Clean Up: Old Kitchen – getting started

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Today’s plans ended up changing a bit.  (photo heavy post ahead! :-) )

Originally, the only thing on the schedule for today was a medical appointment for my husband in the morning, so that was a drive into town.  After we got back, my daughters and I talked about plans to head into the city tomorrow for the Costco shopping.  My husband’s disability payment doesn’t come in until Friday, but his CPP disability came in today.  With Canada Day happening this weekend, the last thing I wanted to do was shop on Friday!  My plan was to move the big freezer in the old kitchen, which we emptied last night, to a more accessible spot, while starting to pack things up for the storage shed.  Doing the old kitchen is going to be a bit different, since we ended up having to store some of our own stuff in there for the winter, so it’s a mix of things we need to pack and move out, and things we need to keep.

My younger daughter had her own errand to run in the city, and we ended up deciding to do both her errand and the Costco shopping today, instead of tomorrow.  So I started on the old kitchen, just enough to move the freezer.

Here are the before pictures.

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Under this window is where the younger of my brothers had his freezer, which they took out before winter.  My older daughter’s tent ended up in there, and the taped up parts of a utility shelf is ours, along with the watering can.  This is the window where we have extension cords going into the sun room.

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The shelf in the corner is going to be removed at some point.  Both it and the wall mounted shelf are full of mostly jars.  There is also a very light, folding walker in there that my dad used indoors, tucked away in front of that purple curtain.  The round wooden thing in the corner is a seed sifter.  The bath transfer seat was my dad’s, and we will be keeping that.  He didn’t use it for long before he went to the nursing home, so it’s still in good shape.  It’s also sturdy enough that it’s been used to get up onto the shelf, so that we can reach the breaker panel above.

Once we move the shelves out, we’ll need to have something handy to access the breakers.  My older brother, wonderful man that he is, wired in a new breaker for the drier when he moved the washer and drier out of the basement and into the main entry.  In the process, he added extra wire, so when we are ready to, we can add another breaker for something else.  It was VERY difficult to add more electrical, so this will save some future problems.

And yes.  That is aluminum foil on the other window.  I’m guessing it’s because it faces West, so it is to block the sun as it sets and helps keep the room cool.

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There is my parents’ freezer that we are using.

Yeah, we had to crawl over the stuff to get at it.

Those are the only areas I intended to work on today.  I cleared out the stuff under the window, where the freezer was going to go, moved the stuff in front of the freezer, all into the sun room or outside, then move the shelf with the drawers out of the way.

Those drawers are full of odds and ends.  I haven’t even tried to do more than take a quick peek in them, so far.

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Yay!  We can access the freezer, now!

I also got rid of the curtain on the window.  I’m kinda liking the fact that we don’t need to have curtains or blinds to keep people from seeing into our home.  We can have privacy AND light at the same time! :-D  My mom, on the other hand, put curtains everywhere, including using them to hide the contents of shelves, like the purple one here.

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This is what was under the freezer and shelf.

Ew.

All I can do for now is sweep.  That floor is going to need a lot of work!

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Now, the utility shelf can finally be used.

Do you see that big, black enameled bowl on the shelf on the right?  Somewhere, there is a lid for it.  That’s the bowl my mother used to mix bread dough for her once a week bread baking.  She would start the dough in the morning, cover it and leave it for the first rising while she went to milk the cows.  By the time she was done, the dough would have overflowed the container, which would be pushed back, punched down and left for a second rising.  After more chores, she would punch down the dough again, then start forming buns.  Before long, the kitchen and dining table would be covered with trays of buns, as she would start baking them in batches.  She would continue, late into the night, before she was done.  I am sure she made bread loaves, too, but I only remember buns; we loved them, so that’s what she made the most.  Once the buns started coming out of the oven, however, we would go at them like ravenous wolves!  They were meant to be bagged up, with some frozen for later in the week, but I think there were some days when we ate too many, too quickly.  I have a memory of seeing her face, once, with this sort of dismayed look on it, as she looked over what was left of her day’s labour.

As an adult, I now understand that feel, but as a child, I just loved her bread!  It was awesome.

And now I have the bowl.  Not sure if I’ll put it into storage or not.  Depends on if I find the lid. :-)

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And now, it all looks like crap again! LOL  I just put most of the stuff back again, to wait until we can pack things up and put it into storage.

Meanwhile, here is what the rest of the room looks like.

Keep in mind that this is just a tiny addition to the main log part of the house.

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Well, this picture didn’t turn out very well.

The grid wall is my daughter’s, and goes with her tent, so those will be kept.  The giant mirror behind it is one of many we’ve found around the house (and there’s still one that needs to come down) that are huge, and damaged.  Likely salvaged from who knows where.

The aquarium box is from when we had to get a small aquarium for my aquatic plants, since we were never able to set up the 90 gallon tank.  Without being able to replace the broken piece on the filter, I might not be able to set that up until we can buy a whole new filter, which I certainly don’t want to do.  I got the one I have at a massive discount.  A new equivalent one would cost me $400!  I can’t even find the part I need online, at the brand’s website. :-(

The tank is past warranty now, so the box can go.

You can see the stove pipe in the back from the wood burning cook stove that’s completely hidden by all the stuff in front of it.  This is the stove we used until the new part was added to the house, and we got an electric stove, running water, and an indoor bathroom.  We continued to use it when there were power outages.  Those happened fairly regularly, until the power lines were all upgraded.  Country lines were pretty low on the priority list.

The stove is mere inches away from the wall, and there is no fireproof protection behind it.  That was normal, back in the day, but completely against fire safety regulations today.  We’d never be able to use it, as is.

The stove is covered with stuff, and the warming shelves are also full of stuff.  All things we will be packing away.  Tucked into a corner on the right are wall shelves, full of more stuff.  Including, I think, the parts and pieces of our old cream separator.  The basin, at least, is there.

I am hoping to completely clear the stove so that we can clean it up and have it as basically an historical decoration.

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More odd bits of scrap carpet and rug pieces on the floor.  The Christmas lights are ours; we didn’t put up our tree for our first Christmas here, so they didn’t get used.  That dual cassette player on the floor used to be mine!  My dad had it in the sun room, so he could listen to the radio.  I’ve put that thing away so many times, and somehow, it always ended up on the floor.  Now it’s in the utility shelf, and it had darn well better stay there! :-D

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The blue bit of carpet is now gone.  That window is waiting and ready to replace the one with aluminum foil on it.

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My mother’s salt and pepper shaker collection.

Those, and the shelf they are on, will be packed and put into storage.

I also got rid of the curtain on the door.

Not only was part of it stuck at the hinge, but it was taped in place, as well as being on a tiny curtain rod.  Likely to keep it from billowing as the door was opened and closed.

This is the last usable room we need to pack and clean.  (I’m not really counting the basements and attic above the old kitchen, since they are not spaces we use regularly.)  I’m looking forward to being able to open the door and not have to worry about the cats sneaking in.  The door doesn’t latch well, so if we could just leave it instead of having to fight with it every time we open and close it, that would make life easier! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Down it goes

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When things started to cool down, I did a check around the yard to see how things were.

No surprise at all to find that, having taken down a dead tree trunk recently, the still living but broken branch is was supporting has come down.

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Unfortunately, it hasn’t broken completely.

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The break is way too high for any attempt to cut it with the extended pruning saw.  I tried to pull and twist it, but it’s still hanging on.  All I managed to do was break of some smaller branches.

I’m just going to have to leave it for now.  As it dries up, it should eventually become brittle enough to pull down.

Meanwhile, it is basically blocking the path around to the back of the storage house that I was able to go through with the riding mower.  Which means that, when I do get the chance to mow, I’m going to have to find some way to either get it down, or somehow prop it to one side until I’m done mowing.

Oh, my!  As I wrote this post, some very dark clouds moved in from the West.  We’ve got storm warnings for that side of the province, though not as far us.  Hopefully, we’ll at least get some rain. According to my weather app, we should have heavy rain and a thunderstorm in 21 minutes.  Whether that actually hits us, we shall see!  The last few predictions of rain and storm missed us entirely.

The Re-Farmer

 

 

Good thing we have two driveways

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We have ourselves another scorcher today.  I had hoped to mow the inner yard today, but I don’t want to risk the riding mower’s motor overheating in these temperatures.  So it will wait.  I was also thinking of doing the last bit of the clean up I had started doing around the storage house yesterday, stopping when it got just too hot to be working outside, but nope.  Not gonna happen in this heat!

Despite the heat, both cats are very cuddly.  DaBoy spends his nights upstairs, taking over the bottom of one of the girls’ beds.  You’d think, with his fur coat, the last thing he’d want to do is be in the hottest part of the house, snuggling up to warm feet, but he does.

At least his mom is doing it in the coolest room in the house; the master bedroom.

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She was using my ankle and foot as a pillow.

Being the suck that I am, I was “trapped” for some time by the adorable fur ball.

My husband has been having a very bad pain day today, so he asked me to go into town to pick up something to help.

It’s a good thing he did.  Otherwise, we would not have known until we were heading out for his medical appointment tomorrow, that we were locked in.

My younger daughter came along with me, and when the girls are along for the ride, they typically go ahead to the gate to unlock and open it while I get the van and drive through, then they lock it up again.  This time, I drive up to the gate, and she’s still struggling with the gate.

The lock is a combination lock; the only thing we had handy at the time my mother asked us to start locking the gate.  Of the 4 tumblers, three weren’t turning.

We tried using tools.  We tried oiling it.  Nothing.  Those tumblers would not move.

Thankfully, we have another driveway, and that gate has a key lock on it.

This other driveway is not normally used.  I’ve mowed a path to it, because we still need to rebuild the barbed wire gate and just haven’t gotten around to it.  Right now, the lock and chain are the only thing keeping it upright and closed.  It’s a rough drive to the gate, the the driveway itself is overgrown.  I knew the path to the gate was clear, because I’d just mowed it, but we double checked the driveway itself to make sure there was nothing that would blow a tire on us or something.  It was good.

So when we got to town, our first stop was at a hardware store.  I picked up a new key lock, plus heavier duty bolt cutters.  It was funny as we went to pay for them.  The cashier joked about using the bolt cutters to cut a lock, then replacing it with a new one.  We told her that yes, that’s exactly what we were doing!  Then we explained that our lock was a combination lock, and the tumblers weren’t turning.  I added in, “Either the weather got to it, or someone tampered with it.”

Her response was, someone probably tampered with it.  When I commented that we live in the middle of nowhere, she just nodded and said, yeah; that’s where it’s most likely.  Then she told us about her brother, who has a trailer out in the sticks, and someone had broken into his locked gate and stole a quad.

An unfortunately reality of living in the sticks.  You’d think it would be safer, but people know that chances of getting caught are much lower, and the police are at least half and hour away.

I couldn’t see any sign of tampering on our lock, but unfortunately, I can’t rule it out.  For it to suddenly stop working like this, it actually seems more likely to be the cause than weather.

After getting the new lock and bolt cutters, we finished our errands, then did a bit of quick Pokemon Go.  We paused to battle a gym at the beach, sitting outside at a picnic table as we played.  Oh, what a lovely breeze off the water!

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The temperatures were 28C, with the humidex putting it at 32C, but the lake it still quite cool, and it made for such a pleasant time outside.

We didn’t stay for long, though.  Once at home, we cut the broken lock off and put on the new one.  I’m going to have to cut copies of the key, so we all have one, plus an extra in the house.  I’ve kept the old lock and will see if I can find a way to open it up and see why it stopped working.

We did stop at the post office on the way home, and found a nice little surprise.  We got our reimbursement for our vehicle registration in our previous province.  It was enough to cover the cost of the bolt cutters, at least. :-)

For now, we keep cool inside.  Looking around in the basement, I found an oscillating fan that actually works, though it needs a major cleaning.  That’s what I’ll be working on, next.

While having lunch with my brother and his wife on the weekend, I found out about something I had been wondering.  In the old part basement, at the window that we used to throw wood through, is a platform.  I had no idea why it was there.  It turns out my brother built it to hold a fan.  There is a screen to replace the window that’s there now, and the fan was used for air circulation to help keep the house cool.  The basement doors would be left open to help cool the house down, but we can’t do that until we’ve cleaned up the new part basement so it’s safe if the cats get down there.  We talked about getting a cheap screen door in the short term, to keep the cats out until we can do that.  The door is a standard size, so we could actually do that.  Something to keep in mind!

My brother described the fan he had on the platform, and none of us could remember seeing it, so I went looking around today.  Which is why I found the oscillating fan.

No sign of the fan he’d built the platform for.  Like so many other things, it has gone missing.  Another thing that came up in conversation, since I’d mentioned my search for a pitchfork in the past, is that there had been about 6 or 8 pitchforks stored in the barn.  There is no sign of them, now.

It’s a good thing we are living here now.  Too many things disappeared while this place was empty. :-(

The Re-Farmer

Beware the Chair Fungus

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There is a chair.

It’s a sturdy metal chair, painted grey, with a padded grey seat, covered in vinyl.

This is an outside chair.  I don’t know where it came from, or how long its been outside, but I remember it being there since at least 2009, when we took a road trip to visit family out here.

I remember my dad sitting on it, outside the sun room, with the outside cats all around him.  Now, it is on the concrete pad, outside the main entry.

I’ve been thinking of repainting it and doing something about the cracks and holes in the seat.  Chairs as sturdy as this one are rather hard to come by, these days.

I should probably get on that.

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The Re-Farmer

Oh, Dear

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As we dealt with the cows this morning, I phoned up the renter to let him know about his broken electric gate.  Later in the morning, before heading to town to meet my brother and his wife for lunch, I took a quick walk around.  Fresh tire tracks in the tall grass showed me that the renter had already come and gone, checking both of his electric gates in the process of fixing the one, and got the cows back on their side of the fence.  We never even saw him!

One thing I saw while checking the electric gate by the barn was barbed wire sticking up out of the tall grass that wasn’t visible before.  Turns out, there’s an old barbed wire gate that was hidden in the grass.  The cows’ hooves must have got caught and pulled some of the wire up.  Yikes!  I’m going to have to put a priority on cleaning that out, even though it’s outside of where we are focusing on this year, just so no one gets hurt.  The posts in the gate are rotten to the point of broken, so it’s completely unusable.

When we got back from town, my daughters and I moved the power pole completely into the yard, along the back of the garage, so that it’s out of the way.  With the cows gone, we left the vehicle and people gates open again, but at least now we know what sort of work they need to have done.  The reason the people gate no longer latches is because the fence post on one side is now leaning away from the gate.  We’ll have to decide if it’s even worth straightening, at this point.

After moving the power pole to its new location, I was glad that I had managed to do all the weed trimming last night, in preparation for mowing, including where we just left the pole.  I even cleared around most of the apple trees.  With 200 ft of cord, I was able to just reach the second furthest tree, but only trim on one side of it. :-D  An extra 10 ft of cord would have allowed me to finish the row, but I was just too tired to get one at that point.  It took me about 3 – 3 1/2 hours to trim around the entire yard, including going into some areas that I’ve newly cleared.

It was while trimming in front of the garden shed that I noticed something I hadn’t before.

Of the two trees leaning towards the house that have to come down, one is over the roof and its branches sometimes hit when it bounces in high winds.

The other reaches far enough that we can see it from inside the living room, but isn’t actually touching the roof.

Which is good.  Because I discovered this last night.

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A terrible picture, I know, but it was starting to get dark.

Somehow, in all the times I’ve been around this tree, I had never paused to look into this bole.  While weed trimming, however, it was right in my face and I couldn’t miss it.

That’s rotten wood and the remains of a carpenter ant nest.

Which means this tree is more unstable than I originally thought.  More unstable than the one I was more concerned about.

*sigh*

When I call to get quotes to have trees cleared from the power lines, I’m going to have to include these two trees as well.

If we can get this done before winter, I will be feeling much better!

Meanwhile, temperatures were cool enough today that I was finally able to mow the areas outside the yard (dodging fresh cow pies in the process! *L*).  It should have been done days ago, but was just too hot.

It’s looking so much better now! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Good Moooorning!

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So my darling husband (picture me speaking with a rictus grin) cheerfully comes traipsing into the bedroom and wakes me up with a “so, are there supposed to be cows in the yard?”

What a way to be awakened!

No.  There are not supposed to be cows in the yard.

He had been hearing the cows mooing and thought to himself, that sounds awfully close.

Then looked out the window.

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That’s not good!

By the time I put my glasses on, they were at the opposite end of the yard, by the fire pit.  When I got outside, there were no longer any cows in our yard, but there were several just outside the barbed wire gate at the fire pit.

I closed the gate.

I could see from the gate the the electric gate at the cow fence was in place, so before we closed the other gates, I went over by the barn, where the second electric gate is.

Sure enough, the wire was down, looking like something went right through it, dragging it into the tall grass on our side of the fence.

That left us with the task of closing up the vehicle gate, and the people gate.

Problem.

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Yeah.  The pole was still there.

Moving a 30 ft pole is awkward, to say the least.  It wasn’t just getting it clear of the opening, but clearing the swing arc of the gate.  So there was a whole lot of rolling and pivoting, but it wasn’t enough.  He really shouldn’t have, but my husband was able to pull it a few feet away from the yard (yeah, I helped, but really… I wasn’t doing much) and it got rolled clear.

This is the first time we’ve closed these gates since we’ve moved here.

*sigh*

They’re broken.

On the vehicle gate, one side isn’t too bad, but had to be lifted to close.  It shouldn’t need to be lifted.  The other was off the top hinge and we weren’t able to put it back at the time (I will need to go back with a tool kit), but we swung it closed.

They are supposed to be able to latch together.

They don’t.

But we could at least sit the parts on top of each other and let gravity to the rest.

*sigh*

Then there’s the people gate.  I had been wondering why there was a bungee cord on the chain link fence.

Now I know why.

The latch parts don’t latch anymore.  So the bungee is used to keep it from swinging open on its own.

After phoning the renter and leaving a message for him (with apologies for calling so early), I went around the yard, just in case we missed a cow in the bushes or something, then went to see what was going on.

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There were 6 altogether; 2 cows and 4 steers.  The rest of the cattle were on the other side of the fence near the electric gate.

I decided not to try and get them out.  They can graze all they want and, at some point, they may well wander back towards the barn and join the rest of the herd.

Granted, the rest of the herd might end up on the wrong side of the fence, too.  But I’m not too worried about it.  They can keep our grass down.

Now.  I wonder if I can get another hour or two of sleep…

The Re-Farmer

The Squirrel. Sees us.

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My daughter got some pictures of a squirrel at our feeder stand today.

It would go up onto the platform, then stretch out to catch the bottom of the hanging planter, pull it closer, then climb onto it.

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It saw my daughter taking pictures.

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Now, there’s a face that can haunt dreams! :-D

Sure doesn’t seem happy with being watch, that’s for sure. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: old lilacs

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I posted about an area I’ve been working on for some time that I feel is now pretty much done.  Today, I was able to go back and take some photos.  It will still need some raking and a pass with the weed trimmer, and the odd pruning of little things that got missed, but the big work is done.  You can read more about the progress here, here, here, here, and here.

Yeah, I’ve been working on this section for a while!

Here are some before and after pictures.

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What used to be rows of lush lilac bushes have been reduced to mostly dead branches and stems, and many long, tall stems with nothing but a few green leaves at the top, trying to get some sunlight.

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I was being pretty ruthless in what I cut; the back of the row had a lot of undergrowth of false spirea at one end, caragana at the other, and lilac suckers all over.  Much of it could be pulled right out of the ground without using pruning shears or saw.

Here is the next section’s before picture.

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In this picture, I had already done some cleaning in the front rows of trees and bushes.  Here it is, after clearing the back row.

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I used a bow saw to cut part of the dead tree down as well.  Some of the tiny little trees still in between are plum trees, so I wanted to keep them.  Otherwise, I took out all the undergrowth and cleaned out the remaining lilacs in the back.

In the next section, I worked my way up to an old caragana, which is as far as I’d cleaned up from the other end of the row of trees and bushes.  This next picture is from before I started on the front area with the plums.

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I had cleaned up the front around the plums and linden tree, and from one side, cleared out some old lilacs and the caragana.  This is what it looks like now that the back is cleared up.

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I’ve decided to keep this caragana, though it still needed to have some old trunks removed.  Like a lot of the other dead wood I removed, I was pulling some of it right out of the ground, with no need for cutting, it was dead for so long.

There are quite a few dead bits of trunk sticking up in several places that I have left for now.  I am not able to cut them flush to the ground at the moment, so I’d rather they were taller – and more visible – then cutting them only part way down.

It’ll be good to get in with the weed trimmer and a rake, but it’ll wait for cooler temperatures!

The Re-Farmer

Surprise finds

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This morning we had some very welcome rain.  We are also supposed to hit above 30C today, with chances of thunderstorms, so I decided to do a check around the yard and see if any more branches had come down, etc.

There were a few small branches, but as I went around the other house (I think I should call it the storage house, though we aren’t storing anything in there ourselves), I found a surprise.

Remember this tree?

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The dead one on the right of the picture, with the crows nest in it?

This is what it looked like today.

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Yeah, the crows nest is now almost hidden by greenery.

The trunk to the right is part of the tree, too, and is dead, but the trunk with the nest had suddenly sprouted leaves.

Just a few days ago, there was NO sign of life in that trunk.  Not even buds.  The only living thing growing on that trunk was moss and lichen.

Many of the branches are still dead or mostly dead, but fresh leaves have burst out all over the place.

The dead trunk had a large branch leaning on the disconnected power line running to the storage house, while the rest of it leans above it, holding up a broken, though still living, branch from another tree.

So I decided to take some of that down.

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After taking down the branch on the disconnected power line with the extended pruning saw, I made the initial cut on the dead trunk higher up, where it was most vertical, so that I could guide the fall straight down, rather than have it falling sideways onto the power line.  Granted, the power line is only held up by a tree outside the yard, but I still didn’t want anything landing on it, as much as I can avoid it.  Then I cut the trunk again, lower down in a spot I could access with the bow saw.

As I was cleaning up after all this, I found another surprise, by the branch that had come down earlier in the month.

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I had gone over this area with the weed trimmer as much as I could, and it was basically all just grass.  I guess clearing it as much as I did was enough to spur the growth of some hidden horseradish!

I had no idea horseradish had ever been planted here!

When we first moved to the city we were living in before coming back here, we used to hike in the river valley trails a lot.  The first spring we explored the trails, I was seeing horseradish growing wild, all over the place.  It was like a weed!  I’ve never seen anything like it, anywhere else.  I like that it is such a resilient plant.

With big, healthy horseradish growing in other areas of the yard, I will not be making any effort to keep these when I come back with the weed trimmer, but it was still cool to find them.

The Re-Farmer