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Technical difficulties: still figuring it out

/ Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

First up, many thanks to Fyreglass and her hubby for all the help with my technical difficulties! So far, the problem hasn’t been solved, but my goodness, my computer is working much more efficiently! :-D

In fact, as I type this, the text is showing up as a combination of black and magenta. I am also still getting things like this.

Which isn’t too bad, compared to the neon green I usually get.

I spent hours last night, trying different things. This is what I’ve been able to figure out.

It’s definitely a Firefox issue, more than anything else. I did sometimes see it in Chrome, while in my email, for example, but getting the new monitor somehow solved that. Things actually appear on the screen faster than before, which is not something I expected to see a difference in. That’s usually an internet connectivity issue, but apparently, my old monitor – which was much older than my current computer – didn’t process as quickly.

Re-installing Firefox did not fix the issue. I’ve noticed that Firefox is a data hog, compared to other browsers. I use it for this blog and under my Re-Farmer profile simply because I don’t like having to log in and out repeatedly in the same browser, and I use Chrome for my personal stuff. I’ve also used Explorer in the past, and tried several other browsers. They all have their issues, and I keep finding myself going back to Firefox and Chrome, because the issues they have are easier to work around than the others I’ve tried.

I’ve used Glary and cleaned up all sorts of things. By this morning, when I double checked with my husband before deleting a couple of games he’d installed on this computer, before he was able to replace his own that died during the move, I’d freed up about 100 gigs of space.

I checked my drivers, and they are up to date. My video card is working fine.

Anything on WordPress – especially the editor – is the most affected, but it also affects things like Facebook and Pinterest. I’ve gone back and forth between browsers to test things out and, while there are definitely loading issues in general, which would be an internet issue, it is only on Firefox that the weird colours and text issues are showing up.

In fact, I’m going to pause and take a screen capture, just to show you what it looks like right now, as I work on this post.

WordPress is one of the platforms that I have the most loading issues with. Especially the editor, but just about every WordPress blog I try to visit has major issues, from the “like” button never loading, to the formatting going completely haywire, to simply timing out and not loading at all. Over and over and over again. Anything embedded in a post (like a video, or a reblog) generally fails to load, and trying to leave a comment is almost impossible. While using Chrome, the loading issue seems more limited to the editor and admin pages, than while visiting blog pages. The stats in particular reeeeaaaallllyyy don’t like to load, even though everything else around it (side bars, headers, etc.) will load just fine.

It’s not just WP, though. I get it in Facebook and Pinterest as well, though not as bad, nor as often. Since doing some PC maintenance, and my computer is working faster, I no longer have the problem in my gmail, as in the screen capture I’d posted yesterday. I might even be able to catch up on my emails now! :-D

And, just to make things even more confusing, it will often change, right before my eyes. For example, if you click on the above image to see it larger, check out the text in the bottom left corner. Before I took the screen capture, that’s what the text in my side bar on the right looked like. After capturing the image, then resizing it before uploading it, that text went wonky again. As I am writing this right now, the text in my side bar is messed up, not clear and legible, as it is in the image I screen captured just a little while ago.

Oh! Now it’s blinking back and forth!!

So now I’m thinking the problem is a combination of two things.

One: it’s a loading issue. Even though I have a WiFi booster (which I even moved to a different location, in hopes it’ll get the signal better), something about the corner my “office” is in does not connect with the internet as efficiently as other parts of the house.

The other is Firefox: while I have problems loading things on other browsers, it is only on Firefox that the weird colours and disappearing text is happening the most. Where other browsers just take longer to load, Firefox does the weird text and colours.

*sigh* I’ve even saved my draft and reloaded this several times while working on it, but that magenta text just won’t go away – and it’s only happening here, in my editor, as I write this. It’s not happening when I load a published post.

It’s getting very hard on the eyes, so I’ll go ahead and post this. I might have to just stop using Firefox and find another browser to use for my Re-Farmer profile. Trying to use the WordPress editor has been even worse in other ways, in the various browsers I’ve tried, which is why I kept coming back to Firefox.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

(ps: I just edited this post to fix a typo I missed, and the magenta text is gone, as is the weird blocky, unreadable text in the side bars. No consistency at all!)

What is this? (question for the techies)

/ Re-Farmer / 15 Comments

Okay, so I thought my monitor was the problem, we got a new one, and…

The problem hasn’t gone away.

This is what my gmail looked like a little while ago.

I use the past tense, because when I go to another tab, then come back to it, I see the text, only to have all the text disappear when I try to click on an unread email.

It’s not just gmail. I went to another tab after embedding that image, came back, and now I’m seeing nothing but a neon green block instead of the image. Oh, and the text in all my tabs have disappeared (all WordPress blog posts I’m trying to catch up on), but the icons are still there.

So it’s not the monitor (though I do now have a bigger, better monitor out of it…). It does seem to have improved since I got it, though, which is odd.

I at first thought it was our crappy internet, but I’m the only one in the household having this problem, and it’s only on my desktop.

My husband thinks my computer might be the problem. While I think it’s possible, I don’t think it’s likely.

Is it WordPress not loading properly? WordPress always has more trouble loading than anywhere else, it seems. It does seem to happen almost exclusively on pages hosted by WordPress… except it also happens when I open my gmail.

Is it my browser? I use Firefox for this blog, and Chrome for my personal stuff (I’ve tried others but end up going back to these to, for various reasons). In fact, I just went to my other browser, logged into WP, and browsed around. Images still take forever to load, or sometimes don’t load at all, but I’m not getting that neon green thing happening. Nor am I getting the magenta text that sometimes happens. I also have no problems with my gmail.

Okay. So Firefox is definitely part of the equation. When things don’t want to load in Chrome, they just don’t load. If they don’t want to load in Firefox, I get weird colours or missing text.

Maybe I should try using Tor again. It had issues with WP’s block editor, but WP has updated since I last tried it. I’ll have to test it again.

So… It could be Firefox, plus our crappy internet, just messing me up with blinding green and magenta, and disappearing text that can only be read if I highlight it with my mouse.

Whatever it is, it’s very frustrating!

And occaisonally blinding.

The Re-Farmer

We finally got it

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Today, after being delayed for … two months? … more? … I was able to pick up the replacement hot water tank.

The current hot water tank is still working. There is no longer a puddle under it, though there is a scale build up along the seam of the bottom cap. It must be a small enough leak that leaving the panel off is allowing for evaporation to keep it from actually puddling anymore.

I went to a different town to get it; one we don’t normally go to. In fact, I’d forgotten the franchise the tank is from even had a location there. The location we’d picked up the last tank from has gone full mask nazi and doesn’t even allow the Mingle Mask or shields. I’d heard this town has been more sane. I phoned first, to make sure they had one in stock available for a warranty replacement. It took a while; I got the impression they don’t get warranty replacements very often! :-D

Once that was all figured out and I said I could be there this afternoon, I mentioned that I am medically exempt from wearing a mask. The guy I was talking to said that would be no problem, and that there were quite a few people in town that were also exempt, adding that it wasn’t their job to police people over it. That was very reassuring. When I got there, I walked in, everyone else was masked up, but no one said a thing. It was so nice to not be given a hard time or have to justify myself!

Once the paperwork was done, I drove over to one of their buildings in the back to pick it up. I got to chat with a really nice and interesting young man who loaded it into the van for me. He’d had me back right into the building, so when I got out, I found myself surrounded by stacks of plywood, which reminded me we need a couple of sheets to make a floor for the trailer frame my brother found tires for. I asked how much a sheet of 3/4″ plywood cost, and he got someone on the radio to find a price for me. It turned out to be about $145 for a single sheet! That’s just for the rough stuff. He told me the type that are smooth on both sides is actually a bit cheaper. !! My husband and price checked in the city, at a different franchise, and they were about $85 a sheet.

When my daughters worked for that particular franchise, before we moved, a sheet cost about $35.

Not only have prices gone through the roof, but supply is really low. He told me of people driving across three provinces to get the supplies they needed, because nothing was available closer!

It makes me wonder just how much more it would cost to replace our roof at this point. When we got the estimates, they were both just under $9000. Assuming that they would find damage under certain areas, for which both companies charged by the square foot to repair, we figured $10,000 was a reasonable expectation for the final amount. Of course, we don’t have that, and with so many unexpected bills over the past couple of years, saving up for it has been pretty much impossible. I hope that, by the time we do find the money, the supply issues will be resolved and prices will become more reasonable!

During the drive to and from this town, I noticed something interesting. This town is about a half hour’s drive north of us. Not that far. Yet, I could still see quite a few patches of snow that haven’t melted yet and – most encouraging of all – water! There were several ponds that were almost full, and even standing water in some ditches. It was nice to see that not everywhere is quite as dry as we are!

But I digress.

We have the new tank, and it awaits installation. After having the same thing happen to two new tanks, we’re tempted to keep using the leaking tank for a bit longer. Even if it’s just for the summer. I wouldn’t want to lose hot water in the winter again!

The Re-Farmer

Situational blindness?

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My older daughter just finished a whole bunch of quick commissions, and after sitting at the computer for so many hours, she really needed to get out and walk!

So we headed out together, and wandered around beyond the outer yard, cutting through the old hay yard.

I just had to share this photo of a floating tree.

This tree is a bit of a mystery. It is one of several trees that had not fallen on their own, but were cut down and just left in the hay yard. Perhaps the intent was to clean them up, but it just never happened. Who knows?

This tree, however, has a piece missing.

Unlike the others that were lying near their stumps, there is what I estimate to be about 8 feet of trunk missing. The nearby stump is much wider than the cut end of this tree’s floating remains. There is no sign of the missing piece, anywhere! I find myself curious as to why someone would remove a section completely like that, and what it was used for!

While we were walking around, my daughter asked her if I’d seen the old outhouse.

…

Which old outhouse? I had to ask, since several came to mind.

Apparently, there was an old outhouse my daughters found in the bushes.

So of course, I had to see it!

You know how you can walk past something time after time, yet not “see” it, until something calls your attention to it? And then you wonder, when did that get there? Or, is this new?

I had to have had this sort of situational blindness, because I’ve gone through this area several times, and yet I can’t remember seeing this. It’s in the bushes, between the car graveyard and old gravel pit, and most definitely has been there a long time!

Truly an odd place for an outhouse. It’s not like this was a place people spent so much time, they’d need an outhouse!

The use of wood shingles for siding like that is another curious thing. Very unusual.

It’s possible I missed seeing it because I’d gone through here at a time of year when the bushes were in full leaf.

At this angle, you can see the hinged door at the bottom, for access to emptying the… contents.

There does not seem to be a pit under it.

I wonder if it was brought in from somewhere else, and just dumped here, like so many other things were, over the years?

The roof is gone and it’s collapsing into itself to the point the door cannot be opened, though it is somewhat ajar.

I was able to stick my phone into a gap and get a photo of the inside.

I’m guessing that little blue shelf was hanging on the nails under the coat hook.

What a curious thing to have somehow not seen while going through here! Or perhaps I did see it, but just dismissed it. There have been so many odd finds since we’ve moved here, they aren’t really odd anymore! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Stuff we’ve found, and things to fix

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While doing my evening rounds, I figured it was time to get a recent photo of our found object “art” display. ;-)

The table itself was dragged out from under a fallen tree while clearing the edge of the spruce grove. We weren’t able to get at it until the old wood pile was cleaned up. The chair frame (barely visible at the bottom) was found somewhere else in the yard.

My daughter showed me where they found that crushed tea kettle, and now I’m even more perplexed as to why it was there and how it got crushed. Being driven over is not as likely as I thought, since it was in between some trees, where no vehicle – not even an ATV – could fit. The steel trap and the strip of rusted metal beside it was buried in the dirt under where the wood pile used to be, found while clearing out roots to turn the space into garden beds. Quite a few of what’s on there was found while cleaning up that old wood pile! The beer bottle was found along the East fence line along the spruce grove, most likely left there by my late brother. He did like his beer! The group of three cups to the right of the tea pot, plus the two Old Spice bottles, are the newest additions, found by my daughter in the junk pile way out by the plowed field.

While walking around and thinking of the things we need to do, and what we need to do it, I decided to drag something out of one of the sheds. We’d seen some wire mesh fencing rolled up in a corner, and I thought it might be useful for when we build our trellises or something. So I moved a few things to get to the corner, dragged it out and brought it to the house.

I was really surprised. There is a LOT more in there than I thought there was. As far as I have seen, we don’t have any fences made with this wire, so I have no idea why it’s here or what it was used for. Whatever it was for, not much of the roll was used!

This will come in very handy.

This morning, after switching out the memory cards on the trail cams, I took another look at the fence by the gate post, where we want to put in a small people gate. The gate post itself has three holes in the steel where we could potentially attach things. At the moment, the ends of the barbed wire are attached to the post through these holes. We’ll have to put in a new post first, attach the wire to the post, then detach the wire from the gate post. We still need to settle on how wide we want the gate to be, before we know where to put in a post.

While looking at where the barbed wire was attached to the gate post, I noticed this.

*sigh*

It wasn’t like this in the fall. This is damage from temperature fluctuations over this past winter.

I checked the other sides, and the other gate post. The other gate post has no cracks in the concrete at all, but this one…

These are the two corners of the south facing side.

These are the west and east facing sides.

I don’t know that these can be patched, or if the base needs to be replaced. I recall my brother telling me about a particular type of concrete he wants to use to repair the cracks in the bottom portion of the barn wall, that could probably be used on these cracks. I will bow to his greater knowledge and ingenuity on this one!

Well, this does show which post was responsible for the gate shifting. When we hung the gate back up after repairing our vandal’s damage, it was level. Over the winter, it shifted enough that the pin for the sliding bar could no longer be used. By the end of the winter, however, the gate shifted back, and the pin can be used again. My daughter had thought it was the other gate post that had shifted, but with these cracks, I’d say it was this one!

Since I had to slip through the fence to get pictures on all sides of the gate post’s base, I decided to check out the fence line from that side. New fence posts had been put in until just past the end of the spruce grove. The rest of the fence has been slowly falling down. From the outside, I was able to shift the posts – they are so rotted, they’re broken loose at ground level – so that they were leaning into the yard, rather than towards the road.

The entire stretch of fence is basically toast. I think there might be one fence post that isn’t broken. At one point, I noticed a large tree had fence wire on either side of it. One of the wires had a break repaired. It looks like, when the break was fixed, whoever did it deliberately put the wire on the other side of the tree, so the tree would keep the fence up.

For that spot, at least, it’s working.

I will have to prioritize cleaning up along this fence line, so it can be repaired. We’ll need to pick up more fence posts; I’ve found some scattered all over the place, but I don’t think there are enough, and they’re different sizes, too.

My daughter just popped in and we talked about the fence. If we were just replacing a post or two, we could make do with the old post hole diggers we found around the property. However, there are just too many posts to replace for that to be practical for us. We’re not that able bodied! And since the equipment that we could have used is gone (the Bobcat had a soil auger attachment), or no longer functional (the post pounder my late brother built), we figure it might be better to just hire someone. All we really need is for the posts to be installed. Once they’re in, we can do the rest ourselves. Since this is a permanent fence line, we would also want to not just have posts in dirt, but to install them in such a way that they won’t rot away as quickly.

We also want to move away from barbed wire, so we would probably want to install posts closer together, and use other materials. We might start off with the “rustic look” and use materials on hand to make a simple rail fence, until we can come up with something more durable and permanent – and preferably deer proof!

But first, that section of fence line needs to be cleared. We’ll lose a lot of privacy in the process, but once the corn and sunflowers are grown in, that will suffice for the summer, at least.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Another mystery

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My older daughter and I went for a walk, and decided to head through the pasture, towards the plowed field.

This was the route I took to check how much I could see of the fire from the night before, and I’m surprised I missed this. I may have been distracted by seeing a bald eagle fly off. It was the first time I’ve seen one this close to the house and outbuildings!

Yeah. That’ll be my excuse for not seeing this.

This, lying in open pasture.

It looks like an oil drum converted into a furnace.

Like so many things we find, we are left with questions.

Converting oil drums into various things isn’t all that unusual. The unusual thing, as so often is the case, is the location.

Why is this here?

I can’t even say it has something to do with the junk pile that’s out this way. This pile, I know my late brother had dumped there, because I recognize the concrete filled oil drum. This was stuff he’d cleared away from the property my parents used to own. That was where we’d lived the last time we lived in this province. The building he’d converted to a workshop and is now being used for storage had been brought from there.

But this was not from there. It’s also quite far from the junk pile, so it’s not like a cow had somehow managed to drag it out (like so many other things we find, scattered about), even if a cow could somehow roll this around.

Yet another mystery!

After checking this out, we went to the junk pile, which my daughter had not yet seen. While poking around she found a few more things for our “found object art display”, where the crushed teapot now rests. Three mugs and two worn Old Spice bottles. :-D There’s also a toilet, which I intend to salvage and use with the others we’ve found, as a planter or something. The weird thing is, the toilet looks to be in excellent shape. No idea why it’s there, either, but at least with that, I hadn’t walked past it several times since we’ve moved here, and somehow not seen it.

Like the oil drum furnace that’s been sitting there long enough to have lichen growing on it! :-D

The Re-Farmer

On alert

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I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep tonight!

Not long ago, we heard what is a very unusual sound for this area.

A siren.

It stopped for a little bit, then started up again. I was in my “office” at the time, so I happened to see the lights of the vehicle going by on the live feed of the security camera. I couldn’t tell what kind of emergency vehicle it was, though my initial thought was that it was a police siren.

I decided to go outside and check. When I opened the door, the winds from the south-east almost tore it from my hands! I headed to the gate and looked around, saw nothing, but there was the smell of smoke in the air. With how incredibly dry we are right now, I was keeping my eye out for signs of a grass fire, but there were none. One of my daughters came out to join me, and neither of us could see anything of concern.

Once I was back inside, I decided to check our garage security cam email. It’s set to email an image any time the motion sensor is triggered, and I was wondering if the vehicle had triggered it from the road or not. There were a few emails with images waiting for me to check.

This was one of them.

There WAS a fire! A huge one, for us to be able to see it through the trees like that. What’s out there is mostly open fields and trees.

The series of images with the glow of fire covered about a 10 minute time period, bracketing 9pm.

While I was checking the images, I saw another vehicle in the live feed, heading in that direction. I could also see lights through the trees. Usually, I see lights there that are the reflectors on the abandoned vehicles in there, but this was something else. They looked like headlights. We never see headlights from vehicles driving on the road through the trees there. The angle is wrong for that, so this told me there were vehicles facing our way from somewhere other than the road.

So I bundled up, grabbed a flashlight and headed out again. I went to the gate, but still could see nothing. I decided to walk closer. I didn’t want to take the road, though, since if more emergency vehicles or whatever came by, I would be in the way, so I cut through the barn and headed towards the field beyond the trees, where the renter plants his crops.

My phone camera could not get a good photo, of course. I counted what looked like at least 7 vehicles. I think three of them were emergency vehicles. While I could still smell smoke, I could see no sign of a fire. After a while, I could hear the sounds of people yell-talking. Not yelling in alarm, but the sort of volume one would need to be heard over these winds.

Everything seemed to be under control. Seeing where all these vehicles were, though, had me concerned. There is a house, hidden away among some trees on the far side of that field, and those vehicles were about where that house is, about a mile from us. There is another house across the road as well, but I don’t think the vehicles were that far away. I do hope no one’s house burned down!!

As I was writing this, I saw more headlights going to and from the direction of the fire. More going from, than going to, which I hope is a good sign. I can still see headlights through the trees every now and then, too.

While things may be under control, I am not going to assume anything. We are just too windy and too dry, and if flames kick up again, those winds are blowing our way. It’s unlikely to happen, with emergency personnel on sight, and likely to be there for quite some time.

While walking out behind the barn to where I could see better, I first tried to go to a spot where I knew the fence was more open and clear of trees, because there used to be a gate there. When I got there, however, I found that two trees were fallen on the fence, and one of them looked like it had fallen recently. The whole area is littered with fallen trees. It reminded me again, why I want to get the spruce grove by the house cleaned up so much. I’d love to clean out the dead and fallen trees further out, but that is well beyond our abilities. We just don’t have the equipment for that large of a job, and it is way too big of a job to do manually. Basically, it’s all a tinder box, and that concerns me greatly. Particularly this time of year!

I must say, though, I am really appreciating that my brother set up that security camera, so we could see down the driveway. He has about a dozen cameras like it on his own property! :-D Without the images the camera captured, we would not have seen that there was a fire at all.

More security cameras are also part of our plans as we fix things up. The trail cams are great, but having a live feed and motion sensor triggered images sent to us is what we need more of.

I never thought I’d want them to keep an eye out for fires, though!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: trees in the old garden

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We had such a lovely day today, even with fairly high winds, that I couldn’t resist going outside and doing a bit of clean up. This time, I decided to work in the old garden area.

As we clean up around the property, there is one thing I find myself struggling with that I did not expect.

Trees.

In the decades I was away, my parents slowly reduced the size of their gardening, which made perfect sense. Unfortunately, at the same time, they planted trees. Poorly placed trees, many of which I am now having to cut down for various reasons, while trying to save as many as I can. At the same time, they also allowed self sown trees to grow where they really shouldn’t have. Some of them now need to be removed because they are causing damage. Others… well. Let me show you.

This is the before picture.

My mother had a row of raspberry bushes here. Elms and maples had self-sown among them. When my mother transplanted the raspberries (into an area that’s full shade!), she left the self-sown saplings. For a “wind break” she told me. The garden used to extend another 6 feet or so to the north. As they are now, the trees take up a space about 10-12 ft (3-3.6m) wide, and about 100 ft (30.5m) long.

That’s a lot of square feet of full sun garden space that can no longer be used.

Between these and the shade created by the trees they’d planted into the garden area on the south side, huge amounts of garden space have been taken out of production. Space that’s the closest to the house and water.

When I brought up taking them out and reclaiming the garden space, my mother was adamant that they not be touched. Apparently, if we take them out, we won’t have any wind break anymore or something, even though there are plenty of other trees and the lilac hedge to shelter us from Northern winds. :-/

Well, we’re not in a position to actively remove the trees quite yet, though the arborists recommended taking them out while they’re still small enough to be pulled out by the roots with a tractor. While trying to garden near these on one side, and tend the lawn on the other, I figured the least that should be done is to trim and clear them.

Yes, I know. This is probably the worst time of year to be trimming trees, but these are not trees we plan to save. They’ll do just fine, though. In fact, they’ll probably thrive. :-/

Starting at the end I took the photo at, I worked at it using both the baby chainsaw (aka: cordless pruner) and the long handled pruners. Loppers, I think they’re actually called. I used those quite a bit, because the branches and suckers were so dense, I couldn’t get in with the baby chainsaw to cut where I needed to. Which is fine. It reserved battery power for the pieces too large for the loppers. I got about 1 1/2 hours in before the battery died, then I continued for another half hour or so with the loppers.

Here is how it looks now.

That log that is now visible marks the corner of the mulched area we gardened in last year. I cleared until just past that log.

This is my branch pile.

I at first tried to trim the larger pieces and set them aside for potential use later, but that was taking up too much time, so I just added to the pile. When it’s time to deal with the pile, it will be easier to use hand pruners to trim any larger branches that might be usable for other things. The smallest pieces will go onto a chipping pile.

I did use pruning paint on the cut ends of the trees, though the maples were pouring so much sap, a lot of it was washed away! The elm sap isn’t running yet.

For all my mother’s admonitions to leave the trees alone, I found evidence that I was not the first to try cutting these away. In fact, some of what I found were growing out of stumps. Someone had tried cutting them down, and they grew back.

I also found this little group.

Three elms growing into each other! We couldn’t see this until I cleared things away. In fact, I couldn’t stand in the spots I was in to take the photos, either.

I worked on a maple just past this group of elms and found myself pulling out large strands of vines as well. The rest of the section has more of these vines. My mother had planted them (not here!) years ago, not realizing they were invasive. Now they’re spreading all over, and I’ve found at least a couple of trees that have been killed by them. So I stopped to continue another day, since more time will need to be spent pulling up these vines, which will need to be burned.

The irony of pulling up vines that are killing trees we plan to get eventually get rid of is not lost on me!

By the time I’m done with these, we should be able to walk through and around the trees without having to fight branches. I’ll even be able to mow past them without branches pulling off my hat!

Hopefully, their roots won’t make gardening near them too much of an issue. Eventually, we do plan to build some permanent, high raised beds in this area closer to the house, so it won’t be an issue for long. When we build the permanent garden beds to the south of the house, that will be where we will focus more on things that take longer to mature and get harvested in the fall, while areas closer to the house will be more kitchen garden type things that mature quickly, or have a continuous harvest.

Little by little, it’s getting done! :-)

The Re-Farmer

I have questions about this.

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Yesterday evening, the girls decided to go out for a walk and headed out past the barn.

They found this, among the trees.

A squashed kettle.

Among the trees.

I have questions.

How did it get squished like this?

And why was it out there to get squished, in the first place?

When I was a kid, we had a large pig pen beyond the barn and, after that, there was a large manure pile. Past that was trees. Just trees. Nothing where someone might set up a kettle, then mysteriously leave it there to be crushed.

The girls have set it with my “art display” of other found objects. :-D

Ah, the things we find! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Dem Bones

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

With the warmer weather and longer days, the girls have been walking beyond the outer yard to check on things, such as the old gravel pit and pond areas.

Sometimes, they bring things back.

I believe these were found somewhere towards the old gravel pit.

Dem bones look like they’ve been cut!

The Re-Farmer