Clean up: spruce grove fence line, more progress, part two

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After working my way through the first section, I realized the stuff I’d cleared away had hidden quite a bit.  So here are some before photos of the next section. (click on them to see them better)

The little spruces were far enough from the fence that I found myself wondering, should I take them out, or should I just prune them clear of the fence?  When I’m in that situation, I try to think ahead 10, 20 or more years.  What will they be like if I leave them?

This was made easy today, by looking at the large spruce that’s already there, even closer to the fence.

What tree, you might be asking?

This one.  In the during and after photos.

Yup, those little spruces were completely hiding a huge spruce, right at the fence.

Also, another little spruce that grew under the fence line and even wound its way back and forth around them.

Reaching that big spruce was my goal for the day.  If all goes well, the next time I work here, I should reach the gate.

In that after photo, note the red Christmas light bulb.  Look for it in these next photos.

The first of these three photos was taken from outside the fence line, where I went to clear some of the trees growing there.  There are many more, closer to the ditch, that need to be cleared, but those will wait for now.

If you look closely, you can see that red Christmas light bulb in the first and third photos.

Did you notice something else in the after photos?  Take another look at the top fence wire.  What you can see of it, anyhow.

I found a temporary fix for the broken wire.

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Once I cleared this area of the fence line, I found that when I pulled on the end with the loop in it (on the left of the above photo), it could almost touch the broken end (on the right in the photo, now with its own loop).  I don’t know when I’ll be able to fix it properly, but I didn’t want to leave it broken and hanging, either.  So I went to the garage and grabbed some zip ties, created a new loop on the broken wire end, and joined them by linking 4 zip ties loosely together.  Once they were all linked, I tightened all the zip ties as much as I could, then trimmed the ends with the pruning shears.  Now, the top line that was broken is tighter than the middle line, which got stretched when the tree fell on it, but didn’t break.  :-)

While making my way to the garage, I found this.

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Another bench, made out of logs with a board across the top.  I’ve gone through here a few times, but had to practically step on it before I saw it!  I tried to pick it up, to see if it was usable, but it is so rotten, it started to fall apart, so I left it for now.  It will be cleared out when we get to taking out all the deadwood and continuing to clean up the spruce grove, next year.  Though on this end, it’s not really a spruce grove any more.  Closer to the garage, and the south fence line, it’s more poplar, elms and oak.  The elms and oak are in rows, so those were planted deliberately.  The poplar looks to have sown itself.  There are even what might be some apple trees in here.

Once I’ve cleared the East fence line to the gate, I will work my way down the south fence line, along the driveway, just enough to clear it.  There are poplars growing right at the wires, and while the south fence line has good posts, just like the East line does, many of them are falling over.   Especially right next to the garage.  It is along this fence line that the power cord from the garage runs.  We might not get to straightening them out this year, but if there’s going to be electrical cord supported by this fence, I want it to be able to stay upright!

We shall see how far along there we will be able to get, before the weather turns.

Looking ahead to the future, I hope to have a number of seating areas scattered about – with seats made of materials that won’t rot or degrade as quickly as the wooden benches I’ve been finding.  The goal is to clear this area enough to give it a park-like feel, plus I want to be able to see through the trees from the house to the driveway.  At the same time, I do want to leave some of the undergrowth, too.  Dogwood.  Wild roses.  False spirea. Junipers.  I look forward to planting shade loving plants and flowers in areas where they can naturalize, and ground cover that can be walked on.  Over time, I want this yard, including the spruce and maple groves, to be a sanctuary, not only for us humans, but to shelter some of the native wildlife, and to provide food and shelter for native pollinators as well.

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: spruce grove fence line, more progress, part one

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The chilly weather we’ve had for the past few days has really got me wanting to finish this fence line along the spruce grove!  As long as I can clear to the driveway gate before winter, anything else is gravy! :-)

I took a whole bunch of photos, so I’m splitting them into two posts again.  Here is the first section I worked on.  With how I was finding things, I decided to go with before, during and after photos.

This is where I left off, last time.  I was able to leave the oaks, just pruning them a bit, for transplanting next year.  They are really leaning towards the fence, where they would have been getting the most light, but once they are planted somewhere more open, they should start growing straight again.

Over the years, I could see that someone had trimmed branches back from the fence line.  A lot of those have died, but are high enough and short enough that I will leave them for now.  I pruned the undergrowth only as much as I needed to, to clear the fence and access things.

That meant cutting away some of the things growing in the juniper, as well as some of the dead juniper branches.

The ground cover (I am not 100% certain that they are juniper, but that’s what I’m calling them for now) stayed as well.  I had to walk all over them, but they can handle it.  They did make working in the area more treacherous, though!

I know these have been growing here for a long time, but seeing this stem really shows just how long.

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It takes a lot of years for these to get such thick stems!

Clearing this first section revealed enough that I took before and after photos of the next section, too.  Which will be in my next post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Luring kittens

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One of the things we like to do is leave the inner doors open, so our cats can look outside.  The outer door at the main entry has a window almost all the way to the bottom, at the perfect height for them to sit and look out.  The step outside, however, is lower than the floor, so the cats outside have to make more effort to look in.

As I walked past this morning, I heard DahBoy making some noise at the door.  He was batting at the bottom of the window, where I could just see the top of a head and front paws of another tuxedo, batting back!  :-D

Seeing this, I decided to grab some cat treats and see if I could convince some kittens to come close.

With the rain we’ve had lately, my usual places to sit are on the damp side, so I opened up the sun room, leaving a trail of treats, to see if any would come in.

Of the kittens that did come out, all but one of them eventually came into the sun room!

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Doom Guy, the tuxedo, was quick to go inside, though he was not willing to let me pet him today.  While I saw the bigger orange tabby around, only the teeny tabby stuck around.  Only one of the calico-tories showed up.

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This is the closest Rosencrantz or Gildenstern has come near me in ages!

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Corvo, the grey, came in, but was more about checking things out than having treats.

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He was the only one to actually start climbing around, going up onto my dad’s chair.  It’s a rocker, so I’m a bit surprised he’d go onto something that moves.  He also started to push his way into the cube shelf, knocking out a spare insect zapping racket in the process, and scaring himself out of the room! :-D

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Even the teeny tabby came in, but not much farther than the doorway.

I’ve left the outside doors to the sun room open for now.  There were still treats on the floor, and I figure my not being there would let the shier kittens have more of a chance to get some.

I want to snuggle them so much!

:-D

The Re-Farmer

They’re BaaaAAAaack!

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We’ve had ourselves an afternoon of kittens and cows! :-D

My daughter and I had to head into town this afternoon, but as we left the house, we got distracted by a Doom Guy.

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Who is starting to get used to this whole “being held” thing, and enjoying head scritches.  Oh, was he purring up a storm!

The girls had gone out to see the kittens this morning, too, and he allowed himself to be picked up.  It has been quite chilly, so I think he is appreciating the body heat that comes from being held by a human! :-D

I think this is having an effect on the other kittens, too.  They’re starting to come closer, even if they don’t let us come near them.  Though they also seem to be begging for treats, too.  More on that, later! :-D

When we got back from town and pulled up to the gate, we found cows!  Just a few of them in the outer yard, while others were in the old hay yard.  There was no surge of the entire herd coming in like last time.

The vehicle and people gates to the yard were open, as was the garage door, when we left.  !!

Thankfully, no cows were in the garage.  While I closed the vehicle gate to the inner yard, my daughter got her stuff from the van and closed up the garage.  Then I went to check the electric wire gate by the barn, because I could see that the insulated wire holders were still upright.  I found the wire broken and dragged into the outer yard, so I paused to move it aside, so no cows would get tangled in it. As I did that, one of the cows came walking past me, through the gate.

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This immediately concerned me, because she was limping very heavily on a front leg.  I followed her a bit and managed to get a picture of her looking back at me on her right.  This allowed me to zoom in on the photo and read the number on her ear tag.

I then went in (making sure the people gate was closed up) and phoned up the renter to let him know his cows had come through again.  We both think the recent rains (another thunderstorm came through last night) has been causing problems with his electric fence.  I let him know the tag number on the injured cow, though with how heavily she was limping, she would be hard to miss.

After I called him, I went to walk around the yard, just in case a cow got in and no one noticed.  We do have a couple of gaps in the fence by the old log building that a determined cow could get through, even if the gates were closed.

Walking around was much more challenging than expected!  Butterscotch came over and kept winding herself around my legs as I walked.  As much as I tried to avoid it, I still ended up kicking her in the head, at least twice.  Do you think that stopped her?  Not a chance!

Beep Beep and several kittens followed along, too!

They were most definitely begging for treats. :-D

Even the shy kittens were following me along.

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Rosencrantz, or Gildenstern, came along, then the bigger orange tabby came running, too. :-D

Even pausing to take the photo was an unexpected challenge. :-D

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Butterscotch may not like being picked up, but she was certainly willing to try climbing my leg!

About an hour later, I could hear an engine, letting me know the renter was here, so I went out again.  The cows were nice and co-operative about getting back to the barn side of the fence.  We stopped to talk for a bit, and it now looks like I’ll be buying a round bale of straw from him. :-D  I had made arrangements to get 6 small square straw bales delivered a few days ago from someone else.  I only need enough to cover the top of the septic tank, then plan to layer the rest on the smaller garden by the Old Kitchen.  Unfortunately, the person never showed up, and hasn’t been answering my messages, so I don’t know what’s going on.  I asked if he could recommend someone I could buy from, and after asking what I needed, he said he could sell me one.  A round bale will have much more straw than we need, but it won’t go to waste, that’s for sure.  When things dry up later, he’ll deliver one into our yard for us.  Unlike smaller straw bales, there’s no way we’d be able to get it into the yard ourselves!

I also let him know how much we are enjoying his cows, and made sure to let him know we didn’t mind them getting through the gate.  My only concern is that, with all the stuff around, they’ll get hurt.  Which I’m hoping is not what happened to the limping cow.  It could just be a rock in her hoof, but until he gets a look, there’s no way to know.  There was visible sign of an injury other than her limping.  We did joke about how curious they are, and get into everything.  Do they ever!  They are so interested in the cats, too.

A unexpected bonus with the cows breaking through the fence.  I’m getting to know the renter more, and he’s a really nice guy. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Home canned chili

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Last night, I made up some chili in the slow cooker, for ourselves and my mother when she gets home form the hospital.  You can see my recipe here, though I slightly modified it this time.  I added a rutabaga with the vegetables, an extra can of beans, and used two cans of crushed tomatoes, instead of one, plus tomato paste.  I also skipped the cream.  Lots of fibre and iron in here, which my mother will need for the next while.

This morning, I put up 12 pint sized jars of the chili.

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I don’t have the equipment to pressure can these, but these are not intended for long term storage.  Done this way, they should last 6 weeks or more, in the fridge.

I found a flat bottomed, rectangular roasting pain with rack while cleaning the Old Kitchen.  It was the perfect size to hold all the jars.  I put the jars on the rack and, after setting kettles to boil water to scald them, added hot tap water to the roasting rack, so there would be no chance of anything cracking.  I scalded the lids and rings in a stainless steel bowl, then poured boiling water into all the jars to disinfect them all.  I scalded my jar funnel, too.  I am so glad I picked that thing up!!

Once the jars were scalded and emptied, I could use the roasting pan to carry them all together to the crock pot.  I left the hot water in the pan.  To fill the jars, I would put some chili in, then use a (scalded) fork to poke at it and get out any air pockets, fill it the rest of the way (with a half inch head space) then poke at it again to get rid of the air pockets.  After removing the funnel, I popped a lid in place, then moved on to the next one.  Using the roasting rack made it much more organized.

Once filled, I put on the rings, but did not tighten them all the way, then moved them all onto some paper towel to cool slowly.  Once fully cooled, I’ll tighten the rings the rest of the way.  Not too tight, though.  I don’t want my mother to have a hard time opening them!

This took up about half of our 8 quart crock pot of chili.

So I had chili for breakfast. :-D

The Re-farmer

Kitten Heaven!

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The kittens have been tearing around all over the place!

Last night, I spent some time outside with them, tossing out cat treats in various directions.  The tuxedo was once again the only kitten that would come near me, and even allowed me to pet him.

This afternoon, while heading out to go pick up some prescription refills, they heard as and all came out – even the ones that wouldn’t come near us.  My husband has been putting food out for them in the mornings, but they didn’t all come out until later.

So of course, my daughter and I paused to say hello.

Beep Beep’s kittens now have names.  Meet Doom Guy, the tuxedo.

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Who loves my daughter’s new purse!

While we were out, we started to hear some plaintive meowing from… somewhere.

It turned out to be one of the inside cats, at the kitchen window.

Beep Beep’s tabby went to take a look.  Meet Corvo (why yes, my daughters are gamers… why do you ask? LOL)

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He had even stretched up, with his paws on the wall, trying to get closer to the window, but I wasn’t able to get a picture.  Too cute!

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Butterscotch, three of her babies, and Beep Beep, at the food bowls.  The larger orange tabby made a showing, but I wasn’t able to get a picture of him.

Then, something amazing happened.

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Doom Guy allowed my daughter to pick him up.  He not only stayed (though he wasn’t quite sure how to handle being held) and let us pet him, but even started to purr!!

So awesome!

Just before we left, my daughter had to rescue her bag again. :-D

Well, okay. He’s not quite comfortable around us, yet. :-D

In other things; it had been my plan to work along the fence line today, but it was much chillier than I expected.  So it was a morning to do some crochet.  Later on, I’ll be making a big batch of chili in the crock pot, and setting some aside in jars for my mother, for when she comes home from the hospital.  Between my siblings and I, she will hopefully not have to cook for quite some time, and can focus on recovery.  Though there has been come discomfort for her, everything has been going very well with her.  At the moment, she’s expected to come home on Saturday, and my older brother plans to stay with her for a few days, to help her out.  We should know by then if she will need home care or not, too.  I hope she does get it, just to make sure she doesn’t over do things too early.  My family is notorious for ignoring pain or injury and pushing ourselves through it, even when we shouldn’t! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Green

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Our day started with thunder and much needed rain.

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While going into the medical centre for my husband’s appointment this afternoon, I couldn’t resist getting pictures of the lush green spruces and their pine cones, along the parking lot.  Such lovely, healthy, trees they have on the grounds.  :-)  It’s amazing how quickly everything perks up after a good rainfall.

While in the waiting room, we heard a massive peal of thunder!  The storm didn’t hit directly, though.  We just got some good rain.  It would have been good to get it earlier in the year, but I’ll take what we can get!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: spruce grove fence line, part 3

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Yes!  I finally got to the area where the trees had fallen on the fence!

What the area looked like before can be seen in this post.

First, I got rid of part of the tree further into the grove, so I could drag things by.

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The next area actually had three fallen trees in it, each having fallen at different time.  One had fallen with its top just touching the fence.  In clearing that out, I discovered it was so rotten, the branches I grabbed to move it just broke off.  Then, when I tried to shift the trunk itself, to decide where and how to saw it, it broke, too.

I cleared away the broken part and left the rest for now.

Another fallen tree was under the three that had fallen the most recently, but it was small enough, and smooth enough, I was able to just pull it out from underneath, then carry it away.

Then I cut branches from the one that had fallen onto the fence, before cutting through the trunk itself, a few feet away from the fence.  Once that piece was free, the reduction of weight shifted the center of gravity, and the rest of the tree lifted and shifted!  I ended up rotating it a bit further, and left it.

This left things clear enough for me to continue on the fence, so I’ve left it for now, too.

Here are the after pictures to match the before pictures from the previous post.

I will leave pruning the little stuff for another day.  If I had a heavy duty enough weed trimmer, I’d just use that, but my little trimmer isn’t able to handle more than grass and smaller weeds.  When I’m done clearing the fence line, I plan to use the trimmer outside of the fence.

Here is another view.

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I will leave continuing outside the fence for another time, too.

Also, the beer can I had noticed before turned out to be a bottle. :-D

It’s the brand my late brother drank, which means he was probably the last person to do maintenance on the fence itself.  He passed in 2010, so it’s been there since before then!

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The next section has these oak trees at the fence line, and some juniper.  I’m going to leave the juniper as ground cover, clearing out any other trees that have started to grow in them, and I am deciding on whether or not I should leave the oak to transplant next year.  When I get back to this area, I will decide based on how in the way they are, or not.  I’ve seen quite a few oak saplings about that can be transplanted, so if I do end up having to cut these away, there are others I can use.

At this point, I’m about 3/4 of the way to the gate.  If all goes well, next time I work here, I should be able to reach it. :-D

I love how much better it looks, even if it’s not quite finished.

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: spruce grove fence line, part 2

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I’ve got some before photos, and some taken during the clean up.  By this point, I had pretty much stopped with the pruning shears, except to clear things that were in the way.

These three before pictures were taken in an area just before there a tree had fallen on the fence.  I wanted to at least clear that area, as my goal for the day.

One thing that was noticeable is that, over the years, there was some maintenance done around here.  Despite the weird tops of some of the fence posts, they are all good posts, and still straight.  There is a bit of wiggle on them, but that could be attributed to how dry it has been.  The fence wire itself would also have been good, if trees hadn’t fallen on it!

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I didn’t want to go too far into the grove, but this tree top had to go.  It was in the way of clearing things out.  The stump of the tree can be seen where I’d cleared previously, near the open, mossy area.

I also went outside the fence to move away the top of the tree that fell on the fence.

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This is what my older brother had cut, to get it off the fence itself, shortly after we moved out here.  For now, I’m just leaving this here.  It will need to be cut down a bit before being hauled away, due to its size.

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Here’s where it had fallen on the fence.  I took a closer look at that ant hill, and there’s no sign of ants left in it.  It has been abandoned.  Which is good, because I had to cut some small trees out of it!

Then I made some discoveries.

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In the next section of fence, I found the end of a string of Christmas lights.

Notice the wire it is wrapped around.  If you follow it up, you can see it end in a loop.

In this next photo, you can see where it should be.

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This is where two lengths of barbed wire were joined together, but when the tree fell on the fence, on end broke off.

Once the fence line is clear, I will be repairing this.  I even found a tool for tightening fence wire that I can use; one of the few useful things that didn’t disappear while this place was empty!

I started unwinding the Christmas lights and found…

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… the fallen tree had also unplugged the string of lights.

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This is where it had been plugged into.  This string of lights reaches to the outlet box and still works.  I will leave it for now.  Eventually, I want to replace them with LED lights.

After this, it was time to climb back through the fence and start clearing on the inside, which will be in my next post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: spruce grove fence line, part 1

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I was able to get back to working on the fence line of the spruce grove today.  I got quite a bit of progress, so I’m splitting the before and after photos into several posts.

I also came back to some updates about my mother, and am happy to hear her surgery went well and she is recovering quite nicely.  She is in good hands, too. :-)

Here is the progress I got done in the first section.  For these pictures, I propped my phone up on a fence post near where I left off last time.

To the right of the fence line, I’d already done some work clearing things around the trees, but not so much the fence itself.

I decided to clear the trees growing on the road side of the fence.  One advantage of having barbed wire fence.  It’s easy to get through.  Handy for work like this, but not very secure.

I discovered something while clearing the trees on the road side of the fence.

Someone had tried to do this before.

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Many of the saplings were like this; new growth out of the remains of an older little stump.  None of the stumps were cut, though.  From the jagged edges, I wonder if someone just broke them?

The pile at the bottom of the tree in the after photo is what I tossed over the fence while clearing on the road side.

Almost all of this was done using pruning sheers.  Which is much more time consuming! A lot of what I was clearing was wild roses, and my goodness, they are a pain!  Literally!  Those skinny little thorns like to slide right through the rubber palms of my gloves.  Then, when I try to toss them onto the pile, they stick to the gloves, instead.

I used the extended pruning saw to take down some of the low hanging dead branches as well, though I am not doing this as thoroughly as I did previously.  I can come back to do the rest later.  I just want to focus on getting that fence clear as quickly as I can, while the weather is good.

Now to process the next set of pictures. :-D

The Re-Farmer