculture, partly because my family are lactose intolerant, and they can drink goats milk without getting sick.
We did talk about getting chickens, but both my daughters are hesitant about that. The problem is, they have friends with pet chickens, and their chickens are always getting sick. They think if we get chickens, they’ll get sick all the time, too, and we’re very unlikely to take a chicken to a vet. In a way, I understand this, but I think chickens raised outdoors would be much hardier and healthier than chickens raised as pets. Honestly, I’d be more concerned about sheep, goats or pigs needing vet care.
Yeah, I’d like a couple of pigs, too. Partly, all these animals animals are an important part of regenerative practices, and would go a long way in helping us to reclaim and improve our soil, with each contributing in different ways, and partly, they are a food source. Get a couple of piglets in the spring, send them out for processing in the fall, and have a freezer full of meat! I suppose we could get a steer and do the same thing, but I don’t think we’re up to an animal that big. Mostly, though, we need grazing animals for the outer yard. There’s no way we can mow all of it; it’s too rough in places. The overgrown areas are a fire hazard. A controlled burn would fix that, but with so many outbuildings, that would be very risky. Grazing animals would take care of that problem for us.
So my daughter is going to focus more on harvesting and processing the dead spruces for me to build raised beds, dismantle the shed and salvage materials to build animals shelters, as well as the outdoor kitchen and her smithy that she wants to build. I’ll focus more and gardening and building garden structures, and maintaining the yards. There will be crossover, of course, as we help each other out on the big stuff, but it’s clarified with each other what our areas of focus will be.
All in all, this made for a grand Mother’s Day! Well… except for all the wood ticks. We were picking those off our clothes constantly, and had to shower when we got back inside!
However, the three racks of ribs that have been slow roasting in the oven are now down, so it’s time to start focusing on our Mother’s Day dinner!
Okay, so last night, we had issues with the septic pump again. It wasn’t turning off, even though there was no water flowing through the pump. So I shut it off manually and left it for later.
This morning, while doing my rounds, I popped opened the tank and took a look. The grey water side was pretty full, and I could see the new float/pill switch at the top. Nothing seemed to be hung up or anything.
I’d primed the filter last night, so all I had to do was turn the pump back on and see. The filter promptly empties – but no grey water from the tank was being pulled in.
Crud.
Also, I really, really appreciate having that filter with its clear lid on there. Without it, we’d have no way of seeing what was going on!
So I shut it off, primed the filter again, and thought… what the heck. That tank is pretty full. I’ll try again.
At first, the filter just emptied, and I was going to shut if off again, but then grey water started to flow through the top. Perfect! I set the time on my phone for 4 minutes, and let it go. With the rain we’ve had lately, the old basement is starting to have water seeping through again, and the sump pump is starting to actually get trigged, so I moved some fans around. I’d already replaced the winter window in the old basement with the screen summer window, yesterday, for increased air flow.
Then, after about 3 minutes, the septic pump shut itself off.
???
It’s working properly again!
I have no idea what happened last night to keep it from shutting off, but whatever it was seems to have worked itself out.
At least for now.
There’s a reason I’m so paranoid about the pumps in this place!
I tried going to bed early, so I could get an early start on work outside, before things got hot again. Of course, everything seemed to conspire to keep me awake.
Which, I suppose, turned out to be a good thing.
It eventually soaking into my sleep deprived, frustrated brain, that I was hearing the septic pump running.
And it wasn’t turning off.
I almost dozed off, but was awakened again, and it was still running.
So down to the basement it went to check. The filter had no liquid in it. It was running dry.
I did the usual routine; shut off the pump manually, prime the filter, turn it on again… then off again, when the filter just emptied, but the pump kept running.
*sigh*
Why would a new pill switch conk out so quickly?
Tomorrow… er… later today… I will call the septic guy again, and let him know.
Until then, I hope to get at least a few hours of sleep!
By the end of the day, my right arm was giving me grief. Painkillers didn’t seem to help any, and it made for a difficult night. There just wasn’t any position I could get into that wasn’t making a joint somewhere more painful – and it was just the joints. No muscle pain, which is more what I would have expected. And why just my right arm? The wrist is the worst.
So that changed my plans for today. I didn’t want to push it by doing more manual labour outside. Instead, courtesy of my older daughter, I decided to do that cat food shop that was planned for later in the week, and my younger daughter is currently working on cleaning up and weeding the low raised beds in the main garden area, in preparation for amending with the sulfur granules and peat. She’s taking it slow and easy; it’s 20C/67F out there, and she handles heat even worse than I do!
I still did my morning rounds, though, and was happy to see more snow crocuses blooming.
I tried to do a head count of the outside cats this morning, and I think I counted 27. I saw Broccoli, which was good. Sad Face was there, which I’m not sure is good. Last night, there was a huge fight in the sun room – there’s tufts of fur all over the floor now. It was between Sad Face and Creamsicle III No sign of Creamsicle this morning.
Unfortunately, I also identified another of the white and greys as female. There’s one that I hear mewing every time I come out to feed them, but I never quite see which cat is making the noise. Well, which one was confirmed, as she was standing there, looking at me, as she mewed – and she was looking decidedly round.
*sigh*
So… Broccoli, Brussel, Sprout, Caramel, Slick (aka: Octomom) and Adam are all cats that had kittens last year, and now we have 2 white and greys that are looking round, and I’m pretty sure one of the tuxedos might be female, though I’m guessing only because I saw cats I know are male, showing extreme interest, about a month ago. So that makes for 8 mamas, with Broccoli already having her litter, possibly 9 if I’m right about that tuxedo.
*sigh*
I’m just assuming Brussel is pregnant. Her fur is so long and fluffy, we can’t actually tell if she’s getting round or not.
After what happened last year, though, it’s entirely possible we won’t actually have that many litters of kittens, though. It was such a bad year for losses. I suppose, in the end, that’s a good thing, as our colony would be much bigger if there hadn’t been, but it was still heartbreaking to find all those little bodies.
At least I can say, the outside cats are earning their keep. We have zero rodent problems!
The inside cats, on the other hand…. 😄😄
So my trip today was specifically for cat supplies, along with a few other things. I went to the Canadian Tire, first. I needed another bag of seed starting mix, so I could pot the pre-germinated melons. I also got three bags of stove pellets for the litters, with an extra bag because I sometimes use it to mulch garden beds.
Then it was off to the Walmart.
Of course, I got a few other things, too, for a grand total of $240.73 after taxes.
The canned cat food is for the inside cats, and the dry food mostly for both inside and outside cats.
Then there was the stuff for us.
The only thing we really needed was the house brand version of Pepto. I remembered we were low on popcorn seasonings, but couldn’t remember which ones (I hardly ever have popcorn, myself), so I got three different flavours. Then I spotted the rice crackers my husband likes, at only 97¢ each, so I got 2 each of 2 different flavours. Then I spotted the house brand teas at 97¢ each, too, so I got an Earl Grey and two Vanilla Rooibos. I was taking my time going through the store, as I didn’t want to leave until I knew the post office would be open on my way home, and found some compostable bags for our compost buckets. They keep moving where those are! Finally, I saw a good price on canned ham and decided to get one for us to try and see if we like it. If we do, then we can start getting more for the pantry, as part of our stock up supplies.
Oh, and I grabbed some bananas, too. We still have fruit at home, but we all like bananas. 😊
So that was my cat food re-stock trip that I would have done later in the week.
Hopefully, my right arm will be feeling better soon. I was going to wear a wrist brace, but the only one we could find was for the left. Somewhere, we have two more, one right handed and one left handed, but do you think anyone can remember what happened to them? I did look at wrist braces while at Walmart, but my wrist isn’t hurting enough to pay that much for one, when we have one somewhere at home!
The weather is finally good. I need to be working outside! I don’t have time for injuries. 🫤
We still have the fans going in the new basement, and I wanted to check on them. Since the new blower fans are aimed at the new basement stairs, I went through the old basement, which gave me a chance to check how the floors are, with all the rain we’ve been having.
There were a few damps spots starting to show through the concrete, so I opened up the floor drain. The weeping tile under the new basement flows through there, to the septic tank, but there’s no P trap between the floor drain to the septic tank. That allows gasses to back up into the basement, unless we cover the hole with plastic, then put the drain cover over it.
I lifted that up and found the drain was full to the top! There also wasn’t any movement in the water that I could see. Clearly, it was draining at least somewhat, or it would have backed up into the basement.
Between the floor drain and the wall, there is another access to the pipe to the septic tank. The cap is highly corroded, so opening it requires loosening a pair of strap fasteners, then fighting it loose.
We have an old hose with one end cut off that we leave permanently attached to the cold water tap the washing machine used to be hooked up to, just for clearing the drains. Usually, I can just shove the hose through, all the way to the septic tank, then turn the water on to clear away any debris. This time, however, it wouldn’t go through. The other thing we keep handy for times like this is an old wire chimney sweep. One end has a brush attached, while the other has the tip bent back on itself, forming a rounded end. The wire is strong enough, while still being flexible, to punch through just about anything. I had to resort to that, to get through whatever was clogging the pipe, and then I could get the hose through, but without turning the water on, yet.
The water in the floor drain moved a bit, but did not drain.
Hmmm….
When we first discovered we had issues here, we had a plumber auger the pipes, and he pulled a matt of roots out from between the two openings. This is when we realized the weeping tile under the new basement had sand getting in, and tree roots were growing through, all the way past the floor drain. This is something else we now check regularly. Lately, I could see small roots coming through, but nothing major.
With the water not moving out of the floor drain, I reached in to pull at a few visible roots.
They just broke.
After several other attempts just lead to more breaking of roots, I took a look through the other opening. At the bottom, where the floor drain joins the main pipe, I could see a few roots. Nothing much. Still, I reached in and pulled.
And pulled.
And pulled again!
I pulled out a mat of roots, with sand stuck in them, just as big as the one the plumber pulled out, some three years ago!
It still didn’t drain much, though.
So, it was back to using the wire from the old chimney sweep some more, then trying to push the hose through.
I knew I finally succeeded when, not only did the floor drain start to empty, the septic pump turned on moments later!
Once the floor drain was done, I turned the water on and started hosing out the drain from both openings.
Hmm… I didn’t think of it until now. I should have run the hose through the other way, towards the new basement, too. That section is probably full of sand and roots. There’s nothing I can do about the roots, but I could wash away the sand, at least.
But not now.
Once everything seemed to be flowing well again, I closed up the overflow access pipe again, then covered the floor drain. After cleaning up and putting things away, though, I was left with a very wet floor!
So I went and checked on the other basement.
I think the carpet on the steps is finally dry, but I left one blower on it, just in case. I took the other one and set it up in the old basement, to dry the floor there.
I so love these new blower fans! Not only are they safer than the old blower, they are much lighter and easier to set up! Plus, they have power cords long enough that I could plug it right into the outlet, and didn’t have to use an extension cord.
We’ve made a point of clearing those drains fairly regularly, but I guess we had a recent growth spurt of roots coming through! There must be some sort of change in in the pipe between the floor drain and the overflow access, for the sand and roots to build up there, even when it seems like there are almost no roots at all when looking through the openings.
I wonder if this was the ultimate cause of our other drainage issues!
I’m glad I found the mess and cleaned things up. There is some sort of bottleneck in the pipe between the basement and the septic tank, roughly 3 or 4 feet from the overflow access, judging by how much hose it takes to hit it. Whatever it causing it feels very hard and doesn’t get any bigger, even after clearing and hosing the pipe repeatedly. The only way to know for sure what the problem is would be to send a camera though the pipe. That section of pipe is cast iron, so I can think of a few things that could be causing it.
Another reason we need to win a lottery jackpot! If, for example, that pipe needs to be replaced, we’d have to break through the concrete floor to access it. With the state of the walls in that basement, there’s a good chance it would compromise them; they are already crumbling. The weeping tile in the other basement needs to be dealt with, but that is so beyond our means to get done, I don’t want to even think about it. Then there’s all the other stuff, much of which is just getting old and worn house after decades of use.
Well, there’s only so much we can do, and there’s no point in worrying about something outside our control.
I’ll just keep telling myself that.
Meanwhile… I think it’s time for a shower, and more laundry!
Today, the plan was to meet my brother to help set up my mother’s air conditioner for the summer. Since I was going to be out anyhow, I planned to go to the grocery store after, and pick up some eggs.
Since I was out anyhow, my daughter asked if she could bribe me into picking up some stuff for her, at which point it was worth the gas to go to the town we usually shop at.
Of course, nothing quite goes to plan, does it? I like it when that turns out to be good, which is how it worked out, today.
My brother and I pre-arranged to meet at a gas station before going to my mother’s together, so I left early to tank up, first. Once we connected, we both headed over to our mother’s place. My SIL was a sweetheart and sent a lunch for us all, with enough extra to feed my mother for at least another day. She is such a saint. She no longer visits my mother, because my mother has been so incredibly cruel to her, but she still loves her and does stuff like this. Which makes her a much better person than me. My mother has literally thrown away food my SIL made for her – frozen in individual meal portions – so she wouldn’t have to cook while recovering from surgery, because she decided it wasn’t “fresh”. She actually gave it to me to give to the cats. It wasn’t until later that I found out where it was from. I’ve tried to bring my own cooking to my mother as well, but got nothing but complaints, so I’ve given up completely. Now, she complains because I spend money on food, which makes me bad with money in her eyes. We can’t win, no matter what we do, but my brother and his wife just keep being so sweet to her! Which is a big part of why I was happy to join him today. Not only do I get to see him, but my mother behaves differently when both of us there, compared to how she treats him when he’s there on his own.
Setting up the AC didn’t take long at all. It’s one of the portable AC’s, not a permanent window one. Basically, it just involved removing the Styrofoam insulation that’s set in the window for the winter, and hooking up the duct from the machine. He’d taken the original window out and replaced it with a board the exact same size, and the window part of the AC set up installed in the middle, then cut 4″ wide Styrofoam insulation to fit on the inside, taped in place, for the winter.
Of course, once it was set up and plugged in, we had to test it. The outlet it’s plugged into has its own switch on the wall, which he taped in the On position, and even wrote “AC” on it, so no one would flick the power off from that outlet.
And… someone did. The tape was still there, but the switch was off. He turned it on while I was next to the plug, which has a reset button on it that I heard beep… but the AC would not turn on. If the switch was pushed in further, it would beep again, but that was it. So there’s clearly a connection problem in there, but not something we could deal with. That’s something my mother should call for a maintenance request for, though she won’t do that, of course. My brother could fix it, another day – and knowing him, he probably will – but technically, he shouldn’t. At least not without getting special clearance from Public Housing.
What we found, however, is that once the tape was put back over the switch, it was enough to hold it in place and keep the power on, and the AC was working fine.
That done, we had lunch, which was way more difficult than it should have been. My mother had delayed her breakfast and made “extra” for us, so she kept trying to make us eat her toast and cheese chunks, while trying to not eat the food my brother brought, because she made breakfast… As we were setting up lunch, my brother went into the fridge and found it almost empty. Oh, yes, my mother says. I’m running out of things… but I’m good for a few more days.
*sigh*
It took both of us to convince her to take advantage of the fact that we were there and could do it right away, instead of having me come back later in the week. So once we finished lunch, I started making a list with her. That’s when she said she wanted bleach, for her bathroom sink.
???
The sink was draining very slowly, so she wanted to use bleach to clear it.
So we explained that bleach won’t fix something like that. She would need a drain cleaner – maybe. My brother went over to take a look, filling the sink to see how bad it was. It turned out to be pretty bad!
Then we took a closer look, and there was all sorts of gunk visible. So my brother got a wire coat hanger, turned it into a small hook, and started pulling stuff out.
While he did that, I did my mother’s grocery shopping.
By the time I got back, the sink was draining like a dream, and my brother was “fixing” her TV. She was complaining about how the picture was too small – she was seeing black borders around the images. The problem turned out to not be the TV or its settings at all. Her cable provider recently upgraded, but not all the channels she gets are HD, so some channels automatically fill her screen, while others don’t. There was nothing wrong with her TV.
Meanwhile, as I put away the groceries, my mother was checking out the receipt and suddenly said, I told you I didn’t want lettuce.
???
I took a look and sure enough, there was iceberg lettuce on there – and it was voided, then her cabbage was listed. The cashier had put in the wrong code, then fixed it. My mother, however, was convinced that she was charged for a head of lettuce because she once got charged for a watermelon she didn’t buy, some 10 years ago (which I’m not sure actually happened; I think she mistook a promotion on the receipt as a sale item, which she once did with shipping I helped her with). So once everything was put away, I got out my phone with its calculator and added it all up. The total I got, minus the lettuce, matched the subtotal on the receipt. When to told her this, she gave me a look we all know too well. She didn’t believe me. She then tried a different tactic and implied the change she got was wrong. Well, I’d given her her change with the receipt, and it was still on the table, so I added that up and it matched the receipt, too.
You’d think that would have made her happy.
It didn’t.
Instead, she now thinks that not only is the store cheating her, but I’m lying to her about it.
*sigh*
Still, we dropped that.
As always, my mother tried to bring up all sorts of things in the most negative way, even trying to twist things to make it so that her behaviour is not a problem, but that everyone else is – including a nasty dig at my brother’s wife in the process.
*sigh*
My brother was way more gracious than I would have been, by that point!
My brother had told her yesterday that he couldn’t stay long, as he had an event to get ready for later today, but as we were getting ready to go, my mother kept trying to make us have tea, or eat something, or… I had already told her I needed to run errands, too, and she started giving me a hard time about how I’m always running errands. I told her, if I’m going to be going out anyway, I want to do as many things as I can, so I’m not going out several times a week. Of course, we’d already been there for a couple of hours, so it’s not like we were rushing off. Then she tried to make me take a little jar of “keys” home. Why? Well, she doesn’t have room for them. I looked in the jar and didn’t see any keys. Instead, I saw a mix of all kinds of objects; the sort of stuff you’d find in a junk drawer. Any keys that might have been in there were completely buried. I asked her, why are you giving me your junk? Oh, there’s lots of room at the farm.
*sigh*
That’s the problem, I told her. There’s too much stuff at the farm, including stuff people gave to her and Dad 50 or 60 years ago!
So she tried to tell me that I could sell the metal to a scrap dealer.
…
At that point, my brother stepped in to end the conversation, because it just wasn’t worth trying to explain it to her.
I didn’t take her jar of junk.
Then we both had to leave.
Which just made my mother angry, saying we were leaving because we didn’t like what she was saying (at that point, she was into a completely different rant about a topic unrelated to any of us), and we were like, no, it’s time to go, that’s all!
Sadly, while that was true, we were both glad to be gone. I’ve tried to explain to her that her behavior towards people drives them away, and she just excuses it with “I just say what’s on my mind.”
*sigh*
While my brother had to rush off to get home, I was able to make a quick stop at the hardware store, where I finally picked up a bale of peat moss for the garden, first. Then it was off to town and for what was supposed to be just a few items.
Ha!
I didn’t get a picture of what my $137.99 looked like, though. Just the receipt.
My daughter had requested the energy drinks and coffee creamer. The cases of energy drinks were quite a bit cheaper than most of their sales, so I got two. Usually, it’s just maybe 50¢ off per case, but this time they were $1.30 off per case.
My husband requested the Coke, which was also on sale, so I got two 12 packs of those. Not much of a sale, but better than nothing. He requested the Sweet Chili chips and corn chips, which were not on sale… good grief, they are expensive these days! That came out of his budget, not the main budget, though. 😄
The flats of eggs were not on sale, but they are about 3 dollars per flat cheaper than at my mother’s grocery store – if they have any flats at all.
Pierogi were on sale as well, so I got a couple of bags.
One of the big savings was the butter. I haven’t seen butter for less than $5 each in four years! The other was the chicken, which was a buy one, get one free, deal. It was a mix and match option, but I chose two whole chickens instead of parts and pieces.
So while I ended up buying more than expected, we’ve got more butter and extra chickens in the freezer, and that’s always a good thing!
Once I got home and everything was put away, I really needed to just sit down and decompress for a while! Visits with my mother – even good ones like today (yes, this was a good visit!) – really take a lot out of me.
While I was out and about, we got hit with passing rain several times, so things are wetter out there now, then when I left this morning. The next two days should be cleared and warmer, so I’m hoping to finally get some work down outside – including working some of that peat into various prepped beds, and finally planting my potatoes! I’m hoping to get another bed of peas, spinach and carrots planted, too.
The rain has delayed getting other beds ready, but most things won’t be planted until after June 2, so we’ve got the rest of May to get those done, and build new ones.
The Re-Farmer 