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Yesterday’s monthly shop

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I’m glad I was able to do the city trip yesterday. It rained all night, so today, the gravel roads are all muddy again – especially that one really bad spot near our place – and the yard is completely saturated. Yesterday, I was able to back up to the house to unload. The vehicle gate was still muddy, but I could at least drive through with minimal spinning of tires. Today, that area of the driveway is all water again. So are a number of areas in the yards.

I’d left a bit earlier than usual, making my regular stop to get a bit of gas at the town my mother lives in. Too early for their fried chicken to be available, so “breakfast” was a protein bar, instead. :-D I also paid the “idiot tax” and bought a lotto ticket, as well as a couple of on-sale energy drinks for the cooler in the van. Grand total was just over $45.

This trip is our usual series of three stores, finishing at Costco. The first was Canadian Tire, where I picked up a couple more 40 pound bags of the stove pellets we use as cat litter. We still had plenty, but I’m starting to use it as mulch in the garden again – it works really well for the finer seedlings – so I wanted to get more. I also got an extra spool of line for the weed trimmer, as it’s going to get a major workout in the old garden area, soon, and a package of short bamboo stakes that I thought might work for some hoops for the garden (more on that in another post). The PVC pipe I got to use as hoops last year is a bit too stiff and kept breaking the doweling I used last year. Metal stakes would be better, but finding any small enough to fit into the pipe is more difficult, and more expensive, so I’ll try the bamboo for now. I also picked up a roll of half inch PEX pipe. It is more flexible, and we can cut it to the lengths we need. Plus, it’ll be easier to find metal stakes to hold it in place.

I also finally picked up something I’ve been eyeballing for a while, now.

White Carolina strawberries! We have 4 transplants of red strawberries, which will be planted with the purple asparagus. There are 10 roots in this package, and I’m not really sure where we’ll plant them – several options come to mind – but we’ll figure it out. More perennial food plants is worth it. Altogether, this stop was just over $100.

After that, it was off to the international grocery store, though I did make one extra side trip, first. They share a parking lot with a Dollar Tree, and I wanted to see what gardening supplies then had. I ended up getting a selection of plant supports. I got 4 tomato cages, though they will probably be used for the eggplants or peppers. Then I got 4 supports that are a narrow metal spike with a spiral at the top to wind a stem through. I’m not sure what we’ll use those with, yet. Then I got 4 each of plastic coated metal stakes in two sizes. These came with adjustable ties for the plants. The heavier duty ones look like they would do very well for vertical growing summer squash. That worked out okay last year, except we had a hard time getting the lengths of poplar we’d cleared from part of the spruce grove to stay upright. The narrower ones might do well for that, too. After testing the 4 different types of supports, we’ll know which ones to get more of – if any at all. I also picked up a couple of fabric “raised beds” to test out. We already have a couple of grow bags that I was planning to grow the sweet potato slips in, once they arrive. We’ve got 5 sweet potato slips, 10 Jerusalem Artichokes and 2 highbush cranberry that will be shipped when it’s time for planting in our zone, which is pretty soon. With so many transplants, so many things to direst so, and so few beds to plant in, I thought it was worth trying out. I also picked up some S hooks and ground staples. The ground staples will work better than the tent pegs we are currently using for the protective netting we’re putting over the beds. Altogether, this part of the shop was just under $50.

Once those were all put away in the van, I headed into the grocery store and finally had “breakfast”. One of the bonuses for making these trips is being able to have dim sum!

This store is where we find some favourite frozen dumplings, international condiments and less common types of cheese. They also have a section of locally produced slabs of smoked bacon. Sometimes, they only have small pieces of unsliced bacon, but this time, they had some of the big ones in stock. It’s also where we get things in non-Costco sized quantities. ;-) Prices for some things have gone up quite a bit, and this stop ended up being just under $200. Plus the dim sum (which also went up in price) and drink I bought, it was about $215 in total.

Then it was Costco time.

*sigh*

Gas was 6 cents per litre cheaper, so I filled the tank first. That still came out to a little over $50. Then there was inside the store.

Ugh. There was a fair bit of sticker shock for some of the food items. I got more canned chicken for our stock, and that had gone up in price again. Six cans now cost about $20. Last month, they’d gone up to about $15. Basics like butter, eggs, rice, even toilet paper, have all gone up in price. The only other meat I got was the all-beef wieners and buns for a planned cookout. It’s a good thing we stocked up on meats previously, and we still have plenty. All the meats and fish have gone up in price substantially. Oddly, dry cat food hasn’t gone up in price as much as people food. I would have liked to get more than the 4 bags I got, but our van doesn’t like heaving loads, and I already had 80 pounds of stove pellets in there. The canned cat food has gone up in price more than the dry has. The popcorn we get (in the excellent, heavy duty, food-safe plastic containers that we are keeping for dry-storing other foods) hasn’t gone up, nor has mayo, but mixed nuts (to keep in the van) has gone up more, as has the Basmati rice. Even their flats of water (for the cooler in the van) has gone up.

The frustrating thing is that I was looking to pick up non-food things for our stash, like more of those heavy duty tarps, and some non-scented, “flushable” wet wipes for washing up should we lose our water for some reason, as well as some work gloves that are stronger than the gardening gloves we have right now. I had to put them all back. The grand total for this trip was just under $550, which isn’t unusual for how much we spend at Costco, except that we got way less actual food this trip.

More incentive to keep increasing what we grow in the garden, and to get a coop and brooder set up, so we can finally have chickens.

Altogether, I spent over a thousand dollars, but our fridge is only half full. Granted, the pantry and freezer are still good for now, but the stash is not growing as well as I’d like.

Ah, well.

Next week, we have the rest of our monthly stocking up to do. I’m planning on going to the Wholesale Warehouse again, now that I’ve got a better idea of what we can get there.

It was a very hot day, and I’m glad I remembered to grab the ice packs from the big freezer this trip. We do have insulated bags, but even with saving those purchases for last, the van doesn’t have air conditioning, and those bags can only protect so much.

While I was gone, the girls were taking care of things on the home front, including frequently checking on the transplants to make sure they weren’t being baked, misting them as needed. They were still better off outside than in the sun room; it hit 30C/86F in there.

One of the things a daughter had tried to do while I was gone, was vacuum the living room. She’d done about half when the new vacuum cleaner basically lost all suction. We still don’t know all the quirks of this machine, so we left it until I got back.

We then spend probably 2 hours in total, fighting with that thing. What we eventually found was that the main hose was clogged, but it took figuring out how to dismantle the vacuum cleaner part way. The hose itself runs through a part of the vacuum cleaner that holds it in place, but doesn’t come off, so all the fighting we did with the hose included pulling it back and forth through the back of the machine. It ended up taking one of the metal plant supports I got at Dollar Tree to finally punch a hole through the clog, but we still couldn’t get it out. My daughter remembered a computer tool kit we have, which has a screw grabbing tool that was long enough and narrow enough to reach the clog, and the grabber could pull it out, little bits at a time.

The clog turned out to be mostly fibres of sisal rope from the cats’ scratch post. That stuff is nasty on the vacuum cleaner!

Plus cat hair, of course. Everything has cat hair.

One of the downsides of doing this is, we were in the living room, which has no air circulation. I was dripping with sweat, and by the time we were done, we were covered in dust, cat hair and little bits of sisal fibres.

Well, at least she was able to finish vacuuming the carpet. It was my turn to do the bathroom, which was done by LED flashlight, because the breaker was being kept off until the burnt outlet could be repaired. Not much air circulation in there, either, even with the window to the sun room open.

We were all pretty exhausted by the end of the day. I hate housework even more than I hate shopping. That’s why I’m usually the one doing the outside stuff, while the girls take care of the inside stuff. :-D

Still, I’m glad I got the Costco shopping done, at least, and I won’t have to do that again for another month!

The Re-Farmer

It’s fixed!

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Before I catch up on the other stuff, I just have to share the best part of all.

My brother made it out today, and he got the outlet fixed for us!

He tried getting here using his usual route, only to find the road closed sign was still at the south end of the road past our place, so he turned around and took a different route, adding an extra 3 miles of gravel road to the drive. It rained steadily all last night, and the section of road near our intersection was so muddy, he had difficulty getting through with is 4 wheel drive. The grader went through a couple of days ago, but even it went around that spot! It’s just mush in the middle of the road.

But he made it and checked the outlet for us, and it turned out to be less damaged than he feared it might be.

When I noticed what happened, I quickly unplugged the 2 power bars that were plugged into it and just dropped them. After that, we were more interested in making sure nothing started burning in the wall. When we moved the DVD shelf to access the outlet, I never even thought to look at either of them.

I think we found the cause of the fry out.

This power bar had the TV plugged into, as well as the Xbox, I think (we use is as a DVD player, but it doesn’t always work) and the USB adapter for our Roku. He thinks something had to have been drawing a lot of power, but they should have only been using just a trickle. So we still don’t know why it blew.

As my brother was removing the receptacle, he commented that our father had installed it some 50 years ago!

Can you tell?

I’m pretty sure that 61 visible on the white sticker is the original price.

Marshall Wells hasn’t been around since 1988 and, even before then, it had been bought out a couple of times and was under a different name since about 1978.

While replacing the receptacle, my brother found one of the wires was loose, and the ground was no longer attached at the wall. He replaced the ground wire but discovered he couldn’t screw it in to the wall – it was stripped. There was a second hole, and that was stripped, too. He had to drill a third hole and use a new, longer screw! The end of the black wire was melted, so he repaired that, too.

Of course, it was tested out right away, after I turned the breaker back on, and all worked perfectly!

And my daughter’s computers started turning on. A light upstairs turned on, too. I had no idea until then, that any of the ceiling lights was on that breaker, too.

We now have a light and fan in the bathroom again. :-D

Then, because he’s a sweetheart, and had his bag with 5 or 6 different lengths of screws handy, my brother “fixed” the main door by replacing some of the hinge screws with longer ones. I hadn’t done it before, because the door is hollow, so I didn’t think it would help any, but it did. He was able to pull a couple of the other hinge screws out with just his fingers. !! We still need to replace the entire door and frame, as the fame itself is splitting at the top and middle hinges. My brother suggested I use longer screws into the frame, too, to compensate. A door is only as secure as its frame, though, and I want an insulated metal door with a metal frame! He doesn’t think it needs to be replaced, but if we want to do it, he’s okay with that.

The main thing is, we can use the main door again. I don’t know how long that will last, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile, my older daughter has been busily catching up on commissions. I believe all of her clients were okay with the delay, too, which is nice.

Then, after he was finished here, my brother was going to go to town to pick up some milk for our mother, in the plastic 2L jugs that are no longer available where she lives, then drive back to her place – adding almost an extra hour to his drive home!

My brother is the best!

He mentioned talking to our mother last night, and that they’d talked about her getting home care and Meals on Wheels, since she is in so much pain right now. I had brought that up with her, too, and she seems agreeable to that. I’m also thinking she might finally be willing to get a hospital bed through home care, like my husband was able to do. I think being able to adjust the height, and have support under her knees or sleep at an incline would be a help.

We shall see how her telephone appointment with the doctor does, a couple of days from now.

The Re-Farmer

Exhausted

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Today was my day to go into the city to do part of our monthly shop. I ended up going to 4 places today, spent about as much as I usually do, but came home with a lot less groceries for our money. The non-grocery purchases were pretty much unchanged. :-/

It’s been a really long, hot day, and while we got a lot done, it feels like I got nothing done. Does that make sense?

Definitely a day to get to bed early. Which probably won’t happen, but I can daydream, can’t I? ;-)

I hope my brother does make it out tomorrow morning, though knowing him, he’ll probably be leaving his place at 5 am or something. :-D We’ll see. I have no idea if he’ll be able to fix the outlet, but we just really enjoy his company.

I’ll have to do a catch up post, some time tomorrow. I’m too exhausted to think straight right now!

The Re-Farmer

That’s not good

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Yesterday evening, while puttering in the kitchen, I heard a strange and sudden noise. A very out of place noise, coming from the living room.

So out of place, even the cats started to gather round, searching for the source.

In fact, it was the cats that lead me right to the source, partially hidden by a shelf.

For some reason, this outlet fried itself.

There were two power cords plugged into it. On one of them, nothing plugged into it was being used. On the other there was a salt lamp and a Orbi WiFi mesh device, both of which are always on, neither of which take a lot of power.

The breaker tripped, as it should, which has lead to some other problems.

We’re discovering what else was on that breaker.

On the panel, it’s labelled living room and bathroom. The living room has only 3 outlets. There’s the one that fried, of course. Another that powered the aquarium greenhouses, which are empty right now, is no longer working. The third, which powers the charger for a cordless phone handset, is still working.

The bathroom lights and fan no longer work. At least the bathroom already had a battery operated LED light switch to use, rather than blinding ourselves when going to the bathroom at night. With a second portable LED light next to the mirror, the room gets let up pretty well. Plus, there’s the window into the sun room. That gives us some light during the day, and we can open it more to make up for the lack of a fan.

I discovered an outlet in the new basement, which was being used to power a fan aimed at a damp spot in the corner, was no longer working. Nor is the light switch for the unfinished bar we’re now using as cat-proof storage. I was able to plug the fan in at another outlet, though it needed a much longer extension cord. That actually allowed me to put the fan in a more efficient spot, so no real complaints there.

Overall, things would be fine, except for one more outlet that stopped working. An upstairs outlet.

The one the girls’ computers is plugged into.

That room has only two outlets, a two prong and a three prong. So they can’t even plug into the other outlet.

Which means my older daughter can’t work.

She now has to find a way to email her clients and ask if they’re okay with a delay in their commissions, or if they want their money back.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to get our electrician in to fix it, but we can’t do that until my husband’s disability payment comes in – which, thankfully, is soon.

Not good – but it could have been a lot worse!

The Re-Farmer

It’s wet and ugly out there

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It’s been raining off and on throughout the night, and will continue to do so for the next couple of days. We still have predictions of some snow overnight, two days from now.

After I was back inside from doing my damp morning rounds, I heard the distinct beeping and rumbling of heavy equipment. Someone was working on the really bad spot on the road near our intersection. I was happy to see that, since I needed to pick up a parcel at the post office.

That first mile of gravel road was absolutely awful. It’s so saturated, it’s just being destroyed. I still had to skirt around the really bad spot near our place. I could see that the road had been worked on for a full 2 miles. I hate to think how bad it was before it got fixed! Well. Fixed as much as possible for now.

Not a whole lot accomplished outside today! I did get some hoops up on the high raised bed, so it can be covered overnight when we’re supposed to get snow. Later on, the girls and I went back out to where we are looking to plant the trees when they come in, marking off where we need to dig holes with orange paint, though a couple of spots didn’t get marked, because there are puddles where we need to dig. Working out the distances and where we will start from, we’ll actually be able to plant all 30 silver bison berry in two rows where we had the corn and sunflowers last year. Where the sea buckthorn will go, and the highbush cranberry that is coming from another supplier, also got marked off. We also talked about where the 6 Korean pine will go, though there’s no point in marking anything there.

I had been thinking if using the netting we got to create a temporary fence around the whole garden area and where we will be planting the trees, but my daughter, who bought the netting, pointed out that it isn’t suitable for that. It’s a finer mesh that is meant to be used like the mosquito netting she got last year. So many insects got trapped under those, many of which were beneficial insects.

So… no temporary deer fencing around the entire area. We’ll be protecting individual beds and plots, instead, and getting something else to put around the trees to protect them from critters.

Well, at least all this rain will make it easier to dig the holes we need for all those trees.

The Re-Farmer

*heavy sigh*

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Last year, May was a very warm month. More like the height of summer, than spring.

This year?

Snow? Really?

Yeah, I know. It’s not really that unusual. It’s just that all those warm days that were being forecast keep turning into colder days. Predicting 2-4 cm (under 2 inches) as well feels a bit like getting kicked when you’re down.

The Re-Farmer

Not much progress today

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It’s been a chilly day today, with off and on rain. Too chilly to try and put the transplants out to harden them off.

While doing my morning rounds, I spent some time fussing with the garden shed to see if I could secure the sheets of metal roofing a bit better. I was trying to figure out why they wouldn’t lie flat, then remembered: a smaller piece of aluminum had been put on the roof, over where there is a hole that water was getting in. A rock was tossed on to keep it from blowing away. You can’t see the rock from the ground, and it was forgotten about. Now, the sheets of metal roofing are on top of it! :-D I was able to arrange them in a more centered way, was able to nail down one of them above the door, and found a way to clamp down the other. Between that and the strap the girls put back on, it should stay. It’s just a matter of time before we get rid of it completely, so we’re not too worried about it.

I got a phone call from my brother today. Our mother had called him this morning and left a message with him, saying something about not feeling well. She’s mentioned to me, when I last spoke to her, that “everything hurts”, but when my brother called her back, now she says she’s got a headache, too. My brother says it sounds like she has the flu. He convinced her to do the usual things she would do to take care of herself, and get lots of rest, so she stayed home from church. Apparently, she’d planned to walk to the grocery store after church, but also insists she has enough and doesn’t actually need to buy more food, so we’re not sure why she still planned to go shopping.

Since she needs to rest, my brother will be the only one calling her to check up on her, so she’s not constantly getting up to answer the phone. If it becomes necessary, he’ll let me know and I’ll head over.

That gave me extra reason to make sure to get to the hardware store in town today – I wanted to see if the gravel roads had improved enough to drive on with my mother’s little car. The high winds we’ve been having are at least good for that. The rough spots are still very rough, but no longer muddy, and the tires weren’t sinking as much while driving through them. It should be fine to use my mother’s car without damaging it.

Once at the hardware store, I found the roof repair tar and new caulking gun that we needed, then decided to look around. Which is always a dangerous thing for me to do, since I will always find something we can use! :-D Today, however, I found the lamp oil I’ve been looking for! I was able to get a large bottle of paraffin based lamp oil at a better price than what I’d found online at Canadian Tire, and without any scent. I got just one bottle for now; enough to fill all 4 of our oil lamps, if we needed to, though we’d probably only use two at a time, at most. Now that I know where to find it, I’ll pick up more for our stash, as we are able.

The main thing is we have what we need to patch up the roof, and should the need arise, we’ve got what we need to use our oil lamps. I feel much better having that option available, now. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Finally broke it down

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Just a bit about some of the clean up we did yesterday, since I didn’t get back to the computer until much later.

The girls were able to get the sheets of metal roofing that blew off the old garden shed out and strap them back on, but weren’t able to screw them into place. We don’t really have a way to reach the top. Too much stuff around the building. Will have to get back to it another time.

They also picked up some of the fallen branches around the yard. When I went out again later, I picked up some more. There are still a few areas that are are so wet, we’re not trying to get into them to do any cleanup yet.

The main thing I’m happy to have finally gotten to, was cleaning up that piece of tree that fell on the canopy tent. With the BBQ moved away, it was easier to get at, and the picnic table made a convenient saw horse. I was able to use the mini-chainsaw to cut most of it to size, then used a buck saw on the rest. I didn’t fill like dragging an extension cord across the wet lawn to use the electric chainsaw.

I cut it to fire pit lengths, and the whole thing fit into the wheel barrow, except for the little branches that went onto one of the branch piles. I kept the bark the fell off, though. The inner bark in particular is good for starting fires.

You can see the hole in the ground from the tent leg that got driven in when the piece of tree fell on it.

This was some nice maple wood, so it went into a pile we’ve got that’s almost all maple and apple wood we’ve been cleaning up, to use in cooking fires.

We’re looking forward to the winds dying down so we get get the fire pit going and finally test out that cast iron Dutch oven. We should get some excellent cooking coals out of this. Can’t let it go to waste! :-)

As much as I look forward to the winds dying down, they are certainly helping dry things out. Even the water seeping into the old basement is visibly less, for all that we still got rain. Still, I want to get the platform set up again, so we can go back to hardening off our transplants. Theoretically, we can just put them on the ground, or even just on the platform bed frame, but they’d be in reach of the groundhogs if we did that. I’ve been seeing them running around in the yard, and on the garage cam live feed. I imagine there will soon be little ones, and hungry mamas would make short work of our transplants.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

It’s crazy windy out there!

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After my successful outing yesterday, now that the main road has been repaired, my younger daughter and I headed out today, to do an early birthday shopping trip. Her birthday is actually next month, but we don’t pay too much attention to exact days. ;-)

It rained most of last night, though the water levels around our yard did not increase too much. There were plenty of fallen branches already. Once again, feeling so thankful we were able to get those trees cut away from the house a few years back. We do still have dead trees we’ll hire someone to take down, as they could potentially fall onto the house, but they are far less of a risk than the ones that were right over the roof and into the power lines!

Our birthday gift to my younger daughter was going to be a clothes shopping trip at a particular local Thai clothing store. My daughter mentioned she really needed some jeans, so we decided to hit a Walmart, first.

The first surprise of the day was the first mile of gravel road. When I drove it yesterday, there was one really bad patch at the intersection nearest us, where the gravel trucks sunk keep into the saturated road. Even with the grader going by, it was still pretty bad.

After a night of rain, that entire first mile of road was filled with saturated patches; none as bad as the one nearest us, but still enough that we had to carefully skirt around the worst parts – and I could still feel the van trying to sink into the road as we did! In fact, right now, the best part of the entire stretch to the highway is the spot that had been washed out and repaired!

Once on the highway, all was good, though. Since we were heading to a Walmart first, we make our usual stop at the town my mother lives in, to fill the tank and pick up some fried chicken for “breakfast”.

That was my other surprise of the day.

Gas prices went up 8 cents a litre, overnight.

My fuel gauge was just above 3/4 of a tank.

Apparently, my gas gauge isn’t accurate. The tank on our van hold 95L (25 US gallons, 20.8 Imperial gallons). That makes a quarter tank 23.75L According to my gas gauge, I needed less than a quarter tank. I have noticed, however, that the gauge stays at the full line for quite a long time, and that the needle seems to drop faster, the lower it goes. Especially if it dips below half a tank. I remember commenting about it with a mechanic at some point, because I was never quite sure how much fuel was actually in the tank. His answer? Just keep the tank full! :-D Good thing that’s what we normally try to do.

While I was paying at the gas station, I remember to ask about the road we needed to cross to get to the next highway. The cashiers weren’t sure but, thankfully, the next customer in line was able to tell me that all was well. I’d heard the road had washed out at a new bridge, but all was fine, though plenty of fields were still full of water.

Once at the Walmart, I left my daughter to hunt down the clothes she needed, while I picked up a few things. More cat kibble, of course; that’s one thing we have the hardest time stocking up on. I also made sure to check out the garden centre, and made an unplanned purchase.

I picked up some strawberry plants. It’s something we were intending to do, eventually. These will be planted in the asparagus bed. I only got 4 plants, but strawberries are easy to propagate. At this size, they cost just under $4 each, though there were much larger plants in hanging baskets, with strawberries already ripening! Those were completely out of my budget, and we have nowhere to hang baskets, anyhow.

One thing I looked for but couldn’t find was lamp oil. The closest I found was citronella oil for those outdoor torches. I’m wanting oil for glass lamps we have; there are two we brought with us when we moved, and two others we found here at the farm while cleaning out my parents’ stuff. One of those actually looks like it had kerosene in it, though. It appears to have dried out, but the glass is stained dark. I haven’t tried to take the lamp down from the top of the shelf it’s on to find out; it’s safe from the cats up there! :-D

Anyhow, I used to be able to buy lamp oil at Walmart, but now I can’t find any. We considered trying Canadian Tire, but decided not to go there today. I’ve just looked online, and apparently they do carry scented lamp oil that can be used in indoor lamps. I had to read comments and reviews to find that out, since it wasn’t information included in the product description. Something to remember, the next time I’m there. It’s something to include in our stash.

My daughter was able to find a couple of pairs of pants that she needed, suitable for working outdoors, and was very happy. Once we were done there, we headed to the Thai place I originally wanted to take her to. She ended up getting two more pairs of pants that will be perfect for summer weather. While there, I found something for myself, too. I spotted what looked like swoopy folding bamboo and cloth fans. They turned out to be hats! Then, of all the things to find in a clothing store, I was very excited to find steak spice. This place has both a storefront and a restaurant. The building used to be a grocery store and butcher shop. The owner was a good friend of my in-laws. He had his own recipe for steak spice that is the best we’ve ever had. My FIL would mail us about 10 bags of it, once a year, so we could have fresh to use in our tourtierre filling. When the owner retired, I’d seen signs that the spice mix was still available, but I’d never actually seen it on the shelf before. As I was paying for my stuff, I commented on it and found out that when the Thai family bought the building, they also bought the spice mix recipe!

My husband was so thrilled when he saw the bag of spice mix. When we get a chance, we should pick some up for my FIL. He’ll love it!

That done, we headed home. During this entire trip, we were fighting the winds the entire way. We certainly weren’t going to be putting the transplants out for hardening off today, that’s for sure.

Then we got home and saw it wasn’t an option at all.

Pegging it down wasn’t enough for these winds!

Once everything was inside the sun room, my daughter and I straightened the platform out a bit, but didn’t try to put it back up. While my daughters finished taking things inside and putting them away, while I put the strawberry pots into a small bin to join the other plants in the sun room, I headed back outside and fussed with the tarp, pegging some corners down again to keep it from blowing away.

Then I switched to rubber boots and went to see what else needed to be dealt with.

The diverter on the rain barrel had been blown off. I tried to secure it, only to come back and find it blown off again; just not as far. Even the cover on the rain barrel, which is weighted down with the board and bricks that hold the diverter in place, was blowing off, and that thing is made of mesh! One of the containers with our winter sowing (which have not sprouted, yet) was blown right off the step it was on. Thankfully, the soil inside was undisturbed. I moved all 4 containers to a more sheltered (I hope!) spot.

The huge tarp covering my late father’s car gets blown around a lot, but it was really bad today, billowing like a parachute with a car inside. I ended up dragging out three old tires from behind the pump shack to weigh it down; one on the trunk, one on the hood and one on the roof.

While working on that, I noticed that the side door of the storage house was open! Thankfully, it’s quite high off the ground with no stairs, so no cats would be getting up into it. It made me think to check the back door of the barn. When the snow finally melted enough that I could get in there for the first time since fall, I found the top half of the split door in the back was open. I checked, and it had not been blown open again. So I went into the storage house – I don’t think we went into there even once, last year! – and got the door closed. The side door is next to the kitchen, which has exterior blinds in the windows. They tend to rattle in the wind a lot, so I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to reduce that. There wasn’t, but I found another surprise.

Among the things we found lots of while cleaning this place out, are old canning jars that use glass lids. We went through them, and I’ve got shelves full of them that have no nicks or chips in them at all. We also found lots of the glass lids. What we didn’t find were the metal rings. A couple of jars had them still on, and they are so corroded, they’re stuck to the glass. These rings are deeper, to accommodate the width of glass lids and rubber sealing rings. The rubber rings are still available, but no one makes these rings anymore. I wouldn’t want to use the jars for actual canning anymore, but they could still be used for dry storage – if I could find more of these rings. I’ve looked online and could find some on ebay and the like, but they were quite expensive, and looked to be in poor condition.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, there in the storage house was a bucket of canning rings, and was that a deeper ring that I was seeing? After rifling through the bucket, I found about 8 or 10 of these rings, mixed in with some more modern ones, and almost all of them looked nearly pristine! I made sure to take them all out and set them aside. Now that I know we have some, I’ll pick up some of the rubber rings, and we’ll match jars, rings and lids, clean them up and have them available for dry storage.

I was very happy to find these!

Once done in the storage house, I came out and found that the tarp on my late father’s car was billowing again.

The wind had actually blown a tire, right off the roof!

So I fought with that some more. The car happens to be next to a pile of rocks that were cleared up from around the yard. Most of the smaller ones were taken out and used for various thing, but there were some bigger ones that were not so big I couldn’t lift them. After wrestling the tire back onto the roof of the car, I used rocks to weight down the edges of the tarp on the sides. It still billows, but no longer turns into a parachute. Unfortunately, several years of winds has been tearing the tarp to shreds. We need to pick up an actual car cover one of these days. There are covers for the make and model of this car, but they are not something our budget has room for.

It’s been interesting watching out my window as I’ve been working on this post. At the moment, the winds have died down, and the branches on the maples are just wiggling a bit. Other times, the entire tree is swaying, including branches that are as thick as many tree trunks. This particular maple I see from my window needs to have some of those big branches removed, to take weight off the trunk, before they break off completely. With winds like today, I am often amazed that they haven’t broken already. Especially since there is ant damage visible in the trunk, where the biggest branches split off.

Once the winds die down – hopefully, tomorrow – we’re going to have to spend some time cleaning up. Aside from the broken branches, things have been blowing out of the junk pile, and even out by the barn, we’ve been hearing the sound of metal being blown around; there are leftover pieces of metal roofing material among a pile of stuff near the barn. They’re weighed down with things like car tires, cinder blocks and metal grates, but they’re still being lifted by these winds!

Hopefully, we’ll just lose branches, and not any more trees. Or pieces of trees. We still haven’t cut up the piece of tree that landed on the canopy tent. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Road conditions

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While doing my morning rounds, I saw a gravel truck going by several times. We’ve been seeing them regularly for quite some time, now. There must be some major road damage to the west of us, for so many loads to be going by.

When switching out the memory card in the sign cam, I noticed we had a new sign on the road, too.

The “flood waters” sign is gone, and our road is now officially closed.

The “local traffic” is basically us, and maybe someone needed to get into a field. All other homes are on the other side of where the road is washed out.

It was road conditions much closer that had me going through the fence, though.

This is the main road, just before our intersection. This area typically gets soft when there’s a lot of moisture, but with everything so saturated, the weight of the gravel trucks going through is just tearing the road apart!

Smaller vehicles can still drive around it, though. Which is important. My husband phoned in his insulin refills to be delivered today. I was a bit surprised he did that. It seems he didn’t quite get that we really are cut off. Larger trucks may be able to get through the washed out area by the bison ranch, but small cars like the one the pharmacy delivery driver has, isn’t going to make it. He does always phone us ahead of time, before entering our cell phone dead zone, so when he does, I’ll tell him I’ll meet him at the washout. I’ll have to make sure I’m wearing my rubber boots, so I can cross the washout and get the prescription. Thankfully, my husband doesn’t have to sign anything for his insulin, like he does for his bubble packs. Otherwise, he’d have to come with me!

With the big gravel trucks driving through the washout, though, I’m very curious as to it’s like there.

I wasn’t about to walk the distance to find out, nor waste the gas to drive the distance, but I did walk over to check the washout to the south of us. This time, I was able to walk across it.

The road has eroded all the way across now. Walking through, I could feel myself sinking in the gravel and clay. As you can see, some people are still driving through it, though I don’t know how old these tracks are. I wasn’t able to get to this side when I checked the area last night.

The water levels have continued to drop, and today the speed of the water flowing across has also reduced since I looked at it yesterday.

Do you see that line of debris in between the two washed out areas?

It was looking rather different than before, so I made sure to take a closer look. This is what it’s made up of.

I’m not sure what these are, but it’s amazing that something with such deep roots got washed out and deposited here. The field next to the road has been planted with grain, nothing like this, so wherever it came from, it traveled quite a distance before being dropped off here!

The other washed out area has also eroded all the way across. Until now, the shallower water that I would walk across had been on the west side of the road (on the right of the above photo), but now that it’s washed out all the way, the shallower water is now on the east side, along the edge of the ditche, where the gravel is being deposited. It’s all pretty soft, though, and even walking where the grass has managed to hold on, I could feel myself sinking.

It will likely still be a while before they can start fixing this area. I suppose it’s possible they’ve fixed the washed out area on the main road; that road gets so much traffic, it would be a high priority. With now fast the water is still flowing here, however, I suspect they still can’t do much on the main road, yet, either. I’ll find out today, when I meet the pharmacy delivery driver.

Meanwhile, the weather forecast has changed again. The rain that wasn’t supposed to start until tomorrow, is now expected to start today, albeit as scattered showers. We’re now supposed to get rain for the next three days, too, with 2-3cm (under 1 1/2 inches) expected tomorrow. Looking at the 14 day forecast, after 3 days with rain, we’ll have 4 days without, then another 3 days of rain, a couple days without, then a couple more days of rain again. Hopefully, those days without will be enough for the ground to be able to absorb the moisture. Even now, as I went around the property, I could see standing water in only the lowest areas, like the area behind the garage, and even those are much, much better than they were yesterday.

We continue to have overland flooding alerts. The south of the province continues to be the most at risk, but the alerts extend north of our area, too.

Well, we’ll see how it goes, and deal with what we get.

The Re-Farmer