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Left Hanging – on multiple levels

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

While doing my rounds this morning, making my way through the spruce grove, I noticed something dangling that wasn’t there before.

It looks like a section of tree came down during our recent high winds.

But where did it come from?

A surprising distance away, actually. It’s the top of a mostly dead tree. There are only a few remaining live branches on the south side of the trunk, from what I can see. It seems that the top now hanging in other trees is where most of the living branches were.

After checking the trail cam files later on, the tree wasn’t the only thing left hanging.

I have some decisions to make.

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Got it

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Today, I took advantage of a much warmer day (we reached -7C this afternoon) before the temperatures plummet again, and headed to a nearby city to see if we could get a replacement hot water tank.

I’d already phoned and had instructions, but we’d never been to this location before, so my daughter and I took the time to look around. We have been discussing a building project for the summer, that I will blog about later in the year, so we went to see if we could price out stuff like mortar and insulation.

It turns out this is not the hardware store we could go for these materials.

Then I went to customer service with my sticker from off our hot water tank.

In maybe 5 minutes, paperwork in hand, I drove around to the back of the building, to a particular shed, where a new replacement tank was ready and waiting for me.

It now sits in our dining room, waiting to be installed.

It was so fast and easy, I wish I’d thought of going somewhere else, long ago! Not one person I spoke to thought of it, either. It was certainly worth the hour and a half total in driving time!

One of the amazing things about it is how light it is. Compared to the old tank that got replaced shortly after we moved here, which is so heavy I intend to dismantle it and remove it piece by piece, rather than risk damaging the stairs with the weight, or someone getting injured taking it around to the other basement and hauling it out that way. Assuming it could even be moved to the other side of the stairs in the first place.

My daughters and I had wondered about how the old tank was brought down there in the first place. It occurred to me that it was probably installed while the new part of the house was still under construction. The new part basement would have been completely open, except for the support pillars, and there would have been just a wood burning furnace in the old part basement on one side, and the stairs on the other. The tank was probably brought from the new part basement, through the space now filled by the electric furnace.

Getting rid of the damaged tank will be much, much easier!

So now we just have to pay for the installation. I suppose we could install it ourselves, but I want the plumber to look at our well pump, too. Now that we don’t have to come up with the money for a new tank (the price was $419, before taxes), on top of the cost of labour, we’ll be able to get it done at the end of this month!

I am so looking forward to getting that done!

The Re-Farmer

It’s warmed up a bit…

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Of course, that’s a relative statement.

When I got up this morning, it was -33C/-27F with a “feels like” of -42C/-44F.

I’m happy to say that the van handled the temperatures quite well. Yes, we’ve been diligent in maintenance and improvements as much as we can, but it’s still a 15 yr old vehicle with almost 430,000 km on it, so I’m always going to be paranoid about that thing. :-/

Motivated by the temperatures, I stayed up last night to finish a shrug I was crocheting for myself. When my upper back gets cold, it triggers my chronic cough, so I just wanted a little something to throw on while around the house. I am wearing it right now, and feeling nice and toasty!

I think this is the first time I’ve deliberately made something, just for myself. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Assessing things

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

Yesterday’s plans to take my mother to visit her sister at the nursing home changed. I got a call in the morning, because she was worried about the weather. It was blowing pretty hard, and she was concerned. We ended up postponing for now.

When doing my rounds this morning, I found some minor tree damage from the winds.

Finding this branch was rather funny.

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Found the spot

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It’s been a busy couple of days, and any time I’ve gone to town during daylight, I’ve been trying to spot where I went through the ditch. I only had a vague idea of where it was, since I was a little too distracted to notice landmarks or anything. ;-)

It was the only area with tire tracks through the ditch, so when I did spot some, I knew it had to be ours.

I found more things to be thankful for and surprised about.

One was the location. It was farther away than I thought it was. I was able to drive quite far before that tire went completely flat!

The other was the ditch itself. I was heading towards a marshier area, and the ditch on that side of the road became wider and shallower, instead of being the deep V earlier in my drive, or farther down the road, past the marshy area. Another reason I was able to get out of the ditch at all!

Also, what I had thought was fence posts in my headlights, wasn’t.

They were trees.

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Fantastic news! also… what?

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

First things first, I got fantastic news this morning!

I came in from doing my morning rounds to find my husband on the phone; the garage had called about my mom’s car.

There is no damage.

None.

Not even the flat tire!

They pumped it up and checked it, and there’s not even a leak. It looks like the seal got broken at the rim and the air just leaked out. The tire and rim are just fine.

He did suggest an alignment, considering what happened, which I was planning to ask for already. They were already putting the tire back while he was talking to me, so the alignment is all that will need to get done.

Now I have to figure out when I can come pick it up with a second driver. :-/ He said there was no hurry on that. They’ll have it ready and waiting for me whenever I can.

So that is a HUGE relief!

Then there was the weird thing.

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Mead Baby 2.0: second fermentation

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First, the back ground, for those who are new to this blog. (Welcome!) All links will open in new tabs, so you won’t lose your place. :-)

Mead Baby, redux
Mead Baby 2.0: active fermentation
Mead Baby 2.0: it’s a temperature thing
Mead Baby 2.0: temperature success

We’ve been keeping a close eye on our baby mead, keeping the temperature at the warm end of the temperature range recommended. If it dropped to 16C, I would turn on the electric heating pad to the “warm” setting, and that would bring it back up to 18C.

We could see bubbles inside the airlock, so there was still active fermentation – something we’re pretty sure had stopped completely well before this point in our first batch. The “burp” had dropped to about 23-27 seconds apart and seemed to be staying there for the past few days, so my daughter and I planned to transfer the must to another 1 gallon glass carboy for a second fermentation today.

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How things are this morning

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

After our adventure last night, I’m rather impressed by my current lack of pain this morning! :-) I expected to at least be stiffening up by now, but at the moment, there’s just some minor tension in my neck and shoulders. I’m taking pain killers, anyway, but that’s really more for my arthritis.

I really don’t know a whole lot about my mother’s car, but my older brother had tried to help her with it a lot over the years, and knows it a lot better than I do. I wasn’t able to fill him in on what happened last night, but he was able to take a few minutes from work and call me this morning.

I was reminded of another reason it’s a good thing this happened in my mother’s car, and not our van.

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On Ice

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I was able to swing by the lake this morning. I’d been able to swing by yesterday, as well, and saw that the first few ice fishing sheds were being put up. Today, there were a few more.

I stayed nice and warm in the car to take this photo – I wasn’t about to walk to the beach just to get pictures in this cold! LOL

To the left of the photo is a large mound on the beach. That is sand that was dredged out of the storm drain, after the blizzard we had in early October.

The ice is now thick enough to be safe to drive on, so ice fishing season can start. The “road” to this area is cleared of snow.

I wasn’t able to get pictures, but on the other side of the ice road, I could see vehicles in the distance, and snowmobiles pulling loads across. This is the area where a track has been cleared and people could get lessons in ice driving. Police and ambulance drivers also used the track to practice on. It looks like the organizers are starting to set up with that. No track is cleared yet, but that didn’t stop one car that I saw from going on the ice and spinning around through the loose snow.

That brings back memories! As a passenger, though, not a driver. :-D

It’s interesting to think about how there are entire industries and businesses that rely on ice like this!

The Re-Farmer