Creamsicle decided to help me take pictures of the mushrooms, by batting at my phone!
Or maybe he just wanted me to include him in the picture. :-)
Can I help?
Poor Man’s Hippocras: taste test
The girls and I had a lovely evening, sharing a charcuterie board to go with our version of hippocras.
We strained the spiced out using a jelly bag, and kept it warm until we were ready. Here is how it turned out.
The first thing to notice was how deep the colour had become. You can see in the photo that the glass even steamed up from the warmth. It had been kept on low heat, too!
So how did it turn out?
For my initial taste test, I could make out the predominant flavours of the cinnamon and cloves. The whole flavour profile could be described simply as “stronger”. Compared to making mulled wine in the past, I would prefer the mulled wine of this, even though there were many shared ingredients.
We did end up adding a bit of honey to the mix, which did improve the flavour. Though the hippocras was strained, some of the finer particles still got through, sinking towards the bottom of the pot but still fine enough to be floating. Which meant that when I tasted it again, after the honey was mixed in, more of these spices showed up in the glass. At that point, I was really tasting the pepper a lot more, and the spice flavour in general was stronger.
I was not able to finish the glass.
When we were done for the evening, we poured the remains into a 1L pitcher to go into the fridge. There was more than a litre left, but the last little bit was so full of spice “dust” that we didn’t keep it.
It should be interesting to see what a difference in flavour there is when drinking it chilled.
One of my daughters didn’t like it at all, but that was more about drinking wine that was warmed. She had unadulterated wine from the second jug, instead.
I think I will find ways to include the wine in our cooking, to help go through it faster, so we can use the 3L jug we bought it for! :-D
Would I make this recipe again? Probably not, however we weren’t actually true to the original recipe, not having access to the more expensive, rarer spices. If we were able to get those spices, then yes, I’d definitely want to try it again.
Until then, I think we’d just stick with our usual mulled wine combination – without pepper!
The Re-Farmer
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Replacement door: hung
The replacement door to the sun room is back up again!
Of course, things went wonky in the process. At this point, I expect nothing else!
I don’t know if you can tell, but we ended up adding yet another piece of wood under the bottom hinge. The gap there was still massive. And yet, none was needed at the middle hinge!
Of course, the door didn’t quite fit, even after all this. We still needed to force the door over the threshold. We’d had to do that with the old door, to a certain extent. It wasn’t as noticeable, and I think that was partly because the door was already starting to fall apart before we moved here.
Using the blue paint scraped off the door as a guide, I used whatever tools I could dig up to smooth out the side piece. I tried one of the planes we found in the basement. It was a bit big for the space, but it would have worked, except the plate was loose, which is when I discovered the frame holding it was cracked.
We didn’t find it that way. The cats had knocked it off the shelf I’d put it on.
*sigh*
I carved out a recess for the latch plate and deepened the hole for the latch itself until it could finally catch and stay caught. I also began chiselling, carving and rasping away at the outer edge of the threshold until the door could close without being forced.
Well. It still kinda needs to be forced. There is still an issue with the hinges. Understandably, there is a lot of stress on them. I’m trying to think of what I can do to fix that, and not a whole lot comes to mind that is feasible.
I suspect this door won’t last very long, but it’s the best we can do right now, and at least there’s a working door!
I still need to work on smoothing out the frame some more before we paint it. I have been eyeballing some tiny little planers at the hardware store that would be perfect for the job. I might just have to spring for one.
I will be so happy when this job is finally done.
The Re-Farmer
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Replacement door: sun room door frame progress, and washer surprise
You know, when the outer door on the sun room finally broke, we thought replacing it would just be a simple matter of switching out one door for another that we salvaged from a shed.
How wrong we were!
There were a lot of things we discovered along the way that complicated things. For those who are new to this blog (welcome! Happy to see you here! :-) ), you can catch up on the saga here, here, here and here. Then life happened, and the whole thing stopped until yesterday.
Today, I am finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel!
The first thing I did was smooth out the rough bits of the cut pieces a bit, then nail the side piece in place. I didn’t bother taking a picture at that point, because it really just looked the same as when we checked the final fit yesterday.
I had trimmed away some ragged bits of old caulking that were still attached to both frame and wall, but that bit of a gap that you can see was still there.
Once the side piece was nailed in, it was time to take off the door and work on the hinge side.
When cutting the side piece yesterday, I first cut it to the line I’d measured and marked with a chalk line, only to discover that when we put the piece in place, needed more cut off. That I was left with two long, narrow pieces came in very handy.
I used sections from the skinny end of the first piece I cut off to fill in the hinge recesses.
Since the weight of the door will be on this side, I used some wood glue on the second piece that was cut off…
… then nailed it in place, with extra nails on either side of where the hinges will be screwed into place.
Before taking the door off its hinges, I’d marked exactly where I would need to put the latch plate on the other side.
While giving the glue some time to set, I used a chisel to start gouging out a recess for the latch.
While I had been working on this, we got a call from the appliance repair guy about our washing machine, and he arrived while I was gouging, so I paused to be with him for that.
It was just last week that our new washing machine simply stopped working. No response when pushing the power button. Of course, pretty much every time we walked past it, we’d reach over and push the button. Nothing happened.
When the repair guy first called after being contacted by LG for the warranty work, and I described what was (and was not) happening, he ordered 2 parts that could possibly be the problem. They came in very quickly – in conversation, he mentioned that some of his customers using other brands have been waiting for 5-6 weeks, and he still doesn’t have their parts! With LG, the parts come in pretty much the next day.
He, of course, did the same thing we did; pushed the power button. LOL He tested the power to the outlet, and it was fine. As we were chatting, he mentioned that he has only recently started working with LG products; the company had been trying to get him to do warranty work for them for some time, and he finally agreed. I’m glad he did, because he’s the only person in the area that does! Still, he said he’s not as familiar with LG products as other brands.
After popping off the cover for the electronics at the back, he took the screws off one of the first part he was going to replace, for the power. The other one would have been the display panel. Then to check something out, he plugged it in.
It made noise.
I think we both had matching stunned faces.
He hit the power button.
It turned on.
I asked him what he did. He’d done nothing!
He checked the wires, to see if any where loose, but everything was fine.
He was at a complete loss as to why is suddenly started working.
He was also at a loss as to how to proceed. If he left it and sent the parts back, he’d half to re-order them if it stopped working again. The fact that it stopped working once, for no reason he could find, means that it could easily happen again. In the end, he decided to leave the parts with me, bill the warranty work, then if – when? – it happened again, we could call him directly, and he’d put in the new parts. Not knowing why it happened in the first place, as well as what happened for it to start working again, made is difficult for him to just walk away from the job. It just seems like there’s a very good chance it will happen again.
After he left, we started a small load of laundry, just to test it! So far, it’s still working fine.
What a mystery!
Ah, technology. I love my tech, but it does break down a lot more than the old school stuff! :-D
After that, I went back to working on the door.
While the door was hung, I had to lift it over the threshold to be able to close it. There was a large gap at the bottom hinge, but not the top hinge. In fact, the top corner of the door was hitting the frame. So while I did not need to add material all the way to the top of the frame, I decided to fill the hinge recess at the top, as well. With no hinge recesses, there should be enough of a gap at the top for the door to no longer be touching the frame at that corner.
Once the hinge side was built up, I put the top piece back. I then applied caulk to the outside of the frame pieces.
It’s amazing how just adding that white caulk over the gap made the whole thing look so much better!
The top was a different issue. Particularly in the middle, where there was a substantial section of wood missing! I’m guessing there was some rot that got cleaned out, before it was painted the summer before we moved in.
Little bits and pieces from the remaining piece cut off the side frame got used to fill in the gap, then I caulked the rest.
I lined the angle cut with the other side of the frame, but the shifting meant that left a large gap on the hinge side. Another piece of wood and some wood glue got pressed into duty to fill the space.
For now, everything is being left for the glue to and caulk to dry and cure for a while. The next step will be to hang the door again, and attach the latch plate. I picked up a quart of white exterior paint, and the whole frame will be painted.
Then, once everything is back up, the chain for the door, to keep it from blowing open too far, will be attached to the top of the frame. Once that is secure, I plan to move the shelf we’ve got behind the door, to the other side. I want to wait until the door is completely done because, right now, that shelf ensures the door doesn’t get blown open and breaking a window or something. I doubt the door can even open that far, but I didn’t want to take any chances!
So I figure, I’ll snag a daughter this evening to help hang the door, then – weather willing – the painting can happen tomorrow afternoon/evening.
Unless we discover something else has gone wrong, once the door is hung back up. The way this project has been going, that wouldn’t surprise me at all! :-D
The Re-Farmer
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Poor Man’s Hippocras: in progress
Yesterday, I wrote about picking up a whole lot of wine, so that we could use the 3L jugs as carboys for the second ferment on our hard crab apple cider.
The problem is, we now have to do something with the wine. We’re not really wine drinkers in general and, ironic as is seems for someone who is getting into making alcohol, I don’t really like alcohol in general. I had a couple of glasses of the wine last night and… well… it’s wine. I can’t even say if it’s particularly good wine. Just that it’s not bad wine. Going through 6L of wine between three of us, though, was probably going to take a while, and I really want those jugs to rack that hard cider.
We have, however, made spiced wine for special occasions in the past, and I did enjoy that. Since I’m also into modern recreations of historical recipes, my mind when to this video I’d found some time ago.
It turned out my daughters were thinking in the same direction, and were quite on board with trying a historical recipe. Of course, we’d want to be having something with the spiced wine, and we started talking charcuterie. So when I headed into town this morning to go to the hardware store, I also popped by the grocery store next door to pick up what we needed.
Now, the recipe for hippocras used in the video above includes ingredients that we just can’t get. I suppose I could order them online if I really wanted to, and try recreating it more exactly in the future, but frankly I can’t justify the cost. So spikenard, galangal, long pepper and grains of paradise are out!
After going through our spice cupboard, I only needed to pick up some marjoram, fresh ginger and cardamom.
Ah, the joys of small town inventories.
It took some searching before I found their last jar of marjoram. I did not expect that to be hard to find! However…
No cardamom.
At least not the whole seeds. I did finally find a single jar of ground cardamom, but it cost almost triple what the marjoram cost!
I didn’t buy it.
We did have some ground cardamom at home, but just a tiny bit. Better than none, I guess!
So this is our poor man’s version of hippocras.
Cinnamon sticks
fresh ginger
whole cloves
black peppercorns (substituting for long pepper)
nutmeg (ground)
marjoram
cardamom
ground cinnamon
Plus, to make up for the lack of sweet spices we’re skipping completely, some granulated sugar.
We eyeballed the quantities from the video for what was probably just over the equivalent of 2 bottles of wine. Except the cardamom. I just emptied what was left in the jar, which was probably less than a quarter teaspoon.
The cinnamon sticks were duly cracked, the ginger sliced, the remaining spices ground in a mortar and pestle (I love my mortar and pestle!), then everything mixed together in a pot with the wine.
The mixture is supposed to sit for a day or two before straining, then served warm.
We plan to drink it tonight, so to speed the process, we got it all set up and on the stove on low heat, where it will stay for the day.
It should be interesting to see how it turns out after we strain it this evening!
Of course, that still leaves us with another jug of wine. If this turns out okay, maybe we’ll make it again for Thanksgiving dinner, which we’ll be doing on Sunday.
The Re-Farmer
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Got a new toy, and dealing with unexpected issues
This morning, after doing my rounds and feeding the felines, I headed into town to run a few errands. This included stopping at the post office in our little hamlet. Which is also a liquor store.
I bought a whole lot of wine.
Or, should I say, my daughter did, since she paid for it. :-D
We don’t actually want the wine, but it came in 3L jugs. We need to rack our hard apple cider, and I’ve been hesitating because we only have gallon jugs (4L) to rack into. With using unfiltered, raw apple juice, there is going to be a LOT left behind when we siphon off the liquid, and 4L jugs would have left a lot more headroom than there should be.
The 3L wine bottles will be perfect carboys.
We will just have to drink a lot of wine over the next couple of days! :-D
I hope it’s actually good wine. I’m not a wine drinker to begin with, so chances are pretty high I won’t like it. :-D
I was happy to see the waterproof cord protectors came in in the mail, so that’s another step closer to winterizing the cat house.
Once in town, I made a point of stopping at a local business that had been getting threats, including death threats, for putting up a humorous sign saying “face diapers” were not required to enter. I’d talked to one of the owners online, and wanted to stop in in person to show them some support. We had an excellent chat. It turned out the owner has a health condition and cannot wear a mask. Even though there is no mask mandate, some of the local businesses are refusing to allow anyone in without a mask, even if it means discriminating against people on the basis of health, so he wanted people to know everyone was welcome in his business, with or without a mask. It was good to hear that, for all the threats and efforts to cancel his business out completely, he’s now busier than ever! It’s a printing business, and he gave me a bunch of business card sized notices of exemption, citing the relevant portion of the mandates (for those municipalities the province put mandates on) and phone numbers.
One of them will be going on my mother’s door, and I’ll be giving her one to carry with her, too.
After visiting the shop, I went to the other hardware store in town, hoping they might have something I could use to cut the piece of door frame for the sun room. Even just clamps, so I could use the reciprocating saw.
I ended up leaving with an inexpensive jigsaw.
My new toy got a major workout today! It even went through hidden nails.
But before I started that, I ended up spending some time on the computer, emailing with my siblings about the situation with my mother. Then I called her and asked for the name and number for the social worker she deals with. These are the people she talks to when there are problems where she lives. She didn’t want to give me the number, saying she didn’t want to make trouble with the caretakers. She had found a note under her door saying that I should be wearing a mask in the building, but it was not signed or anything. She’s pretty sure who left it. We talked about how she should not be wearing a mask, and she again said she didn’t want to make trouble, and just takes it off her face when she needs to breathe. !!!! I convinced her to give me the information, and promised to be nice to them. :-D
It turns out that the number was for a senior’s office, and while they often do things where my mother lives (until they got canceled by the pandemic restrictions), they don’t actually have any say in what goes on there. That falls under a provincial department.
When I called them, identifying myself and my relationship to my mother, then told them what happened, they immediately came to the same conclusion as my mother about who left the note. At one point, I was talking to two people on speakerphone, and they seemed so incredibly happy that I was calling on behalf of my mother. It turns out they have been trying for years to get this caretaking couple fired, due to their horrific and abusive behaviour towards the seniors in the buildings they work in – not just the one my mother is in! – but they have the residents so intimidated, no one is willing to write a formal complaint to the provincial department that manages the building. It turns out this couple has especially targeted my mother, who stands up to them the most. The ladies I spoke to vehemently agreed that my mother should not be wearing a mask, but she has told them she’s afraid of what would happen – meaning how the caretakers would react – if she didn’t. !!! They have already threatened to get my mother evicted, and it turns out they’ve threatened the job of one of the social workers, too!
In the end, I got a name and number for the person they’ve been working with at the provincial level, and they were thrilled that I was willing to call with a complaint (because even if they witness something, they are not allowed to say anything themselves), asking me to let them know how it works out.
When I called the number, though, it went straight to voice mail, so I left a message saying I wanted to talk about elder abuse towards my mother. I will try again tomorrow.
Once I did as much as I could with that, I headed outside and started to set up to use my new toy.
I was being watched!
So adorable!
Of course, once I started making too much noise, they ran off.
With my daughter’s help, I was able to cut the marked area off the piece of frame. Then we set it in place and…
… made a new mark to cut it again.
Finally! We can close the door with the frame piece.
I had considered screwing the pieces in place, but in the end, decided we’ll just nail them.
The crazy thing is, with all the buckets, jars, tins and plastic margarine containers full of nails all over the place, we have absolutely no nails that we can use to put the frame pieces in!
We’ve got lots of roofing nails, though. :-D
So tomorrow, I will make another trip into town.
Once the frame pieces are back, we will remove the door and use the pieces I cut off the frame on one side, to add to the frame on the other side, so that the door will hang straight, even if the sun room itself is now shifted.
It is all a horrible, messy looking patch job, but until we are in a position to replace the entire door frame, it’s the best we can do for now.
I’m glad I found that little jig saw. It still had a hard time cutting this surprisingly hard wood. That is also managed to cut through some hidden nails, barely slowing down, is bonus.
I will have to make a point of stocking up on spare blades. I foresee using this baby a lot, in the future!
Once we did as much as we could with the door, I had a chance to paint the other side of the support post for the old platform bird feeder. I’ve already picked up a new hanging feeder to put on its hook, ready and waiting. For now, I will not be trying to put on a new platform, and will just leave the little support pieces for that, where they are.
If all goes well, we should be able to set it up by the end of this week. I’ll just have to pick up some more bird seed. :-)
The Re-Farmer
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This and that
A whole bunch of little things happening today.
The kitties were happy to see me this morning! :-D
I did find the missing food container that had been in the entry to the cat house. It is, indeed, still in the cat house, but somehow got dragged well into the main space, in an area where I could only see if when the sun was shining through the window in the entry! LOL
I got one side of the bird feeder support painted.
Then it started to rain and I tucked it into the sun room. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do the other side today.
While that was drying, I started to work on trimming the pieces from the sun room door frame so we can finally hand the replacement door straight. I measured how much space I had, taking into account space needed around the door itself. The piece across the top would be an easy one, but the side piece needs to have a half inch difference between the top and bottom.
I quickly discovered some problems.
I was looking forward to using the table saw for this, only to discover the blade isn’t large enough to cut through. It would only reach half the thickness of the wood. I went hunting in the basement and the garage and did find more blades, but none larger.
I figured I would use the circular saw, instead. I started with the short, top piece, but it’s only 2 1/2 inches wide. I had my daughter try to help by holding it steady on the saw horses, but we discovered that the circular saw couldn’t cut all the way through, either. ??? Well, there’s the reciprocating saw. The blade on that was more than long enough. Except we don’t have clamps large enough to hold the piece in place, and it vibrates so much, there was no way it could be held steady by hand.
Which left using a hand saw.
At which point I could really feel how hard the hardwood is! It took forever to saw the half-inch I needed to remove.
There is no way the side piece can be cut by hand. It’s just too awkward, it’s several times longer than the top piece, and the cut that needs to be made is a very gradual angle. I was able to use the chalk line to mark a guideline to follow, but it would be difficult enough using power tools, never mind by hand!
I might just have to go and pick up some larger clamps, so I can use the reciprocating saw. I was looking at circular saw blades while at the hardware store yesterday, and they had almost no inventory, so I can’t even just buy a larger blade for the table saw.
I’ll make that decision, tomorrow.
So we moved on to other things. Like deciding to use up all the carrots we harvested to make one giant pot of carrot soup.
With the beets, too, since there are so few of them.
As I write this, they are all being roasted in the oven, and the girls are working on the other preparations. We got about 6 pounds of carrots (and maybe half a pound of that is beets! LOL), so it’ll be a triple recipe. We’ve never made carrot soup before. It should be very interesting in appearance, with all the colours in there. The carrots includes purple, white, yellow, and orange, while the beets include red and white, deep red and gold. I figure we’ll get … purplish grey. LOL
The vegetables were all still on the metal mesh “door” in the old kitchen, which is about as cold as a refrigerator these days. Once they were trimmed and removed, I took the time to reinforce the metal mesh. Some of the staples were already popped out. :-(
I’d found some washers in the garage a while back, large enough to reinforce the mesh, but the holes in the washers were too large for wood screws. So I got some smaller washers that would hold the screws.
This is on the support bar across the middle, which had lost the most staples.
Doing the sides was a bit different. The mesh is slightly off center, so on one side, I had plenty of mesh to work with, while on the other…
… there was about half the amount to work with. It worked, though. The mesh feels very secure. Even if the staples somehow end up coming out, the mesh will stay in place. It is now strong enough to use as a soil or compost sifter, if we want.
For now, though, it’s tucked away until we need it next year. :-)
Now to go see how things are going with that carrot and beet soup…
:-)
The Re-Farmer
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Did it work?
This afternoon, the girls and I did a bit of winterizing around the house by laying sheets of foam insulation around the base of the house and covering the septic tank, and the pipes to the house, with straw. The only part that is left to do is around the tap at the back of the house. There is still a hose attached, and we’ll likely be using both front and back hoses for a while longer. Once those are put away and we shut the water off from the inside, we’ll cover it with more pieces of foam insulation. We’re doing this quite a bit earlier than last year. There was already snow on the ground then!
Once that was done, one of my daughters and I decided it was time to take down a branch of the tree in front of the kitchen window. This is the branch the tech from our internet provider singled out as the last possible thing that might be preventing our secondary internet account from having any signal at all to its satellite dish. I can’t say that I was hopeful. There are far fewer leaves left on the branch, yet the signal to our primary account has been worse than ever.
Still, the wasps are gone, so it was time to give it a go.
We considered our options and decided to use the extended pole pruning saw to take the branch down, rather than climb up a step ladder and use something else. We figured that, this way, we could more easily jump out of the way if the branch went in an odd direction as it fell.
We also chose to cut it further out, so that the cats will still have their perching branch. They like to sit on it and watch us through the kitchen window! :-)
It was a pretty large branch, so rather than try and manhandle the whole thing, I used the reciprocating saw to break it down to smaller pieces. The thin, leafy branches went to the chipping pile in the outer yard. The lengths of the “trunk” were big enough, we lay them out around one side of the bed the white lilacs are in. We only needed to grab one more piece from another large branch we had taken down from the tree near the gate to completely line one side, and curve around the end.
Then, because I was able to find some this summer, my daughter sprayed the cut end with pruning paint.
At some point, we are going to take this tree out completely but, until then, I’d really like to get the branch hanging over the roof removed. There’s no way for us to take it down without it falling on the roof. We just don’t have the equipment to take it down safely in pieces.
So it will wait. It seems to be quite strong and unlikely to come down in a storm, but then, so did the branches on this tree that have come down in storms!
Once we were done and everything was cleaned up, we went inside to see if we could notice a difference in our signal with the primary account.
We had no internet.
Nothing.
Zero.
Zilch!!!
After doing the usual troubleshooting, there was still nothing.
So my husband started phoning our internet provider. After several calls that went straight to a busy signal, rather than their usual recorded messages to direct calls, we figured we were not the only ones having issues! My husband tried again about an hour or two later, and this time it went straight to a recording saying they were getting an unusually high volume of calls and were not able to answer.
Eventually, though, we did get our internet back!
Once we did, one of my daughters tested it out by trying to log into a particular game where our intermittent signal was giving all sorts of problems. She was actually able to log in first try – and was even able to switch servers in the game! Now, this could just mean we are having a particularly good night. It could mean taking down the branch made a difference. Or it could mean that, in fixing whatever shut down our IPs service completely, they also fixed whatever problem was causing our intermittent service.
One thing I’ve noticed in preparing to write this post, though; WordPress seems to be loading better now! I have been having endless problems embedding images into posts, and this time, they worked just fine. I still had tabs that didn’t want to load, but even those were able to finally load, much faster than usual.
Tomorrow, my husband will call our IP to get the suspension on the secondary account removed, and we will see if we finally get a signal. If there is still no signal to that dish, there’s nothing else here that would be causing the problem. For all we tried to ration our internet usage, we still went over last month, and the overage fees per gig are so high, the final bill was higher on one account, than the cost of both accounts together!
Until then, I’m just happy to have any internet at all, again!
The Re-Farmer
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It wasn’t supposed to rain today
All the forecasts showed the rains would be passed by this morning. Instead, we’ve got three large systems heading over us.
Which meant the cat food containers I put by the cat house were full of water.
At least all the food that was in them was gone, first.
I dragged over the saw horses and made them a quick shelter.
I reached into the cat house to grab the container in there to fill, but it was gone. Not just pushed back, almost out of reach, as I’ve found it before. Nope. Completely gone!
There was another container that I’d had that disappeared. I figured it got pushed under the cat house, but with this one completely gone, now I wonder!
The girls heard skunks fighting last night. I wonder if they could have dragged them off? Is that a thing skunks do?
Hopefully, the rain will be done by this afternoon, when we’re supposed to have quite pleasant temperatures. We were going to put the sheets of insulation around the bottom of the house today, as well as cover the septic tank for the winter, but we’ll see how wet it still is.
Well, now… The phone rang while I was writing this. My mother called to let me know she found a note slipped under her door, saying “your daughter has to wear a mask.” When I brought up medical exemptions, and that she shouldn’t be wearing one, either, she told me that they don’t understand that. She doesn’t want trouble, so she wears one and just pulls it away from her face, or under her neck, when she can’t breathe.
*sigh*
That is a problem to deal with another time! For now, I need to head to town to pick up a prescription refill for my husband, at the pharmacy where they are more sane about things like this!
The Re-Farmer
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Getting a little closer, and… another one
I have been using the food and water bowls outside to slowly get the little kittens used to coming to the cat house, where they will hopefully get curious enough to go inside and discover how nice and dry and warm it is in there.
There had been quite a crowd at the food bowls earlier, but they ran off as I walked around. There had been a couple of Butterscotch’s kittens there, though the others were hanging around near the door to the house, where one of the containers had been for the past week or so.
Nostrildamus is comfortable enough with me to not run off. Normally, Little Braveheart would be there, too, but…
I’ll get to that in a bit.
Yesterday, I was going to take a break from digging garden beds. Partly because I still haven’t decided if I want to make a third one, and partly because it feels like I’ve pulled all the muscles in the backs of my legs. Nothing major, but I figured a couple of days rest would be a good idea.
Which was good timing, because I got a call from my mother, asking if I could drive her for groceries. It was a bit chilly to walk.
So I headed out in the afternoon and did that. I’d forgotten that her municipality is under a mask mandate now. Even in the lobby of where my mother lives, they are supposed to wear masks. Which is so bizarre and arbitrary. Especially considering how low the numbers are right now. But, the goal posts have been moved again, and masks are now the thing.
The problem is, my mother shouldn’t be wearing a mask. She has long been complaining about breathing problems, and we haven’t been able to track down why. I tried to talk to her about it, when she asked if I had one and I told her I can’t wear masks, but it was not a conversation she could handle. She put it on before we left, leaving it under her nose, but as we were driving, I could really hear her struggling to breath. Meanwhile, no one batted an eye at my not wearing one. *sigh*
Unfortunately, my mother was in “fine form” this time. While chatting before we left, I tried showing her some pictures of the garlic beds I was working on, and she became incredibly angry. I shouldn’t be doing any of this, because it should be plowed or tilled. She saw the straw layer and, even as I tried to say I’d added compost first and what I was doing, she kept cutting me off and asking why there was straw under there. Then she got mad about the wood walkways, and said I need to take those out and plant things there, because it was a waste of space. Because apparently, there shouldn’t be room to walk in a garden. ??
That was just the start of things. After shopping, she wanted to go to a restaurant for a quick bite, and that got cut off short when my not living the way she wanted turned into a racist rant (my husband is Metis).
It was not a good time.
When I got home, the girls had the van ready and filled with stuff for the dump, so I basically switched vehicles and did that. When I was finally able to come inside to stay, I noticed the door to the new part basement was closed. Since all the cat food and most of the litter boxes are down there, I commented on it. I was informed that my younger daughter was down there.
With Little Braveheart.
While they were loading the van, she was able to pet and pick up Braveheart and Nostrildamus. She was also able to confirm that Nostrildamus is male, and Braveheart is female.
In the interest of reducing the number of future litters, Braveheart was brought inside.
We now have 15 cats in the house.
Braveheart is semi-feral – and still more feral than semi – so she’s been spending most of the time hiding somewhere. While in the basement, my other daughter would slowly introduce other cats downstairs. Braveheart had been meowing plaintively when Two Face first came down. They instantly got along, and meows became purrs as they ate together. Over the next while, she met the other cats and seemed to get along much better with the dudes than the dudettes! Fenrir does not like her, but she isn’t particularly friendly with any of the cats, so that’s not unusual. Beep Beep batted at her, but Beep Beep is in heat and has been randomly batting at all of the cats.
I’ve been putting the word out on local Facebook groups to try and adopt cats out, but have had zero responses. No one wants cats right now, apparently. Our next step is to print out posters and drive around to different towns in the area and put them up.
Today I hope to finally get my day of rest. I did start soaking down the garlic beds last night; I plan to do that again today, and will continue wetting them down over the next while until the garlic comes in. I want them to be soaked through the compost layer before planting. I’m leaning towards not doing a third bed and, if the two beds we have now are not enough, we can plant garlic in the retaining wall blocks in the old kitchen garden. Of course, that assumes our back order comes in in time!
I have also been keeping an eye on the various materials I’ve been finding lying about, and I think I have what I need to make a quick little shelter for the outside food and water bowls. I want to keep those by the cat house, but don’t want them to be buried in snow. We’ll have the heated water bowl plugged into the second outlet in the cat house. The cord should be just long enough to reach outside the entry, so I’ll want to set something up there to keep it from getting snowed under, too. Last year, it was set up inside the sun room, so that wasn’t an issue. I will be working on plans for that, today, and hopefully will start building something tomorrow, when it’s expected to be warmer, and not raining.
We’ve been very fortunate this fall, so far. Last year, we already had a snowfall by this time, and a blizzard on Thanksgiving weekend. The long range forecasts have us warmer, with rain every now and then. I’ve heard predictions for both another bitterly long and cold winter, and for a long, mild fall followed by a milder winter. So far, the longer, mild fall seems to be the one that’s coming true.
I’ll take all that I can get!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 