Ah, Nosencrantz… luxuriating…
… and making sure I don’t make my bed.
With other cats, I would just make my bed on top of them, and they’d either stay under the covers and nap, or slink their way out. I don’t want to do that to the Anxiety Bear, though. She gets way too stressed out!
Yeah. She still refuses to leave my bedroom/office.
The Re-Farmer
Overnight, we got our first real snowfall. From what the live feed on the security camera showed, it looked like we had a storm, but it was just high winds blowing around a small amount of snow – just enough to cover the ground and stay.
Tomorrow, we’re supposed to reach a high around 5C/41F, so it should all by gone soon.
It made for a new adventure with the kittens! While I tried to do a head count, I found quite a few didn’t even bother coming out of the cats’ house, including the bitty baby. I do wish they wouldn’t knock the water bowl out of reach. I’d love to make it so that they could have water along with food in there.
I think I counted 29 in total, but I’m not completely sure.
When I was done my morning rounds, I checked on them again. I could see them balancing along the edges of the water bowls, and doing the cold toes dance at the food trays below. They don’t do that in the kibble house, thanks to the sheet of insulation under the floor.
The water levels were still low, so I heated up some more water to finish topping them up. I also raided the bin with scrap pieces of rigid insulation. There was one that just fit the length of the water shelter, and three water bowls could fit on that. Another piece went under the big heated water bowl that doesn’t work, next to the ramp. There’s an old crocheted blanket in the corner that used to be inside the cats’ house. I’d tossed it into there to get it out of the weather, then left it when I found the cats were using it. A couple more scrap pieces of insulation went against the walls in the corner, held in place by the blanket, for a bit more shelter. More pieces went under the kibble trays on the ground below. The trays will keep them from blowing away. I’d have added more, but at the time I didn’t have anything handy to weight them down without getting in the way of the cats.
Before I did all that, I had fixing to do. The tarp on the far side of the shed we’d covered had come completely loose from their nails, and some of the nails had even fallen out. No surprise, with the high winds we had last night. The only thing that kept the tarp from being blown off entirely was the weight from the length of PEX pipe that had been tied along the end! The only thing I had to improve the situation was a box of large cup hooks. After straightening out the tarp as best I could (it had bunched up along the pipe), I screwed in the hooks and tied the tarp down more thoroughly than before – I hope. It would be good to replace those with stronger eye hooks later but, to be honest, I don’t know how much good that would do. The cup hooks are not very strong and are likely to break if the winds are high enough, but the wood is so weakened with age that stronger hooks would get torn right out of the wood.
We really need new sheds to replace these old ones. Or one large building to replace them all, including the barn. One of those would probably cost less than multiple sheds.
Something else for the list, after we pick up our lotto winnings!
Oh. I suppose that would require buying a ticket, eh? 😉
It was about -5 or -6C (23 or 21F) at the time. Not particularly cold, but chilly to be in for as long as it took to get that tarp tied down again! Of course, I’m always fretting about the littlest kittens, so I made sure to check on them again.
Yeah… I think they’re good.
The Re-Farmer
Plushy wasn’t playing around, either!
For some reason, she decided my hand was food on this particular morning. And I’d just fed them all, too!
Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!
The Re-Farmer
Well, it took the three of us a couple of hours, but we finally did it. We got the tarp over the hole in the shed roof.
One thing I can say about that shed, now that we’re done.
It’s not going to last much longer!
Anyhow.
The first thing to do, of course, was to open up the tarp.
This is what 20′ x 30′ looks like. It’s being held up at the back by tall grass.
The kittens really, really loved this tarp!
Now, I’ll say right from the start, this tarp should have been oriented the other way. We could have covered the entire roof with it. That, however, was not an option for us. There was simply no way we could do that, reach the edges and be able to fasten it down, safely.
The trick was, how to get one end of the tarp over the roof. I decided to make use of the remaining PEX pipe I bought to use as netting support in the garden, so make one end more or less rigid. There was just over 20′ of it left, too, so that worked out.
I was going to Zip tie the pipe to one end, but I couldn’t find my package of smaller sizes, and I wasn’t about to waste the long ones I had on this. I did, however, find an unopened roll of garden twist ties. I’d bought 2 of them a couple of years ago, and never used the second one.
The PEX was in a roll, so it took some doing to straighten it out as much as I could. With the temperature barely above freezing, I was trying to warm it with my hands and much as I could, to make it more flexible.
It still wanted to roll up again, especially at the ends, but it worked well enough.
Then next step was to tie twine to grommets near the corners. I’m glad I got those rolls of bale twine! Very handy. I used my arms to roughly measure out about 35 feet of twine, then tied them on.
Next, I needed weights. Something that I could tie to the twine and throw over the roof – keeping in mind that I’m not very good at throwing things! I poked around in the barn for a while and found these.
Perfect!
By this time, one of my daughters joined me. It took a few tries, but we got them over the roof.
Mostly.
With one of them, I was able to grab it with a garden tool, but the other one had to be pulled back and thrown again. 😁
Before we could haul the tarp over, though, we also had to prune some trees away. They need to be cut away from the shed completely, because of the damage they’re causing. I didn’t cut the dogwood, though. Unlike the maples, its not going to develop a large trunk or branches that will tear the shed apart.
By this time, my other daughter was able to join us. It took a LOT to wrestle the tarp over. There were so many things it could get caught on. On the side with the shingles, there were plenty of nail heads sticking out, and not just from where the shingles had blown away. It was even catching on the metal cap at the top. We had to use the extended pole pruner, at maximum length, to get under the tarp and lift it over whatever it was getting caught on – while also trying not to tear holes in the tarp! Of course, the PEX kept trying to roll up again, too, which certainly didn’t help any.
By the time we got it over, it was shifted so far to one side, the hole was completely uncovered, so we then had to fight with it some more, maneuvering it to where it needed to be using twine tied to the grommets. Then, once it was where it needed to be to cover the hole, the hole thing needed to be adjusted so that the roof was covered, the tarp could be tied down, and the door could still be opened.
At this end, it’s tied down at only two places, and I made sure to test to see if the door could still be opened. At some point, we’ll have to pick up some Bungee cords and hooks so that we can fasten it down better, while also being able to unhook them any time we need to open the door.
Also, that old children’s swing? You can just see a line from one of the legs to a fence post at the corner of the shed. For some reason, the swing is tied to that post with barbed wire.
Fastening the tarp in that corner was particularly dangerous, and not just because of that barbed wire. There is all sorts of stuff buried under there, hidden in the tall grass, and even sunk into the ground. Oh, and rolls of more barbed wire, rusting away.
Still not as dangerous as the other side.
Pulling enough of the tarp over so that the door could be opened, meant we could easily reach to fasten it to the wall.
AFTER turning under the sharp corners of some of the metal roof pieces, so they wouldn’t cut the tarp! We ended up rolling an old tire over for my daughter to stand on, so she could reach the edges with pliers.
Aside from the junk snowmobiles and the antique boiler/steamer thing (now that’s something that we should cover, too!) in the way, this area had bits and pieces of snowmobiles the cows scattered, my daughter found glass from the window that broke a few years back – I thought I’d found all the pieces when I fixed that! – rotten pieces of wood hidden in the tall grass, and boulders sticking out of the ground.
There are SO many large rocks sticking out of the ground out here.
With the pipe running along the back of the tarp at the grommets, we could get away with hammering only a few nails in, instead of one at every grommet. Which is good, because the wood of this wall is getting so rotted, it was hard to find spots where we actually could hammer nails in.
Yeah. This shed has definitely not got a lot of years left.
I suspect the nails won’t hold long. I’ll have find other ways to secure it and go back. The main thing, though, is that it’s now in place, and just in time. Ice pellets were starting to fall while I was still setting up the tarp. By the time we were done, it was a mixture of snow and rain. It seems to be snowing right now – at least, I can see some snow accumulated on the ground and the driveway, on the security camera live feed, but we’re also still supposed to be getting rain.
I’m glad we managed to get it done. How long it’ll last, with the winds we get, who knows, but there’s not much we can do about that right now. 😕
The Re-Farmer
The bitty baby seems to have developed a bit of a routine. After I’ve put the kibble out, I check inside the entry to the cats’ house, and usually see the bitty at the kibble, with one or two other kittens. Then I do my rounds and when I come back, I’ve been finding the bitty here.
He’s come out for some water, and taking a break.
The poor thing’s eyes are so gooby right now. The inner eyelids no longer look red and inflamed, so they no longer look like they’re bleeding, but now the eyes tend to be more stuck shut. I’ll have to get the girls to go out later in the day and give the eyes a good cleaning.
I was able to pick it up for some cuddles. It definitely didn’t like being picked up, but doesn’t fight me off anymore, either. After some cuddles, I put it down inside the entry, where it’s warmer. We got a mix of snow and rain last night, and while doing my rounds I saw snow still on the ground in the more shaded areas.
He is so incredibly tiny for this time of year, but I had a reminder that this is not the first time we’ve had such tiny kittens so late in the year. In fact, we had one show up even later. I popped onto Facebook while uploading pictures, and got one of those “X years ago today” things. It was a video of Dah Boy, who moved out here with us from the city. We had two stray cats show up on our balcony, having climbed the fire escape stairs to peek at us through the living room window. They were starving, so we started putting food out. One of them had a collar, and both were very friendly, wanting human attention as much as food and water! Then one day, the collar was gone and we could see a sore around the neck; the cat had been on its own since a much younger age, and outgrown the collar. We were able to take them to a vet to check for microchips, but there were none – and the one with the collar turned out to be a pregnant female. We tried to make a nest for her using a carrier we had, but when she disappeared for a while, we figured she had her kittens somewhere else. Soon after, we were able to put a patio table on the balcony, over the carrier, with a vinyl table cloth covering the space. That turned out to be what she needed. Somehow, that mama managed to drag her one kitten from wherever she had her litter, up two flights of stairs and a landing in between, under the gate onto our balcony, and into the carrier.
What a mama!
We already had two cats – the limit for where we were living – but we got permission to bring the mama and baby in. It was November, after all, and there was no way that baby would survive the winter without help. He was even younger than our bitty baby is right now! Once he was old enough to wean, we were able to adopt the mother out. A year later, she showed up on our balcony again! Pregnant again, but that’s another story. In the end, we found ourselves with Mom and Son (over time, our other two cats passed away), and they moved out here with us.
Dah Boy is now eleven years old.
Wow.
Which gives me hope for the bitty baby.
The bitty might be just tolerating attention so far, but the fully socialized cats are something else. Especially Plushy! Once she decided humans were good for something, now she won’t leave us alone.
Also, apparently I’m a tree.
The three of them were fighting for real estate when Plushy decided to take that open spot on the top of my head! This is a first!
Also, apparently my face is delicious. All three of them kept trying to like my face. Especially my nose! It is a rather large nose, so I guess it’s just easy to reach. 😉
Well, it looks like we’ve reached our high of the day already. 3C/37F. I’d better head outside and get some of the more temperature dependant stuff done!
The Re-Farmer
Usually, I have one or two kittens follow me for my entire rounds.
Some mornings, however…
While you can see four in the photo, there were eight of them that followed me to the sign cams on this particular morning! I think that’s a record.
The Re-Farmer
When we first moved here, one of the things we noticed was the junk pile near the house, at the edge of the spruce grove. It’s one of the places mama cats would hide their litter of kittens, which is how Junk Pile got her name.
When we finally got around to cleaning it up, it turned out to not be a junk pile at all. It was a pile of salvaged boards, very carefully and neatly stacked. Some of the “junk” we found were the remains of tarps that used to cover it.
Years of exposure left the top board pretty rotten, and being salvaged from who knows where, a lot were full of nails. Still, we’ve been able to make use of them and, as we work our way deeper into the stack, the less rotten the boards.
After cleaning off the junk, we did use the original tarps to cover it up, and weighed it down with various things.
Then the groundhog that made a den under the stack decided the tarps would make good nesting material. Tore them to shreds!
With the horrible spring we had this year, we didn’t keep the yard as clear and mowed as we wanted, which meant one side of the stack got completely engulfed in thistles that reached nearly 5 ft tall in places.
Today, I finally got around to cleaning it up, so I could access the stack.
The kittens were very interested in what I was doing!
That groundhog did not leave much of those traps left at all. There was a blue one in there, as well as the orange one!
The grey tarp on the side is covering a pile of boards too rotten or full of nails to use; they’re laid over an old metal bed frame I found in the maple grove (there are still two more in there!) to keep them off the ground. I also found some old children’s toys, so I tucked those underneath, then covered the whole thing with yet another old tarp I found among the junk. This gives the yard cats yet another place they can tuck into for shelter, until we finally clean it out properly.
The hill the thistles are growing on is a bit of a mystery to me. It is one of those things that showed up in between our rare visits to the farm over the years. I think it might be where the ashes from the furnace got dumped, until the electric furnace was installed. It would take a lot of years of ashes to make a hill that big!
Also, I need better quality garden gloves. Thistles go right through them!!!
The next step was to take everything off the top for a few layers. There’s a lot of spruce debris in there. I would have to take the whole pile apart to get it all out, but I just wanted to get the worst of it near the top removed. Then the boards went back more neatly, making sure that any with nails in them had their nails facing down!
The stack itself is built up on some pallets, and there are more pallets, and other miscellaneous things, on the far side of the stack. They’re all pretty rotten, but only one of them was also in the way. I had to fight to get it out, as it kept getting stuck on the other two pallets one corner was in between, but it was so rotten, I could just tear it apart and drag it out! That went into our own junk pile that is waiting until we can hire someone to haul it to the dump.
Once that was all cleaned up and ready, I grabbed an 8’x10′ tarp from the 3 pack I bought at Costco a few months ago and brought it over to cover the stack. I’ve already used another one of them to replace the tarp I’d found in the barn to cover the post pounder by the garage. It was a huge tarp, but the wind tore it to shreds. An 8’x10′ tarp doesn’t cover it completely, but they’re heavier duty tarps, and I tied it down like crazy. I can see it on the security camera live feed, and absolutely nothing flaps around on that thing! With the stack of boards, I needed to do the same thing. I had to make sure the wind could not get ahold of it, once it was over the stack.
My goodness, the kittens went nuts while I was going that! They just could not get enough of running around and playing on it!
Which made tying it down a real challenge!
I think I spent twice as much time tying down the tarp as it took me to clear away the thistles and clean up the top of the pile! Thanks to all the leftover pieces of wood that I brought over to do the wattle woven raised bed, I had plenty of sticks I could use for pegs.
At the far end, the tarp is tied to the old pallet still back there, and even the dead trees. In a few places where the tarp was tight around corners of boards, I added some bits of pool noodle foam (we used scrap bits on supports around some garden beds, to protect the netting they were holding up, and the last of the netting was removed today) and even some paper towel from a roll kept in the garage. I didn’t want the corners of the boards to rub their way through the tarp in the wind. The remaining three sides were pegged to the ground. While probably not needed, I returned the stuff we were using as weights before, just in case. I can easily imagine kittens playing with the twine and pulling pegs out of the ground. 😄
The boards may be old, but at least now they won’t get any worse over the winter. I have no idea what we might use them for – there is no consistency in lengths, thicknesses or even how the ends are cut – but better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it!
By the time I finished putting everything away and got inside, it was full dark. It was very disorienting to look at the time and realize it wasn’t even 7pm yet! At least it was a more productive day today. The pile of garden soil is once again covered, and since I was out near the barn anyhow, I brought the frame pieces for the carport to the yard. I’m sure we’re still missing a cover piece, but even if we are, I’d like to find a way to set it up near the house, over where the old basement window is. It was warm enough to do one final watering of the Korean Pine; my daughter got the sliver buffaloberry and sea buckthorn done yesterday. We’ll have to be careful putting the hoses away, so they don’t crack in the cold. We even got a dump run in.
The next couple of days are supposed to reach highs of just above freezing, then a couple of days of slightly warmer temperatures. After that, our highs are going to be below freezing, and staying there. At least that’s what one app is telling me. Another weather app is a bit different – and forecasting colder temperatures. About the only thing that really needs to get done in the next few days, though, is to cover the hole in that shed roof with the large tarp I got for it. Getting it up and over is not going to be easy, never mind fastening it down. What we could really use is scaffolding! Ah, well. I’ll just add that to the list… 😉 Anyhow, we’re looking at possible rain and snow a few days from now, so we really need to get that taken care of. There are too many things in that shed that are useful. I don’t want the roof to collapse, if I can avoid it!
Little by little, it’ll get done!
The Re-Farmer
I tried to do another headcount while feeding the yard cats this morning, and got 29.
Then more adults showed up!
Speaking of adults…
Guess which one is the adult, and which is the teenager?
The smaller one on the left, caught in an adorable tongue blep, is the adult, Caramel – an obvious descendant of Beep Beep! The black and white is from the oldest litter that we discovered in the cats’ house, in late April!
They’re hard to tell apart, but here’s a photo taken on April 29.
These were Junk Pile’s first litter of the year, and she moved them out not long after. Thankfully, they all survived. These are Plushy, the tuxedo, the black and white, plus a grey tabby that will not let us near it.
Now these babies are almost adult size, and bigger than most of the adults! The black and white and the tuxedo are the burliest. They let us pet them every once in a while, too. Junk Pile went on to have a second litter of white and grey Shop Towel babies, younger than the ones Rosencrantz had.
Caramel was born just last year, and she had the latest litter of the year until the bitties showed up. It looks like there’s just two, or two that survived. They are very shy ones, but I do see them regularly now. One is a dark grey tabby, while the other looks even more like Beep Beep than her mother, with that distinctive orange splotch on her forehead. The truth is, I’ve never seen those two kittens with an adult, but I know Caramel had kittens somewhere around the collapsing log cabin and the old threshing machine, and that’s where those two kittens started showing up from. Now, they seem to have mostly moved in under the cats’ house. It must be pretty cozy under there, considering how many of the smaller cats I see under there. I’m hoping the scrap pieces of rigid insulation I slipped under there have helped make it even better. 😊
It was decidedly chilly out this morning, so of course I’m worried about the smaller kittens. Especially the bitty baby. I put kibble in the tray just inside the cat house entry and later saw it eating there – a long with two other kittens! When I was coming back from finishing my rounds, I saw it using the ramp to leave the water shelter, and I was able to pick it up for cuddles. It was shivering, the poor thing! I made sure to put it down inside the entry of the cat house. Just sticking my hand in to do that, I could feel a substantial difference in temperature!
I was glad to see it had come out for water but, at the same time, frustrated. I got one of those no-spill water bowls for inside the cat house, setting it on the tray just inside the entry. The tray may be jammed in nice and tight and isn’t moving, but the water bowl ended up knocked about and further into the cat house. That’s the second one that got knocked out of reach. I’d have to lift the roof to be able to get at it, and that’s just not something I want to do unless I have to. It’s very disruptive, and the shelter is old enough that there’s risk of breaking something. Which means the bitty has to leave the warmth of the shelter to get to water. Being the tiniest of the kittens, it’s far more at risk from the dropping temperatures.
I’m still holding out for a mild winter. The Farmer’s Almanac predicts that some areas will be bitterly cold this winter, while others will be much milder. Looking at their winter forecast map, we are – as usual! – basically at the border between the two areas, so if their forecast is accurate, we could go either way.
If it weren’t for the destruction caused by the racoons, I’d be leaving the doors to the sun room propped open overnight, so they’ve have even more shelter available to them!
I am such a suck, when it comes to the cats! 😂
The Re-Farmer
By a snuggly Rolando Moon.
Rolando Moon seems to be hanging around more often, lately. I think she’s getting ready to stay with us for the winter again. She sometimes still likes to follow me around when I’m going my morning rounds.
What a sweet, badass old lady!
The Re-Farmer
I can’t help it. I feel like I’ve wasted a day. I got a stock going and tended it, off and on, for much of the day. While I didn’t have to be there constantly, I was checking on it often enough that I didn’t want to start anything that took too much of my focus or was too distracting. I ended up actually *gasp* watching TV, binge watching DS9 on Prime. I could use each the status bar on the episodes as my timer to go check the stove. Normally, I’d at least do something like crochet at the same time, but a summer in the garden has left my fingertips so rough, most yarns stick to them like Velrco, and I ended up pulling the loops right off the hook! 😆
Ah, well. I suppose it’s good to have a break every now and then.
One thing I discovered while sitting on the couch watching the show.
Fenrir missed me!
Before Butterscotch and Nosencrantz came indoors, she used to spend as much time as she could like this, while I was at my computer.
Which made it very difficult to type.
Unfortunately, Fenrir is one of the cats that will come in and immediately launch an attack at Nosencrantz if allowed in my room. Butterscotch, too, if she’s in view. I have no idea why she is so aggressive towards them. Especially Butterscotch. Butterscotch and Beep Beep took her in, along with their own kittens, when she showed up at our place as a kitten, our first summer here. Now, she will spend hours just outside my bedroom door, watching it and, if I’m not careful, she’ll teleport herself into my room as soon as the door opens, and attack Nosencrantz. She’s amazingly fast! Given the opportunity, however, she will climb onto me, curl up on my chest, and nap, as she did several times, today. She was not impressed by my frequently getting up to tend the stove. 😁
Our fridge freezer had quite a few bags of carcasses waiting, mostly from chickens, but also some turkey. I roasted them first, and they completely filled my roasting pan. There was enough that I used my giant stock pot, that I’ve also been using for water bath canning, to fit it all.
Into the pot went most of our remaining Uzbek Golden carrots.
I admit. I’m a coward.
I could have used at least a couple of Black Nebula carrots, too. That would have changed the colour significantly! But I decided that might not look too appetizing. 😂
Along with the carrots I added crushed garlic cloves, yellow and red onions – the little ones from our garden – plus celery. For seasonings, I added course salt, whole peppercorns, turmeric powder, dried thyme leaves and dried parsley, then covered it all with water. Later on, I added a generous splash of our crab apple cider vinegar, too.
After bringing it to a boil I let it simmer for about 7 hours adding more water to the pot part way through. After that, I used a hot pot soup strainer spoon that I find very handy, to take out as many of the bones and vegetables as I could, then a small sieve to strain out more, before finally ladling it through a fine mesh strainer into my other two stock pots.
The larger pot, with the measurements on the inside, shows a little under the 6 quart line. In total, I would say there’s about 10, maybe 11, quarts (11 to 12 1/2 litres).
For now, the pots are covered and cooling, as is the bowl of carcasses and vegetables. I’m debating what to do with it next. I could just pour it into freezer bags and freeze them, as is. Or I could cook it down to make a more concentrated stock. I’m kind of leaning towards cooking it down more. I’ll see how it looks in the morning.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 