Bypass installed!

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Have I mentioned, my brother is the best?

Today, he worked on our septic plumbing again. This after already spending a couple of hours outside, doing things among their stored items, and being sick, too!

A few days ago, they’d gone out for dinner and he’d ordered a “Canadian burger”. Yeah, one of those virtue signaling things so many places have been doing, suddenly pretending to be patriotic because our government and media have told us to hate the US right now. Just a few years ago, the same people were calling Canadians who flew the flag and displayed patriotism racists and Nazis and white supremacists, just like Americans – or at least the Americans they tell use to hate. People were arrested for flying Canadian flags, banned from businesses, their property vandalized and even physically assaulted. Now, suddenly “American style patriotism” is no longer bad. Funny how easily people can spin on a dime and not see their own double standards.

Ironically, the restaurant was a US franchise.

Anyhow, the burger made him incredibly ill. He thinks the beef wasn’t fully cooked and he was hit with e. coli. He said he was still operating at only about 80%.

His 80% is more than a lot of people’s 100%, though! The guy is amazing. I don’t know how he does it!

I had other things to get done before I went back to working on the basement, so I didn’t get to help or watch while he figured out how to install the new bypass. I cleared another section in the new basement enough to mop it, then joined him after I set the blower up to dry the concrete floor. By that, he was pretty much done and ready to start testing. He was quite happy that it worked out much easier than he expected.

This is what he installed.

The pipe to the ejector now has the T insert in it. Under normal circumstances, effluent would just go straight through this pipe and to the ejector, out by the barn.

In the next photo, you can see the ball valve in the emergency diverter pipe, in the open position.

I was really curious how he would work with that diverter pipe. It had a very strong curve to it, in the wrong direction! What he ended up doing was first, rotating it so that the curve was in the other direction. Then he used his heat gun on a substantial section of it, until he could straighten it out enough that it could be attached to the T. He had to stand there and hold it straight until the pipe cooled enough to hold its new shape.

Of course, he had to cut sections out of both pipes to install the T and the ball valve.

While this was being worked on, the family was concerned about using the water. The septic pump was turned off while he worked, of course, but it had gone off not very long before he started, so there wouldn’t have been very much water in the greywater side of the tank. Any time I got a message, asking if it was okay to flush or shower or whatever, I encouraged them to use plenty of water, so we could have something to test with!

Before testing it, my brother went outside to check the diverter at the house end to make sure nothing got knocked askew while he was manipulating the pipe around. Once that was done and he was back inside, he turned the pump on manually – an easy thing to do, thanks to the second switch he installed for that! – and checked for leaks. There was a tiny leak at the elbow before it goes out of the house, so he tightened the screw clamp and added a second one, just to be safe. There was no leak when he turned the pump on again.

So we knew that effluent was flowing through the open ball valve in the diverter. We could see in the filter that water was flowing, and we could hear it, too.

We didn’t test for long, though, as we didn’t want to actually empty the tank.

The next test was with the valve closed. We were both watching that filter closely and, while there was movement, it didn’t look like it was flowing. The only way to know for sure, though, was for one of us to go to the ejector, while the other turned the pump back on.

My brother went to the ejector, then video called me on Facebook messenger, so we could see and show each other what was going on. Once he gave the go ahead, I closed the ball valve again and turned the pump on.

Nothing happened.

No flow out the ejector.

We waited a while to be sure, before I shut off the pump, then opened the ball valve again.

Which is just awesome. Without the valve, the only way to test if the ejector is working would require switching pipes – then switching back again when the test failed. Not only is that messy, but every time that is done, there is a risk of breaking something.

What this means is that the emergency diverter is now a permanent set up. Once the ejector is working again, we can close the valve, but can be ready to simply open it again, if we have more problems in the future.

We won’t be able to do anything with the ejector until things warm up a lot more. My brother thinks it’s most likely still frozen at the bottom. I think there’s something blocking the venturi valve. Worst case scenario, the pipe from the house itself is clogged, somewhere. That’s more than 300 feet of pipe, and a clog could be anywhere in there!

Either way, we won’t be able to find out until spring thaw.

Until then, the emergency diverter is our life saver!

Once the bypass valve was installed and tested, my brother headed out for home, with plans to visit our mother along the way – and bring her a hot supper to share. No meals on wheels on the weekend, so I’m sure she would appreciate it. I just hope she treats my brother well this visit. She’s really been on about how he was “keeping secrets” from her because they were so quiet about selling their acreage and moving, even though she knew that was why they brought their equipment here to the farm. I think she even forgot that they’d done that. Ah, well. I’ll find out later tonight!

I am quite pleased with how things have gone today. While I don’t have my seed starting set up in the basement yet – quite a bit more work will need to be done down there, still – I did get good progress down there, and was able to reclaim my work station. My brother got the bypass valve installed and, while we were doing that, my daughter was spring cleaning in the kitchen and dining room. She was able to get all the cat hair off the walls, ceiling, cupboard doors, the ceiling fan, pictures on the walls, curtain rods, etc. That alone was a HUGE job. With so many cats, of course there’s cat fur everywhere, but when it sticks to the walls and anything on them, it doesn’t want to come off! It won’t even vacuum off. She had to get right in there and scrub. She did an amazing job, though by the end of it, she was really needing painkillers!

So was I, by the end of it all. I haven’t gone up and down the stairs so many times in one day since we cleared and cleaned out the basements. Yes, I took my prescription painkillers in the morning, but even those can only deal with so much, and I can’t take more during the day, since I save my second allowable dose before bed. Pain is more of a problem when I’m lying down and trying to sleep than during the day. I can put up with it more when I’m up and about. Once I’m in bed, it keeps me from getting sleep. I did take some acetaminophen, though, to help take the edge off, at least.

I have a few last things to do in the basement before I call it for the day. Tomorrow is Sunday, which I try to keep as a day of rest. This will make sure I don’t over do it and put myself out of commission for days. As long as we get something set up for seed starts within the next week, it should be good. Most, if not all, of the seeds I ordered should be in by then.

From there, it’s the fun part: going through all the seeds and choosing which ones to start and when!

The Re-Farmer

Taking a break from good progress

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Today, I started on cleaning and organizing the basement.

Again.

A few years back, we were able to clear out all sorts of things from the “new” basement – the part that’s under the addition added in the 70’s. Lots of stuff went into the barn for storage until we could figure out what to do with them. Lots went to the dump. Eventually, we got it to the point that we could scrub and sanitize the concrete floor, and set it up into a useable space. We were even able to turn a table down there into a work station that I was able to use for wood carving and other general small building projects.

Then we used it as a maternity ward when Butterscotch and Beep Beep were both pregnant at the same time again.

Then we blocked off access to the old part basement so we could let the case into the new part basement. It became where we kept most of the litter boxes and and food bowls.

The cats, being cats, ended up using pretty much the entire space, as litter boxes. Sadly, that included my work station, causing damage to some of my tools, including some of my carving tools.

Then we had some wet springs and discovered the weeping tile was no longer doing its job. As water seeped through and fans needed to be set up, we had to start moving things wherever we could find the space, to get them out of the water, even though they were already on top of things like floor tiles that we found, to keep them from having direct contact with the concrete.

Eventually, we had to stop allowing the cats in the basement at all, and it’s been quite a disaster ever since.

Which meant we could move the barrier between the basements (there is no door; just a vaguely door shaped hole in the old basement wall), so we no longer have to go upstairs and around to the other door to go from one basement to the other.

It also means we have a large, cat free space.

Right now, my goal is to set up a space where I can start seeds in the last week of March. My original thought was to reclaim the work station and use that.

Well, that didn’t quite work out.

Because of how disorganized things have become, I need to work in stages, and that table was the first stage.

The table itself is a bit rickety, and has a larger sheet of not-plywood on top. After clearing the surface, I decided to take it off completely to see why the the table was so unstable.

It turned out that the surface was two wide boards nailed to the frame. The frame itself has extra cross pieces that allow for long items to be stored underneath – something I’ve found quite handy. There were still a few things under there, so that got taken out, too.

In moving the table around, I found the corners of one board were lifting, so I decided to secure both boards with screws. I used the old nails as guides on where to drill the pilot holes, since the frame they were on hid the supports they were nailed to. On one side, while drilling the pilot holes, I discovered gaps and had to drill new ones about an inch over. Then I had to add a couple more screws at each corner to secure it to the outer part of the frame as well as the supports I couldn’t actually see, underneath.

Securing it with screws did improve the ricketiness, but one corner still seemed to be lifting somehow. I finally tipped it on its side to see what was under there.

Which is when I could see just where these boards came from and, to be honest, it broke my heart a little.

Years ago, my parents bought some property as an investment. The building used to be a general store in the front, with living quarters in the back. The general store itself closed some time in the 60’s. There was a semi-detached storage building (which is now here at the farm), and I remember finding old inventory lists from 1963.

Most of the wall shelves were removed. I have a large section of one against the wall in my bedroom right now. Smaller sections were turned into dividers between the living and dining rooms. Other parts and pieces of them have been turning up in various places around the property.

The wood that was used to make these shelves is really excellent – and very distinctive in their size and colour.

The underside of the table had that distinctive colour. I couldn’t see it on the top, because it had been so scoured and damaged.

Even the larger board I moved looks like it came from this old store. Once I saw the underside of it, there were “shadows” showing it was part of something else. I even remember what it was. There was a multi-tiered display shelf in the old store, and this was the top of it.

Which also explains the cut off corners.

There is another sheet of this same wood that’s even larger that we found while cleaning the basement, and I now realize it would have been a lower level of this display shelf.

It’s such a shame that someone took apart these shelves and used this excellent wood to basically make a scrap material work table, and the surface got so damaged.

I never did find why it still seemed rickety, though. In fact, it handled being moved around quite well.

Once I had it upright again, I realized the narrower size of the table was much easier to reach around, and I considered not putting the sheet of not-plywood back on. However, my husband had picked up a huge self healing cutting mat for the work station, and it was finally going to be used – and it was wider than the table!

So, the top sheet went back on, and it turned out to be just a fraction wider than the cutting mat.

Then I put stuff back on the table, and I now have a work station again.

Yes, that’s a re-purposed gun rack.

There is an outlet on a pillar opposite this wall and I’ve got a power bar running from there, across a floor joist in the ceiling, and a number of hooks to hold power cords up and out of the way. This allowed me to use my Dremel and wood burning tool, and now the charger for my drill and driver batteries. The power bar has USB ports, so I can set up a charger cable for my phone, too.

That top board is not attached in any way, so when it was time to put the vice back, I didn’t want it over the cutting mat. It is now on one end and holding the top piece to the table surface together. The top piece is almost exactly the same length as the table.

Before I’d put the table back and starting returning things, I made sure to clean the floor underneath as best I could without actually mopping it. I could see that the bottoms of the table legs had water damage. After looking around for something to protect them, I found my stash of old sour cream containers. I’ve been cutting those up to make plant markers, and had a bunch of them waiting to be used for that. It turns out the table legs fit in them, so we now have protection from water, if we get another wet spring.

Once that was done, I was happy to have a work station again.

However, I still don’t have a place to start seeds!

So I started working on the next section of the basement, at one end, clearing it out and mopping it. We have a low-to-the-ground twin size bed frame one of my nephews made that we painted and have been using for all sorts of things, inside and out. Once the end was mopped, I set it up under the counter was what was supposed to be a bar my late brother started building when he was in his teens and never quite finished. It has an outlet on the “outside” of the counter that we have found quite handy.

The bed frame is now set up under the counter, on bricks to keep it out of any water should we have issues again. I will be storing larger stuff on it, but made sure to plug an extension cord for us to use, as we won’t be able to access that outlet once the things are moved onto the bed frame.

The bed frame’s platform needed to be mopped, too.

After that was done, I set up a blower fan facing that end of the basement and am taking a break while it dries.

Oh! Break time is over! My brother is now here and in the old basement, figuring out how to set up the bypass valve so we can switch between the ejector and the emergency septic bypass. as needed – and not have to remove and switch pipes every time!

My brother is the best!

The Re-Farmer

Partial birthday celebration, and other things

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As a family, we’re not really dedicated to birthdays. As in, the actual date. Before my husband went on disability and he was still working, we would celebrated birthdays on the weekend before or after the actual date, depending on which was after pay day. The entire week, however, tended to be when the birthday person would get little gifts, or extra special treatment. The day itself was recognized, of course, but we liked to spread it out.

Now that my husband is on disability, his payments come in at the end of the month, so we budget accordingly. Which means we tend to have more birthday months than birthday weeks!

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My older daughter’s birthday is this month. She is really hard to get things for! One regular thing we would do is have the birthday person choose a special celebration dinner. When our income was higher, this was a time when we might go to a specific restaurant that we normally wouldn’t, but dining out for four people hasn’t been something we could afford for a long time. Now that we are out in the boonies, we generally don’t bother and will order takeout from somewhere.

I had already done a birthday take home meal earlier this month, but my older daughter wanted Pizza Hut – and she was paying. Yeah. She insists on paying for her own birthday meal!

It’s still early, but today was when we decided to do pizza day. The birthday girl placed the order online with a pick up time late enough that other stuff could be done first. My younger daughter came along to help out. After a quick stop at the post office to pick up one more package, we headed to the town our doctor’s clinic is in. We got there about an hour early, but there’s a grocery store in the same area, so we could just park and go there, first.

The only thing I needed for general groceries was milk and eggs, plus my daughter spotted some dark coffee; they’ve been running out. The rest was birthday related. I ended up choosing two cakes; a tiramisu cake and a Pina Colada angel food cake trifle. We picked up some ranch and blue cheese dressing to use as dips for the pizza. We got drinks, some Cotton Candy Ice Cream, and their last box of mango Melona bars. As an extra, I decided to try some frozen finger foods for later on. Breaded pickle spears, Italian Mozza Bites and Tempura Yams.

I was going to treat my daughter for her birthday, no matter how much she balked! 😄

By the time we were done and the truck loaded up, we still had almost half an hour before the time set for our order. The location is take out only, but I figured they’d have seating for people waiting for their orders, so we made our way over anyhow. Which worked out, as they were almost done with our order!

Good grief, pizza has gotten expensive. Four large pizzas and three chicken bites bowls, and the total was just under $200 – before tip! A few years back, it was almost half that, and we were getting extra large sized pizzas.

Well, we only do this once a year. Plus, it will feed us for a couple of days, at least. Still… *choke*

Since it is a special occasion, I’ve taken a break from my Lenten fast of sugar and simple carbs.

In other things, I had a chance to chat with the Cat Lady earlier today. She sent me a post made by the woman who was able to provide us with so much donated cat food. It was very generous and much appreciated – we still have wet cat food left from that! The Cat Lady did warn me, though, not to share to much. As the Cat Lady put it, her heart is in the right place, but she causes problems. A few months back, she was “helping” someone caring for a colony, got the province involved, and most of the cats ended up being euthanized. Sadly, it seems to be happening again. There’s a call out for various supplies, fosters, donations for spays and neuters, and so on, for a colony that sounds about the same size as ours, though the number of cats we have showing up can change considerably from day to day, and even feeding to feeding. All great stuff being called for, except for on thing.

She got the province involved again.

The post had mentioned that the cats have winter suitable shelters, but not much else. Well, the Cat Lady knows of this colony. She says the cats are well cared for, and they have lots of excellent shelters. While help would certainly be appreciated – especially with spays and neuters – with the province involved, the person that’s been caring for them is going to get pressured a lot before the province finally steps in and simply wipes them out.

I know that in our municipality, their procedure to “help” people caring for colonies is to simply shoot the cats. It’s pretty much the main reason we don’t try to do any local fundraising drives for spays and neuters. We don’t want it to be generally known, how many cats have been showing up (I’ve seen another tabby that looks like a stranger recently. He has a distinctive Nicky the Nose face; that old tom hasn’t been around for years, but this cat looks like it could be one of his decedents). I want to adopt them out. Not kill them off.

Speaking of spays and neuters, the Cat Lady hopes to book us for three cats, as soon as she gets a chance to call the clinic we’ve been going to. She’s been spending a lot of time at another clinic in the city. The vet that saved Cabbages sold his clinic and went back to India for a while. He has since returned and opened a new clinic, and she’s happily been going to him again. She’s currently dealing with a rescue case that is quite severe. I was quite surprised when she said for three cats. The last we talked about it, she was hoping to be able to get two done. Hopefully, that means donations to her rescue have started to go back up again. Otherwise, it means she’s paying for it out of pocket, which they have done before. They are so amazing!

Meanwhile, I also got a note from my brother. He plans to come out here tomorrow morning. Along with needing to do some stuff among their stored items, he plans to set up “that bypass valve” on the septic diverter. He must have thought he had already talked to me about it, but I had no idea about this. He said that we’ll be able to test out the ejector to see if it’s frozen and, if it is, can switch back to the emergency bypass. Which is an awesome idea! I don’t think the ejector is frozen, though. I think there’s something stuck in the venturi valve. Either that, or there’s a clog somewhere in the pipe to the house. To be able to switch from the ejector to the emergency by pass through a bypass valve instead of having to attach and detach hoses is a brilliant idea! I look forward to seeing what he’s come up with to do this. With all the issues we’ve had with the septic in the 7+ years we’ve been living here, having that bypass is a godsend.

Aside from that, I’m planning to make a dump run tomorrow. Time to finally get rid of that broken microwave! I’m glad we replaced it with the multi-function toaster oven. The girls have been using it more than they’ve been using the oven! Very handy! Tomorrow we’re expecting to have a high of only -8C/18F. Not bad, but quite a drop from today, where we ended up hitting 4C/39F, which was higher than was forecast. Things were melting all over the place! It’s expected to be almost a week before we see highs above freezing again. Nothing to complain about, though.

I look forward to seeing my brother tomorrow. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Enjoying the quiet

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It seems so very strange to be sitting here and realizing it’s almost 6pm right now, and we’ve got bright sunshine outside. I’ve gotten so used to the sun setting between 4:40 and 5pm, it feels almost wrong for the sun to still be up. Of course, we just had daylight saving time a few days, which would account for some of that, but I was getting this sense even before the switch.

Before I go on, though, we must have the cuteness!

Would you look at those adorable faces! Clarence and Cheddar.

You’d never know from the photo that Clarence is quite the troublemaker. 😁😄 One of his favourite things to do is run and jump onto my office chair before I can reach it to sit down. He will then roll onto his back and look at me, like he’s all innocent. 😄

Anyhow…

Today has been a pretty quiet day, though I made a discovery this morning, while I was outside feeding the cats this morning.

For some time now, I’ve been finding frozen throw up on the ground here and there, with roundworms in it. Surprisingly large and distinctive looking things! On learning that Button needed to be treated for worms 3 times before he was clear of them – and then he suddenly grew to the size he should have been for his age – I just sort of figured it was from one of the tiny cats. There are three small ones, plus one more that’s a bit bigger, but not by much. My bets were on The Grink, a black and white, but the other three white and greys were candidates, too.

While going to the isolation shelter with kibble, I just happened to be in time to see a cat that had finished throwing up, and yes, the throw up had worms in it. The cat, however, was not any of the ones I thought it would be! It was a tabby that’s about the same age as my suspects. It’s the one that was all sick and stuffy, and allowed us to treat him, last fall. He is now somewhat socialized. He’s quite a bit larger than the suspects, which is why I hadn’t considered it might be him.

In a way, I’m glad it’s this one, since he is socialized enough that the chances of treating him are much higher. The Cat Lady was going to try and get some medication for us, but 1) we weren’t sure which cat needed to be treated and 2) if it turned out to be one of the more feral ones, we wouldn’t be able to use it anyhow. Of course, it’s also possible more than one cat has been leaving evidence of roundworms frozen in the snow, so that may still be true.

We had a Colorado Low making its way up today which, for our area, meant we did get a pretty good snowfall shortly after I’d gone back inside, but nothing major. The south part of the province got a lot more than we did. My husband’s bubble packs were delivered late this morning, and it had been snowing a while by then. The current pharmacy delivery driver is also a school bus driver; I see him go back and forth past our place, every weekday, on the trail cam files. He starts his deliveries after he’s parked his bus in the morning, and told me about the different areas he’d already been to, and still had to go to. By the time his deliveries were done, he would be going straight back to the bus for more driving! Deliveries are only one day a week, but it does make for a long day of driving for him! Thankfully, the road conditions were still pretty good, and the snow stopped not long after.

I did end up going out later this afternoon. Several packages had arrived earlier than tracking said they would, including a large one for my husband, so I got a daughter to come along and help load it into the truck. It was not at all heavy, but awkward – and fragile! My husband was able to get himself a larger monitor for his computer. It’s a gaming monitor, with a curved screen, but he got it mostly for reading electronic books. With his disability, he spends a lot of time on his computer, and he was having a very hard time being able to see on his old monitor. This one is much, much easier on his eyes. The other monitor is still good, though. My daughters both have dual monitors for their desktops; an essential for my older daughter as she works on commissions. One of her monitors is quite old and starting to die, so she will have a much newer monitor to replace it.

Speaking of which, my older daughter has a birthday this month. She has chosen Pizza Hut take out for her birthday dinner. It’s a bit early, but we will probably be doing that tomorrow. While I’ve given up sugar and simple carbs for Lent, exceptions are made for special occasions – like birthdays!

As I write this, we are at -4C/25F and haven’t reached our high of the day yet – and it will not get any colder through the night. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to have a high of 2C/36F, then it’s supposed to drop below freezing again. So tomorrow will be a good day for the drive to pick up birthday pizza! We’re trying a different location this time, and will be going to the town our new doctor is in. In fact, the Pizza Hut is right near the clinic – and a grocery store. So I’ll be taking advantage of that to pick up a few things, including a birthday cake. Or a cream pie. Or cheesecake. My younger daughter will be with me, so she will help me choose. 😊

All in all, I’ve been quite enjoying another nice, quiet day! I admit, though, I’ve been procrastinating terribly. I want to set up an area in the basement to start seeds, but I just haven’t been able to get to it. There isn’t a lot my daughters can do to help me, since I haven’t quite decided how I’ll be setting up – I need to consider that, if we have a wet spring, water is going to seep through the concrete even in the new part of the basement, which has weeping tile, which isn’t doing its job anymore. That means setting up pedestal fans, box fans and blower fans all over, again.

The main issue, though, is the stairs. Stairs and my knees are not a good combination. Especially if I’m going to be carrying anything.

Ah, well. I’ll figure it out.

I just need to get my butt in gear about it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025… 2026? garden: Heritage Harvest seed order placed

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Okay, I did say, months ago, that we did not need to order seeds this year.

I also said that I knew I probably would order more, anyhow! 😄

I’ve placed two orders so far. One was with MI Gardener, and I just got the email notification that they have been shipped. I explain what I chose, and why, in this post. Most are “back up” seeds, in case our winter sowing experiment fails.

I also placed an order with Veseys, but this was more for the food forest. The seeds ordered were so that I could take advantage of a promo code to get free shipping. I explain what I ordered there, and why, in this post.

So, why am I ordering even more seeds?

I mean, besides the fact that I just want to… 😄

Well, this order is with Heritage Harvest Seeds. It’s actually been a couple of years since I’ve ordered from them. They are a small heirloom seed company that is even further north than we are, so as far as climate and growing season goes, I know anything I order from there should grow here.

Another reason is, more back up seeds!

This is what I ordered today. (all links should open in new tabs)

At the top of the list is Cream of Saskatchewan Watermelon. We tried growing these last year, and one one tiny little watermelon out of the only surviving transplant. I want to try them again, but this time give them more dedicated space, rather than having it share a bed with a whole bunch of melons. I do still have seeds left, but they are a couple of years old, so I want to have some fresh seed.

Next is the Arikara squash. This is a variety of winter squash I have been eye balling for years. I chose is specifically due to its rarity, with the goal of saving seeds. From the website description:

Originally grown by the Arikara Indians of North Dakota, This squash is oblong with pinkish orange skin and a green star on the blossom end. The Arikara Indians picked the blossoms and dried them for winter use. A very good storage squash that can be used for soup. (90 days to maturity) Extremely rare.

I may not grow these this year, as I have other winter squash we want to grow, and if I’m looking to save seeds, I don’t want to risk cross pollination. We shall see how things work out.

I also ordered more White Scallop Squash. We had issues growing them in containers last year – they simply did not germinate – but did finally get some in one of the garden beds. By then, it was so late in the season, I’m amazed we had any to harvest at all. The last of the seed went into the winter sown bed with all summer squash. These are back up seeds, in case none survived the winter.

In my MI Gardener order, I did order sugar snap peas. This time, however, I ordered Super sugar snap peas! 😄 From the website:

One of the sweetest and crunchiest snap peas available! The 3 inch pods are delicious eaten raw or cooked and are very productive. A favorite of all who try them! Tall vines to 6’ in height.

If we have the space, I’d like to try both varieties of sugar snap peas we’ll have this year. If we end up with space for only one variety, I’d like to try this one, first.

Last of all, I ordered two packets of Yukon Chief corn. Last year, we had two short season varieties to choose from. Yukon Chief and Orchard Baby. We did Yukon Chief first, due to it’s super short growing season. This year, we will be trying the Orchard Baby. Hopefully, if we can keep the racoons from eating them first, we’ll be able to save seed. We did really like the Yukon Chief, though, so I ordered two packets this time, for next year, and plan to save seed again.

One of the changes at Heritage Harvest is that they now have a $20 minimum order. We’ve never had problems with having our seeds shipped with regular mail, but apparently, others have. Solving the problem meant to have expedited mail with a tracking number, but the extra cost of that only makes sense with orders of at least $20. That brought our final cost to Cdn$36.50

Except it didn’t cost us anything. At least, not anything out of budget.

One of the payment methods is PayPal. This year, we actually got payment for ads on this blog (it took 3 years!), which was sent by PayPal in US dollars. It went into my personal PayPal account, and I left it there, so I used that to pay for this order. Which got converted to US$26.45 at the current exchange rate.

Which worked out quite well, I think.

So that’s what I got today; a combination of things to plant this year, and next year, and back up seeds, if the winter sowing didn’t work.

I have to admit, I had to mightily resist ordering more. They have the Tropeana Lunga onions that grew so well for us when we tried them a few years ago. I was also tempted by the Amish Bottle Onion, simply because of its rarity (and the shape, which I find easier to cut when cooking). I even seriously considered the Yellow of Parma onion, for its excellent storage and up to 1 pound size. We have so many of our own onions seeds, though – as well as seed producing onions – that we may never need to buy onion seeds again. I also want to try the Red Mangel, though that would for a time when we have animals, to grow as feed. There are just so many things I want to try!

This will do for now, though. We have more than enough seeds for this year, and years to come!

We just need to keep expanding the garden beds for now, and grow what we can in the beds we have available now.

We’re slowly getting there!

The Re-Farmer

Morning watchers!

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I was finishing up my morning rounds and coming back to the house, when I realized I was being watched.

By many, many eyes!

I couldn’t get them all in one photo! There’s so much reflection on the windows, the camera doesn’t “see” inside very well. I tried counting and there were at least 13 in there at the time.

Today is apparently not going to be as warm as predicted – just an expected high of 0C/32F instead of the 2C/36F predicted, earlier. It’s still warm enough to set the hose through the storm door window for laundry day.

Yeah. We’re still doing that.

Tomorrow was also supposed to be 2C/36F, but now they’re saying a high of -5C/23F tomorrow, and 3C/37F the day after.

At this point, I’m just happy that high winds have passed.

Of course, the temperatures had got me thinking of the garden again… but then, the garden is never really far from my mind.

I did end up making another seed order today. I’ll explain that in a separate post! Meanwhile, I got a email notification that my MI Gardener order has been shipped. I look forward to seeing those! The girls are particularly interested in the Turkish Orange eggplant, which we will need to start indoors around the end of March.

I’m really itching for the snow to be gone. I really want to see how the winter sowing experiment has turned out!

The Re-Farmer

They’re in, and holy smokes!

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First, the more fun stuff. I hit the post office on the way home and found more packages than I was expecting, including – finally! – the new clamp lamps I’d ordered. They were shipped by CanPar and the address we had to use was for the store the post office is in, because the system wouldn’t accept anything else. The benefit of living in such a tiny community. The postal staff knew exactly who it was for and there was a parcel slip in our mail box.

The first photo is everything outside the box. The second is assembled. These lamps are suitable for up to 250W bulbs, so we shouldn’t have the damaged bulb that we got with the heat bulb in the sun room. That lamp now has a 150W ceramic heat bulb in it.

The ceramic bulbs I’ve installed in the lamps are 200W, and they are ready to go. I can put one up somewhere in the sun room, without having to remove the one that’s already there, but I may want to move the one that’s already there and have the warmer bulb in that spot.

The lamp in the isolation shelter will take more doing, as the current lamp needs to be removed completely. We’ll need to open up the roof, remove the rigid insulation “ceiling”, then get the lamp out. The cord is wrapped around the support it’s hanging off of, to keep it out of cat reach. I’m hoping to get that done in the next couple of days, when it’s supposed to be warmer, so that it’ll be ready when it gets colder again.

In other things, today was my day to do my mother’s errands. I had asked her if she wanted me to pick up lunch and she ended up saying to just get food for myself, she would eat what she had.

Of course, I wasn’t going to do that.

I got to town early enough to pick something up before going to her place, but nothing was open until 11am, which is when she was expecting me. I was able to run another errand before parking and waiting the last few minutes before the restaurant I’d decided on, opened. While waiting, I called my mother to tell her I would be there closer to 11:30. She told me she was reheating some potatoes to go with lunch, and I told her, I’m bringing lunch. She doesn’t need to.

She was quite okay with that, and even joked about how spoiled she’s getting with not having to cook!

Soon, I was placing our orders, which were ready faster than I expected for them just opening, then made a quick stop at the grocery store for drinks.

When I got to her place and knocked at the door, there was no answer, but I knew she was home so I started walking in. She was in the bathroom and couldn’t hear me, which was pretty much what I expected.

What I didn’t expect was the strong smell of smoke.

While setting getting the food and drinks onto the table and getting plates, I found the source.

The potatoes my mother said she was cooking had burned. She’d salvaged them, and the carrots she was reheating with them, by scraping the burnt bits into the sink, and the rest were in a bowl on her counter. The burnt bitts were REALLY heavily charred. The frying pan she’d been using was also in the sink, soaking – and totally black!

When my mother came out and saw where I was in the kitchen, she told me about burning them. She said there’s something wrong with the element she was using, in that it stays on high, even when turned down to low.

…

Which may be true. However, this stove was installed brand new, after she moved into this apartment from the one she’d been in when she first moved into the building. She has never said anything about the element being like this before. She’s also never burned anything like this before!

I didn’t say much about it, though while we were eating, I was looking around for a fire extinguisher. Being a public housing building, I would have expected one and asked. She didn’t know what I was talking about at first, so I described what it would look like to her, and she said no, she had nothing like that. Granted, she wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to use one, but it would have been good to have one if an actual fire broke out, so someone else would have it available to use.

While talking about fire extinguishers and alarms, she pointed to the spot on the wall where her CO monitor that my brother got her, used to be. When we set up her place before taking her home from the hospital, my brother checked it and found it had no batteries. We had some issues getting fresh batteries into it and being able to close up the back. There were too many other things that needed to be done, so we took the batteries back out again, and my brother took it home with him to check on later.

My mother’s comment was that she had been “fooled” by it. It had started beeping, but she should the sound was coming from the fire detector on the ceiling, which is also a CO monitor. She’s called public housing and they send someone over. The fire detector was working fine, and the beeping was traced to the CO monitor on the wall.

Long story short, they took the batteries out so the beeping would stop.

…

So not only did my mother think this was some sort of “trick”, but apparently, she thought they were smoke detectors.

I tried to explain to her how dangerous CO poisoning could be, but she preferred to think my brother was somehow messing with her, instead.

*sigh*

I dropped it for now.

Once we were done lunch, we went over her shopping list, which included a trip to the pharmacy for some items this time, and I was soon off. When I got to the truck, though, I took the time to message my family about the things that happened at my mom’s. The burnt food is something home care had told us to watch out for, as it becomes a safety issue. While driving to the pharmacy, I remembered I had the home care coordinator’s business card in my phone case, so I called her when I parked and left a message about it.

Oh, there was another issue I’d tried asking my mother about, and that was getting a Life Line. She’d talked to the woman from the Senior’s Centre; they are the ones that arrange this. Unfortunately, she was confused about the 2 versions of it she can get and wasn’t sure which one to choose. More on that later.

The items my mother had on her list for the pharmacy were easy to find, so I was soon done there and moved on to the grocery store. I was able to get everything on her list, with no substitutions, which was nice.

Today is Tuesday, which is when the common room of her building is used for group low impact exercises, arranged with the local senior’s centre, and people from other buildings come over for it, too. When I got back, they were already starting to gather, so I went around. I had told my mother to go ahead and join them and I could put things away for her, but she was still in her apartment when I got there.

After putting things away, my mother started talking about her bubble packs. It took a while to figure out what she was getting at, and then I had to open up the lock box to be sure, but my mother’s meds were completely out. She said they were going to be delivered, but then didn’t seem sure that they would actually be delivered – and was asking me if I’d picked them up while at the pharmacy! I had no idea about, and she was starting to get so upset, I told her I would just go back to the pharmacy and get them.

It’s a good thing I did.

The prescriptions were prepared for delivery later, so the pharmacist was surprised to see me, but since I was there, she brought out the annual form they need signed to continue doing my mother’s medications in bubble packs. Since they know I have my mother’s permission with this stuff, I was able to sign it on her behalf. My mother would have been very confused by getting that form!

This time, when I got back to her building, my mother was in the common room with the others. So I took care of putting things away, then doing some light house keeping. I hadn’t tested her blood pressure earlier, and it was while I was sweeping that I’d found the box with the machine in it.

My mother had hidden it under her table.

So, no testing her BP this visit! I did put it back on the table, though.

After I finished cleaning up and putting things away, I started heading out. My mother was in behind a table with someone next to her, so I was going to skirt around the group as quietly as possible to give her a hug and a kiss goodbye, but enough people recognized me and started saying hi that I just laughed and said I was going to interrupt, when right through the circle of people to get around to my mother and gave her hugs and kisses. They got a good laugh out of that!

Later on, my mother phoned me and thanked me for that. Apparently, doing this was “good for my reputation”. ??? She explained that the group talks about all sorts of things, and one regular subject is about how many of the seniors are either largely forgotten by their adult children, or treated badly by them. I got the impression my mother hear a lot of positive comments after I left. Which made her happy, so that makes me happy.

She also told me she’s talked to the woman from the Senior’s Center again about the Life Line, and she will be coming by to my mother’s tomorrow to start the paperwork for it. I told my mother that, if necessary, I expect to be home all day, so she can call me if she feels the need.

Meanwhile, I updated my siblings about how things went, including about the CO monitor. My brother soon responded. He found out what was going on. Once he was able to get the batteries in, it started to beep. A double beep every 30 seconds. The display screen also said “end”.

On the back of the monitor, it explained that the monitor needs to be replaced every 10 years and, as a reminder, it would start to double beep every 30 seconds and display the word “end”.

You’d think the public housing guys that maintain CO monitors would have caught on to that.

Or maybe they did, but my mother didn’t understand what they were saying to her.

I feel better about that, at least!

Not so about the burned food. My mother is always super cautious about that sort of thing, so it was *really* unusual for her to not just burn food, but burn it so badly.

As alarming as that is, this may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. My mother really wants to be in long term care. She is aware of how much she is physically failing, and she at least somewhat recognizes her own cognitive decline and it, understandably, scares her. I really hope this is what gets her into the care she needs!

Total change of subject.

I got a call from the Cat Lady while I was working on this. She had sent me some security camera images. The property they moved on to about a year and a half ago, backs up against a national park, where lots of people walk their dogs. Six off leash dogs suddenly showed up on their deck, just minutes after their youngest daughter had been out there with Button. Button is completely blind and deaf now, and their youngest daughter makes a point of going out there with him in a harness to get some fresh air when she comes home from school for lunch.

Her husband had chased the dogs off and they confronted the owner, who said outright she didn’t care. Even when they told her their daughter had been on the deck with a blind and deaf cat, the response was, that cat would have been eaten. !!! When they confronted her on that, her response was, I don’t care, I hate cats. !!!! She also called the Cat Lady rude names, and her very butch partner started looking ready to be violent.

They called the RCMP on them. This is not an off leash park, for starters, and they are on something like 10 acres, so that’s quite a distance for the dogs to be running around away from their owners. People that irresponsible with their animals should not have any, let alone 6 big dogs! I just can’t imagine knowing your animals are prone to violence, and not caring if the kill another animal or possibly hurt a child.

They were so relieved their daughter and Button had already gone inside, that’s for sure!

Which lead to an update on Button. His sight had been going for a while now, and then it was just gone. The vet thinks it was a viral infection, in utero. Any other kittens in the litter and the mother likely died, and they really don’t know how Button survived. It has effected his development in many ways. The Cat Lady tells me, they don’t care. They adore him. Even their dog adores him. He is in almost constant contact with a human, and they even take him out for coffee and other outings. And to think, he was supposed to be adopted by someone else entirely, who ended up backing out and adopting another cat, when his vet care kept getting longer and longer!

Meanwhile, she will be looking into booking a couple more neuters for us. I mentioned we might be able to get a female, now that Adam actually comes up to us for pets, so she will see what they can arrange. I told her, whatever they can manage, we’ll happily take. Beggars can’t be choosers! We’ve got so many friendly males, but we really need to get the females done.

She will get back to us when she has more information.

What a day she had, though! I appreciate that, in the middle of all this, she still thinks of us and of how her rescue can help us.

She is so awesome.

The Re-Farmer

Getting chilly again

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As much as I appreciate that we are slowly warming up and getting some really nice days, the weather whiplash of spring seems almost like an insult. 😄

With things warm enough to be melting all over, today’s high of -7C/19F (which we are already at) with a wind chill of -21C/-6F feels so much colder. A few weeks ago, these temperatures felt like spring!

While doing my morning rounds today, little Magda decided to follow me around. She kept getting under my feet, so I picked her up. She doesn’t like to be carried and ended up on my shoulders – which she didn’t like, either! – but she was cold and shivering, and actually allowed me to tuck her into my jacket.

For a little while, at least.

There’s a weather system blowing from West to East, almost straight across the country, bringing snow and high winds. The snow is supposed to start hitting us withing the next half hour or so, and continue for several hours. Tonight’s low is supposed to drop to -22C/-8F, which means the winds will probably make it feel colder than -30C/-22F

This see-sawing of temperatures means our usual explosion of pot holes on the roads over the next few weeks! While we’re just getting a bit of snow today, it’s not unusual to have at least one big blizzard in March or April.

Tomorrow, we’re supposed to have a high of -7C/19F again, with a warmer overnight low. I’ll be helping my mother with grocery shopping tomorrow, then do some of our own errands as well. After that, we’ll be getting a few days above freezing, then dropping down again, for more weather whiplash!

Winter and spring will be battling out for a few more weeks, yet!

The Re-Farmer

A day of rest

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I’m happy to say that today has been a quiet, uneventful day!

I’ve learned to really appreciate boring days. 😄

I was even able to sleep in… sort of. The girls took care of the outside stuff for me, as well as taking care of the inside cats. This includes kicking all the cats out of my room except for Butterscotch and Freya, so they have have their extra feeding of wet cat food, and Butterscotch would get a chance to use the litter. I’m happy to say that she is starting to use more of the room, instead of just the quarter or so of it that she was isolating herself into, but there is still the problem of the young cats going after her when she tries to use the litter.

You’d think that would make it easier to sleep in, but after the other cats are done with breakfast, they want back in, and start scratching at the door.

Loudly.

Today was warm enough that, when it was time to do the evening feeding outside, I made their own version of cat soup by softening their kibble in hot water for a while. They absolutely loved it!

It’ll be nice, when the highs stay above freezing, and we can do this for them more often.

Yeah, feeding the cats was my big event for the day. 😄

It’s good to have a day of rest!

The Re-Farmer

Who did dat?

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I’m guessing racoons. For part of it, anyhow.

First off, going into the sun room, it looked like there had been a fight or something. What probably happened, though, is that racoons were digging around. Trays were pushed aside all over. Cat carriers on the shelves were pushed aside and half out of their shelves. The litter box was half way across the room. Even the cat beds and self-warming mat on the platform were messed up.

All the food trays and the heated water bowl were empty.

There is the big heated water bowl that no longer heats, but it still being used for water. Of course the water freezes. With the temperatures we’ve been having, it no longer freezes solid. This morning, I could see that the ice on the top had been broken through, and the water below was almost gone.

My guess is, racoons got into the sun room and, once the trays were empty of kibble, they just started digging around on the floor and shelf and the platform, looking for stray bits.

What really hit me, though, was the smell. It’s gotten really bad in there. Yes, we have a litter box, but it looks like it’s only been used to urinate in. Which means, somewhere in hidden corners, we’ve got messes thawing out.

It will be good, once things are warm and dry enough, to empty the sun room and give it a thorough spring cleaning! That’s something we’ve been trying to do every spring. It’s just easier to empty the whole room to clean it, than to try and clean it around the shelves and whatnot stored in there.

Outside, I found one of the food bowls from the bottom of the shelf shelter was on the sidewalk, but that one is always knocked out for some reason. The bowls on all three shelves were empty, though.

All the food trays in the kibble house, and under the water bowl shelter, were empty.

The heated water bowl in its shelter was almost completely dry.

Only in the isolation shelter, did I still find a bit of kibble left in the food bowl.

What I also found was this. It was not there, yesterday.

At least, not how it is now.

I noticed something had been digging into the snow pile a little while ago. My guess was that, when I last cleared snow off the top off the well cap, where some cats prefer to eat, old kibble was mixed up in the snow and a skunk or racoon was digging for it.

The hole was bigger after a while, and it looked smoothed out, like something had been lying in the snow cave created.

Today, not only was the “cave” deeper, but if you click through to the next image, you’ll see the other entrance.

The cave had become a tunnel!

I wonder if there is a “room” somewhere in there?

There are too many tracks in the snow to be able to tell what made this. Not the cats, of course. I don’t think a racoon did this, though. It’s too small. Which means it was probably dug out by a skunk.

I noticed cats snuffling about one of the openings, but none seem interested in exploring inside.

Can’t blame them for that! I don’t think it was occupied at the time I found it, but who knows what’s inside?

With the freeze-thaw cycle we’ve been in for a while, the top of that pile of snow has developed a pretty heft crust of snow that partially melted, then froze again, several times. I could probably stand right on top of where the tunnel is, and it would still hold my weight. Not that I’d try, since I’d probably slip and fall right on my butt. Just moving around to the other side of the pile to get a better look at the second opening was rather treacherous!

Inside that tunnel would probably be quite snug and even warm. Snow can be an excellent insulator.

We’re supposed to go above freezing today – we’re almost there already – and be slightly warmer tomorrow. There’s going to be quite a bit more melting happening! The paved roads are good, but it’s going to make portions of the gravel roads very touchy, when my daughter and I head into town to get her prescription. She wants to check out the second hand store I visited yesterday, too. I think she wants to check out that bucket of knitting needles! 😁

It should be a good day for it. Hopefully, the winds have changed. Yesterday was a good day for walking around, except for the wind coming off the ice covered lake. Such a warm day, only to be hit with bitterly cold wind at the same time!

But I will have my daughter for company today. Thankfully, she is feeling better. She had to use a cane, yesterday, and could barely walk from joint pain. PCOS really sucks.

We are such a household of gimps! It says a lot when we have days where I am the most able bodied person in the house!

Ah, well. It is what it is! We just deal with whatever the day brings us!

The Re-Farmer