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Costco stock up shopping: this is what $782 looks like

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I am so glad to have this over and done with.

I made a point of heading out later than I would have, because I wanted to make sure I ate a lunch before I started shopping. The Costco cafeteria doesn’t have anything I enjoy eating anymore (I miss those Montreal Smoked Meat sandwiches they used to have!), so I was going to go to a nearby mall’s food court. Which doesn’t open until 11. I didn’t need to stop for gas along the way, so there was no point in leaving before 10.

Unfortunately, I had a heavily disturbed, and my mornings are early no matter what time I get to bed. The cats start going bonkers by about 5:30am, and by 6, I’m kicking most of them out of my room to feed them, so that Butterscotch has a change to use the litter undisturbed, and I can give her and Freya their extras, which currently includes the cat milk I picked up not long ago. I’ve taken to putting a container with cat milk or wet cat food right at Freya’s face, wherever she happens to be curled up, so she doesn’t have to jump down from my bed to to eat.

She really likes the cat milk.

Once that’s done, I do try to get a bit more sleep, leaving my door closed to give Butterscotch a break from the other cats. She has gotten used to the routine and now tends to run around and play like a kitten while the other cats are out. Unfortunately, the other cats know there is special food in my room, so they keep trying to scratch their way through my door, making sleep impossible! When I finally do open the door, there’s a stampede of cats dashing straight for the food bowls, as if they hadn’t just been fed, finishing off whatever is left of any wet cat food or cat milk there is.

Well, that’s what we get for rescuing so many cats.

Which is a long was of saying, I was really tired when I headed out. Tired to the point that, if my younger daughter had come with me, I would have traded driving duty with her. She stayed to keep an eye on the grublings and the transplants.

I hoped I would feel better after I had lunch. I chose Chinese food this time, with turned out to be rather disappointing. This mall doesn’t have a lot of options, though. Lunch was about $18.

After I had my lunch, I went through the nearby Dollarama. In the gardening section, I found the spike strips I was looking for at other locations. These are meant to lay down in the garden to deter critters. I intend to use them in certain areas of my room that the cats have been getting into, no matter how many barricades I’ve set up, and causing damage.

If these work out, it might be worth getting a whole bunch of them to cover the floor under my husband’s hospital bed, where some of them make messes, too.

The last time I was at a Dollarama, I picked up a giant glass mug as something to keep in the freezer in between uses, to help keep our drinks cold. We weren’t sure if it could handle the freeze, like the old A&W mugs we used to have that broke after many years of use. It seems to be working very well, though, so I grabbed another one. In total, I spent $15 and change there.

When I got back to the truck, though, I realized that I was still way too tired, so I set the timer on my phone for half and hour, leaned my seat back and took a nap.

I’m very glad I did that. I could have used another half hour, but it was enough to keep me going!

From there, it was across the street to the Costco. First stop was to fill the gas tank. I was just below half, and the Costco price for regular gas was $1.179 It cost $56.09 in total to fill my tank.

The parking lot was insanely full – this on a Wednesday afternoon! – but I happened to catch someone leaving and was able to park decently close to the store.

Then I grabbed a flat cart and took my time shopping. The nap helped, but I was still really low energy – and yes, I did have an energy drink during the drive out! I try to keep at least one among the drinks and snacks I keep in the console between the seats.

I took a picture of my shopping while waiting in line, while it was still pretty organized. It never gets repacked as well, after everything’s been scanned.

This is what $782.43 looks like – including a $5 donation, which I would only do after getting the cashier to NOT doing the loud dingdingding and cheering thing they do during fundraising drives, every time a donation is made. Gosh, I hate that.

I ended up taking a picture of both sides of the flat cart, since so many things could only be seen from one side.

This is what I got today, in the order it is on the receipt. I got a two pack of lemon juice and a jar of green olives (my husband requested nacho fixings, but I never found the corn chips). There’s a 3 pack of Spam for the pantry, Kirkland brand mayonnaise and some iced tea mix. For my daughters, there’s a 3 pack of oat milk. I got 5 pounds of butter (we still have plenty of oil and ghee), a case of Monster energy drinks (which my older daughter pays me back for) and a case of Coke Zero for my husband and I. I got some laundry detergent, plus two cases of 48 cans of wet cat food and four 9.1kg bags of cat kibble. There’s toilet paper, of course, and a case of water bottles. I haven’t picked up one of those in a while; we like to have them on hand when it gets warmer, so I can keep a bottle or two in the truck without it freezing. There’s also a double flat of eggs.

There’s a bag of basmati rice for my husband and a box of Pizza Pops as our supper heat and eat, because no one has the energy to cook on shopping day, and a box of frozen pierogi. I spotted a Peter Rabbit tin with English Breakfast tea in it; I remembered my younger daughter still likes Peter Rabbit stuff, and she will enjoy keeping the tin, after the tea is done – and we all like English Breakfast tea. There is a litre of whipping cream, a package of Old Cheddar and another of mozzarella cheese, and a 9 pack of variety pasta. I picked up a couple of panini packs and another variety pack of sliced meats for sandwiches, a 3 pack of all beef wieners, some pork chops, pork ribs, a pork loin and a 3 pack of whole chickens. I was planning to pick up some beef, but the prices are insane.

I picked up two 2 packs of rye bread, but did not get any wraps. They were out! At least of the type we normally get. There were other varieties, but we don’t like any of them.

While I was in line and passing the clothing section, I spotted a display of women’s pajama sets that were on sale. My older daughter is in need of new pajamas, so I grabbed a set for her. The last ones I tried to get for her didn’t work out, and they went to her sister. I’m hoping these ones will work out. If not… well, I’m sure either her sister or I could use them!

I had intended to get popcorn in this trip, but by the time the flat cart was full, I had no desire to wheel my way through the crowds in the section, trying to find it. I just got in line!

So that’s it. That’s our Costco trip for the month. Even with the things that got missed, it took more of our budget than I had hoped to spend on this trip. I’ll still need to pick up more kibble – 40 pound bags at the feed store, next time – before long. We might need to get more wet cat food, too, since we are currently giving Brussel and her brood wet cat food twice a day.

And now it’s time to snag a daughter and dodge kittens while we bring the transplants into the old kitchen for the night.

Then I plan to go to bed.

Hopefully, I’ll even be able to get some sleep.

The Re-Farmer

A huge job!

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Before I get into the progress we got done while my brother and his wife were here, I must share the cuteness!

The kittens had all been asleep, curled up around each other, but my trying to take a photo woke up the little black and white kitten. Who looks huge compared to his adopted sister!

I love that little black chin.

While my daughter and I were heading to the city, my brother and his wife were heading her to the farm! Along with stuff they had to do in their stored areas, my brother checked on the septic ejector. We’d had to use electric tape to fix the heat tape to the portion that is above ground, and my brother had to take it off before he could open up the cap and check inside the stand pipe. Using the copper pipe we kept nearby, he later told me that he was hitting ice about 4 feet down. No chance of being able to switch over from the emergency diverter right now! He had looked for the de-icer we used before, but it just isn’t available this time of year. He found something else meant for RVs and poured that into the stand pipe. Hopefully, that will get things thawed out faster. He wrapped the heat tape back around the stand pipe lower down, so that we can still access and open the cap if we need to. It turns itself on and off depending on the temperature, so he wants to leave it for now.

I had some concerns about how loose the soil around the new ejector is – plus, a portion of the old ejector’s stand pipe was still sticking out of the ground, about 10 feet away. Once the renter’s cows are rotated to this quarter, they could easily sink into the soil/clay/gravel around the excavated area and injure themselves, or even break the new ejector, as it’s so much shorter than the old one was. My brother cut away the piece of the old stand pipe that was sticking out and filled the buried portion with soil. He also went into some of his supplies that they brought from their sold property to here, putting in some fence posts, then using some of their rolls of snow fencing around the entire ejector area, including the metal sheet we have to direct the flow towards the low area, away from the barn. He secured it as best he could for now, but I will need to go back there with more twine to secure it more thoroughly. Plus, there is a gap that cows could easily get through. I need to find something I can put across there that can be easily opened like a gate. It will be some time before we have cows out here, so there’s no hurry on that, but I’d rather get it done sooner rather than later.

That was not the big job, though.

The big job was working on that dead tree that fell on the outhouse.

My brother had also been thinking about how to get that off, without destroying the outhouse. It does still get used, even with the tree sitting on it!

Part of the problem is that the top of the tree fell on top of another tree, and is stuck. That’s the only thing holding it up and keeping it from crushing the outhouse! So it’s a good thing, even though it makes it so much more difficult to get the tree off.

One of the first things my brother wanted to do was cut off the top of the fallen tree, on the far side of the tree that’s holding it up, to get some of the weight off. He set up a ladder against the tree holding the fallen tree up and, after trying several other things first, ended up using my little electric chain saw. He cut through only until we could hear it starting to crack. It was too dangerous to try and cut all the way through while on a ladder. Once he got that far, he climbed back up the ladder with a rope to toss it over the top of the tree, using a hammer as a weight, on the far side of the cut.

The next while was spent trying to get the top of the tree down with the rope. At one point, my brother and his wife were pulling the ends of the rope together from the same side, which caused the entire tree trunk to sort of roll, rocking the outhouse in the process! The rocking even caused the door to pop open. In the end, they went one on each side of the fallen tree, trying to pull it down. The problem was that the tip of the tree was on yet another tree, eventually getting caught between a branch and the trunk. This other tree, however, was also quite dead. When the top of the fallen tree finally gave out at where my brother had cut it with the chain saw, the heavy end dropped straight down, and the tree it was hung up on fell and broke in several places, hitting the ground in pieces. The top of the tree on the outhouse, however, ended up standing on its end, up against yet another tree – and it’s still standing there now!

The next thing to do was to start cutting away branches. Some, my brother could cut away using his extended pole chainsaw/pruner, but with others, it was back up the ladder with our electric chain saw. He got as much as he could, while my SIL and I grabbed and hauled away the branches.

There was only so much they could get done tonight, though.

In the first image above, you can see where the branches above the outhouse roof were cut away. He even took a chain saw to the sticky-outy-parts of the roots at the base of the tree.

My SIL noticed something interesting, though, as he was up there.

If you look at the next couple of photos in the slide show above, you can just see that the tree is no longer in contact with the outhouse roof! There was more damage done to the corner of the roof when the tree was being rocked while the top was being pulled down. While my brother was on the ladder, cutting, my SIL could see that the trunk was rolling slightly, back and forth, with each cut.

That tree it landed on is holding it up off the outhouse roof completely, now!

With the top and most of the branches removed, a lot of weight has been taken off of the fallen tree. We now have to figure out how to keep that weight off the outhouse while trying to get it down. They’re thinking of using rachet straps and another tree.

It will have to wait, though, until the next time they’re able to come out here and work on it.

Today has been a VERY windy day, and the entire time we were out there, we could hear squeaky noises from other dead trees in the spruce grove, rubbing against each other. There is one dead tree close to the house that died after we moved out here. It needs to be taken down as soon as possible, as this one could potentially fall onto the house. At least with the direction of today’s winds, if it did fall, it would have been away from the house. The problem with all these dead trees that need to be cut down is that we’re often far too windy to do so safely!

I am so grateful that they were able to come out today and get so much progress on this tree. It’s still possible that, in the process of trying to get that tree down, it could end up destroying the outhouse, but at least now there is some hope of saving it. We’d fixed up the inside of the outhouse already, and had plans to fix up the roof and replace the moss covered shingles with some of the metal roof pieces we still have lying about. More repairs will need to be done now, of course, but that’s okay. If we can salvage it, we can get a few more years out of it. Hopefully, we’ll have the outdoor bathroom with composting toilet we are planning to build done well before this outhouse is no longer useable! The location I have in mind for it needs to be kept open for a while longer, though, as we’ll be dragging dead trees through there for some time, as we harvest them. They will mostly be used to build more raised garden beds.

Lots of work to do, that’s for sure! It’s going to be a lot easier, now that my brother’s equipment it out here, though. My goodness. We’re probably going to be able get more done whenever my brother is able to come out on the weekends, than we’ve been able to do in the 7 years we’ve been living here, just because his tools and equipment will be available.

What a concept.

The Re-Farmer

Stock up shopping, and future food forest! This is what $666 in total looks like.

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$666.59, to be exact!

Plus some extras not pictured.

It was a long day today, that’s for sure.

My daughter and I left rather early to take in a homesteading event near the city. We stopped for gas on the way out and picked up some sandwiches (made by the one restaurant in our little hamlet) and drinks for breakfast, and some pastries (from a very popular bakery in the town to the north of us) for later on. I picked up some lotto tickets, too, so that totaled about $76 and change.

I’m glad we gave ourselves extra time, because the entrance to the location was really hard to see! We drove right past it – then had to find someplace we could turn around!

It was held in a building that was on grounds that included a church and cemetery, and was surrounded by trees. The few parking spots were full, plus there were the vendor vehicles parked closer to the building, rushing to finish unloading. We found a spot to park, though I’m not entirely sure it was actually part of the parking area! We were early enough that we stayed in the truck for a while before going in. Things hadn’t started yet, but it was already full. The room was not particularly large, but it wasn’t small, either.

One vendor caught my attention very quickly; someone local had saplings for sale. He was talking to a customer while frantically trying to put labels and signs up before he had to dash away, so I heard him talking about a few things he had. His was the first talk of the day, though, and he soon had to disappear. I had to ask one of the other vendors where the talks were happening, as I thought it was in another room, but I couldn’t see any other rooms. It turned out to be behind a curtained off area at the far end of the room. When we got there, all the seating was full, and more people were crowded against the far wall, blocking off the canteen! Unfortunately, with all the people talking in the market area, I could hardly hear anything he was saying, though I could make out some of it. My daughter tried going to the opposite corner of the curtained off area to see if she could hear better. She couldn’t, but she did end up talking to the vendor that was there. She had a display of skin care products next to a display of honey products her husband was covering. It turned out they were the organizers for the event! With my daughter discovering she’s allergic to ingredients in a lot of shampoos, deodorants, etc., she was very interested in the skin care display. After I finally gave up trying to hear, I joined them. The vendor not only made all of the products, but grew all of the plants, berries and herbs used in them, plus honey from their own bees. We ended up getting a sample pack of their products, plus a tube of hand lotion made with sea buckthorn, among other things, for the scraggly skin on my hands. Both together cost about $45. I didn’t bother getting a receipt for it.

The vendor with the skin care products was also doing the next talk, which was on regenerative farming. My daughter and I snagged a couple of seats right in the front. It was a very enjoyable talk. It was a lot of stuff I was already familiar with (what is now called regenerative farming was what used to be called subsistence farming, when I was growing up here), but with her, it was all from the perspective of planting for their bees, so heavy on successive flowering plants to provide pollen and nectar from when the bees first emerge in the spring to when they settle in for the winter.

After each talk, there was 10 minutes scheduled for Q&A. I left my daughter to that while I went to hunt down the tree guy. He was busy with customers, so my daughter caught up to me before it was my turn. We ended up looking at another vendor nearby that had soaps, bath bombs and other related products. We ended up getting a bar of herbal soap there that cost about $12. I would normally never spend that much on a bar of soap, but I’m willing to do it once in a rare while!

Then it was my turn with the tree guy. Quite a few of the things he had, we already have, but what really caught my attention was the walnut. I’ve been looking at getting walnut for years, but while they will grow in our zone 3, our growing season isn’t long enough for the nuts to fully ripe.

Well, he not only had year old saplings, but walnut seeds, already cold stratified. He grows them himself, in a smaller city a few hours drive to the west of us. If he can grow walnut to the seed stage there, that means we can, too!

This is what I ended up getting from him.

Bundled together is a gooseberry and a zone 3 variety of eating apple; he showed me so many different ones, I forget the name of the variety I chose. I’ll be able to see the tag when it’s unwrapped. In the pot in a year old walnut, and the bag has 8 walnut seeds in it. He said the trees grow pretty fast, too, and can get up to 40 feet high. He recommended planting them about 20 feet apart. I already know where I intend to plant those. The gooseberry, which already have leaf buds, and the apple tree will go into our food forest area, where we already have highbush cranberry, silver buffaloberry, sea buckthorn and mulberry.

All of these together cost $73.50 after taxes – the total before taxes was actually higher, but he gave me a discount, simply because the mental math was easier! 😄

While there were many other talks my daughter and I were interested in, it was too busy and too noisy, and we were already reaching our limit. They definitely need a larger venue, and a separate room for the speakers. Which is a good problem to have! As we were trying to leave, I ended up having to exit through the entrance simply because parked cars were blocking my way to the exit. When we got to the highway, we found more cars parked on the shoulders!

From there, we headed to another area of the city to do our non-Costco stock up shopping. By then, it was almost noon, so we went to the international grocery store, first, where we could have some dim sum and sushi for lunch. I honestly can’t remember how much that cost, but it was under $30.

There wasn’t a lot that we needed at this store, this time. This is what $175.36 looks like.

We got the short grain rice my daughters prefer (and it does very well, cooked in the Instant Pot), plus some salmon, frozen cooked and frozen raw shrimp for them. I got a bunch of teas that were on sale, including something called Breakfast in Paris. There is also a bag of instant milk tea. We picked up a goat gouda with honey to try, regular milk plus oat milk for my lactose intolerant daughters. There’s the oyster sauce they prefer, plus the soy sauce my husband prefers. We two pieces of slab bacon, one applewood smokes, one regular smoked, a flat of eggs to tide us over until we get our usual double flat at Costco, plus I got myself a Cherry Coke Zero, since I neglected to get myself something to drink with our lunch. Our loyalty card savings came out to $23.54, which was nice.

After we were finished here, our next stop was the Walmart. That turned out to be a much larger trip. This is what $417.73 looks like.

The main things we needed to get was cat food to last us until Costco and feed store trips. There are three 7kg bags of kibble, plus two 32 packs of canned cat food buried in there. My husband requested some sours, but they didn’t have the kind he prefers in stock, so we got two packs of mixed sours that hopefully will still work. There’s a case of Coke Zero and a package of facial tissues under the basket, plus a small package of paper towel buried in the cart.

We went a bit nuts on the frozen heat and eats. These are all things that my husband can cook himself in the multifunction air frier/toaster oven we got to replace the broken microwave. With his medications, his hunger cues and appetite are pretty messed up, so having something he can cook for himself when he does feel able to eat comes in handy. So there are a whole bunch of $10 bags of different types of stuffed chicken, popcorn chicken, meatballs and even corn dogs. Plus, some Pizza Pops to be our heat and eat supper when we got home.

There is a bag of carrots in there, two clamshells of strawberries, four different types of cheese, frozen Basa fillets, three different flavour packs of bouillon cubes, a couple of loaves of bread that my daughter chose and, completely hidden in the cart, a dozen cans of Monster energy drinks, to be split three ways. Last of all is a cold Gatorade my daughter got for the drive home.

So, including the items not pictured, we spent around $830 in gas, groceries, etc., though the food forest items did come out of a completely separate budget.

By the time we got home, it was late enough to feed the outside cats for the evening, but our day wasn’t over yet! My brother and his wife had come here to the farm while we were gone. They had a few things to do around their trailers and stored items, but they also did a huge job that I was able to help out with – which I will cover in my next post!

The Re-Farmer

Wow

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Dude… take a chill pill.

I just found this in my notifications.

insightfultenderly49ada0b8ed
7h ago
I have tried every possible way to stop your emails.  REMOVE ME FROM
YOUR LIST. UNSUBSCRIBING DOES NOT WORK.  How long do you sit on your
butt and write about your AMAZING crazy world.

Well, to however this is, I don’t have a “list”. People subscribe themselves. I don’t add anyone to my subscriber’s list. I didn’t even know you could do that. If you were getting notifications from this blog, it’s because YOU subscribed yourself. I even checked, and you’re not an email subscriber anyhow, so I’ve got no clue why you’re getting emails from this blog. I don’t send them. WordPress does.

Any problems with trying to unsubscribe is a WordPress issue, so being a jerk about it to me isn’t accomplishing much, other than getting you a place on the Wall of Shame.

Congratulations.

The Re-Farmer

Well, that was really gross…

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… but it had to be done.

Okay, so I FINALLY was able to work on that drain pipe from the kitchen and laundry that keeps clogging. It’s been open enough to do dishes, but from the sounds I keep hearing from the laundry drain, it seemed to be closing up again. I’d already used the snake a couple of times before, and now have the pipe cleaning brush. I just needed a time when no one used, or needed to use, the kitchen sink for a long time.

A really long time, it turned out.

So I got the coupling access the plumber had put in open, and the first thing to do was to use the plumbing snake. Sure enough, about 6 feet in, I hit a bottleneck. I punched through it, and could feel another one a short distance past it, and punched through that. I ran the drain snake through far enough that I could tell I’d gone past the bend under the bathroom and was starting to down the pipe towards the septic tank.

Then I tried the brush.

*sigh*

I got the longest one I could find, which was just barely long enough to poke at the bottleneck. I’d pull it back and could see gunk stuck to the bristles. I’d prepared a bucket of hot soapy water for this, so I’d rinse it off and do it again, but I just couldn’t reach far enough to be effective. The coil would have been too flexible for anything longer, though.

I used the drain snake again and, from the gunk stuck to it when I pulled it out, it was doing something, but it just wasn’t enough. I needed something longer, with some flexibility, but strong enough to punch through that bottleneck.

Which is when I remembered we had a length of Pex pipe left from replacing some of the copper pipes to the tub and shower.

It worked much, much better.

I was getting a lot of this mud-like gunk out with it. That pipe had a thick layer coating the inside of it.

The Pex pipe had a bit of a curve to it and even that helped, as it allowed me to twist it around and scrape the inside of the drain pipe.

There was so much of this gunk coming out.

At about 10 feet, however, the pipe still wasn’t long enough.

Finally, I broke out the commercial drain auger. There was nowhere to plug it in, and this is not something to use an extension cord with, but I figured I could still use it manually. I used the spiral bulb tip that was already mounted on it, which is basically a much larger version of what the small drain snake’s tip is. It also has cutter and spade tips, but those weren’t going to do much, manually.

It worked out surprisingly well.

I reached that bottleneck and had to work at punching the larger bulb tip through. It seems like something hard is coating the inside of the pipe, there. Thinking about where that would be on the other side of the wall, it might be ice. It’s pretty close to where the old basement window is. The second bottleneck is close enough to basically be on the other side of that window, so it might be more ice. Or, should I say, frozen gunk.

We might need to look at getting insulation around the pipe in that area, and see if it makes a difference.

Anyhow.

I ran the auger through until I hit what felt like a wall. After much manipulating, I managed to get past it, and could keep going, but when I pulled it out, cleaned off the mess, and did it again, I hit the same block.

After a couple of times, when I hit the block again, I grabbed the coil right at the pipe, pulled it out completely, then laid it on the floor. I then walked along from where my hand had gripped it, using my feet to measure the distance. It was about 12′ to the end.

I then went into the old basement and, taking into account the length of pipe from the root cellar to the old basement, walked the distance along the wall the pipe runs over.

It turns out I was hitting the bend in the pipe, under the bathtub.

After wiping down the coil and bit (again), then using it in the pipe a couple more times, I finally decided it was enough. By this time, I’d spent about an hour working on it. I could have kept running the auger through and kept dragging out more gunk, but I think I got enough of it out for now.

The pipe ends needed a thorough wipe down before I slide the coupling back over the opening and tighten it down. Then I got someone upstairs to run water in the kitchen sink while I watched to make sure nothing was leaking.

Then it was clean up time.

I so appreciate that old laundry sink the the old basement!

I got the small drain snake cleaned up first, then set the auger’s coil to soak in hot soapy water – about 15 feet of it! – while I did what I could to clean the length of PEX pipe. The end was completely clogged and I couldn’t get it completely clear, but clear enough. That pipe is now stored elsewhere, since we can no longer use it for plumbing. It will be very handy again, I’m sure!

The commercial drain auger’s coil took a lot more effort to get clean, and I know I didn’t get everything off, but it’s no longer completely coated in gunk. I’ve got the coils for both the drain snake and auger coil laid out on the new basement floor to dry now, so they won’t rust when they’re coiled back into their drums.

By the time all that was done, I was feeling thoroughly disgusting. At least I had gloves to protect my hands, but I still got splattered and splashed, no matter how careful I was.

It felt so good to get showered and changed!!

For the next while, we’re going to have to make extra effort to do that maintenance flush the plumber recommended; filling a sink full of hot water, then draining it while squeezing some Dawn dish detergent into the vortex that forms at the drain. We also have some of the enzyme stuff left for weekly treatments, though we might do it twice a week for about a month.

I’ll need to do laundry but, for now, I will still run the drain hose out the front door. I want to make super sure that pipe is open enough for the water to drain through without backing up and flooding the entryway.

Again.

The washing machine simply drained too fast for the water to get through that gunk coated pipe.

When we first moved out here, my brother had moved the washer and drier from the basement to the entry for us, taking advantage of plumbing that was already there (there used to be a sink installed there). When we did laundry, we always used cold water. Partly because of the troubles we had with the hot water tank, but also to save on electricity. Thinking about it now, this probably contributed to the problem. The kitchen sink is the only other thing on this line. Any hot water from there wouldn’t have been enough to make up for all the ice cold water solidifying the gunk lining the inside of the pipe.

That’s my theory, anyhow.

So we’ll be making a point of getting as much hot or boiling water running down that pipe over the next while, with dish detergent as often as possible. If I can still hear water gurgling through and sounding like it’s backing up, I’ll have to open things up and run the auger through again a few times. Only when we’re sure things are flowing well enough will we try a load of laundry.

Starting with the hot water “tub clean” setting, first!

It will be so nice to not have to run a hose through the storm door window anymore. Especially with the inner door no longer closing properly!

Which we’ll be doing as soon as my daughter is done with the dishes.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to give my boots a thorough cleaning…

The Re-Farmer

Stock up shop: this is what $719.89 in total looks like

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Today has turned out to be a gorgeous day. Nice and sunny and, while the temperatures hovered just below freezing, things were melting all over. Most importantly, the roads were clear and, for the most part, dry!

I went into the city today to do the Costco stock up trip, but I was also on the hunt for a heat mat for our newly potted up, pre-germinated winter squash seeds, down in the chilly basement dungeon. Now that they are potted up, I made sure to turn the grow light on for them before I left for the city.

Today being Sunday, Costco opened at 10am. I left after 9 and my first stop was actually a mall, where I hoped to get some breakfast. Most of the food court wasn’t opening until 11, though, which left me with about 15 minutes to burn, so I checked out a Dollarama. I wasn’t planning anything specific to get there, but I did find things we needed.

This is what $41.16 looks like.

I got three clear dining table protectors, though I still have one unopened package left from last year. I will likely use these to put over the raised bed cover that I plan to move into the old kitchen garden, and turn it into a mini-greenhouse/cat barrier. I also grabbed two shorter over-the-door hooks for our entry closet door. We have a lot of things that need to be hung out of cat range, and these will fit over each half of the folding closet door. I was running low on masking tape, so I grabbed a roll. There’s a spray bottle I grabbed as well. We have so many of them, both for using with plants and for training the cats, and they all keep disappearing! I had to steal a cat training one for the seed starting set up, so I got one to replace it.

My favourite giant mug I used for tea started to develop cracks, so I’ve been on the hunt for a very large mug for a while now. I ended up finding a novelty Canada mug that is the largest I’ve been able to find, so I grabbed it. It’s still not as large as the one it’s replacing – that one held almost a full liter – but it’ll do!

When I headed out this morning, I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up, and forgot to grab a hat. I felt naked without a hat, so when I found a white version of the blue sequin one my daughter bought for me a while back, I snagged it. Last of all, I got another hard sided re-useable bag to hold it all.

By the time I was done, it was past 11, and I was able to find somewhere to get “breakfast” that fit into my Lenten fast from sugar and simple carbs (which is remarkably hard to do! They’re in everything!). After that, my next stop was a nearby Canadian Tire.

I didn’t get a photo of it, but I got their last heat mat! That came out to $50.39 after taxes. It took me a while to find it!

That done, it was across the street to the Costco. Before going in, I filled my gas tank. The Costco price for regular gas was $1.339 Everywhere else was either $1.549 or $1559 What a difference! It still cost me over $60 to fill that tank, though.

From there, I could finally do the Costco shopping. This is what $678.73 after taxes looks like.

This is 37 items. My total discounts from specials was a whole $10.

Ouch.

The biggest expense in there was, as usual, the cat food. Four 9.1kg bags of kibble and two 48 count cased of wet cat food. And we’ll still need to get more kibble from the feed store for the outside cats! I always pick those up first, and was at almost $200 before getting a single thing for ourselves.

*sigh*

Along with the kibble, the stuff I left on the flat cart for them to scan, there’s 5 pounds of butter, two blocks of cooking cheeses, a liter of whipping cream, a double cream brie and a double flat of 60 eggs. Then there was a case of Coke Zero for my husband and I, plus a case of energy drinks for my daughters and I. My older daughter reimburses me for those. Plus, of course, the requisite package of toilet paper.

As for the stuff on the belt, there’s two cases of Sweet and Salty mix of granola bars that were on sale. One for my daughters, one for my husband and I, though I won’t be eating any of those until after Lent.

There’s a panini pack of sandwich meats, frozen pierogi, frozen pork buns and frozen Pizza Pops. I also picked up a couple of 3 packs of Spam for the pantry, and a large pork blade roast.

I was looking at the beef, but the prices were shockingly high. In the end, I did get a package of lean ground beef – normally, I get extra lean – that I will be splitting up into thirds and freezing. Even that cost most than double what it was, just a couple of years ago. We still have a bit of beef from the 1/8th beef share we got back in January, but it’s mostly steaks, and we’ve been saving those!

Let’s see… what else did I get.

There is some Lactase for my lactose intolerant family, a jar of pickled asparagus, two large jars of mayonnaise, two packs of tortilla warps and a case of baked beans. I also found a jug of the Platinum Dawn dish detergent. I usually buy the biggest, cheap dish detergent, and we do still have lots of that. Since we’ve had issues with stuff building up inside our drain pipe from the kitchen, and the plumber recommended using Dawn in a weekly treatment to keep the pipes clear, we’ve been using this stuff more. It’s more expensive, but it does actually clean better, and helps with the plumbing, too, so it’s worth the extra cost.

That’s it. That’s everything I got this time. I didn’t even go through all the grocery aisles, because I was getting close to my budget and hadn’t even picked up meats yet. Thankfully, I’ve been taking advantage of meat or bread sales when I could, so when we unloaded and put everything away, our fridge and chest freezers were both full.

Now that we’ve got that multi-function toaster oven, I’ve been on the look out for more heat-and-eat type stuff that will allow my husband to prepare things for himself, giving him at least a bit more independence, while also accommodating his pain levels and mobility issues. Most of the options are just too expensive, though. Even if I had the budget, I wouldn’t be willing to pay those prices! It does irk me that beef prices are so high. Especially knowing it’s directly because of the extra costs our own federal government has been putting on our farmers and ranchers. We’ve got an election coming up. Hopefully, it will be an honest one, and we’ll have a new federal government soon, but frankly, I don’t expect it. I’m pretty sure the results have already been bought an paid for, just like our media.

But let’s not go there, or I’m going to end up ranting about our ludicrously corrupt federal government.

Anyhow…

That is our stock up shopping for today. I did get a few extras for the house and the garden, but most of it was pretty standard stuff.

While I expect the cost to be high when we’re stocking up for an entire month, these trips are getting really painful on the budget.

I admit, though, it would be a lot easier if we weren’t taking care of so many cats!! There’s going to be another $200 or so spent on 40 pound bags of kibble at the feed store, still. That could buy a lot of groceries!

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Mid month shop: this is what $238 and $70 looks like

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This morning, once I was done my morning rounds, I headed out to the nearest Walmart to do a bit of shopping.

My list was short. I needed seed starting mix, cat food, and a bit of groceries.

The Walmart did not have any seed starting mix.

This is what $238.76 looks like, which includes a small donation.

I got three 9.1kg bags of dry cat food, and one 32 count case of wet cat food. Last month, the dry cat food in this size cost $29.97 This month, they were back up to $34.97

Well, crud. I was just looking at the receipt and realized I was charged for an extra bag. I went through self checkout, so it’s my own fault. I now realize what happened. I was trying to scan the case of Coke Zero through the bottom of the cart, but it didn’t work. I thought I heard a beep and went scrolling through the items on the screen, but there was no Coke Zero, so I pulled it out from under the cart and got it scanned. I now realize there must have been a bar code on the side of the kibble bag that got scanned instead of the case below. No wonder my mental tally was off the final total by so much!

Well, we got to this location often enough that I can get it fixed.

So… this is NOT was $238 really looks like. 🤣

Anyhow.

On my list was peppercorns and eggs. They did have flats of medium eggs for just over $10, but I wanted large eggs, so I got two 18’s, instead. Those were $7.07 each. The Coke was not on my list, but they had a sale price for the case of 24 that was lower than buying two 12 packs – $11.97 instead of $14.97. The toilet paper was also on sale, so I grabbed a package for our emergency stash. 😉

I still needed to get seed starting mix, so after I loaded the truck, I decided to try the nearby Dollarama, since I was also wanting to see if their summer stock included those 6′ stakes that have been working out so well. They didn’t have the stakes, but I did end up getting three packs of “tomato stakes”. Each pack had three 3′ stakes with rigid connectors that can be popped on and off the stakes. I am actually thinking of using them around my corn, to help hold them up when we get high winds. I’ll slowly get more of these kits over the next few months until I think there is enough to support the corn stalks. I also spotted more of the half-bowls in the pattern I like so much, so I picked up four more of them. In the next couple of months, I’ll pick up four more side places and four more dinner plates, so we’ll have an 8 place setting. We can then pack away some of the dishes we never use, because they’re just too heavy. Plus, some are starting to get chipped. All of this together cost $28 and change, and I didn’t bother getting a photo.

They didn’t have seed starting mix, though.

So I went across the street to the Canadian Tire.

That is a very dangerous place for me to be!

This is what $69.54 looks like.

The seed starting mix was on sale, so I got the larger bags at $14.99 each. There was only one brand choice; Miracle Gro.

Then I started looking around the store.

I same SO close to buying a new compound miter saw that was on clearance! I have enough Canadian Tire dollars saved up that I could have gotten it for free. I’m hanging on to the CT dollars, though, to save up for something big, but it was really, really hard for me to talk away from that! We do have a compound miter saw that I got for $10 at a garage sale. It got a lot of use while I was building the cat isolation shelter. If I’m going to upgrade, it’s going to be a dual bevel sliding miter saw.

Which they also had on clearance. The clearance price was more than the CT dollars I have, but…

Oh, was it hard to walk away from that!

What I did end up finding and getting were a couple of 5 gallon buckets to replace the ones we’re using for doing the litter, so we don’t have to make multiple trips to dump the litter onto the compost pile (for those new to this blog, we use stove pellets for litter, which breaks up into sawdust as it is used). They were under $5 each.

I also got another S shaped cat scratcher. We got one not long ago, and the cats really like it a lot. More than any other set up we’ve tried. This is going to replace the scratching post I have in my bedroom that was donated to us. The post itself is still in great shape, but the shag carpet used to cover it has been shedding bits like crazy.

Last of all was an energy drink for the drive home.

Once home, I set the new cat scratched up in my room. The cats were all over it, immediately. It has a little dangling feather toy under the upward curve. That got ripped off within minutes. 😄 The scratching post it replaced has been set aside for now. I plan to remove the crappy shag carpet and recover it with some hemp craft rope that I have. It’s the same stuff I used on the inside ramp of the isolation shelter, and it holds up really well.

So that is our mid month top up shop, most of which was stuff for the cats!

On top of this, I also put in $50 in gas. The price was $1.479, which is down quite a bit. Likely because our new Prime Dictator has deigned to bring a carbon tax down to 0% in a pathetic bait and switch. Marx Carnage made a big show of it, too. With Trump’s public signings of executive orders being so popular, they basically made a set where he sat at a table in front of the media and signed an ” executive order”, to bring the carbon tax down to 0%. The thing is, Canada doesn’t have executive orders. Our version is something called an Order of Council, like they have in the UK. Because the carbon tax is a law, it can’t be removed, so bringing it down to 0% doesn’t actually get rid of the tax. Like I said, a bait an switch. What he signed was basically a fake document for show. An Order of Council has to go through Parliament, which is still shut down. Not that our new Prime Dictator could even be part of any debates in Parliament. He is not an elected Member of Parliament. At best, he can attend on the sidelines as a guest, and watch the proceedings from the gallery. We continue to be a de facto first world dictatorship, and the new guy is even worse than the old guy.

Canada is so screwed right now. While you probably aren’t hearing about it in the mainstream news, most of use are angry with our own government for starting this mess and making it worse. What started out as a joke about Canada becoming the 51st state is looking more and more like a solution. Since we still aren’t getting the election we should be, and haven’t been able to oust our corrupt government, a lot of people actually want Canada to join the US, and Alberta has even sent a delegation to discuss it. If Alberta leaves Canada, the rest of the country will fall apart, since Alberta basically funds the rest of the country through “equalization payments”. Especially to Quebec and Ontario. They’d go bankrupt in a heartbeat.

We are definitely in for some… interesting… times.

The Re-Farmer

New tool in, and finally cleaning some smoke damage

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I’ve mentioned before that we are still having to run a hose from our washing machine, out the window of our storm door, to drain into the yard. Even though we had the pipe cleared by a plumber, when we set the washing machine back up to drain into the plumbing, it overflowed and started flooding our entry again.

The plumber had made an easier access to the pipe, so now we can clean it out ourselves. Unfortunately, even though we’ve done it a few times, there seems to be one spot where things build up again very quickly. The kitchen sink still drains fine, but we can hear the water in the drain for the washing machine, and it doesn’t take long before it sounds like water is backing up into that pipe again.

In talking to the plumber, he suggested we might have to cut out and replace a section of that pipe, as we can tell it’s always clogging up in the same spot. The pipe runs under my husband’s bedroom, and he can even hear the difference in the sound of the water flowing through.

Replacing a section of pipe would be far from ideal, as it would be difficult to access.

In the past, we had a similar situation and were able to rig up a toilet brush to part of a chimney sweep to clear out a drain pipe to a septic tank. That worked really well but 1) the pipe was larger than what we’re dealing with here and 2) it was easy to get at.

I figured there had to be something similar out there, so after some searching, I found this. (not an affiliate link). A flexible hose cleaning tool – and it arrived today.

This is what we got.

I got the longest one I could find in the size needed.

When I opened the package, is seems smaller than I expected. It’s the size needed for the pipe, but my brain keeps saying, the larger bristle end is too small. What really got me, though, was how soft the bristles are. I don’t know that it’s stiff enough to scrub the insides of the pipe.

Well, we’ll find out, later today. I don’t want to open up the pipe until we’re done using the kitchen sink for a while, so we don’t get splashed. I’ll use the plumber’s snake again, first, then see what this brush can do to clean the insides of the pipe.

It will be really good to finally be able to use the actual drain for the washing machine, instead of running the house out the window. My daughters had laundry day yesterday, but some things needed extra time in the drier. By the time my younger daughter was able to switch loads, the hose out the door had frozen in a low spot and clogged. My daughter had used hot water to thaw it out, but by 2 in the morning, she finally gave up and went to bed, after setting the hose out on the sidewalk, in hopes it would thaw out in the sun, today.

Which it did. Once I was sure water could flow through the sump pump hose we’re using as a drainage hose, I ran a tub clean cycle, which uses hot water, to get the loose ice out. Once the tub clean cycle was done, I could finally bring the hose in and close the inner door. Thankfully, it wasn’t too bitterly cold out last night, and today is much warmer, though still below freezing.

I was able to finally get something else done that I’ve been meaning to for a while. I was able to clean the smoke damage off the mementos I got for my mother, from our little local church that was torched some time ago. The church was too damaged to repair, so there was a service to officially close the church, and people were welcome to take what mementos they wanted. The rest will be properly burned or buried.

I’m still hoping to be able to get a bench and or a pew home, but we have nowhere to safely store anything that big until we can clean the smoke damage off.

Anyhow.

I had selected a couple of small items for my mother and, today, I finally was able to clean them.

The church had the fourteen Stations of the Cross along both sides, and the Twelfth Station in the photo was taken from the wall near where our family pew used to be. The back of it can be seen in the second photo. It was almost completely black with soot from smoke, but did not have any actual fire damage. I used baking soda and water to clean it, gently scrubbing with a nail brush and an old tooth brush. I will later be using mineral oil on the wood, once I’m sure it’s good and dry. It looks dry in the photo, but there’s a possibility water got under the ceramic part while soot was being scrubbed off the sides.

The votive holder is one of many from a stand where people could light a candle and say a prayer. The ones that weren’t taken as mementos were going to be taken to the still active Catholic church in town, where they have a similar, larger set up. The holder had quite a bit of wax in and on it, though very little soot. I set it on parchment paper in the toaster oven on the warm setting until the wax was fully melted, poured off what pooled on the bottom into the garbage, then used paper towel to wipe up the rest, while it was still hot.

I still have other items that need to be cleaned of smoke damage, but as these are for my mother, they had priority!

I was going to be taking my mother to the city on Thursday (today is Monday) for her appointment at the eye clinic, but she called me today about it. She was really unsure about going, but couldn’t make a decision either way. The appointment is not for treatment, but to monitor her macular degeneration, and we already postponed it once. She says she’s not noticing any change in her vision. I ended up calling the clinic and talking to someone about her situation. The receptionist passed it on to the doctor and his assistant, and the assistant called me back later. After explaining the situation some more, she went ahead and cancelled the appointment, making sure to tell me that, if my mother notices any changes, to make another appointment.

I will still be going to my mother’s on Thursday, though. I will probably do some grocery shopping for her, but she also needs help filling out the paperwork for her Life Line set up. I also have some stuff from my brother to drop off – he’d mistakenly left them with me instead of our mother – so I can bring those along with these mementos.

What I haven’t done today was work on the basement some more. I was hoping to set up a temporary table to hold seed starts, but what I was thinking to use is just too big. I might simply use the work station, instead. I didn’t want to set up on top of the new self healing cutting mat, but I’ll figure something out.

For now, I think I’m going to go treat the wood on that cross with a first coat of mineral oil. I expect to do that a few times before it’s in decent shape again.

I hope my mother will be happy with these!

The Re-Farmer

Oops!

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He meant well…

😄

Okay, a bit of a refresher on this one, regarding our septic pump emergency diverter set up, outside.

The end of the diverter pipe sticks through a hole in the wall by about a foot; maybe a bit more. I never really looked closely before it was covered. The hole itself is less than foot above the ground.

My brother found a couple of 10′ lengths of white, 4″ PVC pipe that fit together. This was set over the diverter pipe to direct the flow away from the house. We set a brick under the 4″, to raise it and hold it up against the diverter, with the edge right up against the wall of the house. We used what we could find to put under the 20′ of pipe so that it wouldn’t bow along its length, while maintaining a downward slope. The very end of the pipe was on a brick to keep it off the ground, so there would be no chance of it freezing closed. Later, I wrapped insulating material around the pipe at the house end, and where it had contact with supports, to further protect the pipe and ensure nothing could freeze in there.

This set up had the effluent drain away from the house, but not that far. With the lay of the land, the water would drain over the frozen ground, towards the corner of the old kitchen garden and pool there.

In the fall, my brother had brought a 6″ black flexible pipe that’s about 50′ long. This was to use on the diverter to direct the flow into the trees, while the ejector was being replaced. We ended up never needing to use it, and I eventually took it to the barn for storage, along with the rest of my brother’s stuff.

When the ejector froze and we set up the rigid PVC pipe for the emergency diverter, I brought out the flexible pipe again, just in case. There was too much snow on the ground to do anything with it, yet. Eventually, I dug a trench in the snow, brought a wide board that had been found and was being stored in the garage to use as a supportive ramp, and set the flexible pipe (I supposed I should be calling it a hose, not a pipe, but whatever…) over more than a foot of the rigid pipe’s end. This is what the end result was like.

I pushed the insulating material back quite a bit to fit the hose on. The ramp is on the brick that had been supporting the end of the pipe, so the top of the ramp is just a bit past the end of the rigid pipe. I’d brought another brick along, expecting to need it to keep the board from bowing, but ended up not needing it. Instead, I set it hear the hose/pipe connection, on the side where it looked most likely to be pushed off the ramp by a cat or racoon or something.

In the second picture, you can see the rest of the hose snaking its way down the snow trench. The effluent could now drain well away from the house.

There were a couple of problems with this.

The main one is that, while it slopes away from the house AT the house, the ground is not level.

At all.

What I would regularly do during my morning rounds was check on the pipe, to make sure it was still tight against the house. I would then check along the hose a few feet with my foot until I could feel the weight of water inside. From just above there, I would use my foot and drag it along, under the hose, to slowly work the fluid to the end. I could sometimes hear ice breaking up and moving along inside, too, and much of the ice would come out the end, too. I usually did this at least twice, sometimes three times. Some mornings, however, were too cold. The warmth of water flowing through the hose, as well as the black plastic heating up in the sun, melted the snow in the trench down to the ground. When it got cold enough, the hose would be frozen to the ground. I didn’t want to mess with it and risk cracking the plastic, so on those days, I’d just leave it. With the hose being 6″ in diameter, I really didn’t need to drain it at all, as there was no way the ice could build up enough in there to block it completely.

Using my foot to drain the hose, however, allowed me to identify two lower spots where more water, slush and ice would collect. After hunting around, I ended up bringing over the covers for a couple of crane crates my brother gave me. The crates have been converted to wall shelves in the garage, and I meant to attach the lids with hinges in such a way that they would swing down and could be used as surfaces. Instead, I have put them under the hose over these low spots. They will get too damaged to use as I intended by the time we’re done using this set up, but this is needed more.

The other issue I realized is a combination of two problems.

One, by the end of the hose, the ground starts to slop upwards again. Enough that some of the effluent would actually flow back down the outside of the hose, rather than all of it flowing away.

Two, the very end of the hose has a curl to it, and it was curling upwards. Water could still flow through, but once the pump stopped, the hose could never fully drain, so there was always a layer of water in the bottom of the hose, even on the more level ground.

There were two possible solutions to this. The easiest was to just rotate the entire hose, so that the end would curl downwards instead of upwards. So I tried that.

I call attention back to that second picture. You see how the hose snakes slightly from side to side?

Well, those bends in the hose stay, even after being rotated. So instead of side to side wiggles, there were up and down humps.

I rotated it back and left it. The side to side wiggles are at least flat on the ground!

The other possible solution was to use something to straighten that curled end. The easiest thing would be to put something long inside, heavy enough to hold the curl down. That was not really an option, though, as anything inside the hose would obstruct the flow of effluent and create a surface for it to freeze around, among other things.

The other way to do it would be to weight it down on the outside. Being a round hose, though, it’s not like I could just put something on top of it; it would just fall off. I needed something that was large enough and shaped so it could fit around the hose, heavy enough to hold it in place and stable enough to not be easily knocked over.

I had yet to find anything that fit the bill, but I wasn’t too concerned about it. Water was flowing through well, and there was no change that enough water would be stuck in the pipe as to freeze and block it completely.

What I hadn’t thought to do was tell my brother these details. It seemed inconsequential.

Yesterday, before we tested the new bypass valve, my brother had gone out to make sure the pipe was still tight against the house. When he came back, he told me he added more support to it, so that the diverter pipe was against the bottom of the larger pipe, not the top.

He then mentioned that the end of the hose was curled upwards. I told him, yes, I had noticed it was.

Then he told me he “fixed” it by carefully rotating the entire pipe.

I told him I’d tried that, but it left me with raised sections of hose where it bends. He concurred with that and said that it was warm enough for that not to be a problem.

Which lead me to believe that the “humps” created by the side to side wiggles in the hose had flattened themselves out. I was surprised by this, because it was still pretty chilly out there, but that black plastic does still heat up in the sun quite a bit. Especially when it’s protected from the wind, like the hose is protected by the walls of the snow trench it runs through.

Then I forgot about it, as we got busy testing the new bypass valve.

Until this morning.

I’d heard the septic pump go off during the night, so when I was doing my morning rounds, I knew it would be a while before it went off again. Still, I made sure to check at various key points, and everything seemed fine.

There was a “hump” in the hose near the end, though.

When I went to try and drag my foot under the hose to see if it needed to be drained (with the temperatures last night, I expected anything in there to be frozen), it wouldn’t move…

… and not because it was frozen to the ground.

It was heavy with ice inside.

I checked around and, as far as I could tell, the last time the pump drained the tank, it did flow out the end, like it is supposed to.

Sort of.

Once the pump stopped, any water that couldn’t make it over that hump just pooled in the hose and froze during the night.

The question was, how full was it? Was that hump high enough that the backed up water filled it completely? I honestly couldn’t tell.

I did have to flatten that hump, though.

After doing some digging around, I eventually found something in the side of the garage we store our lawn mowers and snow blowers in. It was a piece of metal that used to be part of a fluorescent light fixture. It was about 3′ long and shaped to fit around fluorescent bulbs, in angles, not a curve.

It was the best I could find.

I took it over to the end of the hose and, after flattening it a bit, could set it over the humped part. I’d brought a brick over to weight it down, and there was another brick my brother had brought over to set under and support the hose, but the two together were not heavy enough to flatten the hump, so I went and got a flattish rock from by the house that we’ve been using to weigh things down, as needed. While I had flattened the metal piece enough to fit over the hose, it still took some doing to get the weights on it and stay there.

I knew the set up would fall off easily, but as long as it held while water was flowing through, that would be fine.

I then had to wait inside until I heard the pump go off again.

When I did hear it go off, I went to my window to check but, while I can see the far end of the hose, I can’t see if anything is coming out of it. So I opened my window to listen.

I heard splashing sounds, near the house.

Dang.

Of course, the pump shut itself off before I could even get my boots on, but I was soon outside to see what I could see.

Thankfully, the splashing was NOT coming from the pipe where it butts up against the house.

It WAS coming from where I thought was most likely. Where the hose goes over the pipe. Effluent had backed up the ramp until it was coming out the space between the 4″ pipe and the inside of the 6″ hose.

I checked the other end, and it was completely dry. Nothing made it out the other end.

The first thing to do was to get as much water out of the hose as I could. For that, I lifted the hose at the end of the ramp and work my way up, so it could flow out where the water had been draining while the pipe was running. I had to do that a few times before I was satisfied I’d got most of it out.

I then had to do the same thing, in the other direction. No dragging my foot under the hose this time, either. I had to physically lift the hose with my hands and slowly work my way to the end.

Of course, the weights on the hump fell off long before I reached it.

On the plus side, water started flowing out the end well before I reached it, too, which means it wasn’t completely frozen closed.

All the way along the hose, I could feel ice and slush moving around. If that hump had been just a touch lower, water would have been able to get through to the end, I’m sure.

Once I got to the end, I made sure to lift it enough to get a good amount of ice out.

Then I went back and did it again.

It could probably have used a third time, but lifting that slush filled hose while bent over and trying to walk was NOT good for my back. I wasn’t going to risk injuring myself, when I could tell that water would flow through.

The first photo above shows where the water was coming out from the top of the black hose, then draining down towards the corner of the old kitchen garden. You can even see that the water is still flowing over the frozen ground.

I did make a slight attempt to rotate the hose back again, but it’s still too full of slush to bother. Instead, I put the metal piece back and weighed it down again. I have up trying to put the bricks right on top, as they just kept falling off again, so I set them on the sides. The rock was staying on top well enough, at least. The main thing is that the hump is flattened.

You can also see the larger ice chunks I got out of the hose.

Now that it’s weighted down, when the pump turns on again, the relatively warm water should actually help melt and clear away some of the slush inside the hose, opening it up more. It should not back up the ramp to the top of the hose again.

It’ll take a few showers, much washing of dishes and flushing of toilets before the pump is triggered again, though!

Meanwhile, the day continues to warm up, which will also help. Right now, we are up to -9C/16F, but the “real feel” is -3C/27F. Our high of the day is supposed to be -6C/21F. The 10 day forecast shows we’ll have a couple more days – not consecutive – with highs below freezing, then we’ll be going above freezing and staying there. Looking at the monthly forecast, we are expecting to get as warm as 8C/46F before the end of the month. There are supposed to be a couple daytime highs just dipping below freezing in the first couple of days of April, and then that’s it. Daytime highs are supposed to remain above freezing from then on. We’re even seeing highs of 17C/63F predicted for the middle of April, but of course, that far ahead, the forecast will change many times.

I’ve updated my brother about the situation with the hose outside, of course. As we were talking, he told me he’d been thinking about that ejector situation. His thought is that, with how saturated the ground became, because of the leaking old ejector, the ground froze far deeper than normal. Which is certainly possible in an area what was freshly excavated. There’s no way to know until it thaws, though. For that to happen, though, our overnight lows need to stay consistently above freezing for quite a while, for it to thaw out that far down. Unless we get an unusually warm spring, we’re looking at the end of May or into June.

Bypass installed!

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Have I mentioned, my brother is the best?

Today, he worked on our septic plumbing again. This after already spending a couple of hours outside, doing things among their stored items, and being sick, too!

A few days ago, they’d gone out for dinner and he’d ordered a “Canadian burger”. Yeah, one of those virtue signaling things so many places have been doing, suddenly pretending to be patriotic because our government and media have told us to hate the US right now. Just a few years ago, the same people were calling Canadians who flew the flag and displayed patriotism racists and Nazis and white supremacists, just like Americans – or at least the Americans they tell use to hate. People were arrested for flying Canadian flags, banned from businesses, their property vandalized and even physically assaulted. Now, suddenly “American style patriotism” is no longer bad. Funny how easily people can spin on a dime and not see their own double standards.

Ironically, the restaurant was a US franchise.

Anyhow, the burger made him incredibly ill. He thinks the beef wasn’t fully cooked and he was hit with e. coli. He said he was still operating at only about 80%.

His 80% is more than a lot of people’s 100%, though! The guy is amazing. I don’t know how he does it!

I had other things to get done before I went back to working on the basement, so I didn’t get to help or watch while he figured out how to install the new bypass. I cleared another section in the new basement enough to mop it, then joined him after I set the blower up to dry the concrete floor. By that, he was pretty much done and ready to start testing. He was quite happy that it worked out much easier than he expected.

This is what he installed.

The pipe to the ejector now has the T insert in it. Under normal circumstances, effluent would just go straight through this pipe and to the ejector, out by the barn.

In the next photo, you can see the ball valve in the emergency diverter pipe, in the open position.

I was really curious how he would work with that diverter pipe. It had a very strong curve to it, in the wrong direction! What he ended up doing was first, rotating it so that the curve was in the other direction. Then he used his heat gun on a substantial section of it, until he could straighten it out enough that it could be attached to the T. He had to stand there and hold it straight until the pipe cooled enough to hold its new shape.

Of course, he had to cut sections out of both pipes to install the T and the ball valve.

While this was being worked on, the family was concerned about using the water. The septic pump was turned off while he worked, of course, but it had gone off not very long before he started, so there wouldn’t have been very much water in the greywater side of the tank. Any time I got a message, asking if it was okay to flush or shower or whatever, I encouraged them to use plenty of water, so we could have something to test with!

Before testing it, my brother went outside to check the diverter at the house end to make sure nothing got knocked askew while he was manipulating the pipe around. Once that was done and he was back inside, he turned the pump on manually – an easy thing to do, thanks to the second switch he installed for that! – and checked for leaks. There was a tiny leak at the elbow before it goes out of the house, so he tightened the screw clamp and added a second one, just to be safe. There was no leak when he turned the pump on again.

So we knew that effluent was flowing through the open ball valve in the diverter. We could see in the filter that water was flowing, and we could hear it, too.

We didn’t test for long, though, as we didn’t want to actually empty the tank.

The next test was with the valve closed. We were both watching that filter closely and, while there was movement, it didn’t look like it was flowing. The only way to know for sure, though, was for one of us to go to the ejector, while the other turned the pump back on.

My brother went to the ejector, then video called me on Facebook messenger, so we could see and show each other what was going on. Once he gave the go ahead, I closed the ball valve again and turned the pump on.

Nothing happened.

No flow out the ejector.

We waited a while to be sure, before I shut off the pump, then opened the ball valve again.

Which is just awesome. Without the valve, the only way to test if the ejector is working would require switching pipes – then switching back again when the test failed. Not only is that messy, but every time that is done, there is a risk of breaking something.

What this means is that the emergency diverter is now a permanent set up. Once the ejector is working again, we can close the valve, but can be ready to simply open it again, if we have more problems in the future.

We won’t be able to do anything with the ejector until things warm up a lot more. My brother thinks it’s most likely still frozen at the bottom. I think there’s something blocking the venturi valve. Worst case scenario, the pipe from the house itself is clogged, somewhere. That’s more than 300 feet of pipe, and a clog could be anywhere in there!

Either way, we won’t be able to find out until spring thaw.

Until then, the emergency diverter is our life saver!

Once the bypass valve was installed and tested, my brother headed out for home, with plans to visit our mother along the way – and bring her a hot supper to share. No meals on wheels on the weekend, so I’m sure she would appreciate it. I just hope she treats my brother well this visit. She’s really been on about how he was “keeping secrets” from her because they were so quiet about selling their acreage and moving, even though she knew that was why they brought their equipment here to the farm. I think she even forgot that they’d done that. Ah, well. I’ll find out later tonight!

I am quite pleased with how things have gone today. While I don’t have my seed starting set up in the basement yet – quite a bit more work will need to be done down there, still – I did get good progress down there, and was able to reclaim my work station. My brother got the bypass valve installed and, while we were doing that, my daughter was spring cleaning in the kitchen and dining room. She was able to get all the cat hair off the walls, ceiling, cupboard doors, the ceiling fan, pictures on the walls, curtain rods, etc. That alone was a HUGE job. With so many cats, of course there’s cat fur everywhere, but when it sticks to the walls and anything on them, it doesn’t want to come off! It won’t even vacuum off. She had to get right in there and scrub. She did an amazing job, though by the end of it, she was really needing painkillers!

So was I, by the end of it all. I haven’t gone up and down the stairs so many times in one day since we cleared and cleaned out the basements. Yes, I took my prescription painkillers in the morning, but even those can only deal with so much, and I can’t take more during the day, since I save my second allowable dose before bed. Pain is more of a problem when I’m lying down and trying to sleep than during the day. I can put up with it more when I’m up and about. Once I’m in bed, it keeps me from getting sleep. I did take some acetaminophen, though, to help take the edge off, at least.

I have a few last things to do in the basement before I call it for the day. Tomorrow is Sunday, which I try to keep as a day of rest. This will make sure I don’t over do it and put myself out of commission for days. As long as we get something set up for seed starts within the next week, it should be good. Most, if not all, of the seeds I ordered should be in by then.

From there, it’s the fun part: going through all the seeds and choosing which ones to start and when!

The Re-Farmer