Uncategorized

It’s a bit blustery out there!

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

This time of year is always so disorienting. I’m sitting here, thinking how late it must be, and that I should probably be getting ready for bed, only to look at the clock and find it’s only 6pm. We’ve been fully dark for a while, now!

And windy.

We’re not actually getting a lot of snowfall right now, but every now and then, the garage cam gets completely blinded with blowing snow!

It was several hours later than predicted, but we did eventually hit the expected high of -6C/21F, though not for long – and with that wind, it certainly didn’t feel that way. What’s interesting is seeing how the forecast has changed for next week, and we’re now being told to expect two days with highs of 0C/32F.

Looking at the 30 year records, our average temperature for today is 0C/32F for the high, and -8C/18F for the low. Our 30 year record high was set in 2009 and 10C/50F, while the record low was -16C/3F. We also had a record snowfall of 85.3mm (about 3 1/2 inches) set in 2010. So we really don’t have much to complain about.

Still, it’s a good day to stay inside and catch up on my crochet with a hot cup of tea!

That is, if the cats will let me. I opened my door and let them in. I have 5 cats sleeping on my bed, Nosencrantz is hiding in her shelf, Butterscotch is sleeping on a different shelf, up near the ceiling, and as I try to type this, Fenrir keeps rubbing her lies on my fingers and bashing my hands with her forehead! Fenrir is one of the biggest reasons we have been keeping that door closed, as she usually is the first to try and go after Nosencrantz, but she sure seems to miss stretching out on my chest while I’m on my computer, and making it difficult to type!

The Re-Farmer

I don’t think we’re gonna make it…

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

We’re supposed to reach a high of -6C/21F today.

According to this, we should already be at -8C/18F as I write this, but we’re -12C/9F instead, with a wind chill of -19C/-2F. That wind is BITTER out there! I strongly suspect we’re not going to reach the predicted high today! Especially not with tomorrow supposed to be even colder.

But look ahead to Wednesday! We’re looking at 0C/32F! In one of my apps that has long range forecasts into December, there’s even a 3C/37F in the forecast!

I am good with this. The furnace is already turning on and staying on way too often, even with these mild temperatures (and yes, I did turn it down a bit. We just have a very inefficient house).

No word from the roofers yet. My brother is going to reach out to them. He wants to be here when they are, which means booking time off work, so the more advance notice the better, but it’s so weather dependent! Still, if it can be done before the usual colder months of January and February, that will help on our heating bill, that’s for sure!

The Re-Farmer

Anniversary

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Well, here it is.

Today is the 5th anniversary of all four of us finally being here at the farm today.

I can’t say “moved in”, since we had to put our stuff in storage for almost a month, but aside from that, it was done. We were here!

One of the things we did after spending some time assessing what we’d gotten into, as best we could at the time, was come up with a 5 year plan for what we wanted to accomplish, where we wanted to focus on, and a time line to shoot for.

Boy, did that ever get changed along the way!

Originally, the first two years were going to focus on clearing and cleaning the inner yard. Year one was going to be particularly focused on the maple grove to the west of the house, then year two would see us finish fixing up the inner yard with a focus on the spruce grove. Year three, we would continue working on the spruce grove, but also start moving more focus into the outer yard. By year five, we expected to be able to finish the outer yard. Through all this time, we were also going to work on where we wanted to put in gardens, and year five was going to be our first actual gardening year.

After year five, the inner and outer yards would be done, we could start planting gardens, and also start moving beyond the outer yard to start dealing with things like the car graveyard, junk piles, and so on.

Along the way, as things were cleared and cleaned up, we also kept our minds on where we wanted to plant fruit and nut trees, and other such permanent things.

Well… year one went pretty much to plan.

We got the old kitchen garden cleaned up and started to amend the soil with layers of cardboard, straw, leaves and whatever other organic material we could get.

We got the maple grove cleared and cleaned up. It still feels great to be able to walk through there again!

We got a lot done around the fire pit area and the west yard in general. It took months, and so much progress was made! We even were able to work on the perimeter of the spruce grove, and open things up.

In year two, the clean up continued, and I think it was around then that it became clear we would not be finishing the inner yard – more specifically, the spruce grove – as planned. In fact, we still haven’t finished the spruce grove, and won’t for some time. It’s a much bigger job than expected, and there are a large number of dead spruce trees that need to be cut down.

We did, however, start preparing our first garden area. We also got the retaining wall built at the end of the old kitchen garden. The clean up continued, inside and out, with quite a bit of storm damage to deal with when a blizzard hit us in October. I think the biggest accomplishment was getting that old wood pile area cleaned up – an area that uncovered some of the best soil in the yard.

A lot of work got done in our second year, but for our third year, our focus had to shift. There was no way we were going to be done with the inner yard, though we would have to do more in the outer yard at the same time. Things were getting pretty loosey goosey with our plans.

We still got a lot done. It just didn’t feel like we made much progress.

But, we got a garden in, with squash planted in the bed we’d prepared the year before, new beds made for potatoes, and the old wood pile area became a new garden, too. Our first year gardening was ahead of schedule – and right about the time when suddenly everyone else was starting to garden, too, thanks to the lockdowns and restrictions. We did repairs, patch jobs and replacements. General clean up in the yards continued, and we even got some bulbs planted. Hundreds of them!

Among the more difficult things we had to deal with was my husband’s health. In 2019, he ended up in the emergency room. Things got worse, and he later ended up in the hospital for about three weeks. It wasn’t until 2020 that he finally got into the pain clinic – after 2 years on the waiting list. That was difficult enough, since we were still under lockdowns and restrictions, but the whole thing was really a waste of time. Much like his visits with the cardiac clinic. After all that, right now, he barely even sees our GP, and the last time he had a phone appointment with the cardiac clinic, they never called. I think they’re pissed off at him for refusing to drive all the way to the city so they can make him sit in the waiting room, in pain, until he finally walks out without ever being seen. That’s one down side about moving back to our home province. The health care here is a lot worse than our previous province – though from what I’ve heard, things have gone seriously down hill over there, since we left.

For a lot of people, 2020 was the year from hell. My younger daughter ended up leaving her job at the pharmacy, but at least we had my husband’s disability income unchanged, unlike so many others. Being here on the farm meant very little actually changed for us. Our regular stock up trips and most other outings eventually became just me. I can’t wear a mask and had to deal with a lot of issues, since most places ignored the medical exemptions, never mind the fact that the mandates were illegal in the first place. We basically put our heads down and did the best we could, and counted our blessings.

One thing that did become clear is that we needed to step up on our long term goal of being as self sufficient as possible. Gardening became a higher priority. Our first winters here showed that we also needed to focus on having a stockpile of necessities in case we’re snowed in, etc. Getting chickens and, eventually, other food animals also had to be bumped up the priority list, though plans to build a chicken coop and brooder keep getting foiled.

We did have some fun things happen, though – like having a herd of goats show up at our place! One of which stayed for quite some time. In the end, I just walked over to the owner’s place with a bucket of feed, and the goat followed me.

I think most of us would like to forget 2020 happened, and had high hopes for 2021.

Except 2021 didn’t turn out any better. The illegal restrictions and mandates continued, people continued to have their health and lives destroyed, and we continued to try to keep our heads down and stick to our hermitage as much as possible.

Focus was once again on the garden, which required some creativity, and it was a difficult growing year. It started out well enough, with an early spring that had all sorts of trees blooming. It was very tempting to plant early, and some things, like a mulberry tree sapling we bought, did get planted as appropriate for our climate zone. Then one exceptionally cold night in May killed off so much. That year we had no crab apples, no saskatoons, no chokecherries, and the poor mulberry got killed off.

We expanded the garden by a lot, and it was a constant battle. Drought and heat waves meant watering the garden plots pretty much every day, twice a day. It also meant struggling to protect our garden from hungry and thirsty animals, with deer and groundhogs doing the most damage. We had to watch for racoons, too, though they were more interested in the bird seed and cat food than the garden. And yet, we managed to get a decent amount out of it.

We had plenty of other things to deal with, from van and door fixes, and even tire blow outs, to cat fixes! (Ginger is doing just fine now, and the missing leg isn’t slowing him down at all!) We got more clean up and improvements done around the yards, such as this path we added in the old kitchen garden. We even added to our longer term goals, and I hope to start working on these ones, next year or maybe the year after.

Again, we got a lot done, with all sorts of projects, but it didn’t feel like we made forward progress, other than in the garden.

Then there’s 2022.

Our fifth year here.

I’ll be doing future posts about how the year went, including a gardening review and goal setting, like I did for 2021, so I won’t get into that too much, now.

It did turn out to be another rough year, though after 2021, I don’t think a lot of people expected 2022 to be better. Despite the fact that data around the world has shown that the illegal restrictions and mandates not only didn’t work, but made things worse, our own dictatorial government is talking about bringing them back for this winter. Supply chain problems and increased inflation has been devastating to so many and, being on a fixed income, we’re certainly feeling it, too.

Through we did not have to deal with drought and heat waves this year, we did get a long, drawn out winter, followed by flooding that washed out roads around us in all directions, and more water in our yard than I’ve ever seen before, even when I was a kid growing up here. We did get long term progress done, with finally planting berry bushes and trees.

We expanded the garden so much this year and planted so many different things, we did not have to fight critter damage like last year, and yet we had a much worse growing year than the year before. Over all, I feel like we didn’t really make much forward progress at all, in any area. In fact, in some areas, we’re falling behind. We’ve got aging outbuildings collapsing or falling apart, and no way to replace them. We need to replace our van, as it’s really not worth fixing up anymore, but that’s out of reach now, too. About the only really good thing is that our vandal’s vexatious litigation against us, in response to our getting a restraining order against him approved, finally got thrown out and he didn’t appeal, so we don’t have that hanging over us anymore.

So what can we expect for the next five years? How do we even plan for such an uncertain future?

Well… honestly… the original goals haven’t really changed. They’ve just shifted. We’ve always wanted to live a more self sufficient life, and that’s simply become a greater priority over things like cleaning up the spruce grove or the outer yard.

In the short term, the gardens will continue to expand. We’ve learned a lot in three years of gardening here. We now know that we need to put a priority on things like raised beds and trellises, and that we need to work out how to deal with both drought and flooding, as well as getting around our rocky and nutritionally depleted soil.

We know that we need to work to grow a lot more food, with a lot more varieties, on the assumption that much of what we plant will simply not make it.

We know we need to step up on planting a food forest and other perennials that will feed us – along with things to attract and protect pollinators.

We know we will have to battle critters over the food we grow.

We know that we have to put a priority on getting food animals, even if it’s just a few chickens or meat rabbits – and that we need to be prepared to grow their feed, because we might not be able to buy feed for them.

We know that we can expect to be unable to get out of here for potentially months at a time, whether it’s due to vehicles breaking down or freezing, or roads impassable because of snow or flooding, so we have to be prepared for that. We know we need to keep at least a couple months worth of food, household necessities, and cat supplies, on hand, just in case.

We have been incredibly fortunate in that we have not had any major power failures, but I remember many times when I was a kid, losing power and having to fire up the old wood burning cook stove. That is no longer an option. We can at least cook on the BBQ or the fire pit if necessary, which means that the priority list now includes finding some way to pay for the original well with the hand pump to be repaired, so we will at least have water if the power goes out. Water is our biggest weakness.

We always liked the idea of cooking over the fire pit, but with the first years here having total fire bans, this past summer was the first time we could safely use it for any length of time. We now know we need to come up with an off-grid, outdoor kitchen that we can use at any time of year, whether it’s in the middle of a snow storm in the winter, or if we’re under a fire ban in the summer. This would also be part of bringing back the old idea of having a summer kitchen, to use for canning and preserving, without overheating the house or taking up the kitchen from daily needs.

These past five years have shown us our original goals don’t actually need to be changed. Just the priority list. Yes, it’ll be great to finally have the spruce grove cleaned up, but that is less important than building garden beds and shelters and getting food animals. The goals are not mutually exclusive, though. Since we can’t afford much when it comes to lumber and supplies, we’ll just have to make use of the dead trees we need to cut down in the spruce grove, and we have to clean up around them to do that safely, anyhow.

We just have to keep reassessing and adapting the how and when, but the what has not really changed at all.

The Re-Farmer

Holy Smokes! It’s done! (plus amazing news!)

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

So I emailed the plumber earlier, not expecting to actually hear from him until Monday.

He called less than 2 hours later. After he got our location, he said he’d be here in about 20 minutes.

I don’t think it took him that long!

After checking the pipe out in both basements, they got to work and brought out the auger. (His assistant was a guy that spoke Ukrainian, and seemed to have almost no English. Likely a war refugee.) They sent that thing well past where the block was – he could tell when they hit it. Given the age of the pipes, he said the block was likely really, really old, hardened kitchen grease, and all the things that go along with it.

After they augered the pipe, he went to the laundry drain and used the super industrial drain cleaner we’d finally tried. When I saw it, I mentioned that to him and said that, when that didn’t work, we knew we had to call in a plumber! He was nodding his head before I even finished. If that stuff doesn’t work, no amount of drain cleaner will do it.

Once that was in, we had to test it out. We ran water, and it seemed fine but, from the kitchen sink, it was a problem only when we had to pour out large amounts of water at once, not just from the tap running. The kitchen is far enough away from the tanks and pumps that there just isn’t that much water or pressure coming out of the tap. I ended up filling one sink a couple of inches, while also having water in a container, then draining the one sink while dumping water down the other at the same time, while he poured water into the laundry drain.

When I came around, there was water puddling under the washing machine.

It was also smoking.

The water, I mean. The puddle of water under the drain was smoking.

Remember that industrial strength drain cleaner I mentioned?

Yeah, there was still some in the pipe, and it leaked out with the water, and was smoking.

He had to pull the washer and drier out, so he could see what was going on. After pouring water into the laundry drain again, he discovered the P trap was leaking.

And smoking.

After fiddling with it a bit to see if he could stop the leak, he ended up just cutting it out and replacing it.

While he was doing that, I brought over some old towels that he used – while wearing gloves – to wipe up the puddle. By the end of it, two towels went straight into a garbage can that I brought over, so there was no chance of coming in contact with this stuff.

After that, a new P trap was installed, we waited a bit, then tested it again. This time, he took one of the hoses off the washing machine and ran water straight into the drain.

No leaking!

Then I did the double sink thing again, while he ran water into the laundry drain.

No leaking, and no backing up.

The real test, of course, will be doing a test run of the washing machine, which we will do later. He also recommended using drain cleaner regularly, especially over the next few weeks, to keep the pipes clear of built of grime. Time to get more of that septic friendly drain maintenance stuff we had been using for exactly that purpose!

After doing some more mopping up, the washer and drier were put back, and they were off.

The final bill was higher than when he cleared our septic drain, as I was afraid it would be. The drain clearing plus 1 hour was a set rate, plus the cost of part, and it came to just under $400. With everything being so much more expensive now, though, I’m not actually surprised. However, we had enough squirreled away that I could pay the bill, and not have to go into the money for the tree guys. We actually did have 30 days to pay the bill, but I wanted to get that done and over with. I hate owing money!

Oh, my goodness!!!!

I am texting with the cat lady as I write this. She just gave me the most amazing news!

The two bitty babies she rescued for us are soon to be adopted! They’re getting their vaccines next week, and they’ll be in their new home at the end of November! Someone who recently lost her two 18 year old cats is adopting them both.

I am just so incredibly excited to hear that! Plus, after she has adopted out another cat she’s fostering, she’ll have room for 2 more of ours for placement.

Plus, the 2 spays and a neuter she still has planned for us.

All this, while waiting for her upcoming organ transplant…

The cat lady is just so amazing!

Also, she just informed me that Cabbages actually allows their dog to pick her up and carry her upstairs to her bed. I would love to see pictures of that!!!

Okay, this day is ending on a really fabulous note – even with a hit to the budget!

I’m just so happy right now!

The Re-Farmer

I made a thing

/ Re-Farmer / 11 Comments

With the colder temperatures and chill winds, I haven’t been able to wear my usual ball cap outside. No ear protection. Getting wind in my ears causes me headaches. But I like my ball cap, and having a visor to shade my eyes.

So I made a thing.

Nosencrantz seems perplexed.

After looking at different styles online, I combined the features I liked, and this is what I came up with.

I have just come back from feeding the outside cats for the night, and testing it out.

It works rather well!

The Re-Farmer

Just in time

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, it took the three of us a couple of hours, but we finally did it. We got the tarp over the hole in the shed roof.

One thing I can say about that shed, now that we’re done.

It’s not going to last much longer!

Anyhow.

The first thing to do, of course, was to open up the tarp.

This is what 20′ x 30′ looks like. It’s being held up at the back by tall grass.

The kittens really, really loved this tarp!

Now, I’ll say right from the start, this tarp should have been oriented the other way. We could have covered the entire roof with it. That, however, was not an option for us. There was simply no way we could do that, reach the edges and be able to fasten it down, safely.

The trick was, how to get one end of the tarp over the roof. I decided to make use of the remaining PEX pipe I bought to use as netting support in the garden, so make one end more or less rigid. There was just over 20′ of it left, too, so that worked out.

I was going to Zip tie the pipe to one end, but I couldn’t find my package of smaller sizes, and I wasn’t about to waste the long ones I had on this. I did, however, find an unopened roll of garden twist ties. I’d bought 2 of them a couple of years ago, and never used the second one.

The PEX was in a roll, so it took some doing to straighten it out as much as I could. With the temperature barely above freezing, I was trying to warm it with my hands and much as I could, to make it more flexible.

It still wanted to roll up again, especially at the ends, but it worked well enough.

Then next step was to tie twine to grommets near the corners. I’m glad I got those rolls of bale twine! Very handy. I used my arms to roughly measure out about 35 feet of twine, then tied them on.

Next, I needed weights. Something that I could tie to the twine and throw over the roof – keeping in mind that I’m not very good at throwing things! I poked around in the barn for a while and found these.

Perfect!

By this time, one of my daughters joined me. It took a few tries, but we got them over the roof.

Mostly.

With one of them, I was able to grab it with a garden tool, but the other one had to be pulled back and thrown again. 😁

Before we could haul the tarp over, though, we also had to prune some trees away. They need to be cut away from the shed completely, because of the damage they’re causing. I didn’t cut the dogwood, though. Unlike the maples, its not going to develop a large trunk or branches that will tear the shed apart.

By this time, my other daughter was able to join us. It took a LOT to wrestle the tarp over. There were so many things it could get caught on. On the side with the shingles, there were plenty of nail heads sticking out, and not just from where the shingles had blown away. It was even catching on the metal cap at the top. We had to use the extended pole pruner, at maximum length, to get under the tarp and lift it over whatever it was getting caught on – while also trying not to tear holes in the tarp! Of course, the PEX kept trying to roll up again, too, which certainly didn’t help any.

By the time we got it over, it was shifted so far to one side, the hole was completely uncovered, so we then had to fight with it some more, maneuvering it to where it needed to be using twine tied to the grommets. Then, once it was where it needed to be to cover the hole, the hole thing needed to be adjusted so that the roof was covered, the tarp could be tied down, and the door could still be opened.

At this end, it’s tied down at only two places, and I made sure to test to see if the door could still be opened. At some point, we’ll have to pick up some Bungee cords and hooks so that we can fasten it down better, while also being able to unhook them any time we need to open the door.

Also, that old children’s swing? You can just see a line from one of the legs to a fence post at the corner of the shed. For some reason, the swing is tied to that post with barbed wire.

Fastening the tarp in that corner was particularly dangerous, and not just because of that barbed wire. There is all sorts of stuff buried under there, hidden in the tall grass, and even sunk into the ground. Oh, and rolls of more barbed wire, rusting away.

Still not as dangerous as the other side.

Pulling enough of the tarp over so that the door could be opened, meant we could easily reach to fasten it to the wall.

AFTER turning under the sharp corners of some of the metal roof pieces, so they wouldn’t cut the tarp! We ended up rolling an old tire over for my daughter to stand on, so she could reach the edges with pliers.

Aside from the junk snowmobiles and the antique boiler/steamer thing (now that’s something that we should cover, too!) in the way, this area had bits and pieces of snowmobiles the cows scattered, my daughter found glass from the window that broke a few years back – I thought I’d found all the pieces when I fixed that! – rotten pieces of wood hidden in the tall grass, and boulders sticking out of the ground.

There are SO many large rocks sticking out of the ground out here.

With the pipe running along the back of the tarp at the grommets, we could get away with hammering only a few nails in, instead of one at every grommet. Which is good, because the wood of this wall is getting so rotted, it was hard to find spots where we actually could hammer nails in.

Yeah. This shed has definitely not got a lot of years left.

I suspect the nails won’t hold long. I’ll have find other ways to secure it and go back. The main thing, though, is that it’s now in place, and just in time. Ice pellets were starting to fall while I was still setting up the tarp. By the time we were done, it was a mixture of snow and rain. It seems to be snowing right now – at least, I can see some snow accumulated on the ground and the driveway, on the security camera live feed, but we’re also still supposed to be getting rain.

I’m glad we managed to get it done. How long it’ll last, with the winds we get, who knows, but there’s not much we can do about that right now. 😕

The Re-Farmer

Re-covered

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

When we first moved here, one of the things we noticed was the junk pile near the house, at the edge of the spruce grove. It’s one of the places mama cats would hide their litter of kittens, which is how Junk Pile got her name.

When we finally got around to cleaning it up, it turned out to not be a junk pile at all. It was a pile of salvaged boards, very carefully and neatly stacked. Some of the “junk” we found were the remains of tarps that used to cover it.

Years of exposure left the top board pretty rotten, and being salvaged from who knows where, a lot were full of nails. Still, we’ve been able to make use of them and, as we work our way deeper into the stack, the less rotten the boards.

After cleaning off the junk, we did use the original tarps to cover it up, and weighed it down with various things.

Then the groundhog that made a den under the stack decided the tarps would make good nesting material. Tore them to shreds!

With the horrible spring we had this year, we didn’t keep the yard as clear and mowed as we wanted, which meant one side of the stack got completely engulfed in thistles that reached nearly 5 ft tall in places.

Today, I finally got around to cleaning it up, so I could access the stack.

The kittens were very interested in what I was doing!

That groundhog did not leave much of those traps left at all. There was a blue one in there, as well as the orange one!

The grey tarp on the side is covering a pile of boards too rotten or full of nails to use; they’re laid over an old metal bed frame I found in the maple grove (there are still two more in there!) to keep them off the ground. I also found some old children’s toys, so I tucked those underneath, then covered the whole thing with yet another old tarp I found among the junk. This gives the yard cats yet another place they can tuck into for shelter, until we finally clean it out properly.

The hill the thistles are growing on is a bit of a mystery to me. It is one of those things that showed up in between our rare visits to the farm over the years. I think it might be where the ashes from the furnace got dumped, until the electric furnace was installed. It would take a lot of years of ashes to make a hill that big!

Also, I need better quality garden gloves. Thistles go right through them!!!

The next step was to take everything off the top for a few layers. There’s a lot of spruce debris in there. I would have to take the whole pile apart to get it all out, but I just wanted to get the worst of it near the top removed. Then the boards went back more neatly, making sure that any with nails in them had their nails facing down!

The stack itself is built up on some pallets, and there are more pallets, and other miscellaneous things, on the far side of the stack. They’re all pretty rotten, but only one of them was also in the way. I had to fight to get it out, as it kept getting stuck on the other two pallets one corner was in between, but it was so rotten, I could just tear it apart and drag it out! That went into our own junk pile that is waiting until we can hire someone to haul it to the dump.

Once that was all cleaned up and ready, I grabbed an 8’x10′ tarp from the 3 pack I bought at Costco a few months ago and brought it over to cover the stack. I’ve already used another one of them to replace the tarp I’d found in the barn to cover the post pounder by the garage. It was a huge tarp, but the wind tore it to shreds. An 8’x10′ tarp doesn’t cover it completely, but they’re heavier duty tarps, and I tied it down like crazy. I can see it on the security camera live feed, and absolutely nothing flaps around on that thing! With the stack of boards, I needed to do the same thing. I had to make sure the wind could not get ahold of it, once it was over the stack.

My goodness, the kittens went nuts while I was going that! They just could not get enough of running around and playing on it!

Which made tying it down a real challenge!

I think I spent twice as much time tying down the tarp as it took me to clear away the thistles and clean up the top of the pile! Thanks to all the leftover pieces of wood that I brought over to do the wattle woven raised bed, I had plenty of sticks I could use for pegs.

At the far end, the tarp is tied to the old pallet still back there, and even the dead trees. In a few places where the tarp was tight around corners of boards, I added some bits of pool noodle foam (we used scrap bits on supports around some garden beds, to protect the netting they were holding up, and the last of the netting was removed today) and even some paper towel from a roll kept in the garage. I didn’t want the corners of the boards to rub their way through the tarp in the wind. The remaining three sides were pegged to the ground. While probably not needed, I returned the stuff we were using as weights before, just in case. I can easily imagine kittens playing with the twine and pulling pegs out of the ground. 😄

The boards may be old, but at least now they won’t get any worse over the winter. I have no idea what we might use them for – there is no consistency in lengths, thicknesses or even how the ends are cut – but better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it!

By the time I finished putting everything away and got inside, it was full dark. It was very disorienting to look at the time and realize it wasn’t even 7pm yet! At least it was a more productive day today. The pile of garden soil is once again covered, and since I was out near the barn anyhow, I brought the frame pieces for the carport to the yard. I’m sure we’re still missing a cover piece, but even if we are, I’d like to find a way to set it up near the house, over where the old basement window is. It was warm enough to do one final watering of the Korean Pine; my daughter got the sliver buffaloberry and sea buckthorn done yesterday. We’ll have to be careful putting the hoses away, so they don’t crack in the cold. We even got a dump run in.

The next couple of days are supposed to reach highs of just above freezing, then a couple of days of slightly warmer temperatures. After that, our highs are going to be below freezing, and staying there. At least that’s what one app is telling me. Another weather app is a bit different – and forecasting colder temperatures. About the only thing that really needs to get done in the next few days, though, is to cover the hole in that shed roof with the large tarp I got for it. Getting it up and over is not going to be easy, never mind fastening it down. What we could really use is scaffolding! Ah, well. I’ll just add that to the list… 😉 Anyhow, we’re looking at possible rain and snow a few days from now, so we really need to get that taken care of. There are too many things in that shed that are useful. I don’t want the roof to collapse, if I can avoid it!

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Sun room progress

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I was able to get at least a bit of progress in the sun room today. This is what where it was left off after my daughter worked on it.

The only thing different is the addition of the new kibble bin that doesn’t fit on the shelf. The room has been slowly becoming a disaster, and using it as a recovery ward for the cats certainly hasn’t helped. Where the swing bench had been was the worst of it, with so much stuff fallen behind, and the messes the cats made. The rest was going to be easy after that!

Because of the mess the cats made on this side of the sun room, it needed extra cleaning after being emptied out.

It got emptied, then vacuumed, including around the windows and walls – lots of cobwebs! The windows finally got washed on the inside. The shorter extension cord could finally be wrapped on its hooks (there are no outlets in this room), and I added some hooks so the longer extension cord that is powering the kibble house is now running through the tops of the doors rather than the bottom.

Then the kittens got kicked out and the door closed so that floor could get a thorough washing. Some areas needed to be scrubbed by hand, and I still couldn’t get all the stains out. Last of all, it got rinsed of cleaners, with the ceiling fan running to help it dry faster.

It was getting pretty dark by the time I starting to bring stuff in again, though mostly to protect some things from critter damage. The floor is still damp, too.

After five years, I think we’ve got a pretty good bead on how we need to use this space. The main thing is mobility friendly access. When we first moved here, my husband kept his walker in the main entry, folded up against the washer and drier. There were two problems with that. First, it was in the way of using the washer and drier, and second, it became increasingly difficult for him to get in and out with it. The door’s threshold is fairly high, requiring him to lift the walker wheels over it, and then there are two steps to go down. He didn’t mind it too much at first but, over time, his back just kept getting worse. Then we finally cleared and cleaned the sunroom, which was a HUGE job (I still can’t believe all the stuff my parents had in there!). My dad kept his own walker in the sun room, and now my husband’s walker is kept here, and it’s much easier for him to get in and out. I still want to get little door ramps for him, as he does still need to lift his walker a bit to get through the door, but it’s greatly improved his ability to get in and out by using the sunroom.

So access is a primary concern when it comes to how we want to set things up.

We also use the room a lot for keeping tools and supplies, and we need to find a better way to organize those. The table saw I found in one of sheds had been by the door into the old kitchen, but there it ended up blocking access to things, It’s now set up near the counter shelf by the doors to outside, with the miter saw I got at a garage sale sitting on top of it for now. The swing bench will stay where it is now – right in the corner, with no shelf behind it. The last time we moved things around, I’d set it up against the wall with the two windows, but my husband moved it against the shelf, so he could sit on it and see outside. That blocked access to the shelf and, before we knew it, all sorts of things were falling behind it and getting stuck – and of course, the cats took full advantage of that! So now the cube shelf will go against the wall under the bathroom window. I’m going to try and keep all the tool related stuff on that side.

We found using the room as a greenhouse was handy, but we need to figure out a more efficient way to do it. Being able to set up a surface to hold transplants over the swing bench worked out pretty well, even if it meant only the cats could use the bench! So this side is going to be organized in a way that we’ll be able to set transplants up again in the spring, including a better way of setting up the lights. For a “sun” room, it’s actually pretty dark in there!

One other thing we use this room for is an isolation ward for recovering cats. Which means we’ll be wanting to set up food and water bowls, and a litter box, which is currently in the cats’ house outside. It hasn’t been used yet but, once snow is on the ground, I think the kittens will figure it out! We’ll get another one for the sun room.

We will also be using this room to store things for the winter, until they’re needed again in the spring.

All of this, we will need to figure out as we bring things back inside. Now that that floor has been cleared and sanitized, we can work out how to organize things most efficiently.

While I was finishing up and things were getting dark, I was very happy to see how well the new solar powered motion sensor light was working out. When I checked on it last night, it didn’t turn on. It’s mounted to the top of the outer door, so it should have turned on when I opened it. It didn’t turn on, but I startled some critter out of the kibble house! I could hear it run across the yard, and slam into the chain link fence as it went under it. It sounded bigger than a skunk. I’m thinking racoon, but they usually freeze instead of running away, so I’m not sure. As I came out of the sun room to check, I heard more noise – from the four deer in the yard that got startled and ran out towards the barn! I grabbed a flashlight and went back out again. I could hear something was crunching kibble, but couldn’t see what it was. From the sound, I was pretty sure that one, at least, was a skunk, which turned out to be correct.

With all that going on, the new light would have been very helpful, but it just wasn’t turning on. I knew it worked, because when switching it from off to either high or low light, it turns on and stays on for about a minute before shutting itself off. I had turned it on just before starting to screw it onto the door. Thankfully, the way it is sitting, I didn’t have to unscrew it from the door, and could shift it enough to reach the switch and turn it on. I’m not completely sure why it was off, but my guess is that I switched it off by accident. While I was attaching it to the door, at one point it slipped and started to fall. I managed to catch it, but must have hit the switch in the process. Whatever it was, I got it going again, and set to the brighter light.

Which was really handy as I finished up! I had plenty of light to see what I was doing – and it even lights up as far as the inside of the kibble house. The cats running around also triggered the motion sensor, which means any skunks, racoons or deer will also trigger it. Hopefully, that will be a deterrent.

Ha! Who am I kidding! It won’t deter them, but it’ll make it easier for us to see what’s stealing the kibble!

If all goes well, we should have the sunroom organized and finished tomorrow. Then we can go back to putting the garden to bed for the winter. We’ve got some nice, warm days coming up, which means we can give the trees we planted one more deep watering before the temperatures drop again.

As long as the weather holds, there will always be a bit more we can get done!

The Re-Farmer

First monthly stock up trip: this is $421

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

This is also the first photo taken with my new phone!

I set the new phone up to the bare essentials, making sure I had Discord set up because that’s what we used to message each other with, then headed out. I stopped along the way to pick up some fuel and breakfast (it was about noon by then!), then sent a test message home. It wasn’t until I got to The Wholesale Club and connected with their free wifi that I saw my message never got sent. Not connection to data. My set up wasn’t complete. Which meant I couldn’t have made a call if I needed to. Ah, well.

This store caters more towards restaurants, especially take-out places, so while there is a lot of what we’d find in their regular retail grocery stores (Superstore/Loblaws), there’s a lot that they carry only at their wholesale locations, or things in sizes that are only here.

For this trip, I picked up their last two biggest bags (9kg) of dry cat food. They always seem to be low in stock on that. They had other sizes and their no-name brand, but these were the better deal per kg. I also picked up a 32 pack of canned cat food. When I get to Costco, I’ll be picking up more of both, of course. There’s no way this will last us long. The outside cats go through almost 2 bags of this size a week. The wet cat food is just for the inside cats. The dry cat food has gone up to $30.99 a bag in this size. The wet cat food in this size was $26.99 I used to be able to get them at Walmart for under $19 just a few months ago.

In the non-food items, I picked up a couple of packs of paper towels, because it was cheaper per package to get 2 of them than just one, by about 40%. I also picked up a 6 pack of facial tissues, which I usually get at Costco or Walmart. I found some biodegradable liners for our kitchen compost bucket. A spur of the moment purchase from the restaurant supply section was a wooden muddler. It’s designed for mixing drinks, but it will come in handy the next time we make sauerkraut. It’ll work better than what we made do with, before. There’s also a 4 pk of distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier, and a jug of windshield water fluid rated to -45C/-49F for the van.

I picked up more peanut butter for the pantry. I was very tempted to pick up a big restaurant sized bucket, but that was just out of budget for this trip. There’s a box of Sweet and Salty peanut granola bars that was cheaper than even Costco. I picked up the giant bags of pasta, in penne and rotini, for the pantry, which will be repacked into more functional sized containers. We should be well stocked for pasta for a long time, and if we really need to, we can make our own from scratch, too.

There’s a giant container of stuffed olives – a favourite snack of my husband’s, as well as a cooking ingredient – and a restaurant sized tin of tomato paste. I had been planning to buy a case of tinned tomato paste at Costco, but after making our own and canning it in those little tiny jars, we’ve been spoiled at being able to use a spoonful and seal the container for later. I have another case of those jars, so we can open this giant can, transfer the paste into the little jars, and water bath can them like we did with or own. We’ve been going through those pretty steadily, so more will not go amiss!

I picked up some seasonal coffee creamer for my daughters – the Christmas flavours are out already!, and only 3 pounds of butter. The no-name brand was $5.99 each. I’m hoping Costco, where I usually get 10 pounds at once, will still have better prices. There’s a tub of sour cream, and smaller blocks of old cheddar, marble and mozzarella cheese that were ten bucks each. Usually, I get a giant block of old cheddar at Costco, and I still might do that. We’ll see. I also picked up a bag of AP flour, there’s a flat of 30 eggs, plus four big bags of frozen perogies, in two different flavours. They were only $4 each! I would have gotten more, but it’s a long drive to keep things frozen, even with the insulated bags. There’s a bulk package of wieners (I’ll get buns another time), a giant summer sausage, and a box of frozen chicken tenders that was only $20. I’ll get more “real” meat at Costco. The bunch of celery is for making bone broth, and I picked up more sweet potatoes, now that we’ve found we like them in certain soups. I like them in general, but I’m the only one.

I almost got a 50lb bag of potatoes, but after looking at them through the window in their paper bags, I found they were not really in good shape. They were the “irregulars”, which I don’t mind, but I do mind if I see what looks like scab, or bruising. The bulk sized boxes “table potatoes” cost almost double, so I just got an ordinary bag of russets. Oh, and there’s a big jug of olive oil in there, too.

So that trip is done for now. I won’t be able to make another trip into the city until next week. Tomorrow, I’m taking my mother’s car in to get the slow leaking tire fixed, so hopefully, I can use her car instead. We’re trying to use the van as little as possible, until we can finally replace it.

Once at home, and the girls helped me put everything away, I got to work on finishing setting up my phone. The phone came with a data transfer cable, so I could potentially hook my old phone to my new phone and transfer data that way. It never worked. It kept telling me the cable was connecting and disconnecting. Then an alarm started sounding from the new phone, telling me that it had detected moisture or debris in the connector. !! I tried cleaning out the old phone, but it made no difference. I finally gave up and tried transferring data through wifi. That too forever to get working! I kept getting messages saying that both phones had to be on the same wireless connection (they were), then the new one would tell me it needed to disconnect my internet so it could use the wifi alone. I even tried turning on the BlueTooth on both phones (it made no difference), then turning on the NFC on the old phone – there doesn’t seem to be that option on the new phone. Then it finally started working.

I wasn’t able to transfer all data, though. The new phone cannot support a micro SD card. On my old phone, that’s where my photos and video default to. When I tried to transfer everything, it told me there wasn’t enough room. So I switched to transferring internal storage data only, and it finally started working – only to have something turning on and interrupting the transfer!

Eventually I got it done, but the new phone’s storage is already at 63%. I took a look and found a backup from my old phone was in internal storage, which means that some things are duplicated. Before I’d looked at that, though, I’d removed the SD card from the old phone, and am currently transferring everything on it into my external hard drive.

There’s more than 20,000 files on there, and most of them are photos. It’s going to take a LONG time for that to transfer! Since I want to transfer the internal back up folder onto the external hard drive, too, that will likely have to wait until tomorrow. It’s been about an hour since I started, and it’s at only 4%.

I’m going to have to spend some time figuring out the new phone, resetting things and testing things out. While I did take the one picture, I have yet to look at the phone camera’s setting for quality and resolution.

One of the things my husband did while I was away was order a phone case and screen protectors for it. Smartphones always feel like they’re going to slide right out of my hands, if I don’t have a case on them! He found a style very much like the one I got for the old phone, so it will have a “wallet” cover for the touch screen that can fit a few cards and maybe some cash, and that’s it. I want something as flat as possible, since it’s going to spent most of its time in my pocket while I work outside.

When I turned on the old phone this morning, while starting to set up the new one, a couple of texts came in from the cat lady. She sent pictures of the bitty babies, and they are doing great! I told her that the missing bitty showed up in the cat shelter again. At this point, we will leave things as they are, but if there is any sign of distress or abandonment, she said to contact her and she’ll come get it, too. I was looking for it while we unloaded the van, but it wasn’t in the cat shelter anymore. Likely, it was underneath again, while there was a lot of to-do going on as we unloaded. I will check again before it gets dark and hopefully will see it inside again. I did check one last time after putting the van in the garage, and I saw Junk Pile looking back at me through the window, from inside the cat bed! I have the hardest time believing she’s the mama, since her second litter is still so young, but if she’s decided to mother the bitty baby along with her own, I don’t have a problem with that at all!

Now… time to play with my new phone and get it set up the way I like!

The Re-Farmer