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Early Mother’s Day

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My morning rounds includes checking the various growing things, and I finally got a decent photo of my daughter’s tulips emerging!

The leaf mulch has made it hard to see them in photos, but at this angle, you can see quite a few! There are more, out of frame. We’re so happy they survived their first winter! :-)

This morning, I headed out to be part of a surprise for my mother. My older brother was able to acquire a nice scooter, and he wanted to bring it over for her to see and try driving. While getting her to test drive it, he was going to get her to a nearby park, where we siblings were planning to surprise her with a picnic lunch together.

The problem was, we weren’t sure where the picnic tables were, so we weren’t quite sure exactly where to meet. We also weren’t sure the park was officially open for the season, yet. People could walk in any time, of course, but the entry gates get closed to traffic in the off season. So I left early to check it out.

I think we timed it just right. Not only were the gates open, but there was a crew of people doing all sorts of maintenance and clean up started. I was so focused on looking at where the picnic benches were, I didn’t realize I drove right past my brother! He’d had the same idea I had, and come early to scope the area.

There were quite a few clusters of picnic tables, including a whole bunch under a shelter. There was one that was closest to the entry that we considered moving closer to some buildings, because of the wind. As we walked around, though, we realized there would be no point. The wind was swirling in all directions. There was no shelter from it, anywhere! It was a warm enough day, but we knew the wind would be an issue, so my brother was going to make sure my mother dressed warmly.

My mother loves her fried chicken, so my contribution for the day was picking some up. We were so early, though, I had time to play some Pokemon Go, first! :-D I didn’t want to get it too early, even though I had an insulated bag to keep it hot. I still ended up back at the park early. Which worked out okay, because I soon saw my brother and mother making their way down the road. It was fun to sneak around the building and wait for the opportune moment to step out and surprise her! :-D

My mother, being my mother, was determined to be miserable. She makes a big deal about not liking surprises (except for those times when she tells us how much she likes surprises…), so she was already giving my brother a hard time. She refused to get a warmer coat or a hat, and wouldn’t even put on shoes; she was wearing house slippers! Then she saw me, and that was another surprise she didn’t like. :-D But then we got to the picnic table and I started setting food out. It turned out she hadn’t had lunch yet, and … well … there as fried chicken and wedges to be had! :-D My sister had the day off, so she was able to join us, so that was one more surprise for my mother. By then she was eating, so she skipped being miserable. ;-) Among the things my sister brought was a big thermos of hot tea, and today was certainly a day for it! I’m glad I had my picnic backpack; not only did we have real plates and cutlery, but I had room for actual cups. If we’d gone the disposable route, everything would have blown away!

We managed to have an excellent picnic outside, even with the wind. Plus, we brought enough food that my mother would have enough for another meal or two. :-)

As for the scooter, because my mother has been waffling back and forth between wanting one, because her knees are hurting so much, and not wanting one, because apparently, someone has told her it would be too much for her to take care of (apparently, plugging in the charger would be more than she can handle?) and too much responsibility. So my brother made sure to tell her that it was his, he was not leaving it for her, but he wanted her to try it out and think about it. If she does decide she wants one, it would mean getting rid of her couch (which she doesn’t use, anyhow), and probably at least one shelf. Her apartment is very tiny, and she would need to be able to turn around with it in her living room. I know quite a lot of people who use motorized wheelchairs or scooters, and they tend to have very little furniture, so they had room to maneuver – and they had much larger apartments than my mother’s! She wouldn’t miss the couch, but she does love her little tchotchke!! And not-so-little ones. I forget. She’s even got a garden statue of an angel in her living room, and that thing’s pretty darn big!

But now that she’s had a chance to drive this one around a little, she can think about it, and decide what is more important to her; maintaining independence as her knees get worse, or her bulky furniture and bric-a-brac.

I do think she’ll eventually agree to taking it. Especially as we assure her that she just needs to plug it in to charge the battery; any other maintenance is stuff my siblings and I can take care of, for her. It’s not something to load up like her walker (I have ramps and can load it into my van, but it’s very hard for her to get in and out of it), but it’ll let her make runs to the shops in town as needed.

We shall see.

I’m glad we were able to get together today. Our province has decided to lock down even harder again, starting tonight at midnight. I’m not entirely sure why, but we were already listed as “critical” (even as our Schrodinger’s Virus numbers, which were never all that high to begin with, continue to go down as the season progresses). Not sure what word they’ve come up with to be scarier than “critical”. Anyhow, it was already illegal for more than one person visiting at a time – and even then, only because my mother lives alone, so she has an exemption. That was why we met at a park, though my mother’s apartment is so small, we couldn’t have all fit comfortably in there, anyhow. More than a few people have noticed that these intensified lock downs and restrictions happen right before every special date or holiday, regardless of what the actual data is, or that the lock downs themselves have been completely ineffective. I’m quite content to be a hermit, but for people like my mother, who thrives on social interaction, it’s making life more … well, like no life at all. Today’s visit will, I hope, provide a bit of relief from the malaise I’ve been seeing in her lately. She tried to be critical and miserable about the surprise, but I could see that she was really enjoying herself – even with the wind!

When I got home, it was early enough that I considered getting some more gardening in, but not only was it still quite windy, the girls convinced me to back off a bit. It’s a good thing I’ve got them watching out for me, because I have a terrible habit of overdoing things, then ending up out of commission for several days. :-D

So I made mocha chocolate truffles, instead. Not the best I’ve ever made, but good enough to satisfy a craving! I did accidentally make a double recipe, though. The recipe I was found called for 1/2 pound of one type of chocolate, and 1/2 pound of another. I didn’t have fancy chocolate, but I did have lots of chocolate chips that were suitable, so I broke out the scale. It’s in metric, and 1 pound total of chocolate is 2.2 kg, so I started weighing it out. It was an awful lot of chocolate, so I decided to do a half recipe. It wasn’t until I’d poured the hot cream into the chocolate to melt it that I realized I had it backwards. 1 kg is 2.2 pounds, not the other way around! I’d weighed out 1.1 kg.

Oops.

Thankfully, part of the reason I was making it was to use up the cream before it expired, so I just doubled the rest of the ingredients.

It worked. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Critter of the Day break

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Normally, this would be a Critter of the Day picture post. We’ve been getting so busy with the outside work while the weather is good, I haven’t had a chance to go through my photos to choose which are worth posting. So we’ll be taking a bit of a break.

Critter of the Day will return as soon as I can!

Thanks for your patience. :-)

The Re-Farmer

2025 update: due to running out of storage space for images, I’ve had to go through most of our Critter of the Day and Photo of the Day posts. Which really, really sucks.

Ah, much better. Also, I was wrong

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Oh, this is much, much better!!

I just finished switching the new keyboard with my husband’s old keyboard. I was wrong about his keyboard, though. It’s identical to my old one. It doesn’t have lit keys.

Here is my new, old keyboard! :-D

Believe it or not, I actually cleaned this a bit, already… :-D

As for the broken leg, it turns out the legs are exactly the same height as the width of an old tape measure I had on my desk. Something I’d found while cleaning out my late father’s desk and kept handy. The clip on the back even fits into the space the leg used to be in, so I can slide the keyboard around, and it goes along for the ride. :-D

My wrists and hands are already thanking me! :-D

My husband, meanwhile, is quite happy with the new keyboard. He doesn’t type anywhere near as much as I do, so the issues I was having just don’t bother him. Plus, I’m the one with arthritis in my wrists and fingers.

I suppose I should pop the keys off and clean them, but honestly, I don’t think I care enough to bother. It works. That’s all the matters.

The new keyboard was the closest my husband had been able to find like what we already had, in a split keyboard. Since my husband had to place the order a second time, he missed a sale price, so the new one was pretty expensive, too. Quality wise, as far as construction goes, it is nowhere near as good as the old keyboards, which are both from Microsoft and well over 10 years old.

Considering how much use my keyboard got, I’m rather impressed that it lasted this long. I’m still going to keep it. It may be a bit janky, but it still works well enough that it would do as a back up, should something happen to one of the others that are in use. Now that I think about it, the light up keyboard I remembered my husband had was one that came with a desktop system he’d bought, years ago. That one died after a cat knocked a drink all over it, which is why he was using the one I have now.

My wrists are thanking me. My thumb, in particular, is much, much happier now! :-D

New is not always better, that’s for sure!

The Re-Farmer

Things I’m thinking about

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First up, thank you to those who wished me well after my last post. I ended up lying down for a while, and the pain was much reduced when I got up again. It’s still there, but it’s more of a stiffness than pain now. I still have no idea what caused it, but it’s getting better.

Which made things much less uncomfortable while helping my mother run her errands this afternoon. Since I had her car, she took advantage of it and we went to several places. Before heading home, I stopped to fill the gas tank. Talk about sticker shock!

A couple of days ago, gas prices had gone down to 117.9/L for regular gas, and now it’s 128.9/L!

For those in the US, 1 US gallon is 3.78L (1 Imperial gallon is 4.55L, so there’s quite a difference). So this about $4.87/US gallon in Cdn dollars, or $5.90 in US dollars, at today’s exchange rate. And that’s just for regular gas, not premium!

As I understand it, this is still a low price compared to UK prices! Granted, we’re a lot more spread out, and have fewer alternative options to driving.

So…

Ouch!

At times like this, we are thankful my husband no longer has to commute to the city, as he did when we last lived in this province.

Overall, shopping with my mother went very well. A few days ago, she called me with concerns about pains in her chest and wanted me to make an appointment for her with the doctor. In the end, he ended up doing a telephone appointment with her – and instead of talking about her chest pains and other symptoms, she talked to him about the pain in her knees! *sigh* Still, she got a prescription for a topical painkiller to try on her knees for a couple of weeks. The last couple of times I helped her shop, she had some near falls as her knee gave out. That didn’t happen today, but she did get tired very quickly. Thankfully, when I do these trips with her, I don’t have anything I need to rush off to, so I can give her all the time she needs.

There was one thing that had me shaking my head, but before I describe it, some background is needed.

My mother had asked us to move out here a few times, and one of the “perks” she dangled in front of us is that we could grow a garden and never have to spend money on groceries.

Which doesn’t make much sense. Even when she had her big garden, plus we had chickens and butchered our own cows, we still had to buy some groceries. But that was the carrot she dangled in front of us. We’d be saving all that money by having free food.

When we did move out here, and didn’t immediately put in a garden in our first summer, she was furious. Like, actually furious. She was also angry the we let it go to “weeds”, as if we were doing it deliberately, rather than because it was so badly plowed, we couldn’t mow it until one of the push mowers was fixed the following summer. We would have destroyed the riding mower my brother got for us (because the one that was here disappeared while the place was empty.) In fact, it got so bad that, at one point, we were starting to look at rental listings because we thought she would “evict” us and, frankly, we didn’t need the abuse. It calmed down, but took a lot of concerted efforts from my siblings and I.

Then, when we finally did have a garden last year, my mother have very little so say, and what she did say was all negative. She had never heard of mulching before, so that was bad. We didn’t get it plowed or use a tiller (none of the tillers here work), so that was bad. And so on. But, overall, she just didn’t bring gardening up as much.

This year, with our plans for a much larger garden, she was once again furious, because we are going to buy soil. She has even finally started to acknowledge that the soil is not the same as when she had my dad to plow it, 5 kids to help pick rocks, and manure for a herd of cows to fertilize it. However, she had nothing much to say about the fact that we are planning to have a large garden, even though she harangued us about it for our first two years here. I would tell her about the seeds we got, and she would chastise me for spending money on seeds. During one attempt at a conversation about it, she was giving me a hard time for now “allowing” her to have the garden plowed, when she offered to pay someone, but when I told her that if she were still offering, we were ready to say yes, she just said she would think about it. It hasn’t been brought up, since. (But I’m still not supposed to spend money to buy soil…)

So that’s where we’ve been at for the last while.

Today, while at the grocery store, we were looking at some canned goods and I mentioned that we now had the supplies needed to do both water bath canning, and even do pressure canning, so we will be able to do things like can soups and things like that, safely.

Her response was to make snarky comments about spending so much money, spending, spending…

???

So… I’m supposed to grow a large vegetable garden, but I’m not supposed to buy seeds, not supposed to buy soil, and I’m somehow supposed to preserve the harvest without buying canning supplies and equipment (her water bath canning supplies also disappeared before we moved here)

I pointed out to her that when she canned things, she spent money, too. She had to.

She promptly dropped it.

It is so strange that, with how big a deal she made over us not gardening over our first two summers here, now that we are gardening, and very excited about it (I even mentioned how excited we are about it!), she can’t see anything positive about it. Even when I mention that we’ve started seeds indoors, she expressed surprise (yes, she did start some things indoors, too, so this isn’t even doing something different than she did), but doesn’t want to talk about it. And yet, she had been constantly going on and on about my sister’s garden, and how wonderful it is, and bragging about it every time my sister brought her some fresh produce. My sister has been gardening on their farm for somewhere around 40 years, but you’d think it was all a new and wonderful surprise or something.

So very strange.

But not as strange as the phone messages I listened to.

Yes, our vandal had called her again, a couple of days ago. For the first call, it was an unfamiliar number, so she answered it. She told me about it later, but neglected to mention that he had called her three more times, leaving messages!

He’s changed his story again. Now he’s saying he doesn’t want her money (which is hilarious, since for years, he was constantly after her to pay for things for him), but only wants to “walk freely” on the farm.

Why on earth would he even want to walk around on someone else’s property? It’s one thing to have come here to “take care” of the place, when it was empty (though he was helping himself all sorts of things at the same time). It’s quite another to want to just pop over any time, while there is someone living here, just to “walk freely”.

He obviously has no idea just how creepy that sounds.

Well, his messages were all sorts of rambling diatribes about how my mother has given the whole farm to me (she hasn’t), and why did she do that, when he worked so hard here, and we didn’t do anything at all, ever (he’s including my brother on that one). Then wailing about how we’re trying to put him in jail and have ruined his life.

Oh, and apparently, I go by, waving at him and laughing at him. Laughing!

Also, we’re fat. FAT!!!!

I think the funniest one was his claiming my daughters are holding parties. *snort*

There were some new ones in his messages, though. Now, we’re apparently ruining the lives of my late brother’s children, too. How, I have no idea. He’s also claiming I’m responsible for putting him into almost $200,000 of debt by charging him. Which I’m not doing, because when I tried that after he broke the gate, the courts stayed the charges after he went through some sort of program. I’m applying for a restraining order. How any of that resulted in him going into such massive debt, I have no idea. More likely, he incurred debt in the belief that he would coerce the farm out of my mother and sell it to pay off his own bills.

But that’s just a guess on my part.

Which leads me to the other new thing.

He actually offered to buy the farm from my mother (who doesn’t own it anymore, and he knows that) for…

…

drum roll please!

…

$500.

Which is what he says my parents paid for the farm (which would be the two quarter sections we’re caring for now, not the third quarter section the younger of my brothers got as an early inheritance).

In 1952.

Which I think might be before my parents were even married. Certainly before any of us kids were born, and only my late brother and I were born after the moved her from the city. I believe my parents bought the property in the early to mid 1960’s, and they certainly paid more than $500 for it! Even the quarter section my younger brother lives on cost them more than that when they bought it!

So where did he even get those numbers?

And what on earth was he thinking, to even suggest buying the property for the price he thinks it was purchased at, almost 70 years ago? Was he trying to be insulting? If he was, it didn’t work.

As my mother put it, he’s just making things up!

The oddest thing (among many odd things) is that I can submit these messages to the courts, both in my application for a restraining order (whenever that finally makes it to court), and in my defense against his vexatious civil suit against me, which still has a court date in July, and he knows this. He’s said as much in some of his past messages.

So why does he keep doing it?

And why is he so obsessed with this property? Particularly since he already has his own farm?

And why does he keep going after my mother, as if she still owns it?

None of it makes sense.

Interestingly, when my mother updated her will, the lawyer commented that he sees lots of people doing stuff like this, so he has lots of experience in making wills that can’t be contested by such people.

How very sad.

Ah, well. We deal with what we have.

In the mean time, I think building nice taaaaalll deer fences around the perimeter of the yard sounds like a very good idea. Something that also gives us privacy from anyone going slowly by on the road and peering through the bushes… :-/

We may live in the boonies, but sometimes I think it’s not quite far enough in the boonies. There are still people around. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Presto, Change-o!

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A while back, I had written about my unsuccessful hunt for a pressure canner. There were none to be had; the only place I found that had one in stock, it was way beyond our budget.

Then we were generously gifted with a pressure canner! There were even spare parts, including two pressure gauges. It had been tested before being sent; all we needed to do was get the gauges tested, and we were good to go!

Easy peasy, right?

Of course not. :-D

For you folks in the US, you can take your gauges in to the extension office for their annual testing.

Canada doesn’t have extension offices. That didn’t concern me, since I figured we had some sort of equivalent. I promptly started searching for where the gauges could be taking in for testing.

The only results I got were from the US, saying to go to your extension office. Or, send them to the manufacturer for testing.

Hmmm.

After a while, I turned to a local Facebook group specifically about what to do with your garden produce. Cooking, canning, freezing, dehydrating… all of it. I saw lots of people posting about canning, so I was sure someone would have an answer for me.

Well… not quite.

When I couldn’t find a pressure canner anywhere, locally, I had figured it was for the same reason lots of people were having a hard time finding canning jars or water bath canning supplies; the supply was far less than the sudden demand and everything was selling out very quickly.

Now I think it’s for a different reason.

Apparently, pressure canning isn’t much of a thing here in Canada.

Of the hundreds of people in this very active group, I got two people who even had pressure canners respond. One of them hadn’t used her canner in years, and the other mentioned a place she used to take them to, but they don’t test gauges anymore, so they both wanted to know, too!

I did have a couple of suggestions. One person gave me the info for a company that calibrated precision tools that she thought might be willing to do it. Another suggested I try one of the university science departments.

Given the response, I began thinking that skipping the dial gauge completely might be a better idea. So I started looking and found the weighted regulators on the Presto website. There is no dial, but they never need to be tested.

The model number for this pressure canner was not on the list of those it would work with.

Hmmm.

After another post on the group was made about getting weighted regulators and where to find them (please: don’t buy them from Amazon!!!), I went back to the Presto website last night and sent an email explaining what I needed, asking about testing the gauges, or if they had a weighted regulator appropriate for our model.

This afternoon, I got a response. It turns out they have a kit available; this model needs to have the steam vent replaced in order for the weighted gauge to work, so the kit includes the vent, 3 part regulator and an instruction booklet, all for only US$15, plus shipping.

There was also a toll free number included, with the offer to help place the order.

Of course, I called them as soon as I could!

The woman I spoke to found the email response I got, which had all the information she needed. As she was going through the process of placing an order for me, she suddenly said, oh! These are free for Canadians, because no one tests gauges in Canada.

!!!

She put me on hold to confirm, then we placed the order. I’m basically just paying for the new vent; the weighted regulator on its own cost US$12. Newer pressure canners don’t need the vent replaced for the weighted regulator to work.

It might take a while to get here, but as long as it gets here before fall, I’m happy!

Of course, I went to the group and passed on the info, so others with pressure canners would know they wouldn’t be able to find a place to test their dial gauges in Canada.

Which just blows me away! I know canning, in general, was seeing an increase in popularity for at least a decade, as more and more people were turning to self sufficiency and being “green”. I’ve never known anyone who used a pressure canner, but that doesn’t mean much. If pressure canning, with precision parts that require annual testing, is so uncommon in Canada that no one does the testing, it would explain why I found so few Canadian resources in all my searches. Finding Canadian resources online tends to be rarer in general, so I didn’t think too much of it at the time.

So very strange!

No matter. The parts are on the way. Presto, Change-O, and we’ll be able to safely can our low-acid produce this fall!

The Re-Farmer

Yup. Still snowing

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The weather system has stalled over Ontario which, for us, means that the winds have actually reversed; Instead of coming in from the west and slowly cycling to the north, it’s swooping in from the east and swinging to the south. The entire system is covering the south end of three provinces (well, four, really, but it’s just barely touching one) and at least three states with snow, switching to rain to the east.

We’re just on the norther edge of the system, and seem to be getting more gaps between snowfalls, but there is still heavier snow expected.

The winds have increased, but we’re still at a very mild -4C/25F with a wind chill of -14C/7F.

I saw Junk Pile watching me through the window when I came out, but had to take a photo when I saw through the other window, that Nutmeg and Creamsicle Jr. were snuggled up under the heater bulb, I just had to take a picture! By the time I got my phone out, though, Nutmeg was at the window, checking me out. :-D

Smart kitties know where the warmth is!

I saw Butterscotch, too. I don’t know where her hiding spot it, but it’s not usually in the inner yard.

While switching out the trail cam memory cards, I remembered to get this picture.

We had started out with rain, but these icicles formed on the bumpers only on one side of the gate. There’s even icicles inside the gate post, at the ends of the hinge bolts!

The temperatures are expected to stay pretty constant, dipping only a degree or two overnight. By the end of today, they’re saying we may have a total of 20-35cm of snow. (8-14 inches) We have about 8 inches now.

The sun room, meanwhile, is staying steady at around 10C/14F. The onion seedlings, with their heater bulb below, are doing just fine in there. Of the various seeds that needed to be started this early, they’re easily the hardiest.

As I write this, the snow has stopped, but from the looks of the weather radar, we’ve got a patches of heavy snow about to hit us. Mind you, according to the radar, we should be snowing right now, so… we’ll see what happened.

Either way, I’m glad we don’t have to go anywhere, we’re warm inside, well stocked, and hunkered down. This is a good time for me to catch up on some crochet! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Well, that was a first

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We’re still getting a mild snowfall, off and on. My younger daughter and I made a quick trip to the post office, and the roads were pretty slushy. My husband had prescriptions refills ordered on Friday that were to be delivered today, so when we got the call that they were on the way, I made sure to unlock the gate and shovel the sidewalk. It’s a very damp, heavy snow we’re getting right now, because it’s just a few degrees below freezing.

The delivery driver had just come by and I’d quickly run out to lock the gate – sans coat, because it was that warm out there – was back inside, boots half off, when the phone rang. No one was near a phone to answer it, so it went to machine. I rushed over to pick up for whomever it was, only to discover it was a robot call.

From Environment Canada, with a snowfall warning!

So I stayed and listened to it. Since moving out here, we have never had a call from Environment Canada with a weather warning!

The expected snowfalls are now expected to be 15-20cm (6-8 inches) in most places, but some might get as much as 30cm! (12 inches) There were plenty of warnings about road conditions, visibility, and a number to call for those people who would not be able to make their retrovaccine appointments. It even included an email and twitter hashtag to report severe weather conditions. It was the exact same thing that is under my phone’s weather app alert.

We’ve had some pretty wicked storms since moving out here, and it really makes me wonder what triggered them to have the automated calls to start going out! I think this part of the alert is why. “There is still some uncertainty with the exact amounts as several waves of accumulating snow are expected through the end of Tuesday.” So… they really don’t know what this weather system is going to do – they hardly even refer to it as a “storm”. The winds are not particularly severe, and the temperatures aren’t going to be dropping much, even overnight.

Well, my husband has his medications – even his bubble packs, which he didn’t think he’d be able to get for a couple more days, the larder is full, and any of the places we need to go can wait.

Including the pharmacy. They forgot his insulin, but he’s got enough for a few more days. When he called them about the missing insulin, he made sure to add that, with the road conditions, we’re not expecting them to deliver it! It’ll be ready for pick up on Thursday. By then, the roads should be cleared, and the snow starting to melt away.

I’m still just surprised by the call! And appreciative. They would only be calling land lines, which means my mother would have gotten the call, too. Not everyone has cell phones or internet!

The Re-Farmer

Spring snow

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Well, the forecasts were actually right for a change!

Somewhat.

When I checked the forecasts last night, they were suggesting the southern areas of our province might not get any snow at all, or if they did, it would be just a bit. The system was expected to hit more of the Northern areas of the province. The city, in particular, was predicted to get maybe a couple of centimeters of snow (about an inch).

We’re more central, so either of those forecasts could have included us, but we should have gotten at least a little snow.

When I checked the weather radar this morning, the system was over three provinces, and their bordering US states.

What caught my eye in all the blues of snow was the circle of pink and purple directly over the city. Pink and purple denoting severe weather. So while the rest of us were getting an ordinary snowfall, the city – and only the city, at that time – was getting a storm!

It has since moved on, but the area of snow is still over us, and it will continue through tomorrow.

We started out with rain, yesterday evening, and it was still warm enough that the cat’s unheated water bowls did not freeze overnight.

They just got slushy with snow!

The outside cats were more than happy to be out in the weather once their kibble bowls were filled again! Even Junk Pile cat almost came close to me!

Their bowls are completely empty every morning, after nightly visits from skunks. I’ve only seen one, once, when I popped outside at night to investigate something, and found it inside the kibble house. They can get in easily enough, but they have a harder time getting out, over that board that keeps them from knocking the bowls out, with their short little legs. We catch a whiff of their presence in the night, fairly regularly. I don’t mind them too much. Sure, in the summer, they dig up holes in the lawn, but they’re eating up the grubs, and the divots can be put back. Still, cat kibble is not good for them, so we don’t refill the food bowls in the evenings anymore. It means that cats are pretty hungry by morning, though. :-(

We may be getting snow, but we are still just barely below freezing. Our expected high for today and tomorrow is -3C/27F. Today, we’re supposed to get between 6 and 12 cm of snow (about 2 1/2 to almost 5 inches), and another 2-4cm (roughly 1 – 1 1/2 inches) tomorrow.

In the sun room, however, it was nice and warm. The thermometer was at 10C/50F, though with the heat under the seedling trays, they would have been a bit warmer than that. No danger of them getting too cold in there!

The snowfall was pretty light, this morning. Changing up the memory cards on the trail cams was a bit funny. I could really tell which way the wind had been blowing! One of the trail cams had its front face covered with snow, and under that was a layer of ice that I had to scrap off the lens cover and the motion sensor. It still managed to record some videos, though! The other camera’s front was clear, but one side was coated with ice and snow. The side with the latches to open it, of course. ;-)

I’m really happy with what we’re getting right now. The temperatures are still mild. There’s no deep freeze expected, and no high winds. While there are a few patches of severe weather in the system, they’re not anywhere near us. We’re just getting the snow. Looking at the long range forecasts, the temperatures will rise just above freezing for the next while, and we’re even expected to get more snow as we go into May, which means a slow melt, and all that precious moisture is going to be absorbed slowly into the soil, rather than being washed away. This is exactly what we need!

The girls and I have been paying particular attention to where we planted all those bulbs and corms last fall. With it being so dry, we were concerned. We planted 200 grape hyacinth and another hundred crocuses. The crocuses in particular should be starting to poke through, and even blooming, while snow is still on the ground. We’ve had so little snow this past winter, though. Add in the tulips and irises the girls planted – with the tulips coming with instructions saying NOT to water them! – and it’s hard to guess how many have survived the winter, and the very dry spring we’ve had so far. Getting that polar vortex with so little insulating snow on the ground certainly wouldn’t have helped.

Well, we won’t know how they are for some time yet. If they survived the winter, this snowfall will be a huge boost for them.

I am really happy to see this snow. If things keep up like this, the fire bans might even be lifted. Some local farmers had managed to do controlled burns earlier, but the more of those that are done, the less wildfires we need to be concerned about later.

This snow is such a blessing right now!!!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: spruce grove, clearing to the dead trees

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Today turned out to be such a hot and sunny day, I took advantage of it to do a bit of work in the spruce grove. Specifically around the dead trees near where we intend to plant the mulberry tree that will be shipped later in the spring.

I normally post the before pictures at the start, and the after pictures near the end, but this time I’m going to set them side by side. It’s the only way I can see the difference 2-3 hours of work resulted in. :-/

Here is the first area, and where the mulberry tree will be planted.

They’re a bit hard to see in the before picture, but there are two steel wheels leaning against the reddish dead tree. Those have joined the “found object” art display for now. ;-) Then there was the remains of what appears to have been a bench made with two logs as support, and another log that I think was just there to sit on.

It must have been a very pleasant place to sit, when they were first set up.

Someone (probably my mother) had gone to some effort to make sure the seats were stable. I found these, under them.

These were under where the bench was, with a group of bricks under where each log would have been. It was a good idea to put the bricks under the logs, but nothing had been done to keep them from sinking into what is essentially composted leaves and spruce needles, so the logs started to rot from below.

It wasn’t until I found these that I realized the other log was intended as a seat, too.

I had to cut away what I thought were two small trees, just to access the area. It wasn’t until I tried to cut them down to ground level that I realized, it wasn’t two trees.

I had to dig out and cut away the roots to get them out, and they were both growing out of the same root, which ran under the bricks.

This was, hands down, the most difficult part of the clean up today. Partly because there were other roots running under the roots I was trying to cut! Some belonged to the dead spruce they were next to, but I later ended up pulling out about 8 feet of root, and never finding out what tree it came from!

While trimming the undergrowth, I realized I need to get thicker gloves than the gardening gloves I’ve been using.

Another reason to encourage the wild roses – they make great security barriers! Those spines go right through ordinary garden gloves!

I don’t mind cutting away the roses for now, though. They will grow back, and with clearing out the other stuff, they should have more sun and space to spread out, too.

It was really hot work, though, so I stopped for a rest in the shade. I look forward to when we set up new seating areas around the yard. It would be much more pleasant than sitting on concrete steps!

With how hot it was feeling, I just had to check the temperature. I was thinking we were certainly about 15C/59F Maybe even approaching 20C/68F

Nope.

It was 10C/50F

RealFeel, 8C/46F

Yeah. I know. You folks from the south are laughing at me right now! :-D

Meanwhile, the thermometer in the sun room was approaching 30C/86F. I opened the solid doors to allow air circulation through the screen doors, and increased the speed of the ceiling fan, so the onion seedlings would not be too hot!

One of these days, we should set up our own weather station, so we can have more accurate readings!

But I digress…

I did have a visitor while I was taking a break on the stairs.

I love how the woodpecker likes to get to the seeds on the ground by way of the bird feeder’s support. :-)

Then it was back to clearing away the undergrowth, and working my way towards the stone cross. Here is that section, taken from the same spot I took the first before and after pictures from.

I’m having a hard time seeing the difference between these two pictures. In fact, the “after” picture looks worse, because I didn’t line the angle up the same. :-/ Trust me. I did take out quite a bit of undergrowth in the distance!

In the second picture, you can see the tarp covering the junk pile. The tree beside it is dead, as is the tree my supplies are under. That whole area is full of spirea. It’s better to pull those up by the roots, but I just didn’t have the energy for that, today. Too hot! :-D

I worked more into this area.

In the before picture, I’d already started cleaning up the undergrowth a bit. The row of trees you can see on the right are part of north edge of the spruce grove. My older brother planted those, before I was born. It’s hard to believe they were planted at the same time as the huge spruces on the north edge of the grove, but there were three rows planted, close together. The further into the grove the rows were planted (at a time when the rest of the grove’s trees were in their prime), the less light they got, and the less growth there was. I’d cleaned up along the north side of the grove, taking out a lot of little dead spruces in the process. Hopefully, the more things are cleaned up, the better it will be for the surviving trees.

Most of the large spruces in the pictures are dead, so once those are cleaned up, that will allow a lot more light into here. If their trunks are still solid enough, I want to turn them into supports for benches and maybe a table or two. Over time, more spruces will be transplanted into the spruce grove, as well as more food trees – the mulberry tree being our first – that need the extra protection these spruces will give them. The mulberry tree should grow quite large, and will provide quite a bit of shade, so we need to keep things open around where we plant it. Long term, I want this area to be a pleasant, park-like setting. I will have to keep in mind that the benches and possible tables that I hope to make on the tree trunks nearby will end up covered with berries when the mulberry tree gets bigger! I’ve read warnings that mulberry trees can be quite messy. :-D

I’m sure the birds will clean it up for us, though. ;-)

I probably won’t get a chance to work here again for a while, as we are supposed to start snowing tomorrow evening, and it will be a few days before the temperatures warm up again. I want to get the spirea out, in particular – they’re lovely, but very invasive, so we’re keeping them in one area of the yard, and taking them out everywhere else. I know some of what I’ve already taken out today were chokecherry trees. We have lots of those, and it turns out they can be invasive, too! What we really want to clear up around are the Saskatoon bushes. These ones are still healthy, and keeping the area around them clear and open will help keep them that way. They are crowded by spirea and chokecherry right now, so when I work my way to where they are, I will back off until they are in full leaf, or even starting to bloom, so I don’t accidentally cut any down, mistaking them for chokecherry.

Today has been a very deceiving day! It got so hot, and when I was shoveling around those roots, I didn’t hit any ice or frozen ground at all. Quite a few of our garden seeds say to direct sow “as soon as the ground can be worked.” Well, that would be now, but it’s still another month an a half before our last frost date. Not only are we expected to have snow starting tomorrow evening, but we could easily get more snow later in the month, or even in May, so anything we tried to sow would likely not survive.

Which is fine for now. We can’t do anything until the garden soil is delivered! I keep forgetting to call about it. I’m sure the soil is thawed out enough to load into their trucks by now, and I still need someone to come by so we can look at where would be the best places to drop the loads.

I get excited, just thinking about it! :-D The girls and I are so looking forward to gardening this year!

The Re-Farmer

Someone lost a shoe…

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My daughter and I made a dump run today, and as we were unloading the back of the van, she noticed one of the access panels in the side of the van had fallen off. This is where the jack is stored. She popped the panel back on, and off we went.

As we were turning into our driveway, however, we heard a noise in the back that was rather alarming. At least for us, after having so many things go wrong on the van. So while my daughter unlocked the gate, I took a quick look in the back, thinking maybe something got knocked loose behind that access panel.

Once in the garage, I just had to get a picture of what I found.

The jack had been visible before, and we had seen part of the back with the pieces to use the jack. I think one of the plastic pieces I found was originally a bracket to hold the jack in place, so it wouldn’t get knocked about, but I have no real idea what it’s for. Then there was the pliers. And odd find, but I can go with that.

The child’s shoe, on the other hand, is a bit harder to explain! :-D I know the previous owners had kids – when I test drove it before buying it, and before it was detailed, there was still ample evidence to be found! :-D I do find myself curious how the shoe ended up tucked under the jack and the tools! :-D

The Re-Farmer