The cattens were out in full force this morning.
The oldest of this year’s litters are almost adult size now. The cat with the plaid pattern on its back is one of the mamas.
Sadly, the older they are, the hard it is to socialize them. 😟
The Re-Farmer
I did recordings for a garden tour video on Sept. 10 – the date for our average first frost – and meant to post the finished video yesterday. I ended up leaving my computer on all night while the video uploaded to YouTube, only for it to not process. Which meant I had to close it and start over.
It really irritates me that YouTube will let you upload something for hours, but if the processing fails, there’s nothing there. All that time, lost!
But it’s done, and here it is! Our September garden tour video – and it’s much shorter than my last one!
This morning, I got a small harvest.
It seemed strange to pick those tiny, misshapen Purple Beauty peppers, but they are ripe, so leaving them isn’t going to help anything.
I picked the largest G-star patty pan and could have picked more, but decided to let them get bigger. I’m so glad those are finally producing.
There was just one cucumber to pick and I didn’t even try to pick any pole beans. What little is left can be left to dry on the vine. I was able to pick a decent number of Cup of Moldova tomatoes, but the Sophie’s Choice tomatoes seem to have just stagnated. They’re not really ripening. I suppose when the time come, and we pick the remaining green ones to finish ripening indoors, they will still be fine.
The onions that had been left on the netting overnight are now set out to cure out of direct sunlight. We are supposed to get rain in a few days, so if they still need time to cure, they will be protected under the canopy tent. We’ll be able to braid the Red of Florence onions, but will have to use a mesh bag to store the yellow onions, and even the ones that still have greens on them, the greens aren’t strong enough to handle being braided.
The next big job in the garden is to harvest the Brigit potatoes. I’m not looking forward to it, after how difficult it was to harvest the small bed of Caribe potatoes, and how few potatoes there were. It’s going to be a lot of work for little return.
Not today, though. I’m rather sore from digging this morning. I seem to have pulled something in my neck while wresting with that rock, and it’s starting to hurt pretty bad. 😕
Time to pain killer up and work on something more sedentary for now.
The Re-Farmer
Keith passed away peacefully during the night. When I found him this morning, he looked like he was having a lovely little snooze.
My older daughter and I buried him this morning. At first, we were going to bury him under a willow, where there used to be a flower bed, but there were too many roots under the first few inches of soil. Knowing we could not be able to dig very deep, and not wanting critters to do damage, my daughter went looking for something to use as a cover while I decided to dig among the white lilacs.
We have horrible, rock hard, rock filled soil on top of hard clay and rocks. But we traded off and made progress, until we hit some much bigger roots. We took a hatchet to those, only to find a large rock under them. After much digging around it, we realized it was just too big and was not going to move.
We were able to bury Keith, though, and cover his grave.
It seems rather appropriate that as soon as everything was in place, a kitten decided to play on the spot.
The bench was returned and will add an extra level of protection. Once the ground is frozen, we won’t have to be concerned about it. In the spring, we will add soil and plant something over his grave.
Good bye, Keith.
How strange that we would suddenly lose Keith, when Leyendecker was the one who as so very ill. He has been active, has a good appetite and is overall looking so much better… but still doesn’t seem to be able to void properly. My daughter wants to have his blood tested again before making a final decision, to confirm one way or the other, whether his is recovering.
Right now, I just feel so tired.
And not because I just spent more than an hour fighting a losing battle with a big rock.
The Re-Farmer
After the onions were harvested, and my daughter no longer needed help with her build, I headed over to the platform bed frame the girls have been slowly getting painted. The top, where the litter boxes will be sitting, got several coats of paint. They’ve been working on the under side. It’s the legs that need the extra coats of paint, now that we know the newer basement floor can get water seeping in, despite the weeping tile.
There was just one last coat of paint to add to the leg ends, plus around the edges. The platform is upside down on the picnic table, so I went to put a couple of bricks under it, to elevate it enough to paint the edges, and not the picnic table.
As I came around the back, I found this.
Well, so much for my trying not to get red paint on the blue picnic table when I was painting the bench I made!
The platform now has its final coat of paint, though. We’ll be able to bring it back into the house and into the basement any time after tonight.
Meanwhile, my daughter got some good progress on the water bowl shelter today.
As you can see, it’s already kitten approved!
She worked on this without any detailed plan; just a general idea of the build, adapted to what materials were available. I found the scrap piece of half inch plywood in the barn, so that became the size of the shelter.
The smaller cross pieces at the bottom, inside the uprights, will be the supports for the floor. Another cross piece will be added for extra support. We might have some scraps in the barn that will work. With the floor lower that the top of the cross piece in the front, there will be a lip to prevent the bowls from being casually knocked out. When we built the kibble house, one of the first problems we discovered was that the skunks would pull the kibble trays right off, scattering kibble all over the ground and making an awful lot of noise. Putting a board across the front solved that problem. My daughter made sure that would not be an issue this time!
Once a floor is figured out, it will need walls on three sides. We have more of the wider boards across the front and back. They are pretty rotten on the ends, but they are also longer than needed. Most likely, the shelter will be flipped onto its roof, then boards added across the back with the rotten ends sticking out. Once they are secured, we can simply saw the ends off along the vertical support, then do the same thing on the sides. It doesn’t need to be perfectly seals. It just need to keep the snow out.
This should fit rather well beside the kibble house. The cats’ house, the kibble house and this water shelter, will together form a sort of U shape. The heated water bowl is plugged into an outlet inside the cats’ house, which has its own extension cord that is more than long enough to reach. So even if the regular water bowls freeze, they will still have at least one bowl of liquid water available.
We painted the kibble house a bright yellow, but we no longer have any of that paint left. I’ll have to pick up some more, probably next month. The kibble house could use a touch up, too. Plus, if we dig up the shingles we found in some sheds, we could do both roofs, too.
Yeah. We’re sucks when it comes to the cats.
Speaking of shingles and roofs…
This is a section of roof on the house that caught my attention today.
You can see a loose shingle has started to slide down. This is a very steep roof, but at least it’s low enough that it can be patched from a ladder. This section of roof forms the angled walls of the second floor. Both sides used to be like this, but my dad had one side raised into a low slope roof to make more room in the second floor. Unfortunately, that low slope is why there is now water leaking in through one of the second floor windows.
That brick chimney is for the wood furnace we can no longer use. When the new roof is done, that chimney will be removed completely. It needed to be redone since my parents bought the place. That’s what the chimney blocks I’m now using as planters and retaining walls were for! It just never got done, and now it never will.
This is the only section of roof that is north facing. Ice and snow remains here the longest, and you can really tell. All of the shingles are lifting. It’s worse now than it was even in the spring! This is over the attic above the old kitchen – an attic no one goes into, as the entrance is difficult to get at, so the girls have simply blocked it off with furniture.
The chimney here is to the old wood cookstove in the old kitchen. The stove can no longer be used. Not only is it unsafe, being so close to the wall with no heat shield (how did we never burn the house down when I was a kid???), but the fire box is badly damaged, and the door to the oven is broken off. Some day, however, we may be able to replace it with another cookstove, with a proper heat shield and protective flooring. If nothing else, it would be good to have something like that as an emergency back up if we lose electricity. We certainly have the option to cook outside, but if we lose power in the winter, not only would we want to be cooking indoors, such a set up would also be a heat source.
Not that we could do that any time soon. Right now, the only reason my brother was able to get property insurance was by providing photographic proof that all wood burning stoves – including the ones in the storage shed, installed back when it was a work shop – and the wood burning furnace were disabled. Without that, the cost of insurance would have been much, much higher, for things that can’t even be used. We’ll probably have our outdoor kitchen built long before we’re in a position to remove the old wood cookstove and replace it with something else.
The main thing for now it, getting a new roof.
I really hope my mother isn’t just yanking my brother’s chain again, and will actually follow through. I’m just praying that she’ll make good on her promise, and it can be done before winter. Not only because of how bad the roof is getting, but because it will probably save us money on our heating bills, too. Our equal payment plan has been reset to just over $330 per month. It used to be just under $300, but just this past month, our usage has been up 20% from last year. For January and February – our coldest months of the year – our actual usage in 2021 would have cost us almost $450 in January, and almost $600 in February. In 2022, our actual usage would have cost us almost $600 in January, and almost $450 in February – and March, too! Meanwhile, the upstairs gets freezing cold, even with their heaters. Then, in the summer, it gets so hot, their computers start to have problems. A few roof would help reduce those extremes and reduce the energy we use.
I’m afraid to hope my mother will follow through, though. I know once she sees how expensive it is now, she’s going to start backing off. I just hope my brother can persuade her how urgently it’s needed.
Well. We’ll see. The guy that came by today will send me his estimate tomorrow, and then we’ll see.
The Re-Farmer
In between helping my daughter when she needed an extra pair of hands while building the cats’ water bowl shelter, I harvested most of our onions.
These are the yellow onions from sets – there was no variety name that came with them. The netting was very handy to hold the onions for me!
I also had a helper.
This little beast was traipsing through the Black Nebula carrots, like he was on a jungle safari. Every now and then, when I tossed an onion on the netting, he would leap up from below to try and catch it! Then just hang there until I unhooked his claws and set him aside, only for him to run back into the carrots and hunt down the next onion!
The little bugger even tried it from under the mosquito netting while I dug up the Red of Florence onions. Those were split between two beds, and both are on the netting now.
We aren’t expecting rain for several days, so I’m actually going to leave them on the netting to cure for a while. Quite a few of the yellow onions no longer had their greens, but of those that do, they’ll get braided and hung up to finish curing indoors.
The Red of Florence onions, with their long shape, were a lot easier to harvest.
There are still the Tropena Lunga onions in the high raised bed, but they haven’t started to fall over yet, so I’m leaving them to grow some more.
We don’t have as many onions as I would have liked. The ones planted in the bed by the chain link fence might have one or two worth harvesting, but that’s it, and the red onions from sets planted with the yellow pear tomatoes are really small. I’m not sure if there will be much out of those.
Note for future reference. Plant a LOT more onions. These will only last us a few months, and certainly not the whole winter.
The yellow onions from sets were not any bigger than the ones we started from seed, though we don’t have other yellow onions to compare to, since they didn’t survive after transplanting. Nor did the shallots, both from seeds and from sets, planted in the same bed. At this point, we’re not seeing any advantage between starting from sets or from seed in the final product. Which means that next year, we will likely do both, again. We seriously need a better set up for starting seeds indoors. One that keeps the cats away! We’re actually looking at making a removable hardware cloth door between the living and dining rooms, as well as similar barrier over a shelf that is open on both sides. If we can keep the cats out of the living room, we can dedicate the room to starting seeds and not have to be constantly protect them from the cats. Having to keep the seedlings in the aquarium greenhouses, and under the plastic cover in the mini greenhouse, didn’t allow adequate air circulation, even with fans, and made it more difficult to provide adequate lighting.
We will have the winter to figure that out how to do that, though. 😊
For now, we at least have some onions to harvest!
The Re-Farmer
When I ran out of gas while mowing the lawn, I took advantage of it to rest in the shade for a bit.
I quickly got company.
This little kitten LOVES human attention so much.
He also loves to lick my sweaty, salty face! Very enthusiastically.
What a little sweetie. 😻
The Re-Farmer
Yesterday I got a call back from the third roofing company we want to get an estimate from for my brother, and arranged for him to come by today. With the gate having to be unlocked and open anyway, I took advantage of it to mow the driveway.
And then keep mowing.
And mowing.
And mowing some more!
As for the roof, we will get the estimate tomorrow. While chatting with him, I mentioned getting estimates several years ago, and what a difference it is, now. He told me that some things have gone up in price by 100% since then!
Once I get the numbers, I’ll pass them on to my brother and after that, it’s in the hands of him and my mother. Hopefully, she won’t decide to string us along again and back out of her promise to pay for it again. Prices will only keep going up. The north side of the roof, where the ice and snow melts away last, is looking really bad right now. If would be really good if we could get a new roof before winter.
I asked my daughters to switch from sleeping during the day and being up at night, so we can get more things done faster during the day. As I write this, my younger daughter is outside building a mini-kibble house for the water bowls. It’ll be nice for the cats to not have water bowls buried in snow in the winter!
That gave me the time to finish mowing the outer yard.
“Finish” being a relative term. Basically, I’ve just been chipping away at the overgrown areas, little by little. Whenever I started working on a area that hadn’t been mowed or scythed before, I’d have to go back and forth with the mower at least three time, to actually get the grass cut properly.
I got the area in front of the shed with the collapsed roof done, expanding from what I’d been able to do when I used the scythe. We need space to get in, but also to set aside the lumber we will be salvaging. There is an old metal garage door leaning against a wall in there. Once the roof pieces over it are clear, I want to set it on the ground nearby. Salvaged wood can go on top of it, and be kept off the ground. We can then cover it with a tarp or something for the winter.
I was also able to widen the area along the driveway and to where the branch pile used to be. I want to mow around that area more, as we will be doing scrap wood burns there.
What I really need to do is get a path mown to the barn. I went into there to grab some stuff I thought my daughter could use in building the kibble house. Dragging it through the tall grass – even the area I’d scythed earlier – is not easy! There are things under the collapsed shed roof that need to be moved to the barn to protect them, and there’s no way I’m going to drag those though the tall grass.
I also started to push further beyond the pump shack. Normally, there would be a lane wide enough to drive in, all the way to the back gate from here. Last year, all I managed was a walking path. At some point, I want to get at least a path mowed. I still need to do some repairs on the back gate. One side of it got ripped away from the gate post, likely by a startled deer, in the winter. It’s up again, but not repaired.
I also got good progress getting a path cleared to the storage shed. I wasn’t up to fighting that tall grass all the way, when there were higher traffic areas that I needed to finish, first. Still, it’s going to make a big difference.
We’ll give the grass clippings a day or two to dry in the sun, the rake it up for eventual use in the garden.
I so wish we could use that shed as a workshop, which is what it used to be. With my parents’ belongings stored in there, there is just no space. We can’t even get at the back of it. It’s all blocked by bags and boxes and furniture.
My sister had been digging around in there, trying to find boxes with photos to take, so I tried looking around a bit. The boxes are stacked on top of each other, and the stacks are starting to collapse. We’re going to have to get in there and figure out what to do. Part of the problem is, when it started to be used as storage for my parents’ stuff, no one had a grasp of just how much there would be, so the first things put in there were not done with any sort of plan in mind. They were just sort of stacked wherever. Soft things, like the bags of clothes (so many clothes!!!) are filling spaces that should have been left open as paths – and would have been if we’d known about all the large items that would have to be squeezed in among the boxes and bags. Even as we were moving things over there, the girls did try to rearrange things to fit more efficiently, but there was only so much they could do.
The one shed that has a good roof and isn’t rotting away, and we can’t use it.
Frustrating.
Meanwhile, my mother still gets these moments of urgency, asking me if the door is locked (we don’t have a key), and worried that someone is going to steal all her stuff. As if anyone wants her bags of old clothes that she doesn’t even want herself, or dozens of (mostly salvaged) mirrors we kept finding all over the place! For all that she left the farm years before we moved here, leaving so much stuff behind for others to deal with, she is still so attached to her belongings. Which means we’re stuck hanging on to them.
*sigh*
On a less pleasant note, I called the vet clinic this morning, asking to talk to one of the doctors. I got a call back shortly after I got back inside from mowing.
We are in a very frustrating situation.
Leyendecker seems to be doing better. His appetite is improving. He’s more active. He seems like he’s better in so many ways, but one.
He’s still not voiding.
Every time we see him try and use the litter, at best, there are just a few damp spots. The girls have seen him trying to pee in other places, too, and not succeeding. There has been nothing to clean up.
After describing this to the vet, she said the only option left would be the surgery to make him a “girl”, but there is no way we’re doing that to him. It would just leave him with other problems, and he’d still have a short life, and a much less pleasant one. The longer he can’t pee, though, the more the potassium levels will be building up again – and he was already at “potassium levels of death”, to quote the vet, when they first saw him.
There is only one option left.
The added problem?
Keith has suddenly started having problems, too.
Yesterday, my younger daughter and I watched him try and use the litter, unsuccessfully, and start yowling in distress. My poor daughter was so upset, she started crying.
One of the things Keith likes to do is run in front of us into the bathroom, then fling himself onto the mat in front of the toilet, so we can pay attention to him. Last night, I came in and found him lying on the mat and, to be honest, I wasn’t sure he was still alive until I pet him for a while and he started purring a bit and eventually shifting position. I checked him again during the night, and found him loafed around the side of the toilet, looking miserable.
I haven’t seen him yet during the day, but my husband has been keeping an eye on him, and says he is looking in really bad shape.
I brought this up with the doctor, and we’re looking at the same situation as Leyendecker – and my daughter already used up almost all her savings to pay for his treatment. Right now, she might have enough left for them both to have one final appointment with the vet.
It’s been decided, though. We’ll keep monitoring Keith. If he starts voiding again on his own, it should work out, but if not, tomorrow, I’m making an appointment for them both.
Talk about brutal.
Which really, really sucks. They are the sweetest boys. But the more time goes by, the more internal damage is happening, and the worse it will be for them.
There is no real choice.
F***
Meanwhile, we’re trying to figure out what the heck is going on. We even looked up to see if there were any recalls on cat food we didn’t know about (there is only one brand so far this year, and it’s a brand I’ve never heard of before). We make sure they have a variety of both wet and dry cat foods, and they have access to water at various points around the house. Most of the litter boxes are downstairs, but there are some upstairs, too. We did not allow the cats access to the basement until we cleaned it out, disposing of all sorts of potentially dangerous substances in the process. And yet, somehow, Cabbages was getting into something none of the other cats was getting into, that slowly poisoned her over a long period of time before she finally became sick (and is now thriving, thanks to the Cat Lady’s efforts). The vet said the toxin was either from anti-flea chemicals (which we don’t have) or fertilizers (which we don’t have in the house). So how did it happen?
Leyendecker did not have crystals in his urine, so the vet says muscle spasms, but if that were it the muscle relaxants – and he’s on two of them! – would be working.
And now Keith is having problems?
What the heck? These are all younger cats, too. Keith is the oldest of the sick kitties, and he’s only about four years old!
I just don’t know what to think.
The Re-Farmer
It was a very early morning for me today. The cats got active at about 4am and wouldn’t stop! I finally gave up and did my morning rounds while the girls were still cooking down the crab apple sauce for me to can later.
Parts of the province got frost warnings last night. We did not, thankfully, though the temperatures did go down to 5C/41F. It was still only 6C/43F while I was outside. I actually had to wear a jacket!
Today is our average first frost date and, while it was chilly last night, it is expected to warm up again over the next few days, and stay mild for the next couple of weeks, at least.
The garden is on borrowed time right now!
We actually have a few tiny little Purple Beauty peppers ripening! They are much, much smaller than they should be. These should look much like your typical grocery store bell pepper, in size and shape. That we got any at all still amazes me, though.
The one Little Finger Eggplant that is producing fruit is growing so fast!
No, I’m not pointing to anything there. I’m just moving a leaf while not blocking the view of an eggplant at the same time. 😁
The other plant sharing it’s space is blooming, but still no eggplants, while the plants in the low raised bed aren’t even blooming, yet.
As for this morning’s harvest, we got a first today!
We actually had grapes ripe enough to pick! There are still come clusters that are not ripe, yet. There isn’t a lot in total, but last year we basically had nothing, so that is no complaint at all. I’m not sure what to do with such a small quantity, though.
I finally remembered to go into the outer yard and get a picture of the Korean pine. Here, you can see three of the four surviving pines.
You can just see a mowed path going off to the left. That leads to the fourth surviving pine. The six pine had been planted in pairs on either side of the lane we want to keep open to the secondary gate that I normally would have kept mowed.
The chicken wire covers painted high-viz orange seem to be working out so far. My only concern is that chicken wire isn’t very strong. If the renter does let his cows through to graze in the outer yard, it couldn’t take much for a cow to crush one of them. I’m counting on them simply avoiding the cages, instead. Or deer, for that matter. We’re more likely to have deer going through here than cows.
You can see the other big branch pile on the right of the photo, with some fresh branches on top. Now that the other piles are chipped, any new prunings will be added to this one. Today, I pruned a bit around the stone cross, opening things up and even giving a bit more sun to the Wonderberry. I also started to break down one of the dead crab apple trees near the one that we harvested from. The dead branches are well entangled in the other trees, so it will be done piecemeal at first.
One of the other things I got done, though this was last night, was go through the pile of logs the chippers left next to the burn barrel. I’d already set aside a stack of pieces that are not rotten, quite straight, and useable. The rest of the pile of unsalvageable wood is now moved.
I laid it out around the pile of burnable junk we’d been stacking against the branch pile. Much of it is old newspapers and catalogs we’d cleared out of the sun room when we cleared and cleaned it out the first time. We intended to burn it in the burn barrel, but it’ll just be easier to do a bon fire! The straw is what was cleaned out of the cats’ house, so it’s not something we can use as mulch, or even for the compost.
Once we do have a day to start a burn, we’ll have to take turns keeping an eye on it. This will take a long time to burn through! This is something that could smolder for days. Plus, I plan to drag over branches from the pile next to the garage that the tree guys couldn’t chip, to clean that up, too.
When the girls saw this, the first thing they said was, “nice funeral pyre!” 😂
Yeah, it does kinda look like that! 😁
The Re-Farmer
This morning, I canned up the crab apple sauce I started on last night.
It took about 2 hours to go through and cut up the crab apples in one bin – and that’s the one that had apples taken from it for the large batch crab apple cider vinegar, and a small bucket set aside for my mother.
Who has told me she doesn’t want any more apples. She had been appled out. So we still have another bin, plus the bucket!, to process.
The cut up apple pieces filled my giant stock pot to about 2/3 full.
A few cups of water was added to start the cooking process, and it was then boiled until mushy. Which took remarkably little time.
It stained my new giant wooden spoon pink! 😂
All the instructions I read said to peel and core the apples – which was not going to happen with such small apples! – unless you had a food mill to remove the skins and seeds later.
I don’t have a food mill.
I did recently acquire this…
I picked this up at a dollar store for a completely different purpose. I needed something finer than our colanders, but strong than our big sieve. This turned out to be perfect to use as a substitute food mill. I put in a couple of ladles of cooked pulp at a time, then used a silicon spoon/spatula to push it through, before scraping up the leavings and putting it into a bucket for the compost and moving on to the next batch.
I used our taller, normal sized stock pot for this, which conveniently has measurements marked on the inside.
The strained sauce was just shy of 6 quarts.
It was also very runny.
For the next step, the girls took over, in the early hours of the morning. They tasted it to see if it needed sugar, then cooked it down to thicken it a bit. I forgot to ask if they added sugar, but after tasting in myself, I don’t think they did. These crab apples are very sweet-tart on their own.
They cooked down the sauce by a couple of inches to make it thicker. That done, it was my turn again. I sterilized a dozen 500 ml (pint) jars, then canned up the sauce – a job that seemed to go much faster than I expected!
I could hear the lids popping on some of them, even as I removed them from the water bath!
When done, there was 10 jars of sauce, plus one that was about 3/4 full to go to the fridge, for eating right away. These just need to sit until tomorrow, then they’ll go back into the jar case and be ready for storage for the winter. 😊
I’m quite happy with how these turned out. Love that colour, too!
Now… what to do with the rest of the apples? This is more than enough apple sauce to last us; it’s not something we eat often.
I suppose I could just trim and freeze them for later.
On another note, with the season changing, I’ve asked the girls to switch back to “day shift”. There are things we need to do before winter that require an extra person. Which will mostly be my younger daughter, since my older daughter will have commissions to work on, but she will also be coming out to help as much as she can.
I expected to do more canning this year, but the garden just wasn’t productive enough for it – but more on that in my next post!
The Re-Farmer
As I was finishing up my evening rounds, I noticed this mama.
Well, that explains why I keep finding the netting pushed in at that spot!
What was really funny, though, we seeing this as I was going in through the sun room.
It’s a kitty hammock!
At least it’s not touching the ground. The spinach is struggling to grow, and the first seeds I’d planted had germinated, only to get flattened by cats. They did not recover. The second sowing is coming up, but very slowly. The netting is the only thing protecting them from being rolled on by kitties!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 