One of the things we found in the spruce grove was a bench made by nailing a board across 2 logs.
It was left where it was, but while doing my rounds this morning, I noticed something missing…
The board was off.
I’m not sure what knocked it off. The outside cats did sometimes sit on it, so it’s entirely possible some animal bumped it and finally knocked it off.
You can see how the rot was the worst, where wood contacted wood. One nail was still in a log (bottom of the picture), while a second nail at the other end (in the board, top of the picture) was rusted away to almost nothing; just a tall, thin bit of metal I would not have recognized as the remains of a nail at all, had I not been looking for it.
I cleared away the board and the nails, but didn’t bother moving the logs, yet.
When the spruce grove is finally cleaned up, I do want to set up a bench or two. Something make out of materials that won’t rot like this! :-)
Using a set of instructions we found, the must is to be stirred basically once every 12 hours, for the first 48 hours.
This is what the must looked like after the first 12 or so, and before I started stirring.
I have no idea if this is what it’s supposed to look like at this point. Of the various instructions and recipes I found that included pictures, I never saw one that included pictures at this stage.
I expected more of a yeasty smell, but there is barely any smell at all at this point.
After about a minute of stirring (the instructions said stir for 2 minutes, but I didn’t want to have the bucket open for that long), I popped the lid back on top. Then I made sure to write on a sticky note that the first stir is complete and left that on the lid, so no one else would accidentally pop it open and stir it again.
I’m really looking forward to seeing how this works!
Yesterday, I heard some odd meowing noises out my window, so I went to check it out.
I walked right by one of the apple trees by the old kitchen garden, completely missing it was the source of the meowing!
The base of this tree is one of the cats’ favorite rolling-in-the-dirt places. When I first spotted them, though, he was mostly hidden behind the tree. It was his Aunty Beep Beep that had me laughing. It looked like a pair of eyes was watching me from the ground!
Then she rolled around some more; the epitome of grace. Not. :-D
Since I was there anyhow, I stopped to take a good look at this apple tree.
You can see one branch is hanging quite low, weighted down by apples as they get bitter.
Much if it, however, did not survive the winter. It wasn’t doing well last year, and I guess that polar vortex that kept hitting us was too much for parts of it.
As you can see from its base, it has been cut back a few times. I don’t think there’s anything left of the original graft. The two main trunks that you see in the above picture seemed to be dead. With living and dead branches so entwined together, it was really hard to tell where one branch started another began. I couldn’t tell if they were completely dead, or if they still had a live branch or two on them.
Either way, down they came.
Not a living thing on either of them.
I cut them at about 3 feet above ground, with the intention of cutting the remains, further down. Instead, I decided to make use of them.
I took the branch that was hanging down the most and braced it against one of the remaining trunks. It had a secondary branch that immediately began leaning over in the other direction, so I used rope and the remaining trunk pieces to support them. If they survive, with this support, they will continue to grow stronger, upwards.
This is not a healthy tree, however, so we shall see.
This is how it looks now.
It’s hard to tell, with the maple grove in the background, and with the dead wood gone, there’s surprisingly little left. Basically, they’re just suckers that have survived while the rest of the tree has slowly died.
After finishing with this one, I turned to another apple tree next to it.
This tree had quite a bit pruned away, but also had signs of a fungal disease.
The branches that had the most signs of disease seem to have died.
Once again, with how twisted the branches were around each other, it was hard to see how much of any particular main branch was dead.
I ended up taking out three major branches.
One of them did have a still-living off shoot, but…
The part of it closest to the main branch is blackened. It almost looked burned.
One of the dead branches I cut out was so intertwined with others, it was really hard to pull out of the tree, with several dead branches breaking off and staying stuck among the living.
After cleaning it out, one of the living branches ended up hanging down almost to the ground. It turns out to have been supported by one of the dead sections. I could have mucked about to give it support, but in the end decided it would be better for the tree to take that weight off completely.
There was a third apple tree, growing between the plums, with a dead piece I cut off as well, though I neglected to take photos of that one.
I haven’t done much beyond maintaining what I did in this area last year, trying to focus on the East yard and the spruce grove, instead. Even so, I can see how the trees that seemed the weakest last year are either struggling even more this year, or have died outright. The row of apple trees to the north of the spruce grove is no exception. I don’t think we’ll be getting many apples this year. Not just in quantity, but they bloomed so late, it’s unlikely they’ll have time to ripen before the cold sets in. One that had been pruned back the summer before we arrived had started to recover fairly well, but not enough to survive this past winter. Others in that row have lost quite a few branches. Those, I think I’ll leave pruning back until next spring or so.
Something we will have to keep in mind as we plant more food trees: either they will be varieties hardy enough for our bitter winters, or we will have to ensure they get extra protection wrapped around them in the fall.
Today, we started up a batch of mead, using the wine kit we recently acquired.
Here are the contents of the kit, plus a 5 kilo bucket of my cousin’s liquid gold!
Looking up how to make mead had us all over the place. At its simplest, you can mix honey, water and yeast into a sanitized glass jug. Stick a balloon over the opening to allow the gasses to expand, tuck it in a cool dark place and forget about it for a few weeks.
Other sources had elaborate recipes with multiple steps and finicky measurements every step of the way.
The first: I don’t know exactly what it is, other than “caterpillar”.
I’ve been doing searches, and the closest I can guess is that it’s some variety of tussock moth. It’s quite tiny – smaller than my fingernail. I’ve never seen anything like it around here before.
The other mystery is, where did it come from?
I was at my computer, typing away, when it dropped onto my keyboard.
Before we moved out here, a tree in the spruce grove had fallen onto the fence. I have no idea when it happened, but it had to have been very recent. My older brother, spotting it, grabbed a bucksaw and cut the tree at the fence, then propped the fence wire up with a stick, then neatly tucked the top of the tree, now on the outside, against the fence.
When I was cleaning along that fence line last year, I moved the tree top away from the fence line to give me space. I just dragged it over into the space between fence and ditch and left it there until I could get back to it.
That section of tree has been sitting there ever since.
I’ve been trying our trail cam out in different locations, with varying success. Of the trees in the area, some are too large for the elastic cords used to hold it in place, but I had smaller ones, so I tried different fence posts. Finally, I tried other tree that were smaller but were also growing at quite a bit of an angle.
I’ve since moved it back to where it’s been for almost a year, though the files I went through this morning are from being on one of those leaning trees. It had a bole I could use to level the cam out a bit. Unfortunately, I found it was a bit too close to get a full view of both the gate and the outside of the driveway. Plus, one of the fence posts was right in the view. It’s one of the posts that’s rotten at the bottom, so the only thing holding it upright is the barbed wire. The wind would shift it, causing it to trigger the camera.
I did get a very pleasant surprise, though!!
An excellent video of a bird that landed on the post! There’s a second one on the wagon wheel in the background.
The bird was digging into the rotten top of the post.
Where it found something to eat!
I look forward to when we can set the trail cam up at the feeding station by the house. I just love shots like this!!!
Today was a statutory holiday, and the pharmacy my daughter works at is closed for those, so my daughter had the day off. We still made a quick trip into town, as there was a festival going on. It was the market we wanted to check out, after I mentioned some of the vendors I saw. Unfortunately, half the market wasn’t set up today, so it was a bit of a wasted trip.
Except we got churros. Which makes up for that. These are a once a year thing, so it’s a really special treat. :-D
Another treat we had was when we got home and found the little furry bean, lying in a sun spot.
Is this little guy gorgeous, or what?
While things are starting to cool down, it still wasn’t until evening that I headed out into the yard to water a few things. I was pleasantly surprised to see Guildenstern coming into the yard with her baby.
After watching them for a bit, Junk Pile Kitten ran into the lilac bushes, so I settled myself on the steps at the door on that side and watched.
I was not disappointed.
What a beauty! Just look at those eyes!
He came pretty close to me, playing with a couple of the sun room kittens that came by. Including his brother, Keith. :-)
I was able to get a bit of pruning done in the yard. Some of it was getting rid of low hanging branches that were starting to hang too low. Some of it was in the lilac near where I’ve planted the haskap berry bushes. Some of the branches were hanging low enough to be all stabby at me when I try to mow around the bed, but most of what I cut away was dead branches, twisted among and around the live ones. That opened the bush up quite a bit.
The kittens immediately took advantage of that.
There was 4 of them in there, at one point! :-D
As I was hauling the branches off to the wood pile, my husband went around to get some photos of the sun going down through the trees. We could see a cat off by the pump shack. After putting the wheelbarrow away, I decided to see which cat was out there, because Beep Beep has been pretty vicious about chasing Rosencrantz off in that direction.
It was, indeed, Rosencrantz, but I had another pleasant surprise, too.
She and her baby are using the pump shack again! It looks like the little guy can squeeze himself through that hole in the bottom of the door.
The hole was not that big before.
He is such a dark grey little kitty!
The other kittens came around, and he did play with one of them that came over, a little bit, but for the most part they stayed away from each other.
I’m really glad they have stayed nice and close. I hope Pump Shack Baby will make friends with the sun room kittens and start coming to the house for food.
I may not have gotten a lot of work done outside, but seeing the two other kittens is enough to make up for that. :-D
My husband passed the furry little bean off to me this morning, while I was at the desktop. Dave promptly curled up in a ball and fell asleep on my chest, making the most interesting nose noises.
He then abruptly stood up, clambered up my shoulder, leapt across the chasm to my bed, and snuggled up to Fenrir.
He burrowed right into her fur and went back to sleep.
She didn’t even open her eyes.
That didn’t stop him from stretching out and luxuriating.
And twisting himself into this weird shape. That’s his bottom leg curled up in front. It’s like his head is coming out from under Fenrir, rather than attached to his body. :-D
Also on my bed was this furry black mama orb.
She typically ignores our new addition, but has been getting more accommodating; even a bit playful with him.
But cuddles?
This is a pretty huge new step in their relationship! :-D
As I was finishing up on my computer this morning, before heading into town for the afternoon, my husband came over to talk.
Our conversation was interrupted by a sudden, bizarre noise. I thought, for a moment, it was actually coming from outside.
Nope.
It was coming from my computer.
Once we established that, we could figure out that it was coming from a fan.
So I shut it down, and my wonderful, darling husband opened it up for me while I was away.
It was a mighty battle, but he was able to defeat the dust bunnies that had taken up residence in there.
Both fans were cakes on pretty solidly!
By the time I got home, my desktop was once again running on silent mode. :-D
Ah, but the technical stuff didn’t end there!
My husband gifted me with his new phone. My own phone plan is done next month, and he realized that his new tablet meets his needs quite well. So we’re transferring his new phone to me, then when my contract is done, we’re going to just switch things with the provider, and drop a phone off our bundle. This will knock a substantial chunk off our mobile phone bill (which is crazy high, considering we barely get any signal where we live).
So several hours were then spent getting those switched and set up.
I’ve been using Samsung phones for many years. The new phone is an LG. The user interface is going to take some getting used to! :-D
As I did my evening rounds, however, I had opportunity to test out the camera. It’s a dual lens camera, and supposed to be one of the better cell phone cameras out there.
Looks like Guildenstern has moved Junk Pile cat out of the yard.
Or maybe they’re just visiting another junk pile.
Well… not really a junk pile. The kitten is hiding under a hood that is over a pallet that it’s attached to. It has a handle attached to it. I think it was built to be a sort of sled, to be dragged behind a snowmobile.
Guildenstern was watching me suspiciously!
I do wish they would just stay with the other cats and kittens. The kittens would play with each other, but Butterscotch and Beep Beep have both been going after and chasing away Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, lately.
Rosencrantz seems to have taken her baby some place well outside the inner yard. No sign of that one, since the one day we saw it by the junk pile.
Ah, well. Such is life with semi-feral cats!
As for the camera… well, so far, the digital zoom does seem to be better than my old camera phone.
The Re-Farmer 