That’s quite the discrepancy!

July 8, 2022 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Today was forecast to be a hot one, and getting even hotter tomorrow, so my morning rounds including watering the garden beds. The nice thing was being able to use a nice, full rain barrel to water the old kitchen and south garden beds, while the soaker hose was going under the big tomato bed in the main garden area. There was even enough water in the barrel out by the trellises that I could use to start watering there.

Once the hose was available again, though, I watered them some more. Especially the pumpkins, gourds and cucumbers.

A few of the cucumbers are getting bigger, though most seem to be stagnating. I took a picture of one that is blooming, but didn’t see the baby cucumbers until I uploaded the photo to my computer! There are not a lot of flowers, so I don’t know if there are any male flowers around to pollinate them. The Baby Pam pumpkin that I found never did, and fell off the vine this morning. I spotted two other female flowers, and the little pumpkins under them were already yellow. It seems very odd for female flowers to develop first, like that. At least to me. I have never grown cucumbers before, and none of the Baby Pam we tried to grow last year germinated.

By the time I came in, at about half past noon, it was 24C/75F out there, with a “real feel” of 29C/84F. At least according to the app on my phone. The thermometer outside my husband’s window was at 25C/77F. That window was just getting out of the morning shade.

While I was watering, however…

Yeah. The bean tunnel thermometer was reading 41C/105F already!

That’s quite a discrepancy!

The tunnel gets no shade this time of year. Thankfully, the pea trellis at least gets morning shade. The other two trellises also get morning shade, but not as long, and the silver buffalo berry were still mostly shaded when I headed in. The beans and gourds planted at the tunnel, plus the hulless pumpkins planted near it, would be just baking in the sun! The pumpkins have a nice deep mulch around them, but the beans are large enough that we should start adding more than just the wood shavings and stove pellet sawdust they were planted in.

Where we live is certainly an area of extremes. Long cold winters and short hot summers. It would be nice if we could have something in between! Ah, well. Such is life on the Canadian prairies! We’ll deal. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Enjoying the indoors life

July 8, 2022 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Butterscotch kept me company while I was getting dressed this morning.

The Grand Old Lady is certainly enjoying the indoor life!

She still shows zero interest in leaving my room. She will put up with Nosencrantz and Cheddar, but wants nothing to do with the other cats. If another cat comes in, she goes into her cubby hole in a shelf, where we gave her a bed and even her own bowl of food, because she simply would not come out if other cats are in the room. While she will happily come for cuddles with humans – just don’t pick her up! – she generally wants to just be left alone.

After all her years surviving outdoors, I figure she’s earned it.

I just wish Nosencrantz wasn’t doing the same thing!

The Re-Farmer

Cryptid Kitten

July 7, 2022 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Look who I saw today!

This is the black and white kitten from the very first litter we found. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s this one…

We found this one alone in the yard, soaking wet, and no mama around. Likely she dropped him while moving him, then ran off when I came outside. We brought him (her?) in, and my husband kept him warm while we looked around and, eventually, were able to reunite it with its mother.

I am increasingly convinced that, of the 4 kittens in that litter, this may be the only survivor. I know there was a tuxedo in the litter, and a couple of tabby looking kittens, but this is the only older kitten we are seeing.

It’s also incredibly shy and runs off as soon as it sees me, no matter how far away I am. That is why I put some kibble out on the step, and on the ground in front of the grape vines. What I might end up doing is moving one of the smaller kibble containers over by those steps and putting food out there, regularly. The down side of that is, the skunks are more likely to get it before the kitten does.

Well, if it’s a lone survivor or if its siblings are even shier than this one, I hope they will eventually start coming to the kibble house for food. Leaving food farther out for a while will help get them more comfortable coming over.

The Re-Farmer

Next steps

July 7, 2022 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I just got back from the wonderful person who is letting me take cardboard from her food waste deliveries.

This filled most of the back of the van, with room for me to still see through part of my back window.

The stack looks so small, on the ground! :-D

The next step will be to douse ourselves with bug spray, then go through each of the boxes to remove any tape, plastic labels, etc. Once that is done, we can start laying them around the saplings as a weed suppressant. Priority is around the saplings, but the space between them will also be covered. The cardboard needs to be thoroughly soaked – rain would be very handy right now! :-D Once we have it, it will be covered with wood chips.

I will easily need at least one more load of cardboard to cover the area, so no hurry on the wood chips right now.

We also got a bonus with this load!

These boxes are corrugated plastic. From the looks of it, they mostly held corn. After they get cleaned off, these will work very well for when we need to store potatoes and other things in the root cellar over winter. :-) Plus, as you can see, they easily fold flat for storage. I think I got 10 or so of these. I think they will be very handy for a lot of things!

An extra bonus is, I got to see their baby chickens and turkey, pigs, donkeys and alpaca. They’re already doing a lot of things we are working towards and, once we get our chicken coop built, we’ll be able to buy chicks from them!

I am so happy to have found this family. :-)

In other things, my husband got notification that my new keyboard was ready for pick up, on Monday. I went to the post office to pick it up and there was no card in the mail box. Today is Thursday, and I stopped by on my way home, but still no parcel.

Once I got home, my husband looked up the order.

It was sent by Purolator.

So while I was unloading the van, my husband called the nearest drop off location, since we are not in their delivery zone. Normally, we would have received an automated call from Purolator, if it was being sent there. When I got back inside, he was on hold – with Purolator. It wasn’t at the drop off location, either.

It turned out to be in the city.

How we were supposed to know that, I have no idea. This information was not included in the delivery notice. It just said that it was delivered.

It’s now being rerouted to the drop off location, and we’ll get a call when that happens.

Places that don’t deliver to PO boxes are a real pain in the butt.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: morning harvest

July 7, 2022 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Though we have been grabbing lettuce and spinach leaves, as needed, this morning we our first harvest from the garden!

One bed with onion sets planted around it got a hair cut. They were trimmed down to about 6 inches, and that almost filled the colander. I did see one that was starting to form a bulbil, so I left that to go to seed. Onions are bi-annual, but with sets, their time in dormancy has them acting as if they are in their second year, instead of their first. With the onions we grew from seed, I would like to leave some to overwinter, so we can get seed next year, but I have to figure out how to do that and have them actually survive the winter.

I also gathered the very last of the scapes in the big garlic. The other garlic that is behind is not yet showing signs of scapes.

In the high raised bed, the first spinach we planted was starting to bolt, so I pulled them all up, before they could get too bitter.

After trimming off most of the leaves, the remains were laid along either side of a row of onions to act as a mulch. They are more on the wood chips than against the onions. These onions are from seed, and are looking like they could use a trim, too, though they are quite a bit smaller than the onions from sets.

The other row of spinach looks like we’ll be pulling it fairly soon, too.

Once those are out, we can plant something else. I still have radish and chard seeds that would work. Most likely, chard will be planted. We’re not big on radishes and, if the conditions had been better, they would have been planted much earlier to try their pods, rather than for their bulbs. It’s too late in the season to grow radishes for their pods, I think.

We’re nowhere near the stage where we can be harvesting something out of the garden every morning, so it was really nice to be able to have something like this now. What we don’t use fresh right away will be cleaned, trimmed, chopped and either frozen (at least the onions), or dehydrated (that worked really well for the spinach, last year).

If we do any dehydrating, though, we’ll be doing small batched in the oven, rather than using the screens. All the mint we had dehydrating, and by the time they were done, there was only enough left to barely fill a small jar. The cats wrecked the rest! At least with the mint, there is still lots in the garden.

The Re-Farmer

Critters!

July 6, 2022 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

I popped out to see if the weather would allow some lawn mowing, and discovered a whole bunch of adorableness, just outside the door!

When I first opened the door, they were next to the water bowls (while mama was inside the kibble house, eating), and all four of them were moving towards me, all in a row. :-D Then they went around the back of the cats’ house, stopping long enough for me to get a couple of pictures.

There was a mama cat and kittens on the laundry platform steps, and they all started towards the cats, like they were synchronized. :-D After getting the pictures, I shooed the mama out of the kibble house and they all left.

Once the skunks were gone, the kitties were a lot more relaxed.

Except Sad Face, with his permanent tragic expression, and always looking ready to dash off.

Checking the weather radar, we had our frequent climate bubble in effect. The severe weather system split, with the large portion of it going to the north of us, and a smaller portion to the south. I was able to get some mowing down around the garden area, though it was so hot and sunny, I stopped when I ran out of gas, rather than filling and continuing.

Further south, however, another system went through. My brother’s place got hit with driving rain and hail! Everything is okay, though.

In other things, I called the tree company that cleared our power lines and roof a few years ago. Someone will be coming out over the next few days to give us an estimate. My plan had been to take down dead spruce trees myself, but considering where some of them are in relation to the house, and to each other, it would just be more efficient to hire someone. They can do it all in a day – and with greater safety! When I first called and left a message, I made a point of mentioning that I want to keep the wood for building with. I also mentioned getting things chipped.

With that in mind, before I started on the mowing, I got out the orange marking paint I remember to pick up more of at the hardware store. I then went around and marked the ones closer to the house, as well as the one by the garage. I’d marked as many dead trees as I could get to, last year. The marks have faced, but I could still see them. Last year, I’d counted about 22 or 23 dead spruces, with the possibility of more that were not accessible, in total (I hadn’t bothered marking some of them at the time).

We lost more trees over the winter, though. This time, I marked 22 dead spruce trees, and that was without going around the East side of the spruce grove, and trying to get through some of the underbrush.

That’s a lot of trees that can be used to build more high raised beds! Assuming they are all still solid, and from the looks of it, they are, though a couple of them have been dead and drying long enough, they have split lengthwise.

That spruce grove is going to look really empty once all the dead trees are cut down. Once things are cleared up, the plan it to turn part of the area into a sheltered seating area, with trunks supporting benches and tables. Fruit or berry trees that need more shelter may then be planted, as well as more spruces transplanted into the spruce grove.

Once those dead trees are down, though, we can get back on track for building the cordwood outdoor bathroom, with a composting toilet rather than a pit, that we were looking to do as a practise building. After we no longer need to use the space to access and drag out the dead trees, we can start working on building up a foundation for it. This year’s flooding showed us that, while the space we’d chosen for it didn’t end up underwater, like so many other spots, it did eventually get very muddy. We definitely need to build things up at least a few inches. Though the plan is to make an outdoor bathroom, it will have a solid floor, and the composting toilet will be easily removed, if we ever want to repurpose the building to be just a regular storage shed.

The dead trees we plan to use for building high raised beds had been intended for building the cordwood shed, but garden beds have become more of a priority. I expect we’ll still have plenty of wood that can be used for it, anyhow. Plus we’ll be making bottle bricks to use for light, instead of windows.

This is a project that will take much longer to get done than we originally planned. At least we still have the old outhouse all cleaned up inside and can use that, if we lose our septic again!

Also, if we do the floor right, we won’t have to worry about groundhogs digging dens in the pit, like we found under the outhouse!

The Re-Farmer

Before the heat hits?

July 6, 2022July 6, 2022 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, I tried.

I headed outside earlier than usual, to try and get some work done before things got too hot. My goal of the day was to take the weed trimmer to where the berry bushes are. Tomorrow, I’m getting another load of cardboard and plan to lay it down around them as a weed barrier.

This is how it looked when I started.

I shoved the stick into the ground as a post to mark the end one of the rows of bushes.

Can you see the silver buffalo berry?

The row on the left, you can see the sawdust mulch around several of them, but the row on the right just disappears in the trimmed weeds and grass.

I ended up using sticks that were used to hold trellis lines last year, to mark where the saplings are. A few of them got two. They were so buried and trimmed material, I didn’t want to risk accidentally hitting them with the weed trimmer! I’ll be looking to make sure they all have at least two sticks marking each of them, when the cardboard get laid down.

From this end, the two saplings marked in the foreground are the two highbush cranberry.

It took adding one more length of extension cord, but I was able to trim around the sea buckthorn, too.

Since I had the trimmer in the area anyhow, I used it around all the trellises, the hulless pumpkin patch, and the bean tunnel.

The goal was to beat the heat, but I failed. By the time I was working on the bean tunnel, the thermometer attached to it was reading 30C/86F in the sun. Our high of the day is supposed to be 25C/77F, and we are now under a severe thunderstorm watch. When I headed out this morning, we were being warned of possible thunderstorms on the weekend, and just possible showers later today!

I kept at it, though, and was able to use the trimmer around the crabapple trees. The one I’m standing next to, to take this picture, died over the winter and will need to be cut away. There are a couple other sickly ones down the row that need to be removed, and the others need some pruning, but that will have to wait.

I’m hoping to be able to head out again with the lawn mower, set as high as it can go, to finish around the garden area. Even the lowest spot near the branch pile in the background is finally dry enough to mow.

The metal ring in the foreground was something I brought to do burns over old crabapple tree stumps that were infected with a fungal disease. It’s over a taller one that hadn’t been burned completely away. Currently, the ring is full of an ant hill!

We have SO many ants this year!

In other things, whatever happened to our phone last night was no longer an issue this morning. We can use our land line again. I did get an email response from the phone company to try disconnecting all but one phone and seeing if it was still an issue, which I’d done (there’s only 2 lines to disconnect; the extra handset for the cordless phone doesn’t connect to the land line on its charger base). I wrote back to explain that it was working again this morning.

It sounds like there is a short somewhere. Possibly due to rodent damage somewhere. I’m guessing the cause of the problem is outside the house itself. If it’s a short, we could lose our connection again, at any time. In my email response, I did include that possibility. It would require a tech to come and test the lines, though. They’d be able to do that at the pedestals at the fence lines, one of which is hidden by trees in the first two photos at the top of this post, at first. From there, they would know if they have to come to the house and test again or not.

For now, I’m just happy the phone started working again on its own!

The Re-Farmer

Line is busy…

July 5, 2022 / Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

Well, something weird is going on with our land line.

For some reason, our line is active, as if someone were on the phone.

We have a phone with two cordless handsets, and a hands free head set. The base with the answering machine is in my office. I noticed a red light blinking on the base that normally is off, which is when I saw the “line is busy” message on the handset display. That’s what the red blinking light was showing; that the line is in use.

The second handset is in another room, and was not in use. With both of them, I activated them to listen, and could hear crackling noises. On hanging up, I get the usual “call ended” display, then it goes right back to “line is busy”. I even checked the headset, which we don’t use because the ear piece no longer attaches to the head piece, and got the same thing. Crackling noise.

We do have a corded phone. This is our emergency back up, and is tucked away in my husband’s bedroom. I had to actually move furniture to reach it, then brush off the dust and cat hair.

It was not off the hook. When I picked it up and listened, it was the same. The line is open and active, but no one is on it. Hanging up made no difference.

With all the phones, I tried hanging up repeatedly, disconnected the power and disconnected the phone line. No change.

After not finding a solution, I went online to see how I could get technical support. After logging in to my account, the first thing I tried was the live chat, but that’s available only during office hours. It’s past 10pm now.

After much looking around at support options, I finally tried to call 611, which is their 24/7 service number, using my cell phone.

The call kept dropping.

I do have my cell phone set to use Wi-Fi calling, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Even when the call didn’t drop, there would be just dead air for about a minute – and then the call would drop. I did actually get a pick up, once, got their automated system, and the robot voice disappeared in mid sentence.

Then the call got dropped.

In the end, I had to send an email.

I got their automated response with a ticket number, and a message saying they’ll get back to me within 2 business days.

Meanwhile, our line is still active, though no one is on it. We can’t call out, and no one can call in.

So very bizarre!

The Re-Farmer

Surrounded

July 5, 2022 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The mock orange is blooming beautifully right now!

I pruned away a lot of dead branches this spring, but the rest is just thriving!

The other one at the side of the house is still just budding. It doesn’t get as much direct sunlight as this one. I’m actually amazed it’s still alive. The groundhog has dug a tunnel behind it, damaging and exposing quite a lot of roots in the process. I keep filling the hole in, pushing back the dug up soil with a hoe, sometimes taking a hose to it, too. It can stay filled in for days. Then the grog will suddenly be back. I happened to be at the door above the steps when I saw it going by with a mouth full of nesting materials.

Despite all the root disturbances and damage, that mock orange looks like it’s going to have massive blooms, too.

At some point, I’d like the move both of them. The one by the house doesn’t get enough sunlight, and is far enough under the eaves to get hardly any water when it rains. This one is right up against the laundry platform. It gets in the way when we try to use the clothes line, even with all the pruning. Plus. we need to paint the platform. We have not yet decided on a new new spot for them, though. I still want to keep them close to the house. Just not too close!

All in good time.

The Re-Farmer