Today, I finally made it into the city to do our Costco shopping for the month. Normally, we would have done it more than a week ago. Thankfully, we did get to do our stocking up at other stores, so we weren’t running out of things. I just prefer to get it over with, earlier.
I didn’t want to do it on the weekend, though. I had stuff to do that require a lot of time, so I did my morning rounds quickly and headed out as soon as I could.
This is $481 worth of stuff looks like, including the Pizza Pops for my daughter that she sent me funds to cover. I didn’t get everything I would have gotten, because that already put me over the grocery budget for this trip.
Just to be clear, our “grocery” budget covers food, household cleaners, paper products and cat food, and other miscellaneous items.
Everything has gone up in price.
There are two 11.6kg bags of dry cat food, which now costs $34.99 each, and two 9kg bags of their house brand cat food at $28.49 each. The case of wet cat food now costs $33.99
I meant to get our usual 10 pounds of butter for the month, even though we still have a couple of pounds in the freezer from last month, thanks to also picking up some ghee. I accidentally grabbed 11, and when they counted and found an extra, I just kept it. House brand butter at Costco is now $4.99 each. There’s a package of AA batteries in there, mostly for the trail cams, as well as a 60 pack of eggs, toilet paper, all purpose cleaner, a 2 pack of lemon juice, peanut butter, a couple of jars of mayonnaise, a 2pk of baking powder, a 3 pack of hot dogs, their big package of Old Cheddar cheese, 6 pack of pasta, and a can of pink lemonade powdered mix to try. One thing in there we don’t normally get is a 3 pk of cream cheese, for a recipe we want to try. Some of this is for the pantry, stocking up on the assumption we’ll be stuck for at least 2 months in the winter, but not much.
It’s a ridiculously small Costco shop for the money, but that was what the budget allowed for. I did make a quick stop at a nearby Superstore to pick up a couple of bags their $5 buns, and a non-Costco size of paper towels, a specific snack my husband requested, and a sandwich and drink for me to ingest on the trip home. With that one, I at least had enough loyalty points accumulated that I was able to get what would have been $38 for $8, instead.
The biggest item on the list is always the cat food. We really need to reduce the number of cats we’re feeding!
That done, my afternoon was spent working on making crab apple sauce. It took 2 hours to remove the stems and flower ends, as well as any damage, from the apples remaining in the one bin from the other day. We still have one more bin to do something with, as well as the bucket of apples I’d set aside for my mother. I called her about it, hoping to arrange a time to come over with them, but she declined them. Aside from the apples she picked here, apples had been left in the lobby of her building for the residents. She is all done with apples now. I was hoping she’d enjoy having apples from here that were fully ripe. Ah, well.
The apples took a long time to prep, but they sure cooked down fast! I’ll do a separate post about it later, as it’s not done yet. I’ve asked the girls to give it a taste and add as much sugar as they like, then cook the sauce down, and tomorrow morning I’ll can them while they’re still hot. I don’t actually like apple sauce all that much, but the girls requested it, so it’s on them to get it to their taste. 😊
I don’t know that I want to make more apple sauce with the rest. We shall see.
Unfortunately, my hands are now knackered again. My finger joints are really hurting. As least they’re not so stiff I can’t type, but … ouch.
Arthritis sucks.
Even my elbows and shoulders are giving me a hard time. I did go out and do some work around the yard this evening, but not enough to warrant that kind of pain.
Ah, well. I suppose I should just pain killer up and deal. 😕
Since transplanting the Korean Pine in the outer yard – and promptly losing one that got dug up by a critter – I’ve been wanting to find a more secure way to protect them, but also to make them more visible. With the possibility of cows being allowed into the outer yard, that become more of a priority.
This is what I put together while doing my evening rounds.
I used chicken wire salvaged from the garden row covers we made last year. We’ve got some square buckets, and I used one to work out where to cut the wire. After the cut wire was made into a ring, I used the bucket as a sort of form to square off one end, then fold the edge inwards to make a sort of top with an opening in the middle.
We’ve got some high visibility paint that I use to mark rocks in the yard, so I can see them through the tall grass when mowing. Just the thing to make the chicken wire visible – on its own, it pretty much disappears against the grass!
They will dry overnight, and in the morning the girls will place them around the Korean pine. Along with the one that got dug up by a critter, another on just up and died for some reason, so we are down to 4 of the 6 we planted. I’d like to not loose any more of them, if possible! Hopefully, these cages will help protect them from critters, at least. Tomorrow morning, the girls will take them out and put them over the saplings, in place of the plastic cloche they used this morning, when the calves got into the outer yard. Some ground staples to hold them in place and, hopefully, they should work out.
It was a gorgeous afternoon and evening yesterday. Not only a pleasant temperature, but even the mosquitoes weren’t as bad. I didn’t want to go back inside when I was done what I needed to do!
One of the things I did was re-do the shelf shelter for the cats. I noticed that the little kittens have been climbing all the way to the top shelf, which was actually use to store stuff, and have been snoozing in a corner, where I’d stacked some smaller pieces of rigid insulation.
The insulation over the bottom two shelves were getting ratty, so I decided to empty the whole thing, give it – and some of the insulation pieces – a hose-down and redo it.
Including making a next in the corner of the top shelf for the kittens, even though it meant not being able to fit everything back in again!
The sheets of insulation lining the bottom shelves were used again, since they fit the best and, aside from a few edges, still intact. When covering the fronts, I left the openings wider than before. When startled, the cats would dash out, catching on the edges of the insulation, sometimes hitting them hard enough to pull them right off the nails holding them to the shelf. I decided to try reducing the height of the openings. I want it open enough for them to easily get in and out, but small enough to let less of the weather in. Hopefully, they won’t get ripped right out by a startled cat!
As for the top shelf, I tucked a small pedestal plant stand in the corner and used it to support two levels with the rigid insulation for the kittens to lie on. There’s more space in front with an insulated floor, and there is insulation along the side and back walls, too. An extra piece across the front, and the kittens have their own little cubby hole to settle in.
Now I just need to clean up and redo the outside of the shelf. It had been wrapped in plastic to protect the wood from snow and rain, with an extended “roof” of rigid insulation, but the wind tore the plastic to shreds, and the cats have broken up the insulation. I’d like to find something sturdier to replace them with.
After I had emptied, swept and hosed down the inside, I had to give it time to dry before continuing, so I started another project.
A new cover for the rain barrel.
A couple of years ago, we made covers for the rain barrels out of window screen mesh and hula hoops. One for the barrel at the corner by the sun room, and the other for the barrel we fill with the host, at the far corner of the garden. The covers were partly to keep debris out, but also to make sure no critters fell into the barrels.
After a couple of years, however, the plastic hula hoops became brittle and started to crack. The cover for the garden barrel had been stored in the old garden shed for the winter, and it looks like something chewed holes in the mesh, too.
The sun room barrel’s cover is held in place with a board weighed down with bricks. When the barrel is getting full enough that more rain would cause it to overflow, the board and bricks hold the rain diverter in place.
Not long ago, I found the cover and its mesh broken up. Something had jumped onto it or something. The mesh had torn, but thankfully whatever did it, did not end up trapped in the water. Then we heard a commotion one night, and I came out to find the board and its weights, and the rain diverter, all knocked off the barrel, and the cover damaged even further. I put the board and its weights back, then found some pieces of rigid insulation to cover the rest of the barrel, with weights to hold them in place, to ensure no critter could access the water, until a new cover could be made. Even that ended up being pusher around a bit, as if some critter was trying to get at the water below – even though we have several bowls of fresh water critters can drink from. A new cover had to be made quickly.
Which is what I did while the shelf shelter was drying.
The materials used are much sturdier!
I considered using some chicken wire, but the openings are too large and the wire too easily broken. I went with some half inch hardware cloth I had, instead. The hoop is the same PEXX tubing I used to make arches to support netting over the old kitchen garden beds you can see in the background.
I used the barrel itself to measure the size needed to make the hoop, then cut a square of the hardware cloth to size, removing excess mesh from the corners to make it closer to “round”. The hardware cloth is a lot stiffer than chicken wire, but the extra strength is, I think, well worth it being such a pain to wrap around the hoop. Definitely glad for gardening gloves! The last step was to use a hammer on the underside to get the mesh right up against the hoop as tightly as I could.
There was, however, one problem.
The top of the barrel is not round. It’s more of an oval shape, and a wonky oval at that. The old hula hoop I’d used before was quite a bit larger than the top of the barrel, so it didn’t matter, but this hoop was cut for a more snug fit. The less sticking out, the less likely a critter will knock it off, even with the weights. I thought I’d still made it large enough to fit over, but the barrel’s shape was just too wonky.
I ended up tying some paracord around it as tight as I could, then used a metal tent peg to twist the cord even tigher.
Yeah. That bend up piece of metal was a tent peg.
Between the paracord pulling the top of the barrel into a more round shape, and the hammering of the hardware cloth tight against the hoop, I was finally able to get it in place. The board and weights were added to support the diverter when we need it, and the extra brick at the back, just in case something knocks the board off again, so the whole thing doesn’t flip off.
I might still add window screen mesh to this, since things like small frogs or insects, as well as small debris, can get through the half inch mesh. As it is right now, a cat – or even a racoon – could jump onto the cover and it’ll hold their weight without issue. The PEXX tubing will also last a lot longer, too.
All in all, I think it worked out rather well for using stuff I got for other projects! 😁 It didn’t even take that long to do. It took long enough for the washed out shelf to dry, at least.
So we now have a shelf shelter for the cats all cleaned out and ready for winter – on the inside, at least – and a cat and other critter proof cover for the rain barrel.
I actually made this video shortly after we got the camera, using the still-new-to-me Movavi software. There was a new update when I opened the software, which I downloaded first. I made the video – disappointed to discover music files I had been using before had been completely replaced with new ones, but everything worked fine.
Until it was time to export the finished video to a format that could be uploaded, and I kept getting error messages.
After many failures, I sent a message to customer support that never got answered. I also saw in their beta community that others were having this problem, and the recommended solutions did nothing.
Today, I opened the software to find a new update. I downloaded and installed the update, and now it’s working just fine again!
Since this was made, the camera has been moved slightly, but that’s about it. So far, everything is working just fine.
My younger daughter has been slowly working on cleaning up the spring moisture mess in the basement for the last while, but also just being down there to stay in the cool.
Today, I found out she has been having fun with my wood carving tools, which I have not been able to use myself for quite some time. Her first experimentation was to finish off a fork I’d started some time ago, but stopped because the wood really sucked to work with. This is her second project, and her first made from scratch.
She make a shawl pin for me! Something to use to keep my reading jacket closed, instead of the hair pins I’ve been using.
I absolutely adore the teeny little frog she carved into the top!
What a fantastic job she did, and I absolutely love it!!
Well, we had our visit from my mother and sister. I wasn’t sure what time they’d be coming out, so I took advantage of things; after unlocking the gate, I got the lawn mower out and started with the sides of the driveway outside the gate, then began working my way back. Little by little, I’m trying to reclaim areas we normally would have mowed, but got too overgrown with all the flooding and rain we got. Some areas will simply not be done this year, but there are areas in the outer yard I really need to clear. Using the scythe is no longer an option for most of it; the hay has simply been too flattened by the wind, and the blade would be gliding over more than cutting.
I had gotten most of the driveway done by the time they arrived. It turned out they stopped somewhere else along the way. My sister gave me two big bags of cucumbers. I didn’t get a close look at them until after they were gone, and they are HUGE! Too big to pickle without slicing them, first, but definitely enough to pickle, if we want to.
They immediately started with a tour of the yard and gardens, with my mother going straight for the Red Kuri squash hanging on the chain link fence. They are pumpkin orange right now, and she thought they were ripe already. I told her they will be a much deeper, almost red colour when they are ready, which is when she asked what I could already see she was shooting for – she wanted one for herself! I’m actually quite surprised, as she does not like to try new things (in fact, ever since we’ve been able to garden after moving here, she has been chastising me for growing things that she never grew!). These, however, are very cute, so maybe that made the difference. 😉 She even asked how to prepare them. That was an encouraging start to the visit!
As we made our way around to the beds with the late garlic, yellow pear tomatoes and kulli corn, she went straight for the garlic bed, then asked for a couple! They are smaller than they should be, but very close to being ready to harvest, so I dug up the ones that looked the most mature. When I went to wash them off with the hose (no need to cure, since she’ll be using them right away), I decided to pop inside and grabbed a small plastic bin, trimmed the garlic and added a couple of the tomatoes we have ripening in the old kitchen, and some of the beans I’d harvested this morning.
By the time I came out again, they had moved to the cherry tree. There are still cherries on it, and my mother was very insistent that I must harvest every single one of them. I’d already told her we’d picked lots, and added that we were okay with leaving some for the birds, but she started picking what she could reach herself. She just couldn’t bear to leave them. My sister and I ended up helping her until she had at least some to take home, though I doubt she’ll be able to eat any of them, even though I tossed away the worst looking ones.
As we got closer to the main garden area, she saw the one crab apple tree that is doing well, with apples that are looking quite red now. We are planning to wait maybe another week before starting to harvest them. She said she was going to go over to take a look, so I went and gathered some onions of different types for her and cleaned them up for the bin I prepared for her to take home. By the time I was done, she was at the tree – and loading up the basket in her walker! When I caught up to her, she was going on about how I needed to pick all the apples. LOL
My sister commented on how few crab apple trees are left. There are three new dead ones that need to be cleaned up, two of which don’t look dead because the suckers growing from the bases are so big. Then there’s the big one I want to take down, because it’s sickly, and I want to protect that one good tree that’s left. By the time it’s all cleaned up, we might be down to just two crab apple trees. 😞
While picking apples, my mother got curious about what she was seeing at the trellises, so we wandered over. Taking the smoothest route for her walker meant going past the silver buffalo berry, now mulched with wood chips. It took both of us to explain to her that the tiny saplings I was trying to show her were going to be berry bushes, and that we planted them just this past spring. She seemed to think they had come through the wood chips on their own, for some reason!
It was nice to go through the trellises with my sister there to comment on how she always used trellises, especially for peas, and how it’s so much easier to harvest with them. Using trellises was one of the things my mother kept giving me a hard time about, because she never used them – but she never gave my sister a hard time in her decades of gardening on her farm!
Going through the other beds, we got to talking about just how much water we had all over, and the effect it had on our gardening. In all the years my mother gardened in this area, neither of them remember there ever being standing water in it. Considering my mother gardened in this spot since before I was born, that’s more than 50 years they can go back over in their memories!
As we continued on, they both commented on our reddening tomatoes – my sister’s tomatoes are still green. Even though I’d already added ripe tomatoes for my mother to take home, she wanted a couple more of the “long ones” – the Cup of Moldova – to take home, so I grabbed some of the ripest ones. It was too much for her to get to with her walker, but my mother was quite impressed by how our one giant pumpkin that’s turning colour is looking. The second one hasn’t started changing colour, yet, so it took her a while before she could see that one, too.
Then we made our way around to the old kitchen garden, where they were curious about the beds covered with netting – and why. With kittens running around all over, they didn’t have much trouble understanding the need. 😁 My sister was happy to see that I’d transplanted mint into some of the retaining wall blocks, when I mentioned I am trying to get rid of the rest that’s taking over the garden. It turns out the original mint plants these are from are from my late grandmother!
They both got to see other flooding damage in the drowned out lilacs by the storage house, but were happy that the grapes have survived. When we made full circle and my mother sat for a rest, we got to see more kittens running around – and my mother actually started calling to them! Not that these ones are trained to come when called, like our barn cats where trained to come for some fresh milk. I was, however, able to pick up some socialized kittens, and my mother asked to hold them! It seems she is okay with cats when they are outside. Just not inside! 😄
While my mother rested, my sister went into the old workshop that is now being used as a warehouse, jammed full of my parents’ stuff. She wanted to take their old photographs, so they don’t end up damaged in there. There was something in there my mother wanted me to bring out for her to take home, so I did that and left my sister to it, while I visited with my mother a bit more.
Then it started to rain.
I asked if she wanted to come in, but she said it wasn’t too bad yet. It was enough that I went and put away the lawn mower, though! When it started to rain harder, I asked if she wanted to at least go into the sun room, but that was when my sister came back, carrying a box covered with a vinyl table cloth she’d found in one of the other boxes, to protect the photographs inside, asking my mother if she was ready to leave.
So they left soon after. All in all, the visit turned out okay. There were a few times my mother tried to make digs at me, one of which went right over my head. I knew she was making a dig, but there was clearly something behind it that she thought I knew. I have no idea what it could have been. So it was a failed dig! 😄
It continued to rain for some time after they left but, once there was a break, I headed outside again to make some adjustments to the new trail cam. After checking the files this morning, I saw the position had to be changed. I want the camera to cover the space in front of the sign, without having the frame filled with the back of the sign itself. With the wide angle lens, there’s a sweet spot I need to find, between the sign on one side, and the post it’s mounted on, on the other. Because the dimensions of this camera are larger than the previous one, that required moving the mounting plate completely.
Here is was before, with the mounting plate attached in the exact same spot as the old plate, which was also damaged from when the previous camera was ripped off.
Whoever took it could have just unscrewed the camera from the mount, without damaging anything at all.
Before changing the location of the mounting plate, though, I took the camera inside (away from the mosquitoes!) and adjusted the time, so it’s no longer 12 hours behind. I hope. I thought I got it right the first time, so we’ll see.
Here is the new set up. It’s just far enough away from the post that it’s no longer in the way of positioning the camera where I want it to be, but also close enough to add extra support to the camera. As tightly as I’ve made the various adjusters, the camera is top heavy, and it wouldn’t take much for it to just flop over.
The mount is now a bit lower. Hopefully, that will work out. The main potential issue I foresee is that it might get triggered by blowing grasses now. I do have the sensor on medium, rather than high, sensitivity, though – a setting that wasn’t available on any of our previous cameras.
There is one other thing this camera does that none of the others do. They all include the date and time in the images. The newer camera also included moon phases and temperatures in Celsius and Fahrenheit. This one all that, plus a battery life indicator. Right now, it reads the batteries at 100%. That will be so handy! The other cameras had bar indicators on their screens, not in the images. With the older cameras, the batteries could last a long time on one bar. With the one that disappeared, it didn’t use up the batteries as quickly, but when the batteries did finally get low, it would proomptly just die – and when that happened, not only did the batteries need to be changed, but I’d end up having to reset the date and time, too.
It should be interesting to see how much the solar will prolong battery life.
Now that the adjustments have been made, I’ll see what needs to be tweaked after switching out the memory cards, tomorrow. Theoretically, I could use BlueTooth to connect with it and see the files, but I really don’t want to be standing outside with the mosquitoes while fussing with my phone and looking through files! 😂
Oh, there is one thing different about the files I discovered. I have it set to take stills, then video. With the previous camera, after uploading the files, I could just go through all of them in chronological order. This one stores the video and photo files in separate folders. I can see the advantage of that, but I’m not quite sure if I like it or not.
I’ll get use to it, I’m sure.
So far, though, the camera seems to be working out fine. If it continues to work out well, it would be worthwhile to get a second one for the driveway, since the camera there is starting to have issues, and I’m not sure how much longer it’s going to last.
*sigh*
That’s a lot of time and money going towards having multiple cameras, all because of our friendly neighbourhood vandal.
Ah, well. At least we sometimes get cool files of deer and awesome farming equipment going by, too! 😁
While waiting for the RCMP to call me back, a thought occurred to me, so I went to the post office.
Sure enough, I found what may have been the trigger for this.
In the mail was a letter from the Court of Queen’s Bench. The judge’s decision on our vandal’s civil suit against me.
It was dismissed.
He now owes me $500 in court costs.
I expect him to appeal. He would have picked up his mail as usual on Friday, and had the decision festering in his head for a couple of days, so it could easily have triggered him to get drunk and do something stupid last night.
I don’t know that I’m happy with why the judge dismissed the case, though I suppose she had to respond to his claim, not my defense. She basically said that he did not provide a comprehensive list of items (noting that he’d said there was “too much to list”) with a market value, such as an appraisal, included. Basically, if he can come up with a list and attach dollar amounts to things, he can include that in his appeal.
In the papers he presented to the judge, he had photos of vehicles he claimed were his (one of which is already on his property, and at least one other was given to my dad by my brother, and is not his), and they were older photos. Photos taken while many of the vehicles still look like they’re worth something. They don’t look anywhere near that good anymore. Even as scrap value, the longer they sit there, rusting away, the less they’re worth. In his picture of the post pounder, you can’t even tell what it is, because it was covered in junk. I’m the one who cleaned it up and have been trying to protect it from the elements. That was built by my late brother, so there is no market equivalent.
Still, I can see our vandal sitting there, stewing, coming up with a list of everything he thinks is his, or believes is here, and how much he can say I need to pay him for it. He could have found a way to prove things were his, and I would have let him take it. Heck, I would have been good with claims being corroborated by my brother or my mother, but in trying to do so, I found that he was claiming some things are his that they say are not. But he doesn’t actually want the stuff. He wants the money – and to destroy me.
Ah, well. I guess I “won”, but I don’t think it’s over.
Whatever he ends up doing, I can easily see the decision being enough to put him out of control, getting drunk, and deciding to do something about the one camera he could actually reach. I honestly can’t think of any logical alternative to how the camera disappeared, and I’ve been trying. I would really prefer to believe that some animal dragged it off, but… no. That just doesn’t fit.
No matter.
I called the RCMP again. It’s a good thing I did, because the clerk isn’t in today, so no one saw my message. I’ve filed a report, but there’s really nothing they can do about it. There are no witnesses, and the only evidence would be in the missing camera’s memory card. It’s not like I have a camera on my camera!
But it’s reported and on file, so there is at least that. Who knows. When the clerk comes in and gets my message, I might still get a call from a constable later.
On top of that, I got a call from the tree guy. The chippers will not be coming today, as we are expected to get rain this afternoon. Possibly heavy thunderstorms. Which I don’t expect to actually hit us, but we’ll see. He will call me again, the next time they have a few hours available.
On the plus side, I got a wonderful surprise in the mail. A big, heavy box was waiting for me.
M, you are such a sweetie! Thank you so much. The cats will love the treats and, as soon as I’m done this, I’m going to start going through those old books! 🥰 You are awesome!
My original plan for this afternoon was to continue mowing, but I decided it was going to get too hot to be walking back and for for hours in the sun.
So I decided cutting back trees for hours was somehow better. 😁
Oh, to be fair, pruning the trees did allow me to spend more time in the shade than if I were mowing.
Except when I was hauling branches to the chipping pile.
Ah, well. The job needed to be done! It did eventually get too hot, though. We were supposed to reach our high of 25C/77F at 6pm. Instead we hit it by 2pm. As I write this, we’re at a humidex of 27C/81F. Definitely not good for me to be outside doing manual labour.
I didn’t even think to take “before” pictures, as I’ve taken so many pictures of the area for other reasons. This is what the area in front of the outhouse looks like now.
The arrows point to where two large branches were cut away. They were in the path of that big, dead spruce tree, when it gets cut down. There is now a clear gap for the spruce to fall. Removing them did take out some of the shade, but this is an elm. It’ll sent up new branches in no time, and they will grow in dense and bushy, so there will be share here again, soon enough.
These are the cut down pieces of the second branch I cut away from that tree. Both of them were about the same size, so there was about twice what you see in the photos that got broken down before they were manageable for hauling away. There were also quite a few dead branches that got cleared out, too.
There is another elm nearby that has many dead branches on it, but it won’t be cleaned up just yet. The way it’s leaning, the pieces might fall on the garlic and yellow pear tomato beds. It can wait until those beds have been harvested.
Once everything was hauled away and cleaned up, I was quite ready to go inside, but decided to clear some of the branches overhanging the sunchokes and asparagus beds. Then a few more… and a few more…
I did finally stop, though there are still more branches to take down. It was just getting too hot, and I can’t handle heat like I could in my younger days! I did move the gate and some old branches that were too big for our chipper to go around the other side of the chain link fence and clear the tall grass away, too.
When the tree guys come with their industrial chipper, they’ll have more than just rotting branches that have been sitting for years to chip. 😊
My awesome, wonderful, lovely husband bought me a new toy that arrived in today’s mail!
Isn’t it beautiful?
I know, shortly after we moved here, I saw a draw knife in one of the sheds. I remember using it when I was a kid, stripping bark off of spruce logs. It was old and rusty when I found it, but I’m pretty sure it was still solid.
Now, I can find no trace of it. It’s just gone. I’m still positive I saw it, though. I just can’t remember where!
So my husband bought me a new one!
It’s really solid and wonderfully sharp. My husband made a quick and dirty leather sheath for the blade. Just a strip of heavy leather wrapped around it with snaps to hold it in place. He says he’ll make me a prettier one, later.
When I went to unlock the gate, the renter’s cows (and bull) were in the old hay yard. The grass is too high to see, but it looks like there is still water in the low spot where you can see a bunch of them gathered. They did seem to be drinking, rather than grazing.
I just love the renter’s cows. They make me smile!
I left very early for my court date with our vandal today. I did forget on detail until I went over the paperwork again last night. He’s not suing me for $10,000. He’s suing me for $13,000.
I’m glad I left as early as I did. Aside from stopping to get gas on the way out, when I got to my usual route to a place I knew I could park without time limits, I found the road was torn up. There was only 1 lane of traffic, away from where I wanted to go, and it was several blocks before I was able to take a turn back to the main road and go around another way.
When I got there, I did have a bit of a heart attack when the security guard told me there was no court today. ???!!! The court office was open, though, so I went in to ask. At first, it was confirmed: no court today. Then I showed her my case file and she said, “oh, yes. There’s court for you.”
🤯
Because this was a civil suit, it’s Court of Queens Bench – a federal court, not a provincial court. When I filed for a restraining order against our vandal, it was all provincial, and in a different court room. The court rooms are just down the hall from each other, though. There are some benefits to small city courts!
After some time, I could hear our vandal’s voice, talking to the security guards at the door. When he and his witnesses came around the corner, they saw me sitting by the doors and just stopped, taking seats at the other end of the hall.
He had said he would have two, then four, witnesses, but three were there. His wife, of course. A mutual friend whose voice I recognized, and another guy whose voice I could not recognise at all. They had bright windows behind them, so I couldn’t see him. In the end, it turned out to be a neighbour of ours that we both grew up with. Not someone I would have expected to be there, though.
No matter.
Because he was the claimant, when we finally got before the judge (about 15-20 minutes past the scheduled time), he got to talk first, with an opening statement, then calling in his witnesses, one at a time.
The first thing the judge asked him, though, was how he came up with the $13,000 he was after. He rambled about how much he thought things were worth, and that some things had sentimental value, but in the end it came down to “that’s what I think it’s worth”.
As for his opening statement, my goodness, he rambled on. Then stopped. Then rambled some more. Then stopped. Then rambled some more. The judge was good at keeping a poker face, but even she was starting get that “are you done yet?” look.
In a nutshell, everything is my fault. I am the “ringleader” in trying to destroy his life. I have cameras because I want him in jail. I locked the gate because I want to keep him from his stuff. I call the police on him, over and over and over, and the police came to see him, like, THREE times, and he was fingerprinted and everything. I pressed charges for no reason (his vandalizing the gate was him “opening” the gate). I applied for a restraining order for no reason. I was using the police and the courts against him because I’m so very mean and don’t want him to have his stuff. The farm’s ownership went to my brother “behind [his] back” and “in secret”. He still seems to think he has some sort of claim to the land itself, not just the stuff he claims is his. Lots of rambling about how he and my late brother did SO much to take care of the farm, and how he went to auctions and stuff to buy things that were stored on the farm because he didn’t have room out of the elements to start it, etc. My other siblings did nothing. It was just him and my late brother. And I’m mean for not letting him onto the property.
Then his witnesses came in, one at a time, and basically said the same thing. He did lots of stuff on the farm. He helped my dad a lot. He had lots of stuff on the farm. My dad wanted the farm to go to him. !!! He should be able to go onto the farm and take “his” stuff at any time. His wife even tried to make it sound like he brought his own tools over here and left them, if my father didn’t have a particular tool. Which is hilarious, because when we moved here, all the functional tools and supplies were gone.
Funny. Other than passing mentions, it was as if my mother, who actually owned the land when we moved here, didn’t exist.
The witnesses really didn’t make his case. But then, he doesn’t have one.
When I finally got to respond, it was pretty basic. I don’t claim ownership of the property or anything on it. It was my mother’s, and now it’s my brothers. He has submitted additional documentation that I wasn’t able to go over in full until later, but it didn’t add to his case. I submitted the Statement of Declaration, sign by myself, my brother and my mother, explaining why we moved out here and what my role here is – and that includes keeping things from disappearing. Because of some of the things he said, I included the transcript of a phone message he left with my brother that basically admitted he took all that stuff, and that he was going to keep suing us, even if it meant he had to sell his farm and be homeless. With lots of swearing. I also had a transcript of my dad leaving a message with my brother, shortly before he died, saying he wanted my brother to take over the farm.
My affidavit included an old email I’d sent back in 2018 to our vandal and my family where, among other things, I’d told him that if he could take stuff if he could provide proof of ownership. He never responded.
I also had the chance to say what he actually did to the gate, and that I had cameras because we found locks glued shut and the barn doors boarded up. I mentioned I have a disabled husband, and if we needed to suddenly go to the hospital, that would be a major issue. I also had the chance to mention I have no income; we live on my husband’s disability, so what does he think he can get from me?
There was lots more, of course. As expected, without someone there to keep him on a short leash, he stepped in it a few times. One of them was when he said I was using the police and courts against him and got away with it with a sob story that had the “judge wrapped around [my] fingers”. That was one moment where the judge’s poker face broke, ever so fleetingly.
Oh, one other time I think he stepped in it. He started rambling on about how this farm is apparently “worth a fortune”. And the house, too. Ha! The numbers he threw out wouldn’t even buy a “handyman’s special” house in the city. His own place, and all the stuff he’s got on it, is probably worth three times as much, if not more.
Also, apparently I have ruined him financially, because I pressed charges against him and riled a restraining order, and he had to pay a lawyer $4000. But he’s “financially ruined” because of me? Even on his pension, not to mention the golden handshake he got, he’s probably bringing in more than my husband’s disability payments, and if it isn’t, his wife’s job certainly is. But he was clearly very obsessed with the monetary value of this property, and that fact that I “control” it.
We used to be so close, years ago, but now his hatred of me is palpable. It’s remarkable.
What’s done is done, though. It’s now up to the judge. She will make her decision and we will get it in the mail within 30 days.
I am glad for that, as it means she’ll have a chance to go over all the documentation. Even after going over the stack of papers he submitted (and it was quite a stack, though mostly of photos), he still doesn’t have a case. It all comes down to the fact that 1) I don’t claim ownership over any of it and 2) he had plenty of opportunity to take his stuff, and he didn’t. It’s not like I gave him a time limit on that.
She explained at the end that if she rules in his favour, it would be for the $13,000 plus potentially the court costs, and did he want to include that? He asked what that meant, and it could be up to $500 more.
If she rules in my favour, she asked about court costs, and I said yes, too. So I might get awarded up to $500 if she rules in my favour.
It should be interesting to see what her ruling will say. Whichever direction she goes, if we don’t agree with it, we have up to 30 days to file an appeal.
*sigh*
I find myself wondering how it ever got to this point, but then I see how he still sees himself as a victim, taking no responsibility for the consequences of his own actions, and realize… it got here because for the first time in his life, someone actually stood up to him, and he can’t handle it. So he escalated it.
I think the judge could recognize that, though. We shall see.
The Re-Farmer 