Starry skies, shelter progress and a surprise visit

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First, the cuteness!

With all the tasks outside I’ve been working on, I’ve been forgetting to take pictures of kittens!

Today turned out to be a fairly productive day. I’m actually a bit surprised, all things considered! 😄

The girls and I headed out around midnight to watch for meteors. We did see some, as well as some Northern lights.

We set up the tripod and just randomly took photos of different parts of the sky, hoping to catch something. We did catch some meteors in a few photos that were so small and faint, we didn’t see them as they happened. There were a few brighter ones that happened in between shots, and one huge, bright one with a bright green tail that flashed by. That one was awesome!

In the photos in the Instagram slideshow, the third one has the spotted streak of an airplane’s lights. We actually have a pretty busy sky with planes and satellites visible. It was a gorgeous night for starwatching, that’s for sure! We could see even more stars than the night before.

Unfortunately, once we got back inside and I finally went to bed, I wasn’t able to sleep for most of the night, so my daughters were sweet enough to take care of some of the morning stuff for me so I could sleep in. Once I did get outside, my priority was watering the garden before it got too hot. Our expected high was 27C/81F, which I’m sure we passed. As I write this, it’s past 6:30pm, and we’re still at 25C/77F, with the humidex putting us at 27C/81F.

While I was watering the garden beds, I took advantage of the fact that we have some lovely grass clippings that has been lying out long enough to start drying, and topped up the mulch on some beds. For a few, I just scooped up some armloads, but in some areas I brought out the wagon and raked up a windrow. I gathered a couple of wagon loads, but there’s still plenty left to collect. I want to make sure to collect the thickest areas, as they are thick enough to actually kill the grass below if they’re left where they are. I’ll take care of the rest, tomorrow, though.

Once the watering was done, I paused for … brunch? … then headed back out again. I had one last edge of the isolation shelter boards to paint, and then I wanted to calculated and cut the next set.

I had a few pieces I could cut out of the true-to-size 2×4’s I had, though I ended up having to cut off rotten/uneven ends before I could make my measurements on these ones. Once I got four pieces that will be joining the front and rear frames, that was it for the true to size boards. The next ones had to be cut from a regular 2×4’s. I actually need 2 more of that length, but I got distracted and forgot.

After I’d laid the newly cut boards out to brush the dust off, I was going to give the paint more time to dry and switch out the foam bumpers on the gate and replace the twine and pin for the sliding bar – all of which were disintegrating from being in the elements for several years.

I happened to step out of the garage when my phone dinged at me. I had a text message from my sister!

There is no signal in the garage, so I got it several minutes after she’d sent it, and she was asking if I was home.

It turns out she was in the area, visiting the local cemetery.

Also, did I want some cucumbers? 😄

What she didn’t say was whether or not my mother was with her. I did tell her that I’d gone to the cemetery last month and left fresh flowers at our family graves – and said no, thank you to the cucumbers. The last time she gave us cucumbers, we couldn’t finish them all, even after making a dozen jars of pickles!

I figured her ability to receive texts would be about the same as mine, so I had no idea when she was going to get my answer. I had to go to the house to get some of what I needed for the gate, and made sure to grab the gate key, as well. As I was walking back to the garage, I could see through the trees.

There was a car at the gate already! 😄

I’m glad I grabbed the gate key!

Also, as I write this, I am eating a cucumber salad my daughter made from the cucumbers my sister gave us. 😄 Not as much as the last time, though, so we won’t be overwhelmed!

I ended up giving my sister a tour of what we’ve been doing around the place, including the garden, of course. She wanted to see it as she wasn’t sure she’d make it out this away again this year. My sister being my sister, she took lots of pictures, including some with me in my grubby, torn up work clothes! 😂 Then we sat in the the shade on one of the benches I made and just talked. She was still planning on visiting my mother on her way home – and drop off more cucumbers! – so she didn’t stay too long.

As she was leaving, I followed along and worked on the gate. We use sections of pool noodles as bumpers. With where the hinges are attached to the posts, when the two halves of the gate swing outwards, towards the road, the metal gate hits the metal posts, so the bumpers prevent more damage. Small sections are also added over the hinge pins to protect them from the elements.

The pin for the sliding bar was just a long screw with its tip cut off, tied to the gate with twine. The twine was barely holding together, and the screw was rusting, so I picked up a long screw eye to replace it. I use mason line instead of twine. Having the screw eye to attach the line to was a lot more secure than just knotting bale twine under the head of a deck screw! 😄 I was even able to attach the line to the gate in a more aesthetically pleasing way, too. The only potential problem I see is that the weight of the screw’s eye might cause it to fall out, however there’s enough slack in the line that I could use it to wrap around the end of the screw eye and hold it in place.

At least, that’s the theory!

Once that was done and everything was cleaned up, it was back to the garage.

The painted boards were just dry enough to move them off the sawhorses and onto the pallet to finish trying, and I was able to get the first sides painted on the newly cut pieces.

Once all these pieces (including the two more longer ones I need to cut) are painted, I can then assemble the external frame of the isolation shelter. Once that’s together and secured to the pallet floor, I’ll be able to figure out the best way to put together the inside parts and get the measurements needed.

I’m hoping I have enough salvaged lumber to finish the frame, including the pieces that will support the floor of the second level. I have wider boards left over from another project that will make a good floor on the second level.

This above Instagram slideshow has my original sketched plans. I’ve had to change some things, but the general concept is the same. The second level will have a floor covering 3/4 of the space, but there will be room to add other things, as inspiration strikes. All of the inside stuff needs to be put in before the mesh walls or the roof are added. Though if I can figure out the best way to do it, a hinged roof would certainly make it easier to access the inside, should something need repair or replacement.

I’m happy with the progress made so far. I just hope I didn’t screw up on my math!

The Re-Farmer

Beautiful night, productive day

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As I posted earlier, in the wee hours of the morning, my daughters and I had done out last night to see the Perseids meteor shower. My daughters had read that the peak viewing period would be around 3am. We even brought out the tripod so I could set my phone up and take photos.

Well, we didn’t see very many meteors, but we did get a light show!

My older daughter’s the one who actually took most of the photos. I the fourth one of the slideshow, at the top near the middle, you can just see that a meteor was caught in the shot.

It was an awesome night, too. Lovely and cool – just the perfect temperature! – with nice clear skies for viewing the stars.

The meteor shower is supposed to be visible tonight, too. I checked The Farmer’s Almanac, and it says that the peak viewing period should be around midnight, not 3am, but I guess that depends on what time zone you’re in. Either way, we plan to be out again tonight, at around midnight.

After we were done, my older daughter got back to work and my younger daughter ended up staying up as well. They have been arranging their sleep schedules so that and one of them is up and available, any time of day, and my younger daughter has the “day shift”. 😁 She was a sweetheart and took are of feeding the outside cats this morning – and washing the one kitten’s infected eyes – for me, so I could get a bit of extra sleep.

Once I got outside, my priority was to water the garden before it got too hot, then did a bit of harvesting. After I had breakfast… er… lunch, I made a trip to the post office, making sure to leave the gate open when I got back. I got some more painting done on the pre-cut frame pieces for the cat isolation shelter – three sides are now done. I then spent the next couple of hours, mowing. The driveway hasn’t been done in so long, I had to go over it twice to get it cut to the length I wanted.

I’m going to have lots of “hay” to collect! The grass is so thick in places, even this mower, set as high as it could go, was struggling!

Gosh, it all looks so much better!

Now that that’s done, I’ll get back to cutting more lengths of wood for the isolation shelter frame, so they can be painted before construction, too.

As I think about the construction, I am debating how to make the access doors. There’s going to be a main door that will swing down and convert into a ramp when it’s open. When not in use as an isolation shelter, we plan to leave it open and available for the cats to become familiar with it, and a ramp would make it easier for kittens to get in and out.

Since I don’t have salvaged windows that slide open to incorporate into the design, I am thinking of making sliding doors instead of doors that swing out. I think that will give more security for if we have a particularly feral cat inside. We’d be able to reach in and out without having to open a sliding door all the way. With a swing door, the door itself would be in the way if we wanted to open it partially. A sliding door would also be handy for releasing a cat from a trap, as it could be opened just enough to fit the end of the trap.

I’ll have to think about that, some more. Whatever I decide for the access points, the rest of the structure doesn’t need to change, so I can literally wait until the shelter frame and interior is completely assembled, then see what works best.

I’m having fun with this build! It’s going to be the most complicated thing I’ve built and, with using salvaged materials or whatever we can afford to get, the plans have to be pretty loosey goosey!

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: little harvest, with first corn

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We’ve got ourselves another hot day today. Our high was supposed to be 26C/79F today, but I’m pretty sure we passed that. I can’t say for sure, since I was mowing the lawn at the time.

I’m so thankful that my brother loaned us his smaller riding mower!! I actually got the driveway done!

Well… the edges of it, anyhow. We’ll need his tractor and mower attachment to get the rest.

Whatever the temperature actually turned out to be, the thermometer in the sun room was reading 32C/90F when I was done, which would have been after things started to cool down!

With the heat coming back for the next while, I made sure to give the garden a good watering this morning, then went over it to gather a bit of a harvest.

I wasn’t sure about the corn, so I harvested the ones that looked like they might be ripe – a whole three of them. 😄 After shucking them, I found two of them were still immature. Ah, well.

There were a few more Carminat beans and Dalvay peas ready to pick, and then I decided to see how the Uzbek Golden Carrots were doing. I ended up harvesting the rest of the row I’d started on earlier, except for a couple that looked really small. The other row has the carrots going to seed in it, and I’m going to let them. Carrot seeds don’t last very long, so fresh seed would be good, even though I still have lots. I ended up using some of the peas, beans and carrots in my breakfast, along with one of the cobs of corn I cooked separately and left for other family members to try. My younger daughter doesn’t like to eat corn on the cob because it gets in her teeth, so having just two left works out.

The G Star pattypan squash has squash large enough to harvest – just a couple – but I’m leaving them to get bigger. Another of the 4 plants was blooming this morning, with both male and female flowers, so I made sure to hand pollinate. I also found a new female flower on the Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon to hand pollinate. As for the winter squash, I went through them and took out the squash that were clearly starting to shrivel up. There do seem to be some new Turks Turban squash forming, though, which is neat. We seem to be getting the most of those ones – potentially. It all depends on if the weather holds, and we’re already reaching the middle of August! There’s basically just 3 weeks or so left in our growing season, based on our average last frost date. Not a lot of time for winter squash to grow!

Ah, well. We do what we can, right?

For now, I’m just happy with the little harvests we are managing to get this year.

The Re-Farmer

They work!

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It’s just past 4 am as I write this.  The girls and I just got back from checking out the meteor shower.

More on that in a separate post, but we discovered something else.

The solar powered lights work!

I’m so glad to see this!  I was ready to take them off, later today, and send them back.

They are si bright.  I think I will change to one of the other modes that are not quite so blinding.

I can definitely see getting more of these for other areas, in the future.  Being able to install the solar panels away from the lights makes them very useful!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: harvest – first beans and tomato!

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I just got back from my evening rounds, and was able to bring in a little bit of a harvest!

We have our first beans of the year! The purple Carminat and the green Seychelle pole beans. The one San Marzano tomato I’ve been keeping an eye on was looking ripe, and when I touched it, it fell off the vine on its own. I was even able to grab a small handful of Dalvay shelling peas.

I honestly didn’t think we’d get beans this year, with how much they’ve struggled.

I’m so happy!

The Re-Farmer

After about six years…

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In the city we lived in before moving here, there were bottle depots all over. Anything that you paid an enviro fee on at the grocery store could be brought over, and you’d get the money back.

So we were in the habit of keeping our recycling organized and kept it up.

Then we discovered there are no bottle depots here. In the years we were living in other provinces, we sort of expected they would have them by now.

Since we need to go to the landfill anyhow, and they have recycling stations, we started sorting things differently. Glass is separate. All other recycling goes together. They even have signs at the landfill bins saying not to sort the recycling!

But we just don’t do it with the aluminum. I know most of the stuff that goes for recycling is more of a problem than just using the landfill, but with metal, that’s something different.

So we’ve been keeping our aluminum separate, but not taking them to the landfill. We’ve been storing them in the garage where my mother’s car is parked.

Unfortunately, since there are so many cat food cans in there, critters get into them. We also started running out of space, and were starting to store the bags outside the back door of the garage.

We now have a scrap company that is going to come by when they are in the area. They weigh things on site, so you know exactly what you’ll get for the metal. They take all scrap metal, old appliances, batteries, etc., but aluminum is priced differently.

We don’t know when they’ll be in the area next, but the last time the guy called, it was to come by the same day, and we just weren’t ready for that – plus, I was taking my mother to a medical appointment that day.

Meanwhile, even if they did come out, not only did the critters get into the bags again, but my mother’s car can’t be moved right now – and not just because of all the cans that ended up under the front end!

So when I found out my brother was coming out today, I headed out early to open the gate for him, then my younger daughter and I got to work on the aluminum, picking up all the loose pieces and rebagging those with torn bags. As we filled new bags, or found still intact bags, they got moved to a spot outside of the garage, where they would be easy to collect.

There’s about 28 or 29 bags in there. Some of them have nothing but cat food cans in them! Some of there had stuff with labels, logos or brand colours that changed, years ago.

The garage in front of my mother’s car looks so much better now!

We did, however, find some very old cans of paint that were intended for the dump (they have an area set side just for old paint cans), but they got buried. These were cans we’d found in the basement, and some of them were leaking.

They’ve been moved into a plastic garbage can for now. The next time we go to the dump, we need to remember to grab it. The smell is so strong right now!

We got that done and I had time to grab a late breakfast. I was just finishing it when my brother and SIL arrived. It was a long, slow drive for them. The truck was heavily loaded, and they were hauling a bailer!

Some of the stuff they brought went to the barn for storage. They are planning ahead for my brother’s retirement, so they’re going to be bringing stuff here to the farm to store.

Including equipment.

Like their smaller lawn tractor.

That was brought over in case they needed to mow a spot for the baler. That’s not going to happen, though. The high area they plan to use is too overgrown.

They do have a mower attachment for a tractor that can clear it all, so they’ll be bringing a tractor and mower out next.

!!!

Oh, and the lawn tractor? I thought they were going to take it back, but nope. They left it here for use to use!

Yes, I did lawn mowing already, today! 😄

For now, the baler is stored next to the bags of aluminum. My brother and I went walking around so I could point out to him the various low areas we’ve discovered since moving here, and the few high areas that can be used to store equipment.

The grass where we went through is almost as tall as me in places!

My brother isn’t going to be haying and baling their acreage anymore, so they’ve been using the tractor mower to keep it under control; if it’s not cut, it makes growing conditions worse. That’s the situation we’re going to find when the overgrown areas are finally cleared. At ground level, the grass is going to be sparse and mostly dead.

It’s a shame we couldn’t borrow a few cows! 😁

So my day started very early, and we got lots of work done.

I’ll be heading back out again to do more painting, then get back to mowing!

We’re going to have to figure out how to fit it in the garage where we store our lawn and snow equipment. It’s getting pretty full in there, and it’s mostly stuff that needs repair!

The problem is, I’ve been up pretty much since sunrise and hadn’t gone to bed until around midnight, so I am ready for a nap! 😄

Okay, time to get back to work. Just a bit of painting, the the fun of mowing the lawn with a lovely little lawn tractor!

My brother is the best.

The Re-Farmer

Diiiipppp…

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I got a giggle out of one of the fluffy kittens.

We’ve set up a pair of water bowls in the shade of the kibble house. They are heated water bowls, but the larger one stopped working this past winter. The smaller one still works. The kittens like to drink out of the larger one, even though it’s harder for them to reach. This is the first time I’ve seen one use the larger one to drink out of the smaller one!

What it was actually doing was dipping its paw into the water, then licking the water off its paw.

Adorable.

One thing that was not adorable, though, was the state of a white and black kitten. I was able to picked it up and hold it, and could see its eyes were really leaky, with one swollen shut. It was dripping with puss! Poor thing. My daughter brought out a cloth wet with hot water to wash its eyes as I held it, then tried to clear its nose, too. We’ll have to watch for this one to clean its eyes out regularly – if it will let us! Thankfully, it is one that lets us pet it sometimes.

Once that isolation shelter is built, it could also be used to house sick babies so we can provide treatment, too!

Gotta get back at that!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: August garden tour (video)

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I’m skipping the progress shots for the squash and melons, since I’ve got a video to show, instead! I hope you enjoy it.

Let me know if you have any issues watching it – and do feel free to watch it over on YouTube and hit that “like” button – but only if you really like it!

The Re-Farmer

Cat isolation shelter progress: looking good!

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When I first started thinking about the plans for a smaller isolation shelter, one thing I did not think about was painting it. That’s always been something we dealt with after the build. Paint, however, is going to be needed, to protect the wood and keep it from rotting too quickly. This is especially important, considering that I’m using salvaged wood that already had damage to it.

Given that this build is going to have a lot of stuff going on on the inside, I decided it would be much easier to paint the parts and pieces before assembly, rather than trying to reach inside to do it.

In going through our leftover paint, the can that felt like it had a decent amount in it was the peacock blue used on the floating benches (benches built on tree stumps that aren’t painted, so they’ll look like they’re floating when things grow back under them) and the folding table we cobbled together. The can of red seemed to have some weight to it, plus I also found a quarter can of white that was used to make our sign for those trying to find our address that doesn’t exist on any online maps.

I know we’ll need a decent amount of paint, so why not mix them together? They are all water based exterior paints, so mixing them would work fine.

I started off by setting up the frame pieces that are already cut.

They all needed a bit of a cleaning of dust, dirt and debris, first. Once that was done, I opened the cans to see what we had.

The blue was about half full, but there wasn’t much left of the red or the white.

I had a very pleasant surprise once they were all mixed together. I really like the resulting colour! When it’s time to buy more, which I expect to need to do before the project is done, I definitely want to colour match this!

I had looked for paint rollers and trays, and I did find the roller frames and a tray, but no rollers. I know we have some. I even remember finding one still in its package. Where they ended up, I have no idea.

So, paint brush it was.

With the frame pieces, they were pushed close together so the tops could be painted all at once. The cut ends were done, and part of exposed sides of the row, but that’s it. After they were painted, I spread them out for air circulation as they dried.

I really like that colour!

Once that was done, it was time to put the wheels on the pallet.

My original plan had been to cut away part of the slats at each corner, so the wheels could be attached to the solid wood below. They were far too damaged to bother, though. These pallets were used by the roofers. While they were working, I have a fire going to burn the branches and wood that were too big for the commercial wood chipper used when we got the branch pile cleaned out, a couple of years ago. It was cold and snowing while the roofers were working, and they would sometimes go to the fire to warm themselves. When they were done, they tossed the pallets to the still-hot ashes. So what you’re seeing on the bottom of the pallet is ashes and a bit of scorching. The pieces at each long end got the most damage, so it was easier to just break them off and pull the nails. The slats were so cracked, it was easy to break them off by hand!

The ends were also a bit too damaged, so when I used the wheels to mark off where the pilot holes needed to be drilled, I butted them up against the next slats in.

Then I had to dig through our collection of wood screws to find ones suitable to attach the wheels. The ones I’d already brought to the garage were for attaching the frame pieces together, so there are a lot of really long screws, but no shorter ones. After digging around in the sun room, among the boxes of screws that cats hadn’t managed to spill all over the floor, yet, I found some that would do. Thanks to the new cordless drill and driver set, and the set of driver tips my husband got me for Mother’s Day, attaching the wheels took almost no time at all!

My husband is such a sweetheart.

Once the wheels were on, it was time to flip the pallet over and test them out.

Oh, they are going to make moving this thing SO easy!! They might have some trouble going through the grass in the yard, but that should be manageable. I love that they all rotate 360°, too.

That done, the top got brushed clean, and it was time to paint!

Have I mentioned, I love that colour?

I plan to do just one coat of paint, and will not be painting the underside. I did make sure all the edges were well coated, though.

Once that was done, I went and took garden tour video, then checked on the frame pieces. They were still too wet to flip, so the other sides will be done tomorrow, then the edges. In between painting, I’ll be measuring out and cutting other pieces, so by the time those are painted and dry on all sides, I’ll have more cut pieces ready to paint.

So that is progress on the cat isolation shelter, so far.

Next, I need to work on the garden tour video.

Oh, I’ve just been getting messages from my brother. They’ll be coming over tomorrow, early in the morning, to bring stuff to store in the barn. They do know we haven’t been able to mow a path to the barn, but I hadn’t told him yet that we have no working lawn mowers at all. He knows, now. They won’t be staying long or making much of a visit. My SIL is allergic to cats, so they can’t come into the house, really.

I’m looking forward to seeing them! That will be a great start to the day!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: First baby zukes

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Well, it finally happened! Almost half way into August.

The first female flowers have shown up on the green and yellow zucchini plants.

Whether or not they’ll be properly pollinated and actually form zucchini, we have yet to see. In fact, one of the green zucchini flower buds already looks like it’s going to whither away, as it’s more yellow than green.

I was talking to my mother on the phone last night. After telling me about all the wonderful things about my sister’s garden, she asked me about mine. I know better than to believe she’s actually interested – she does this as an opening to find ways to make sure I know what a failure she thinks I am. Still, I told her about how we planted so many squash and melons, we didn’t have room to plant things like the lettuce my sister brings her, or cucumbers, etc. I even told her about the squash we ended up having to harvest because it broke its own stem.

As we were talking, she started say, in a disapproving tone, how she never grew “quash”, that was something she never did. Meanwhile, she’d already told me about how she used to have so much zucchini. I told her, yes, you did grow squash. Zucchini is squash. She didn’t grow winter squash (though, now that I write this, I think she did eventually grow spaghetti squash at some point), but she did grow summer squash. Then I reminded her of the year she let the zucchini get big, and we had so many giant zucchini harvested, when we stacked them against the wall in the basement, they covered the entire wall in the corner. She laughed as she remembered. As a child, I remember that year very well. We had so many giant zucchini, we eve used some to make Jack O Lanterns that Halloween!

As we talked a bit more about the garden, I mentioned that I had to find a way to support the corn because gusts of wind had blown them flat. She started saying how I’ve had sooo many problems with the garden. Which is sort of true, but I reminded her, she had problems with her garden, too. Did I? she asked, sounding shocked. I told her, she had things fail, too (in fact, some of the times I’ve mentioned a thing that didn’t grow for us, she dismissed it by saying, “oh, that happens sometimes… I’ve had that too…”), and then there were the potato beetles.

Oh, the potato beetles!

I remember, year after year, picking off potato beetles!

My parents grew a LOT of potatoes. Enough to last the winter with 7 of us, plus have enough left to plant in the spring. The potato beetles were absolutely brutal. Some years, my dad even went so far as to buy poison to dust onto the plants to save them, because there were too many for us to be able to pick them off.

Funny. When I mentioned the potato beetles, my mother just laughed – and changed the subject! 😄

Today we’re supposed to reach 24C/75F. As I write this, just past noon, we’re at 21C/70F, with the “real feel” at 25C/77F. I did end up watering the garden this morning, even though it’s not going to be exceptionally hot. Most of it, anyhow. We have so many things growing that need a lot of water. I’m not watering the garlic, though. Those are looking like we can finally start harvesting them. Maybe not today, but soon.

One thing I do want to do today is take some garden tour videos. It’s a bit early, but today is one month before our average first frost date, which is Sept. 10.

Yup. We technically have only 31 days left in our growing season.

I’m still holding out hope that we won’t get frost until later in September, but as I look at the long range forecast, I see it has changed again, and we’re looking at temperatures possibly dropping as low as 3C/37F, even before the 10th.

At the very least, we’ll need to be prepared to protect some things from frost. Most things, like the melons and squash, are just too large to cover, but we should be able to protect the high raised bed, the pepper and eggplant bed, and maybe some of the tomatoes, if it comes to that.

*sigh*

I look forward to when we have a greenhouse.

Meanwhile, I need to get back to working on the cat isolation shelter. The rescue has us booked for some September spays or neuters (depending on what cats we manage to trap), so we’re going to need it. I got nothing done yesterday. While on the call with my mother, I found myself feeling ready to fall asleep. After the call, I quickly finished the blog posts I was working on. I was falling asleep at my keyboard! Once done, I went for a nap, crashed for 3 hours, then woke up still feeling completely groggy and drained. So I made it a day of rest.

Not that I had much choice.

Today’s goal with the isolation shelter: painting and wheels. I’ve gone through our paint cans to see what we have left. Mostly, it’s the bright blue I used to paint the folding table and floating benches.

Hmmm… I should see what is left of the red paint. They are the same type of paint. Maybe I can combine what’s left. I like purple… 😄 It’ll be a while before I can buy more paint, so if I can stretch what we have, all the better. We’re not after winning any beauty contests here!

I’m thinking of painting the cut pieces before putting the shelter together, since it will be difficult to paint it once assembled. Especially on the inside. I plan to start painting one side of the cut frame pieces first, then putting the wheels on the base while the paint dries. Once the wheels are on, I plan to paint the base. By then, it might be long enough that I’ll be able to paint another side of the cut pieces. I know we have paint rollers and pans somewhere, so I’m hoping to use that and make the job get done faster.

Time to go digging around the basement to see if I can find some paint rollers and pans!

Or the sun room…

It’s really hard to keep track of the stuff that we found while cleaning up this place. 😁

The Re-Farmer