I managed to get a picture of a new baby.
I believe this is one of two? of Caramel’s litter. Mostly a guess on m part. I’ve only caught glimpses of them, and there was no adult cat around when I got this picture.
I’m just happy the youngest kittens are starting to come to the kibble house for food. Hopefully, they will soon discover the inside of the cats’ house (they already go under it!) as a safe and warm place to be.
The Re-Farmer
To continue working on the low raised bed in the old kitchen garden, I couldn’t use the mini chainsaw any more – the batteries just don’t last long enough for a job like this.
It was time to break out the electric chain saw. It’s very handy. The only problem is that I was moving around so much to reach the corners, the extension cord was in the way.
It still made the job much easier and faster. There was one log that was so bumpy, I spent more time trying to smooth it out than all the rest of the work put together!
You can see in the background that the kittens had been playing in the soil on the tarp, spreading it out quite a bit!
The whole thing wasn’t very stable, though. Something needed to be done to stabilize it, so it wouldn’t fall apart when the soil was added.
I decided to sacrifice some of the plastic coated metal stakes that I’d used to hold hoops supporting netting over the spinach bed.
I used an auger bit to drill holes into each corner of the bed, then hammered in a length. A couple had to have excess length broken off, but I think the other two actually went all the way through and into the ground below.
This made the whole thing quite sturdy. Now I could start filling.
On top of the wood chips I’d added earlier, I added some of the contents of our compost pile. Vegetation, apple pieces from straining the apple cider vinegar, coffee grounds, and even a few eggshells went in.
Next was a layer of dry grass clippings. One of the logs at the end had a fair bit of space under it, so I stuffed it with some grass clippings, too. Then it all got a thorough soaking before the soil was returned.
Once the bed was full, soil was added around three side of it, to fill in the gaps left from digging out a larger hole than the bed itself.
Which, of course, a kitten promptly tried to use as a litter box!
Finally, some grass clippings were added to mulch the top, and it got another thorough watering. I was also able to clear off the stepping stones at each end.
This bed is now done, and ready for planting next year.
My next job will be to try and weed along the whole side of this garden, before we start figuring out the low wall we want to edge it with (my daughter wants to use rocks – we have lots of those!) and top it up with some of the leftover sifted soil. The next bed I want to work on, though, is the L shaped bed that goes around the double lilac. Even if it only gets a supporting wall on the inside of the L shape, that will help. Trying to work about that lilac bush is a pain, and there are so things trying to grow into the space from there. We’d already tried to remove so many roots over the past couple of years, but it’s just getting worse! As with this bed, the L shaped bed will be only 2 feet wide, except possibly the tip of the short part of the L shape, where it can be accessed from three sides and is already wider than the rest of the bed.
Little by little, this garden will eventually have all walled, low to middle height raised beds. I was wanting to make this our kitchen garden, with things like herbs and salad vegetables that get used the most often over the summer, in here. My younger daughter wants to make it into a flower garden. Considering most herbs have lovely flowers, I’m sure we can come up with a compromise. 😊
Speaking of my younger daughter, when I was done working here, I helped my daughter out with her project.
By stealing kittens.
You’ll notice one of them has yellow paws. My daughter was painting the water bowl shelter, and that kitten would NOT leave her alone! The only way to keep him out of the paint was to put him on her shoulders – which means her skin and the tank top she was wearing got paint, too!
The first coat is done. The underside won’t need another coat, except for the legs. She was able to crawl inside and paint there, too. Carefully, as the roof is resting on bricks to hold it off the ground, and it’s not particularly strong. I think she even got the floor done, as well as the underside of the roof. After the legs and walls get a couple of coats, we’ll flip it right side up again to do the roof and whatever else can be reached at that point.
I’m surprised more kittens didn’t end up with paint all over them. They really, really love playing in this thing! Once it’s done and set up with the water bowls, they’ll have three roofs they play on. 😁
When I picked the colour, I tried to get a yellow as close as I could to the colour used on the kibble house. I couldn’t remember where we’d bought the original paint from, so I figured it was a different brand’s colour and would be slightly different. My daughter remembered that we bought it at Canadian Tire, too. It turns out I really did pick the exact same colour! We used up an entire gallon on the kibble house, but the water shelter is smaller, so we should have enough left over to do the tree stump bench out by the main garden area, too.
It feels good to have visible, tangible progress done! A lot of the fall clean up work doesn’t look like a lot got accomplished, because things get taken away, rather than added.
Little by little, it’s getting done!
The Re-Farmer
We had another morning of very dense fog today. The photos do not do it justice!
The camera automatically cleaned up the images, but it was dense enough to shroud things I was standing next to – and it got thicker as I did my morning rounds!
What was interesting is that I was also surrounded by what sounded like the pitter patter of rain coming through the fog. It wasn’t rain, of course.
It was leaves. Falling leaves, hitting other leaves on the way down. Which I couldn’t see, because of the fog, until I was basically under a tree and had leaves falling around me!
The first thing I do when I head out in the morning it put kibble out in all the trays, which are full of cats and kittens by the time I get back in the yard after switching out the gate cam memory card. This sometimes gives me the opportunity to get close to, and maybe even pet, a less socialized kitty.
Or, in the case of one of Rosencrantz’s litter, pick it up!
While I was cuddling it, I got climbed like a tree by the two friendliest kitties.
The black and white one with the black splotch by its nose likes to just perch on my neck and shoulders. The grey and white tabby immediately starts licking my nose. The new kitty I was cuddling actually seemed to get more relaxed when the other two joined.
Getting my phone out of my pocket while juggling kittens to take this picture was rather challenging.
While I was cuddling, more of the white and grey kittens came out, as well as the one with the orange head (whose eye is getting better) and the tortie.
It took a moment for me to realize there was an extra white and grey kitten. One of the pump shack kittens had joined the bunch! It became easy to tell which one was the pump shack kitten when it slipped easily through the chain link fence to get to the kibble bowl under the shrine. Another white and grey did manage to squeeze though, but the others went around to where they can fit under the fence. 😄
I may not be able to touch them all, but at least they are more willing to come to the kibble bowl while I am standing nearby!
The Re-Farmer
Most of the yard kittens don’t have names.
The girls have come up with a name for one of them.
Judgement.
Because he always looks like he’s judging things!
😂
The Re-Farmer
There are some things I wanted to try with the old kitchen garden, but kept getting distracted. So today I gave the girls a to-do list for the main garden beds, and got started.
This is the main area that I wanted to make changes to.
The areas surrounded by red lines are where we currently have stepping stones. The long red line on the bottom is the border outside of where my daughter planted her irises. You can see the one walking onion, now laying flat on the ground, that has been coming up every year since we moved here. This year, it actually produced a head that, hopefully, has planted itself now. To the right of the onion is where my daughter’s daffodils are planted. We currently have a couple of boards on the outside of this area, but we’ve had issues with people completely ignoring them and stepping on the onion. So one of the things we want to do is build some kind of low wall along that red line, with openings to the stepping stones, just to keep wayward feet out of there.
Where I wanted to work on today, though, is the area marked in orange. That is where we planted our bread seed poppies, using seed collected from last year. They never got to their full size, and the area was way too full of weeds. There was just no way to pull the weeds without damaging the poppies.
So I decided to make a low raised bed in that spot. The first thing that needed to be done, though, was to get rid of those weeds and their root systems, as best as possible.
That meant breaking out the wheel barrow and soil sifter.
For such a small area, it took a long time to remove the soil and sift out the roots and weeds.
Some of the roots, from the nearby ornamental apple trees, needed loppers to clear them out. I ended up digging out a lot more of the soil than expected.
The tarp has two wheel barrow loads of sifted soil on it. I didn’t want to go too deep, so I loosened the soil on the bottom to try and pull up more roots, but there’s no way to get them all out. At least I got the bulk of them out.
I hope.
While sifting the soil, I pulled most of the roots out and tossed them onto the grass for later clean up, then whatever was left on the screen after sifting got dumped near some trees behind the storage house, where it will be used to fill in and level some low spots.
We’ve been building up the soil in this garden since our first summer here, and it really showed. Unlike other areas, I never hit the sand and gravel that is so close to the surface in our area.
The soil was really, really dry, though, so my first amendment was a layer of wood chips, to act as moisture absorbing sponges as they break down. I’ll be adding other layers of organic material before putting the soil back, but first I wanted to build walls.
My initial thought was to drive strong stakes into the soil, then weave a wattle wall. I need to clear the suckers out from around the maples. Especially where the branch piles used to be. With those piles gone now, I can finally reach them. As I took a closer look at the suckers, though, I realized they were not straight enough, or long enough, to be suitable for weaving around the uprights, even for such a small bed.
There were, however, those lengths of wood that couldn’t be chipped, neatly stacked nearby.
So I went through the pile and chose a whole bunch of the straightest ones and loaded them on the wagon. As I was taking them to the old kitchen garden, I went through where one of the branch piles used to be. It’s just bare ground, which is why I was able to see something reflecting in the sunlight.
Something pointy looking, and very bright.
Oh, the things we find around here!
Why on earth would there be an old steak knife buried in the soil here? It’s been here long enough that most of the wooden handle rotted away and broke off.
I’m glad I spotted that, because just the point was sticking out, and it would have been a pretty nasty thing to step on!
I brought more logs than I thought I would need, including shorter ones for the ends of the bed. When I made our high raised bed, the wood was not debarked, but I have a draw knife now, so I wanted to do that with these.
Isn’t the leather cover my husband made for it awesome? It fits perfectly, and he made sure the stitching is super strong.
I measured the space I’d dug out, and it was almost exactly 2′ x 4′. Conveniently, the tree guys cut these log pieces to a maximum about 4′ in length. I used my baby chainsaw (pruner) to cut pieces to length. I’m glad I got that extra battery, because I went through both of them to get it done! I also used it to remove the nubs of branches on some of them. I’ll let the batteries recharge before I finish that part of the job.
I cut enough to make the bed three logs high. As the soil slopes and is quite a bit lower on the outside, I plan to use the thicker logs on the outside and try and level it off a bit. Or I might have three logs on the outside, and only two on the inside. We’ll see.
It took me almost 3 hours to get to this point, and I was done for the day. Once all that was prepared, I cleaned up the log ends, bark pieces and the roots and weeds. Those went into the burn pile, where we also burn the sawdust from the used stove pellets in the litter boxes (sure beats hauling it all to the dump, like we did with the clay litter!), and our burnable garbage. The garden bed will have to wait until tomorrow to finish. There wasn’t much wind today, so I did a much needed burn.
While I was tending that, the girls headed out to the trellises to start salvaging the netting and bamboo stakes. It took them forever to free up the netting the pole beans were on! Those beans were well wrapped around it. They salvaged the netting and the bamboo stakes that joined the A frame supports across the bottoms. The A frame supports were left for now, as they are currently holding up the trellis frame! Those are going to all come down, eventually, but after it took so long to free up the netting, that got left for another day. Those trellises weren’t built to last more than a year, and we got two years out of them, so I’m impressed that they lasted as long as they did! The next ones we build will be much more permanent.
While they worked on that, and I was tending the fire, I started getting messages from the cat lady. She will be able to book three more spays and neuters for us soon. We pick which ones need to be done first. It’ll be in a town further out, so she will pick up the cats, keep them for their recovery period, then bring them back. There are still problems with too many surrendered cats in the adoption system, and she’s had virtually no progress with adopting any cats out at all, but she is still able to get donated spays and neuters at various vets around the area. Adoption will be easier with cats that are fixed.
We still have Big Rig and Tissue that need to be done, since they got into food while they should have been fasting and their previous appointments had to be cancelled. I was thinking we might want to start doing outside cats, though, as population control, but the kittens we’ve socialized enough may still be too young.
We have made socialization progress, though! Not with the black and white one in the back, looking at the camera. We still can’t touch that one. The three at the peak of the cat shelter roof are the most socialized – they LOVE attention! Those four are siblings from the same litter. The fuzzy grey tabby is a female.
The muted calico on the far left has been allowing us to pet it regularly now, though it’s not quite as socialized as the littler litter. It’s sibling, the brown tabby starting at the camera, is male. The girls have been able to pet him but today, for the first time, I was able to not only pet him, but even pick him up! He wasn’t too comfortable with the picking up thing, but loved the ear skritches, so after I put him down again, he came back for more!
If we are going to get the two indoor females fixed, we can also choose one male from among the outside cats. The girls were thinking one of the smaller ones. The thing is, once we’ve got an outside cat fixed, then being kept indoors with the cat lady during recovery before coming back to us, it’s not going to go back outside. Especially not with the weather changes right now. Plus, once fixed, chances of adoption are higher, and we’d have to made sure we can actually get at it, if a permanent home is found.
If all goes well, though, the cat lady will be able to find homes for several cats over the winter!
One can hope.
Right?
The Re-Farmer
Here are some of my morning smiles!
I love that some of the youngest litters are now regularly showing up at the kibble house – but it sure does get crowded in there!
I think I counted 20 yard cats in total this morning, but they move around so much, it’s hard to keep track.
Broccoli’s babies tend to stay away – as does Broccoli.
Looks like one of them is going to have some pretty long fur!
I had to zoom in quite a bit to get a shot of this domestic scene without disturbing them! Rosencrantz was putting up with four of her babies nursing, while number five was deterred by the chain link fence. They can no longer fit through the holes, and aren’t used to that, yet!
As far away as I was, Rosencratnz didn’t like that I’d stopped to take pictures, so she got up and left. Her kittens were not impressed. 😄
It looks like we’re going to have a lovely day today, so I’m wanting to do as much as possible outside! I plan to be working in the old kitchen garden, which means I’ll likely be surrounded by kittens. 😁 But first, I’ve got the floor boards on the water bowl shelter secured, so the base can finally get a scrubbing. It should be warm and sunny enough for it to dry relatively quickly. I want to get that painted as soon as possible. I’m not sure how we’re going to keep the kittens off the wet paint, though. They really like playing in that thing! 😂
The Re-Farmer
Earlier today, I made a trip into town to hit the hardware store. I found the screws in the size I needed, though the cost was insane. A box with only 100 screws was $12.99 – about $4 more than the last time I got a 100 count box! Still, we’ll be able to finish the water bowl shelter now.
I also picked up a glass cutter. We have one somewhere, but I have no idea what happened to it. While I was in the city yesterday, the girls worked on clearing the broken glass from the inner pane of one of the sun room windows. There are still pieces that are firmly attached at the sides. Until that’s done, we can’t let the cats into the sun room. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get that cleaned up soon.
I was really happy to find the lever type door handle I was looking for. Just a simple, inexpensive handle for an interior door. It was easy to install, and it now no longer hurts to open my door!
Later on, my older daughter and I headed out to do some work in the garden, including planting these.
The Nootka Rose garlic on the left are a soft neck garlic. On the right, above the cloves, you can see the hard necks from the middle of the bulbs. They do make it easier to break the cloves apart! The cloves are larger, and there are fewer of them. Of the four bulbs, one of them had only three cloves!
The soft neck garlic has nothing like that in the middle. Just smaller and smaller cloves. I’ve never planted soft neck garlic before. While the hard neck garlic should be planted in the fall, in our climate zone, we can plant soft neck garlic in the spring – but we’re planting both now.
We moved the mulch aside and planted them the same way as the first row we planted a few days ago. The row in the middle of the bed got the hard neck Music variety, because there are fewer of them. Less reaching needed when it’s time to harvest!
After laying out the cloves to see how to space them, the kittens absolutely would not leave them alone! They also really, really wanted to dig in those freshly uncovered rows!
After planting, the rows were lightly covered to reduce compaction while watering – and protect from kitties.
Which didn’t work very well. Several of them started digging in to them to poop! One wouldn’t stop even while being directly spayed with the hose!
*sigh*
We did eventually persuade them to go elsewhere.
With the Nootka Rose garlic, there were enough that we planted only the largest cloves.
The remaining smaller cloves are now in the kitchen for us to taste test. 😊
That done, my daughter did some other clean up and gathering of support poles, while I turned my attention to the high raised bed.
The chard remains were pulled. They’re actually looking better after several frosts then they have all summer, now that there are no longer grasshoppers eating them. We were never able to eat any of it!
As expected, the soil level has dropped a fair bit, as the organic material buried in layers below, settle. It looks like some mice may have been trying to tunnel in one corner.
I have no doubt Rolando Moon has taken care of that problem for us already.
The last of the vines from the squash patch were added for more organic material – then smashed as flat as I could get it before adding fresh soil. The remaining soil sifted from what is now the garlic bed came in quite handy!
It had settled enough that it took three large wheelbarrows full of soil to top it up! I probably could have gotten away with two and a half, but it’s going to continue to settle, so a little extra is fine.
It then got a light, thin mulch of grass clippings before I gave the whole thing a thorough watering. I just want to protect the soil surface, not insulate it. In the spring, the mulch will be removed so the soil can warm up and thaw out faster.
We haven’t decided what to plant here next year, yet, but I think we should give it at least one more year for the upper layers to break down before we try to plant any deep root vegetables in it.
I feel like I’m really behind on preparing the beds for the winter. The girls aren’t able to help as much as usual, either. My younger daughter has been having knee issues to the point that she’s now using a cane to get around the house. She did try to go to a doctor about it, about 2 years ago, but it wasn’t taken seriously because she’s so young. It was already a battle to get her to see a doctor in the first place, so that certainly didn’t help. Anyhow, she does the best she can but, right now I’m actually the most able bodied person in our household. Which is kinda scary, considering how much I’m hurting this year! I didn’t expect my hands to be the main problem, though. Usually it’s my wrecked knees and feet. They’ve actually been relatively good, lately. Either that or the pain in my hands is making it seem like they are better.
Ah, well. We do what we can. It won’t be the end of the world if some beds don’t get weeded before winter and need to be done in the spring. There are other things that are higher on the necessity list.
Little by little, it’ll get done.
The Re-Farmer
We had quite a fog roll in last night, and it was still quite dense when I went out to do my morning rounds.
Starting with feeding the kitties, of course.
Rosencrantz’s five were together, but no sign of Rosencrantz.
We can’t get at the one with the orange head to check it’s eye. 😔
Then I aw a white and grey kitten come out from under the cat’s house, see me, and go hiding again. With these ones still under the shrine, that meant it was one of the pump shack kittens! I don’t know how many of them are coming to the house. I still drop kibble off in a tray in front of the door, but I don’t go in. I do hear noises from inside, so at least some of them are still using the pump shack.
It was so beautiful with the fog this morning!
While checking the gate and switching out the trail cam memory card, I had a whole bunch of kitties following me. Five of them started playing around the “bridge” over the little drainage ditch leading to the culvert, and at least one more had gone the other way and was playing in the hold hay yard.
Then there was this guy.
He much prefers to be on a human!
He is so very tiny. 🧡
The Re-Farmer
I finally made my second trip to the city to do another stock up shop. After going over our list, I decided it was just a Walmart trip.
Then I got a message from my brother, we chatted a bit, and ended up arranging for me to visit! It’s been ages since I’ve been to their place. My brother has come here a few times, but I haven’t seen my SIL since the beginning of summer. She’s allergic to cats, so she can’t really come here. 😔
We had an excellent visit. Gosh, I love those two so much! 💖
Then I headed to the Walmart to get what I needed.
Well. Most of it.
This came out to just over $300. Almost half of that is cat related. I got four 10kg bags – the largest they had – of dry kibble. We now have enough to last us the month. I also finally picked up a covered litter box. Nosencrantz and Butterscotch still refuse to leave my office, but Nosencrantz has litter issues. She will go to the litter box to scratch away at the litter, the sides, the bottom, and the removable top part that is supposed to keep the litter inside the pan. She still manages to get the litter out. There have been times she’s almost ripped the top part off completely, and every now and then, she tips the whole thing onto its side!
What she isn’t necessarily doing is using the litter box. In fact, there are times when she’ll go to the litter several times, scratching away, then go into my closest and take a dump. Then, after I’ve chased her out and cleaned up her mess, she’ll go right back to the litter box and start scratching again.
So I now have a covered litter box, with a filter, in my closet, right where she keeps trying to do her business.
I did have another extra purchase that isn’t normally part of our budget. I picked up some artificial flowers. My younger daughter and I will be going to my MIL’s grave to tidy it up and leave some flowers, then take pictures to send to my FIL. He’s not physically able to get out there anymore. I’ve actually never been to the cemetery. My husband flew out for the funeral, with our daughter as his mobility assistant. The problem is, she was feeling quite ill during the funeral, and doesn’t have a clear memory of any of it. Still, I know where the cemetery is, though I’ve never been there, and hopefully she’ll remember enough that we won’t have to search too long to find the grave.
One other unusual purchase was a request from my husband: nacho fixings. Actually, only the chips are an unusual purchase. The cheese is something we regularly pick up; there’s just more of it this time. I got more Old cheddar, havarti, gouda and mozzarella.
We like cheese.
While I don’t pick up a large jar of olives every month, it’s still something we get fairly regularly. My husband loves green olives, just as a snack. As for the chips, I got 4 big bags, and hopefully we’ll get one batch of nachos out of them. They tend to be pretty broken up. When we make nachos, it’s in my big roasting pan. Enough for the four of us, and usually some left over for the next day. 😁
I remembered to get hot dog buns. I also picked up some rye bread, and some garlic naan. It’s cheap turkey season, but I only got one turkey. Looking at the other meats, none of them appealed to me, so that was it for meat. I wasn’t too impressed with the fruits and vegetables, but the cabbage looked good, so I got a head of cabbage. The Stove Top Stuffing was on sale for only 88 cents a box, so I got two. Thanksgiving is next weekend, and we’ve got a good start on what we’ll have for dinner. I also got a couple of 18 count cartons of eggs, and a couple of bottles of coffee creamer – pumpkin spice and maple flavours – for my daughters. I remembered to look for alcohol swabs for our first aid kit, but couldn’t find them. I asked a staff member and found out they now sell them from behind the counter! I even had to pay for it there. When I mentioned this to my daughters, my younger daughter, who was working at a pharmacy when the “15 days to flatten the curve” started, told me that they had to do that, too. People went nuts, and didn’t stop to read directions, so things like alcohol swabs, sanitizing gel, etc. all had to be hidden away to keep people from stealing them, or snagging them all for themselves. I know the other stuff is out and easy to get at, so I do wonder why the alcohol swabs would still be a behind the counter.
I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I think that’s all that I got today. Oh! I remember now. I got a 4L of milk, too. Usually we get 2L cartons, but we’ll be doing more baking over the next while. I also picked up a case of chicken flavoured ramen noodles for the stash.
What I didn’t get:
Butter. We still have some in the freezer, but with more baking on the horizon, I wanted to get a few more, but even their cheaper house brand is now more expensive than I could justify. Not when we still have a few pounds in the freezer, and a big bucket of ghee on hand.
The wood screws I needed. Not only did they not have the kind I wanted, but the small boxes of screws were insanely expensive.
I also did not get a new door knob. The knob on my door is probably about 45 years old, is missing a screw, starting to get stuck and generally becoming a problem. Worse, though, is that I’m starting to have problems opening my door – and we have to keep it closed, because when Fenrir and Turmeric come in, they both immediately start hunting down and attacking Nosencrantz and Butterscotch! Cheddar comes in and out, and now Leyendecker is accepted by the ladies.
Yes, Layendecker is doing all right! In fact, he seems fully recovered. Tonight, he gets his last dose of medication. We need to book him for follow up blood tests with the vet, but they are closed until they complete their move to a new, larger, location. They’ll even have their own parking lot now! So we will call to book the appointment on Monday (the day after tomorrow), when they are open again.
Cheddar and Leyendecker go in and out rather frequently, which means having to get up and open the door for them when they start scratching at the mat we have under the door to keep them from scratching the carpet. The problem is, my hands are hurting so much, I’m starting to have trouble turning the knob. There have been times when I couldn’t grasp the knob with my right hand at all because of the pain. Even today, while shopping, I’d reach to pick up a jar or something with my right hand, and would get shooting pains in my phalanges and simply couldn’t grip it.
Because of this, rather than trying to fix my door knob, I want to replace it with a lever style door handle. Something I can open even if my hands hurt.
The only ones they had were the heavier duty ones for exterior doors, complete with a deadbolt. Which, of course, is more expensive. There were no simple, cheap, lever handles for interior doors.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to find some at the hardware store when I pick up the screws I need.
Which I could have done today, but completely forgot when I had the chance. When I was done at the Walmart, I decided to check out a nearby Canadian Tire to see if they had any seed garlic (the only garlic at Walmart was imported soft neck garlic, which might be treated with something to keep them from growing).
It took a while, but I did find the display!
There were only two bulbs per bag, so I got two bags of two different types. The Nootka Rose (long storing variety) is a new one for us. The other is Music. The garlic we’ve already planted from our own harvest are Porcelain Music. Previously, we ordered our garlic from Veseys, which were packaged by weight, so it felt strange to be paying $6.99 for only two heads of garlic.
We will plant these tomorrow, in the same bed as the ones we’ve already planted.
And there we have it. We’re stocked up for most of the month, with a few extras added. The few things we didn’t get today, we should be able to get locally later on.
It feels especially good to have so much kibble on hand. If I can pick up extra later on, I will. When winter hits, the outside cats are going to be eating a lot more to keep their winter fat, and there are going to be more outside cats than before, too!
Hopefully, it will be mild winter, but we’re not going to be counting on that!
The Re-Farmer
While putting the kibble out this morning, Rosencrantz was actually letting me pet her, and not attacking me at the same time. I think that made a big difference, because this little guy seemed more relaxed beside her.
What a little cutie! He (she?) even let me pet him when he wasn’t eating. Not only that, but his tortie sibling came closer than ever before, without running away. Not close enough to touch, but still progress.
This entire litter is getting more exploratory and bold. I’m seeing them at the kibble house, and even inside the cat shelter. I think the pump shack kittens are starting to come closer to the house, too, but they run off so fast, I can’t tell for sure.
We still don’t know how many yard cats we now have in total! 😁
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 