My family is silly, and court update

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First, the fun stuff!

My family is silly.

Yesterday, I roasted some chickens for the next few days and, since I had to get up earlier this morning, I had and early supper. I set out a bowl for the “bones and oogy bits” and labelled it before going to bed.

This is what I found this morning.

My younger daughter asked if “oogy” was a technical term, so which my husband said yes, while my older daughter added the headless chicken carcass.

What a great thing to find in the morning, when I was so dreading heading out!

I made sure to feed the cats before I left, but I was gone so long, the outside cats needed a top-op.

They were very appreciative! Another cheerful sight. :-)

As for my court date… it went as well as could be. It’s on our vandal to respond now, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

The session was booked for 9am. I planned to leave by 7am, if not earlier. I took the time to actually eat breakfast, which I normally never do that early in the day, before heading out, and when I started the van, the clock read exactly 7am. The drive to the town my mother lives in, where I stopped for gas, was not too bad, though there were parts of the highway that had been blown over and covered with ice and snow. Bad enough on their own, but it was starting to melt a bit, too, which added another level of “gotta be careful!”

Once back on the highway after getting gas, I thought things would be better, as that part of the highway is busier, but nope. It was quite a lot worse, which made for slow driving for a while. By the time I reached the divided highway, though, it finally cleared up… just in time to hit the construction zone, where four lanes with a ditch in between bottle necked into two lanes on one side.

Still, by the time I reached the city, I was making good time. While I knew where to go from checking on the map, I had my phone’s map on navigator, so I had a voice telling me when and where to make my turns, just to be on the safe side.

That worked well, right up until I reached the street the court offices were on, and I was to make a left turn. As I reach the lights, I see a sign under them.

No left turn.

Okay, I’ll just go to the next intersection and drive around the block.

As I drive through, the navigator auto adjusts and tells me to make a right turn at the next street. Which I can’t do, because I’m in the left lane during rush hour, and changing lanes was just not an option, never mind trying to move 3 lanes over.

Next intersection?

The sign says, no left turn.

No left turn.

No left turn.

No left turn between 7am and 9am.

One way only.

No left turn between 7am and 9am.

One way only.

By this time, I’ve crossed the river and the navigator is telling me to make U turns, which I could not do.

Finally, I found a street I could turn left onto – with my phone telling me to take a U turn again – drove around the block and made my way back. When I got to the street the court offices was on, I saw a parkade just up the block and went straight there, as I no longer had time to search for parking.

By the time I parked, walked back to the street I needed and found the building, it was just before 9am. I also just managed to get into the doors to stand at the back of the line to pass through security.

Thankfully, I had the phone number for our vandal’s lawyer, so I called him and told him where I was, and he said he would pass that on to the judge for me.

Thankfully again, the line moved quickly.

Our province is in an odd situation right now. With the pandemic response, emergency status was lifted a while ago. The mandates, as far as I know, expired as well. But the province is still enforcing mask rules (there were signs for distancing all over, which were being ignored by everyone). Also, as many expected, they brought in more restrictions after Remembrance Day, but most apply only to churches in the south of our province (where not a single case of Schrödinger’s Virus has been traced to) and kids from 12-17 who want to play hockey. There are others as well, that make just as little sense.

I expect them to implement another illegal full lock down before Christmas.

Anyhow, I didn’t have the energy for a hassle, so I wore my Mingle Mask and hoped for the best.

No one said a thing to me while I was in line.

As the line was moving forward, I remembered I had a pocket knife in one of my parka’s pockets, so when I got to the security station and put my things into a bin, I started reaching into my pocket to give it to them. The security guard, who didn’t bat an eye at my Mingle Mask, started to tell me I didn’t need to empty my pockets, my parka would go through Xray, until I pulled out the pocket knife and told him I’d forgotten about it. He was quite happy with that and took it aside while I went through the metal detector (none of this procedure is in the court offices we’d been going to in the smaller city!).

I fully expected to lose the knife. I’ve been through court security in another province before moving here, and they even confiscated the metal travel chopsticks a friend of mine had in her purse. Happily, I was wrong. When I got to the other side, another security guard had a Ziplock baggie with a form on it, got my name and got me to initial it, then told me where to go as I left, to retrieve it! I was quite pleased by this, as my husband gave me that knife, and it is a very good one. It got quite a few admiring glances from the security guards.

After getting directions, I found my way to the courtroom our session was going to be in. Just the lawyer and court clerk was there, and the court clerk left, probably to let the judge know I had arrived. It was about 10 past 9 when I got there, and it took another 5 or 10 minutes before the judge came in, so the lawyer and I had a chance to talk.

The first thing I asked was if our vandal was there. He didn’t actually answer, but started asking me about what conditions I might be willing to agree to.

Smart man, not having our vandal there. He would not have been able to shut up.

I actually feel sorry for the lawyer. Nice guy. Doing his best for our vandal, of course, but I think he’s figured out his client is a problem.

Then the judge came in and things got started.

He wasn’t wearing a mask. I could actually see his expressions! It was wonderful!

I think we spent about an hour in this session, and covered a lot of ground. The judge started by asking the lawyer about where our vandal was, and he explained that he’d told our vandal he could stay home, since the lawyer was there to represent him. The judge then began grilling the lawyer, before having a lot of questions for me. Much time was spent clarifying things like what our role was on the property, who actually owned it, when the ownership was transferred from my mother to my brother, and so on. Our vandal’s civil suit came up, even though it is a federal matter, not a provincial one, but the two files are so connected. The lawyer brought it up briefly and tried to move on, but the judge had a lot of questions. His expression when he clarified that the suit was against me – who doesn’t own anything here on the farm – and not my brother, was something to see. The lawyer is not representing our vandal on this case, but he did make a comment on how this was not the wisest of moves on the part of our vandal. Civil law is not the specialty of either of them, though, so they couldn’t say much else.

After much discussion, what I was willing to accept was a no-contact order, coupled with a restriction on drinking; our vandal (who does not believe he has a problem with booze) can drink all he wants at home, but he can’t leave his property while under the influence. The lawyer got an extra week to have time to bring the proposal to our vandal, so two weeks from now, he will have to show up in court. The lawyer had the option of calling in. If he accepts the conditions, we have a de-facto “peace bond”. A court order that expires in a year. If he does NOT accept it, it will go to trail. The judge made sure to explain that, if it goes to trial, then I take on the role of prosecutor and have to present evidence to justify my application. That would be a year from now, at the earliest. Of course, I have to give copies of any evidence I want to present to our vandal’s lawyer. The only issue is that, if I want to use the phone messages my mother got, my mother has to actually be there in court to confirm that yes, these are from our vandal and yes, these were from her answering machine.

Which my mother is willing to do, but she’d be 91 by then, and who knows how mobile she might be in that time?

I have no doubt the lawyer is going to impress on our vandal, the wisdom of accepting the conditions.

Whether our vandal is smart enough to do it is another thing.

The judge even knew where we live, more or less, so when he started to explain to me how to get a copy of the order (if our vandal accepts), he stopped and said he would just get them to send it to me, and made sure to have my mailing address to do it.

Once an order is in place, things then fall into the jurisdiction of the RCMP.

Which is about the best outcome we could have gotten out of this session.

So that is done for now. The lawyer will inform me of what our vandal decides.

After that, we’ll just have the civil suit to deal with, and the court date for that is in the summer. Unless our vandal is smart enough to drop that one, but I highly doubt it. I don’t know what he thinks he can accomplish. Not only do I not claim ownership of anything he says is his, but I told him long ago that he could take his stuff, if he could prove ownership. He never responded, and didn’t file suit until after he was served in regards to our restraining order application, more than two years later. He has no case, and just doesn’t seem to understand that.

Ah, well. All we can do is hope for the best and prepare for the worst!

As for me, I’m going to go debone some chickens, so my daughter can make some stock for a nice chicken soup later on. :-) Life goes on!

The Re-Farmer

Snow critters, and brief Ginger Bug update

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Yesterday was a recovery day for me, so some things waited until later, and the girls took care of others for me – like shoveling the snow boulders from the driveway clearing out from in front of the garage. :-D I’ve asked the renters how much we owe them for the awesome driveway clearing jobs, and was told to just forget out it! They are so sweet. It also snowed lightly for most of the day, so when I headed out this morning, I did some more shoveling.

But not here! At least, not yet. This is our feeding station, and you can see that the deer have dug into the snow to get at the sunflower seeds. We haven’t started buying deer feed yet, so the next time we pick up feed, I think we’ll get a couple of bags of deer feed, instead of the black oil seed we get over the summer months. The deer feed we get locally is basically just grain and sunflower seeds, though if we went into town, we could get feed that includes more stuff in it, including corn. The deer – and birds – seem to be happier with the simpler mix. The fact that it’s also cheaper is just bonus. ;-)

My husband was a sweetheart and had already given the cats food and water. He had used plain tap water, however, and with ice already in the bowls, by the time I came out, the surface was frozen over already, and the cats were licking ice, even though it was only -9C/16F I had started a kettle going before I left, however, just in case, so my husband was able to bring out a jug of water – half tap water and half boiling water – for me.

Since the water was still pretty hot, I didn’t knock the ice out of the bowls completely before topping them up. The cats were drinking it before I could finish pouring! I even added some to the bird bath. I’m not doing like I did in the past; chopping the ice out with a hatched and filling it with water. The basin is already cracked and I’m amazed it hold any water at all, anymore, though we do now keep a smaller metal basin in it, and that’s what I’m putting the warm water in.

When I came back later, there was even more of kitties, taking turns drinking!

They really do seem to appreciate the warm water.

With so much deep snow, my morning rounds are less extensive, though it now includes trekking to the corner of the property, by the new sign, to make sure it’s still there and undamaged, and switch out the memory card on the trail cam. This morning, I also worked on clearing some of the walking paths, including the one to the kibble tray under the shrine.

As anyone with glasses knows, working in these sorts of conditions means working mostly blind, as the lenses fog up and then freeze over. So I was mostly looking over my glasses, and not seeing a whole lot. Even so, I could see something… odd… near the base of the shrine. A strange dark patch in the snow.

This was not there when I topped their kibble up, last night!

Something has dug a new burrow under the shrine!

I don’t know what digging critter we’ve got around here that isn’t hibernating right now. I’ve seen a little skunk in the kibble house recently (we usually just see the one big one, these days), so maybe it was a skunk? I don’t know.

Making my way back to the kibble house, I spotted our newcomer. I’d seen only flashes of her yesterday. I’m happy she weathered the blizzard all right, wherever she was at the time.

Then, because I am a suck when it comes to the cats, after I shoveled all around the cats’ house, including opening up gaps so the cats can get under it, and a path to where they go under the laundry line platform, I dug the cat path to the storage house, which is what they are in, in the above photo.

Looking at the 5 day forecast, we are supposed to reach a high of -1C/30F tomorrow, with a bit of snow, then 2C/36F with rain and snow, the day after. Which means all the areas we are digging out should melt down to the ground, or close to it. It also means that when I drive into the city, early tomorrow morning, to the courthouse for Case Management in regards to our restraining order against our vandal, it’s going to be potentially dangerous driving. The van has good snow tires, though, so that should help, but I’m really not looking forward to the drive at all.

On the plus side, when I checked the trail cam files this morning, I saw the snow plow go by twice, so I know our gravel roads are completely cleared.

Oh, I just remembered a recent conversation I had with my brother, when we were scrambling to get things done before the snow came. Particularly the garden beds. I’d mentioned wanting to get some manure, when he brought up the manure pile that used to be behind the barn. I remember that pile. We used to have a pig pen beyond it, too. The pile is gone, and there is no evidence of the pig pen, with its shelter for the pigs in one corner, left. Not only that, but there are hollows in the area, where the ground has been dug deeper, that has had me wondering. I’d say they were made with a small front end loader, like what would fit on a small tractor or the Bobcat that was here. It’s all grown over now, so it’s been like that for a long while, but… it looks like our vandal even stole the manure pile! Probably for his own fields or garden, but… who steals manure??? Of course, we don’t actually know who took it, when or why, but there’s no one else that would have done it.

On a completely different topic, we finally got to try our first Ginger Bug Pop last night! It took a week to fully ferment, in our fairly chilly dining room. We all gave it a try, and all of us found it quite tasty. It definitely worked, though I found it really sweet. I haven’t been able to get a good photo of it, yet, but I’ll make a separate post about it when I finally do.

The Re-Farmer

Cleared!

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Oh, it was so nice to see how the driveway looked in daylight!

There is more than enough room to back out of the garage and turn around – and even room for other cars to pull in and park. So awesome!

Though we do still have a bit of clearing to do in front of the garage. It’s just a small job, now!

This picture is taken from the road. Even the cats are loving the lovely, snow free driveway!

The road has been partially plowed. It looks like someone went through with a plow attachment on their truck or something similar. When the municipal plows come through, the clear from ditch to ditch, and there’s room enough for 2 vehicles to pass each other.

Notice the pole of snow pushed into the ditch? Because he cleared so far on that side of the driveway, when the plow does go by, we won’t have a ridge running across the end of our driveway!

I was able to make my way to this fallen branch. You can see where it broke off, above. I was not able to move it. Not only is it really heavy, but it’s frozen to the ground!

While making my way to switch out memory cards on the trail cams, I cold see where the deer are passing through, too.

As expected, there wasn’t much on the trail cams. It was funny to see some of the files from the camera by the new sign. The snow covered the camera lens before the motion sensor covered it, so they were basically just out of focus snow.

Though there is more shoveling to do, especially in the inner yard, I think I’m going to have to leave it to the girls today. My body is definitely telling me I need to take a break! Time to pain killer up and go for a nap!

The Re-Farmer

Kitty count and plant prison

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I notice the cats outside have been really appreciating the digging of paths around the yard!

I counted “only” 17 in total this morning. I did not see the newcomer. Hopefully, they are all doing fine in their little shelters all over, when they’re not using the ones in the yard.

Rolando Moon had been posing like an adorable loaf, but in the time it took me to dig my phone out of my pocket, she decided to come over for pets.

I’ve had some frustrations with the indoor cats and the repotted plants that are finally inside. Though they have been liberally – even excessively – doused in cayenne pepper, we seem to have one cat that is not at all bothered by it. I think it’s Cabbages, but I’m not sure. They do their dastardly deeds when we are not around to see them. Yesterday morning I into the living room and found two of the aloe vera had been thoroughly dug into, with soil scattered all over. My daughters cleaned that up while I was outside, thankfully.

Last night, our vulnerable pots went into plant prison.

The big aquarium greenhouse set up has been repurposed to house the aloe. The two on the right were the ones that got dug up. We’ll see if they survive! My daughter’s orchids will be going in here, too, because the cats keep going after them, even though they are all hanging kokedama.

We brought in the aquarium lights yesterday evening, but I didn’t turn them on until today. They had been in the sun room and were pretty cold.

It didn’t take long for Saffron to rediscover her favourite butt warmer!

It’s a good thing she is such a tiny little thing. :-D

We’ll be using the aquariums as greenhouses to start our onion seeds in a couple of months. Hopefully, by then, the aloe will be well established in their pots, and we’ll be able to move them out to make room.

The Re-Farmer

The Best

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Our renters are the best.

Okay, they’re actually my brother’s renters, but you know what I mean.

I messaged them asking if I could hire someone to clear our driveway some time this weekend.

Someone came over, tonight!

Isn’t that a thing of beauty?

There was so much snow, he actually had to push some of it almost past the pump shack.

Would you just look at that? Wide enough for two vehicles! And room enough to back out of the garage and turn. I tried to get some more photos, but they didn’t work out. It’ll have to wait until daylight. I don’t think the road has been plowed yet, either.

Tractors are wonderful things. Especially tractors with front end loaders!

Afterwards, I sent another message to ask how much was owed, but she didn’t know. Her husband had gone to bed without saying anything about it.

What makes this even more awesome is that they lost power during the blizzard, and didn’t get it back again until shortly before I first messaged about the driveway. They went 36 hours without power! Yes, they have generators, thankfully. I can’t imagine running an operation as big as theirs on generators for very long!

They are so awesome!!! With just one pass, he did more than I was able to do in hours! I’m just thrilled.

Oh, I remembered to bring that lock from the gate in to take a closer look. I couldn’t see what I saw before, so I got the key and tried it.

It went in just fine.

Either I goofed completely and the lock was just frozen or something, or whatever was in it fell out while I was carrying it.

The Re-Farmer

Digging out

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Oh, man, I am so tired.

Today, we started digging out from yesterday’s blizzard.

We didn’t finish, but progress was made.

My husband was a sweetheart and did the cats’ food and water this morning. He shouldn’t have, but did have to dig his way to the kibble house and uncover a couple of water bowls. He slogged his way to the kibble tray under the shrine.

Knowing him, he was probably wearing his sandals while he was out there! LOL

There is a set of stairs to the main entry over under that snow. Good thing we are using the sun room doors! The cat path is pretty funny.

I shovelled my way to the stairs before I stopped, then slogged my way around the corner to grab the 100 ft extension cords, then went to the garage.

I am not standing in a drift, here. The snow is up to my knees.

I shoveled in front of the garage enough to open the doors to where little Spewie is stored.

This little thing is not made for a job as big as this! The expeller was barely higher than the snow!

Seeing the photo, I am noticing the knob at the end of the handle to rotate the expeller. I wish I’d noticed it earlier. The bottom of my parka kept getting caught on it, and the knob end fell right off! I did eventually get a chance to look closer, and it just needed to be screwed back on.

At this point, I paused to add the second 100 ft extension cord.

As you can see, there is a lot of water under that snow! As light as little Spewie is, the wet made it very difficult to push it forward, and my footing was precarious.

Here, the snow was above my knees.

You can see in this photo, that the knob end had fallen off by this time.

Guess who finally reached the gate, only to discover they’d forgotten the key? LOL

At least the walk back would be much easier!

Along the way, I also paused to knock the snow and ice off the trail cam, though I didn’t switch out the memory cards, yet. I haven’t even tried to reach the one by the new sign – a sign, and camera, I’m sure is now plastered with a layer of snow and ice, too!

Once I got the key, I discovered another problem.

I couldn’t get it into the lock.

No, it was not because of ice.

There seems to be a piece of metal jammed in there!

Off hand, I’d think it was our vandal, but there were no tracks in the snow. The last time we opened the lock was Wednesday morning, 2 days ago. We did get a prescription delivery early that evening. My daughter met the driver at the gate, since I was up to my elbows in flour, but never had to unlock the gate.

Well, maybe we’ll see something in our trail cam, before it got covered with snow, when I switch the memory cards out tomorrow.

I had to cut the lock off to open the gate, and continue on to the road.

Once that first pass was made as far as the road, the rest went a bit easier. Going back and forth, I could only clear a few inches wider each time, because of how deep it was.

The road has not been plowed yet. Which means we’re going to have a ridge of snow across the end, soon! LOL

I cleared it just wide enough to drive though. Barely.

But I wasn’t able to finish in front of the garage. We can’t back the van out, yet, and where my mother’s car is, we can’t even open the doors, yet.

In one of the photos, you can see the path my daughters shoveled. They also shoveled paths to the burn barrel, the meter on the power pole, and even to the pump shack. There was concern that a cat was in the pump shack and was snowed in. We kept hearing plaintive meowing, but couldn’t really tell where it was coming from. There is a hole in the bottom of the pump shack door that smaller cats go in and out of that they cleared, just in case.

They also shoveled the sidewalk, around the kibble house, and to the kibble tray under the shrine. You can see that snow even got into the kibble house! A garden hoe turned out to be the perfect tool to clear that out. It was remarkably hard packed.

After they did the shoveling, they made supper and, by the time I came in, there was food and a fresh pot of hot tea waiting for me!

I really needed it, by then. While it was almost too warm for how bundled up I was, I was very wet. My boots were soaked and, even though I had a pair of those foot warmer things, my toes were starting to feel frozen. Plus, while clearing beyond the gate, the wind was blowing the snow all over me, so even my parka was wet by the time I was done. Of course, my double layer of pants were wet to my knees, too. We will have to finish tomorrow.

One of the last things the girls did before heading in was go around to some of the lilacs and knock off the snow, so they wouldn’t break under the weight. Some things, however, were already broken.

One large branch along the south fence line near the driveway was visible from the garage security camera, so I was expecting that one. It turned out to be the top of a dead tree. Another large piece of dead tree fell right on the barbed wire, but we haven’t been able to get at it, yet.

Nor have we been able to get at the large branch that fell in front of the outhouse. I’m sure there are other fallen branches around, but we haven’t even tried to make our way through the snow to check, yet.

Tomorrow, we will need to get back at it. At the very least, we need to clear enough to be able to back the van out of the garage and turn towards the road. We also need to clear enough of the yard that we have room to drive up to the house, with room to turn around.

This is one of those days were I really wish our vandal had returned the Bobcat, as my mother repeatedly requested. This could all have been finished, including the yard, in less than an hour with that thing. I was out there for more than three hours. I’m seriously considering contacting our renter and seeing if we can hire them to come over with their tractor! I’m sure we could find somewhere to squeeze that our of our budget.

Our forecast has changed, of course. We are no longer supposed to get snow tomorrow (Saturday). Sunday is supposed to be colder, but also without snow. Monday, however, it now says there will be “isolated flurries”, with rain and possibly another 5-10cm of snow.

Monday is when I have to drive into the city for Case Management about our restraining order.

*sigh*

At least I can be confident the roads will be plowed by then. When I first started working on our driveway, I could hear the reverse alarm of heavy equipment in the distance, so I think the main road may already be done.

For now, I’m going to have another giant mug of tea!

The Re-Farmer

First snow of the year is a doozy!

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When I tried to make my last post using my phone, I hoped to get enough of a data signal to publish a text post.

I never did.

After about an hour of trying, our internet started to come back sporadically, and it finally posted.

Our internet continues to go in and out, but I did manage to upload photos and am daring to make a proper blog post!!

While this year’s kittens have seen some snow a little while ago, this is the first time in their lives that snow has actually accumulated on the ground for any length of time. I’m sure it’s been a bit of a shock to them! It was sunny to see one using my foot prints to get around.

The kibble house was nice and dry, though I had to knock snow out of the tray on the side, and the one under the shrine. Then I had to dig out the water bowls, knock out the slush inside, and refresh them with warm water.

Then I shoveled some snow to make paths from the sun room, around the kibble house, to the shrine, to the bird and deer feeding station (we have yet to see signs of deer coming around to the house) and the sidewalk to the small gate. Later, we will need to shovel a path to the power pole so we can read the meter, and the burn barrel. But not yet. The snow is incredibly wet and heavy, and still coming down.

Then I went to check on the gate and switch out the trail cam memory card.

Not going to get too many files off of this one!!

It’s not going to be easy to clear the driveway. The snow is so wet, and there is water under it. We’re doing to have to do something, though, because I need to be able to get out of our driveway very early on Monday, for my court date in the city. And it’s supposed to continue snowing trough Friday and Saturday!

This sheltered area is going to be such a nice place for a little sanctuary, once we clear out the dead trees and set up some seating.

Butterscotch caught up with me as I was using my walking stick to knock snow off of low hanging branches so they wouldn’t break.

I did find some broken branches, too.

There wasn’t too many of them, but the few there were, were rather large!

This one is more “piece of tree” than branch! I could clean up the others, but this one will likely wait until spring.

This is on the north side of the house, reminding me once again of just how glad I am we were able to get those trees cut away from the roof and power lines!!!

The snow is so wet and sticky, it even stuck to the wire mesh on the squash tunnel!

This was a disappointing find. I’d left the gazebo tent out to cover the picnic table and BBQ, set as low as it could go, but it couldn’t handle this wet, wet, heavy snow and just collapsed. The canopy even tore, too.

I used a garden hoe to clear as much of the snow off as I could, but we will likely leave it here. It is still serving as a cover for the BBQ (the cover it came with was torn to shreds by the wind, already), the picnic table, and any critters to take shelter under them.

Before heading in, I took the snow off the roof of the cat’s house, since we will need to lift it to replace the smoke detector in the near future. Then, since I was shoveling around it for access, anyhow, I went ahead and shoveled the cat path to the storage house, too.

Right now, we continue to have wet snow falling. It’s only 0C/32F with a wind chill of -7C/20F. It’s not snowing especially heavily, but it is constant. Looking at the live feed on the security camera, I can’t see the road past our gate. My brother’s field across the road is just a while blur. A lot more branches than usual are in view, hanging down from the weight of the snow. By Sunday, the snow is expected to stop and we will have our coldest day, at -5C/23F, but amazingly, we’re not predicted to reach 1C/34F by Tuesday!

For today, we will be staying indoors, except for topping out the kibble and water for the outside cats later on. While I had my baking day yesterday, my younger daughter wants to do her own baking today, too. A day of quiet domesticity is going to be much enjoyed!

The Re-Farmer

Internet Down

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Posting might be sparse for a while. Our internet went down last night, and has not come back, yet. Likely due to Blizzard conditions to the south of us.

We are in pretty good condition here. Maybe 5 or 6 inches of very wet snow. A few branches fallen from the weight. Our gazebo tent collapsed under the weight. But we are fine, and so are the outside cats. :-)

I am getting just enough data signal on my phone, that I can make a text post. Hopefully. If you are reading this, it worked.

The Re-Farmer

A good day to be baking!

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It was a lovely morning, as I did my rounds, with nothing at all to suggest we were going to be hit by a storm, later today!

As is now usual, I had a whole crowd of kitties waiting outside the door for breakfast. :-D

I counted 19, but it’s possible I missed one of the ‘icouses. They were milling about so much! I did get to pet a few furry butts, including several of the kittens that normally would have run off already, plus our newcomer.

Creamsicle Baby was battling it out with Agnoos for special attention. :-D

Butterscotch followed me while I was doing my rounds. She really likes that I now go to the corner of the property to check if the new sign has been vandalized yet, and switch out the memory card on the camera. She has taken advantage of the set up and uses the various posts to climb up and jump onto me, making it very hard to switch out the memory card!

While going through the yard, I spotted a few summer yard tools we missed putting things away, and brought a couple of our snow shovels closer to the sun room door. They are normally kept by the main entry, but we are avoiding using that door until we can get the door and frame replace; something we’d hoped to get done before this winter, but the budget for it just didn’t happen. I wasn’t even able to get the estimate done; I was going to call the same company that did the windows here, before we moved in, but I can’t find them! I do hope they haven’t gone out of business, like so many others have done in the past year and a half. :-(

When I was ready to come inside, I found this handsome fella waiting for me.

He even let me pet him and scritch his ears!

I think this one is Chadicous, but I’m not sure.

I love that pink little nose!

The general store the post office is in closes at noon on Wednesdays, so I headed out shortly after they opened. I wanted to get the battery we needed for the cat’s house smoke detector that I forgot to pick up yesterday. While there, I picked up another bag of flour, just in case.

I had a few general things planned for baking today. One of them was muffins, but I hadn’t settled on any recipes. After doing some searching, I found a couple of savory recipes I wanted to try.

The whole day of baking was about timing! The first thing I did was cook a package of bacon in the oven, until dry and crumbly, for one of the muffin recipes. Once that was cool and crumbled, I started a double batch of bread. I didn’t use our dough baby, because I forgot to set it to soak overnight. Instead, I used our basic bread recipe, which gets modified with whatever we have on hand. This time, it included oatmeal and chia seeds, with molasses for the sweetener.

While that was sitting for its first rise, I had time to make a double batch of apple bacon muffins.

Half of them were for the freezer, and half to have on hand. This recipe as a surprising amount of cinnamon in it, which accounts for the darker colour.

There is an entire package of bacon and two Granny Smiths in that double batch! The recipe sounded amazing, but it didn’t live up to expectations. Don’t get me wrong; they were quite tasty. However, I really expected to at least taste all that bacon! The predominant flavour was the apple. I’d definitely make them again, even if they didn’t life up to their hype. ;-)

When the muffins where done and cooling, the girls quickly took over the kitchen to make lunch for everyone. That gave me a chance to take a break – and see that the snow had finally arrived!

It has just changed from rain to snow when I took this photo. They’re hard to see, but there is at least one chickadee going for the sunflowers as they disappeared under the snow!

By the time we finished lunch, the bread was ready to be shaped into loaves and left for a second rising, which gave me time to make another double batch of muffins.

This time, they were cheddar cheese muffins. They were supposed to be smoked cheddar, but what we had on hand was sharp cheddar. The recipe included cornmeal and cayenne pepper. For a double batch, it would have been 1/2 to 1 tsp of cayenne, but there was no way I could use that much. I enjoy the flavour of spice, but have no tolerance for the heat. Still, I did add some. These turned out very nice. Better than the apple bacon, I’d say. Another keeper. Especially for the next time we get smoked cheddar. :-)

Once these were done, the bread loaves were ready to go into the oven. While they were baking, I started another double batch of bread. This one had oatmeal in it, too, (more specifically, rolled oats, softened in boiling water for a few minutes) and some hemp hearts I had left.

Also, I’m glad I got that extra bag of flour. We had just started a new bag, and I’ve already gone through half of it!

These are the oatmeal, molasses and chia seed loaves. I’m rather pleased with how they turned out! I’m a terrible one for using too much flour, and taking them out of the oven too soon, but I’ve gotten better. ;-)

Then, while the second batch of bread was rising, I made a batch of double chocolate cookies. Double as in, it has two kinds of chocolate (cocoa and chocolate chips), not a double recipe. A single recipe was enough to fill four baking trays. For so many, I had to get a daughter to tend the oven, as they baked very quickly, while I had to start shaping the bread for their second rising. This time, I made them into large buns instead of loaves. The timing turned out perfect. By the time the last cookies were coming out of the oven, the buns had risen enough to go into the oven.

I didn’t bother taking photos of the second batch of bread, nor the cookies. The cookie batter was the kind you drop onto an ungreased pan by spoonfuls, then they spread flat while in the oven. I ended up having to increase the cooking time, and they also turned out to be very fragile. Which is okay. Broken cookies taste just as good as not broken one! They just don’t look pretty. ;-) As for the buns, even with the oatmeal and hemp hearts, they just look like white bread. :-D Those were the ones we started on tonight. While two of the loaves of the first batch went to the freezer, along with half the muffins, I decided not to bother freezing any of the buns. Those are going to disappear very quickly!

In the middle of all this baking, I got a call from my mother. She was wanting to know if we had snow, too. By this time, it was coming down pretty heavily. She sounded so excited, and started going on about what a good thing it was we got her shopping done when we did. I agreed, mentioning that unfortunately, we didn’t get all the things we wanted to get done finished. She was completely oblivious. Instead, she started saying that, as long as the septic was covered, it was fine. She had seen the insulated tarp we had ready to cover it, the day she came out here, so she started giving me instructions on making sure it was weighted down so it wouldn’t blow away. I told her it was pegged to the ground. Apparently, she didn’t know that tarps have grommets on them, than can be used to fasten them down. She kept on going, telling me about how important it was to cover the septic tank. I ended up asking her, how long have we been living here? She thought three years. I said four, and we’ve been covering the septic every year we’ve been here. I know my mother thinks I’m stupid, but you’d think she would have noticed that the winterizing has been getting done, every year.

What I find strange, though, it that she was also talking about covering the well. In fact, she was talking about the septic tank and the well interchangeably, and then saying that if the well freezes, we’d have no water, and how terrible that would be. This was something she brought up last year. She insisted that the well cap had been covered with straw, every year, just like the septic tank. Which has never been done. Not only was it never covered with straw, but I know that even the accumulated snow was removed, likely with the Bobcat our vandal stole, as evidenced by the chips in the concrete, and one of the handles on the cover being broken right off, while the remaining one has been bent flat. Hidden by snow, it’s been hit and run over. Plus, the well cap is at least 12 feet down. It’s never been a problem in the almost 50 years since it’s been dug. She also had nothing to do with any of this sort of maintenance, so I don’t know where she is coming from on this.

It was a short phone call. I mentioned I was in the middle of baking, and she happily let me go. She just wanted to talk to me about the snow. It felt so weird. She’d been so nasty to me when she was here two days ago, and she has no awareness at all about it. I’d talked to my brother last night. My mother had just called him. I had filled my siblings in on how things went when she came out here, so he was in the loop. When my mother started talking about coming to see the sign, she was going on and on about how great it looked, how great everything looked here at the farm, and what a great visit it was. To which he said, no it wasn’t! He spent time time trying to encourage her to be kind and build people up instead of always tearing them down, to which she replied, “I’m not going to lie.” Apparently, the opposite of being cruel is to lie? She had said something about not saying that everything looked beautiful. Which isn’t what anyone is expecting and has nothing to do with simply treating people nicely. I’m grateful my brother stuck up for me, but we are both left rather perplexed by her inability to understand what it means to treat people kindly.

We may not have caught up completely, yesterday, but we did get the essentials necessary for winter, at least. This is our first real snowfall of the year, and while we will continue to be relatively mild, this is a snowfall that will stay. It is still coming down, and now the forecast says the snow will continue to fall through to Saturday, too. Our temperatures remain above freezing, so sleet is a major concern on the highways right now. We’re expected to get 10-15 cm of snow today (4-6 inches), with another 10-15 cm tomorrow, though the weather alerts say that our area might actually get more, due to the lake effect. It’s past 9pm as I write this, and we haven’t reached anywhere near the predicted levels, so who knows what will actually happen.

The forecasts do still say that today’s storm will become tomorrow’s blizzard. I was just looking at our weather history, and the record high for today was 13C/55F, in 2016, while our record low was -20C/4F, in 1991 – but our average high is 0C/32F and average low is -7C/19F, so the temperatures we’re having right now are not at all unusual. It just feels like it! Funny how that works.

Either way, it turned out to be the perfect day to stay inside and do a whole bunch of baking!

The Re-Farmer

Red Kuri taste test

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Okay, we finally gave the Red Kuri (also called Little Gem) squash a try!

We only had three that reached maturity (or close to it), and with the poor growing conditions, they did not reach their optimum size. I expect this has also affected their flavour, but we’ve never had this squash before, so we have nothing to compare them to, but each other!

I decided to roast them, as the easiest way to compare. While preparing them, I saved their seeds, including keeping the mutant squash’s seeds separate. If we liked it enough, we would try growing it next year, and see what we get.

The two furthest halves in the photo are the mutant. This is the one that had a different shape, and was a mottled green and orange, rather than a deep, reddish orange. It also has the most flesh to cavity ratio.

The two halves on the bottom and middle right, with the ring of green near the rind, is the one that was less mature, while the ones on the bottom and middle left are from the squash that matured the earliest and had the most time to ripen.

I added some butter and brown sugar to each one, and roasted them at 350F, with a bit of water in the bottom of the pan, until fork tender. The butter and sugar pooled on the bottom of each, so we could taste them all on their own, then again with the butter and sugar.

Once roasted, I split them up between the four of us, so that we had a piece from each of the three squash.

I didn’t even think to take a picture until we’d eaten them, though! Oops!

The results?

My husband didn’t like any of them. He doesn’t like squash.

As for our daughters and I…

The mutant: we all found it very dry compared to the others. Not a good flavour. My younger daughter couldn’t finish her piece. I was okay with it enough to finish her piece off. The seeds went into the compost bucket.

The ripest one: This one had a nice texture to it, and the flavour was good. Better with the butter and brown sugar, though.

The slightly under ripe one: this one had the best flavour of all! With or without the butter and brown sugar, it was quit enjoyable.

I’m pretty sure we didn’t plant all the seeds that came with the packet, but I now have seeds from the non-mutant squash drying. There is a possibility of cross-pollination with the Teddy squash beside them, so we might get something different next year… or not. They didn’t really bloom at the same time, much, so the chances of cross pollination is rather low.

Not that I mind having something new show up! :-D

The Re-Farmer