A sudden outing, and wow. Just… wow

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With today being an inside day, I did finally start working on editing the garden tour video I have planned.

Then I got a message from my SIL.

My brother was soon to be on his way to our mother’s, to put her AC away for the winter – something he hasn’t had the time to do for weeks. Did I want to be there?

Of course!

Being able to see my brother is always a joy.

However, my presence would also help prevent some of the nasties my mother likes to throw at him when no one else is around.

By the time I headed out, the predicted rain had hit us, and it was pouring! The driveway was already full of water. It was also full dark by then, so the drive to my mother’s town was NOT done at highway speeds!

I left our place not that long after he left his, and he still got there before I did! I didn’t realize that until he phoned me, asking if I could pick up some milk for our mother. The grocery store was closed by then, because it’s Sunday, so I made a dash to a gas station to get some milk for her. By the time I got inside, he was almost finished, so there wasn’t much left for me to help with.

Then we sat for a visit and a chat.

A somewhat serious chat.

It turned out our vandal showed up to visit my mother recently. My mother didn’t remember the exact day, but it was a day when her Meals on Wheels arrived, so we know it was at least on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday.

She was all impressed that he’d brought some chicken drumsticks for lunch, though he ate them himself because she had her meal delivered while he was there.

Her big surprise was when the social worker that volunteers to deliver this not only knew our vandal, but greeted him with a big hug.

There were a few other things she crowed over with his visit, which really bothered my brother and I. It doesn’t seem to matter how badly our vandal acts; all he has to do is bring some chicken or go to a town meeting she approved of, and she can’t say enough good about him.

The conversation did remind my brother that he had another “carrier message” voicemail notification from his phone. He’d deliberately not listened to it because the only calls like that have been from our vandal, even though his number is blocked, and my brother just didn’t need that stress in the middle of everything they’ve been doing with the move.

So he brought up the message, and all three of us listened to it.

Yes, it was from our vandal.

Wow.

It was absolutely vile.

Some of the things he was saying about me and my daughters were just disgusting, mostly centered on our weight, the fact that we don’t “work” (meaning, not having outside jobs he considers real jobs), and involved a lot of swearing.

There were a number of other things that showed he was just making things up in his own head, some of which left us scratching ours, trying to figure out how he came to those conclusions.

He somehow found out about my saying something on Facebook – my personal page – about our hot water tank and went on a bizarre tangent about that. Apparently, if we had outside jobs, the tank would… not break? Magically fix itself? I have no idea.

He has obviously noticed that there are a lot of commotion and things showing up here at the farm. He made a comment about it, lamenting that he can’t come over to see, because he would instantly end up in prison.

That’s not how things work, but if it keeps him away, I’m good with him believing that.

He has no idea what’s going on, and it seems to be driving him bonkers.

As horrible as the things he was saying was, my mother needed to hear it. The version of him that shows up at her place lately is not the real him. These phone messages are the real him. He is absolutely obsessed with his hatred of me and my daughters (he seems to forget my husband exists). He used to direct this hate at my brother, and still tries to say that our late father wanted this property to be bequeathed to our vandal, not my brother. Meanwhile, we have a telephone message my father left on my brother’s answering machine, shortly before he died, saying he wanted it to go to my brother.

Thankfully, ownership has already been transferred to my brother, so it is safe. There is nothing about it in my mother’s will for our vandal to try and contest.

This was quite a wake up for my mother, to hear all this. This message would have been left shortly before or after he had visited my mother in person. She should not be allowing him in. Perhaps after hearing this, she may stop. Unlikely, but it’s one more reason it would be better for my mother to be in a long term care facility, as she wants. Our vandal doesn’t have to know where she is, and if he does find out, he can be on file as not allowed to see her.

It also got us to talking about what he seems to be trying to do. He somehow seems to think my mother can still give him the farm, as if she could somehow take ownership back from my brother. Our vandal has his own acreage, and oodles of equipment and out building and vehicles… he is quite well set up. He doesn’t need this place, nor anything on it.

It’s not about him wanting it for himself so much as to make sure I don’t have it – even though it’s my brother that owns it. He is a shining example of what it means to “covet” something. To covet is not just to want something that someone else has, but to take what someone else has from them.

So… Marxism on an individual scale. 😄

Even my mother was able to understand this.

All in all, it did put a downer on the visit but, considering how my mother responded to our vandal showing up at her place, it was really important that she hear it, and that we could talk about it with her.

We couldn’t stay too much longer, though. My brother no longer takes vacation days on Mondays, now that the move is done and the new owners have taken possession of the property they sold, so he had to get back home. Their new place is slightly closer, but it’s still at least an hour’s drive for him. Plus, there was a break in the rain that wasn’t going to last long, so I wanted to get home before it hit again, too.

I will be back to help my mother with her grocery shopping and errands soon, but she needs this far less often, now that she’s got the Meals on Wheels deliveries.

The weather predictions for the next while look pretty mild, so hopefully I’ll get more done outside. Tomorrow, however, I’m hoping to get the truck loaded up with the bags of aluminum again, and this time actually make it to the scrap yard! The rain is supposed to continue until about 10am tomorrow, but I’ve got a tarp over the sorted bags, so that should make loading the truck less unpleasant!

We shall see what the day brings.

Meanwhile, time to get back to editing some video…

The Re-Farmer

First try with the Crespo squash!

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It has taken us four years to get to this point!

Four years of trying to grow Crespo squash before finally getting a real harvest out of it.

There were four harvestable squash out of the three vines, though the first one to develop sort of stagnated early on, stayed dark green and never got very big. In the photo above, you can see it in the front row, third from the left.

The largest squash with the damage visible is the big Crespo squash we wanted to make sure to cook first. However, with losing our hot water and having to constantly heat water for washing anything, we didn’t get to it until now.

It was remarkably easy to cut into! I expected to have a harder time of it.

The colour is not only quite a deep orangey-yellow, it actually stained my hands a bit, by the time I finished scooping out the insides and removing the seeds. Which suggests to me that this squash has quite a bit of beta carotene in it.

I cut it into quarters, then cut out the stem, which you can see in the next image, before putting it in the oven. Aside from adding a bit of water to the bottom of the pan, nothing else was done to it. I want to be able to give it a taste without any seasonings, first.

In the last image, you can see the seeds, washed and draining. There were very few seeds that got rejected. I supposed we could roast some for eating, but I don’t actually have any interest in doing that. Later, these seeds will be laid out on a parchment paper lined tray to dry out.

I set the oven for 350F for about an hour before stabbing the pieces with a fork, then adding another 45 minutes. As I write this, they are soft and appear to be cooked through. I’ve shut off the oven and left them in there, just in case there were some undercooked parts I couldn’t reach.

Today, I was actually planning to get some stuff done outside but, while it is warmer than yesterday, it has turned out to be a rainy day.

Sort of.

It’s been raining off and on since last night. It’s supposed to start raining for real at about 7pm and continue raining through to about 10am tomorrow morning. Since some of what I hoped to get done today involved power tools, I decided to postpone it!

There is a bit of concern about the winter sown garden beds. When the seeds were sown, the beds were completely dry and did not get any watering. It’s cool enough that it’s unlikely they will germinate, but if they get wet and don’t germinate, the seeds may rot. If they get wet and do germinate, they may freeze. The heavy leaf mulch, however, should protect them from both possibilities.

I hope.

So today I’m focusing on indoor stuff, but still garden related. We had a box of San Marzano tomatoes in the living room that were fully ripe. Those are now soaking in vinegar water. Later on, I’ll remove the tops and tails, and get them in the crock pot for the night to make tomato sauce. There might be room enough to use some of the whole tomatoes we have in the freezer right now.

Once the oven is free, we have lots of peppers that have ripened and are starting to dehydrate in the living room. Those will get set onto trays to dehydrate fully and faster in the oven. Except, maybe, the hot peppers. There are so many of them. We might instead string them up and hang them above a heat vent, instead.

There was also a large colander in the old kitchen, full of tomatoes that were further along in ripening. Every now and then, I go through the bins and pull out the ones that are blushing and set them in the colander until it’s full. I went through those, setting more San Marzano, and a few mystery compost tomatoes, into a bin for the living room to continue ripening. The cherry tomatoes went into a small colander for general use and snacking in the kitchen. These are the Chocolate and Black Cherry tomatoes in there, a lot of which still need more time to ripen, plus a couple of little red tomatoes from the mystery plant that self seeded among the Red Thumb potatoes. When we harvested the tomatoes before our first frost, that plant had many small tomatoes on it, all still very green. I’m glad to see that they are actually ripening now. Judging from the colour and the size, I am guessing it is from the Mosaic Medley mix we grew in that bed a few years ago. That was a mix of cherry and grape tomatoes. These are so small, though, and with how the clusters were formed, I’m tempted to think they might be Spoon tomatoes. They’re big for Spoon tomatoes, but as something that has self seeded, it’s possible they reached a size they might not reach when grown as transplants.

Well, whatever they are, they are a tomato, and my family likes tomatoes, whatever the variety!

Aside from all of this, I hope to take advantage of today being an indoor day and start editing a couple of videos, including the October garden tour video using footage I recorded on Nov. 1. 😄

But first, lunch – and maybe a taste of that Crespo squash!

The Re-Farmer

Our Costco and Walmart shop: this is what $774 total looks like

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Today was my day to head into the city for our monthly stock up shop at Costco. Another city stock up shop was done just a few days ago.

Normally, when I do a Costco trip, Costco is my only stop of the day. My husband was running low on distilled water for his CPAP humidifier, though, and Costco doesn’t have that, so I this time I made a stop at a nearby Walmart.

I did the Walmart trip first, since there would not be anything that needed refrigerating. It was also my breakfast stop, at the in-store McDonalds, since Costco no longer has food in their cafeteria that I can eat, or like.

Gosh, I miss their Montreal Smoked Meat sandwiches!

Of course, while in Walmart, I looked around for other things that we might need. Including a small donation, this is what $62.99 looks like.

The items on my list were the water bottles for my husband, and the pumpkin seeds to grind into powder and include with the cat’s food.

I remembered that I needed a new notebook. The one I’m using now to keep track of our budget is on its last page.

The New England Clam Chowder was on sale for $2.97 each. These days, those are usually around $5 each, depending on the store, so I got that for the pantry as a treat. I also grabbed a refill of liquid soap for the bathroom, plus some laundry detergent that was at a better-than-Costco sale price.

That’s it.

This didn’t even half fill one of my hard sides bags (not counting the large containers, of course).

Then it was off to Costco.

The first thing I did there was fill up the tank and reset my trip mileage counter. Most of the city was at $1.249/L, but Costco was $1.179/L, so it cost me $48.44 to fill my tank.

Doing Costco on a weekend can be pretty hectic, but today wasn’t too bad. Just the usual trying to maneuver a flat cart around people who think I can stop instantly, or turn on a dime. 🫤

I had hoped to keep the total down but, even with not getting some things I normally would get, I spent more than I intended to.

Remember when beef stew meat was the cheap meat?

This was not one of the larger packages, either. We used to get stew meat at Costco all the time, but just can’t afford it anymore. The price has pretty much doubled in the last few years.

This is what $711.89 looks like.

I got only three bags of kibble this time, buried under other items.

There were a few things that were still priced all right, and I stocked up. The flour tortillas, for example, are still $9.99 a package. I also got two, 2 pks of rye bread.

I got a case of water bottles; that has gone up in price, but it still cheaper than elsewhere. We don’t use bottled water a lot, but it does come in handy for in the truck. There’s a 30 pack of Coke Zero that is a better price than elsewhere, too.

For the pantry, there is a large pack of ramen noodles and a 9 pack of baked beans. Those have certainly gone up in price.

There’s two cases of canned cat food and three bags of kibble – I’ll be getting more kibble for the outside cats from the feed store, so this is mostly for the inside cats.

There’s toilet paper, of course.

There is a double flat of eggs (60 eggs) that I think has gone up in price since last time. For meat, I got a pork loin that was on sale, and a chub of ground beef, which was slightly cheaper/kg than the family packs. There’s a pork blade roast – pork is still reasonably priced – and a panini pack of sandwich meats. I also got 2 rotisserie chickens, as they are cheaper than buying uncooked chicken.

Their salad mixes are a much better price than elsewhere, so I got a couple of their double packs in two different mixes; Asian Cashew and Mexican Corn salad.

There’s 5 pounds of butter, plus avocado oil and sunflower oil, one liter of whipping cream, marble cheddar, extra old cheddar, frozen perogies, the Kirkland brand of mayonnaise, a big container of popping corn, plus some vitamins; gummie multi vitamins and B12. I also picked up a package of the clear leaf bags that we use for our recycling. Last of all, AA and AAA batteries. I got the Kirlkand brand, because the usual Duracell ones were just too expensive.

In total, there are 46 items for that $700 plus.

Altogether, including gas and breakfast, today was an $843, plus change, day.

Ouch.

Thank God my husband’s private insurance disability payments are as good as they are. We can juggle the numbers and make things work, still. Others are not so fortunate, so we are grateful for what we have, and to still be able to get a few non-essentials as “treats”.

And feed the cats, inside and out. I’ll be honest; things would be a lot better if we weren’t feeding so many cats. The rescue has helped so much in getting them adopted out, but we’re reaching a point where we need to seriously consider culling some of the outside cats. Particularly any we aren’t able to catch to get spayed or neutered. Even with the inside cats, we’ve been trying to adopt some of them out for years. Ginger and Toni, our two tripods, were supposed to be taken for adoption almost a year ago, and that hasn’t panned out, as sick or injured cats took priority.

We’ll figure it out, of course. It’s just getting harder to manage.

I can’t even imagine how much the Cat Lady and her family spend on their cats. They’ve taken in so many that are not adoptable, mostly for health reasons. Between special cat foods, medications and vet bills, it must get insane, and yet they still try to help us out, too! They are just awesome.

But I digress.

I’m happy to have been able to do our second stock up shop today. We’ll be good for quite a while, now. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Getting some rest today

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I did get some things accomplished today, but ended up cutting back on some of what I planned to do. I was just too stiff and sore, and I’ll be heading to the city for our Costco shop tomorrow, so I didn’t want to push my luck.

I wasn’t happy with the garden tour video I took yesterday evening, so I tried again this morning. I think they will do, though I did catch some mistakes I made. Ah, well. I can edit in some notes when I put the tour video together.

The truck was booked for the garage today. When changing the oil, he forgot to reset the computer, so I was still getting the “change oil soon” warning. He also forgot to put on a new sticker. The check engine line turned back on again, so he was going to diagnose that for me, plus get some pricing for other work we already knew would need doing.

My appointment was for 1pm, but I left early so I could put in a bit of gas and a car wash. I still dropped the truck off early. They were having lunch! After talking for a bit about what needed to be checked out, I told them there was no hurry, as I had some errands to run.

Without the truck, doing them meant a lot of walking!

My first stop was the furthest. I headed to the dollar store. There were some things I was looking for, for the bathroom, but I wasn’t sure if they would have them. I did, however, find some embroidery thread that I plan to use for this year’s Christmas decorations (I try to do a different craft every year). They had also restocked on breakaway collars. I got their last five that had reflective strands in them. The last time I got some, I got four of them to put on the four males that had just been neutered, but three of them were gone the next day. I think I put them on too loosely. I’d hoped to find them around the yard or something, but there was no sign of them. Only Syndol still has his collar.

After taking the bells off, I put the collars on after doing their evening feeding.

I had to double check for tattoos on a couple of them, to be sure! I had enough collars to include Judgement (who was done on a cheap spay/neuter day, and has no tattoo) and Gouda. Right now, the only fixed cat that does not have a collar is Rolando Moon. The grand old lady has no need for a collar, and I doubt I could get one on her, anyhow.

I made them a bit snugger this time, testing them out on inside cats, first. Hopefully, that will do the trick, and they won’t get lost. So far, the cats didn’t seem to notice them, once I got them on.

After the dollar store, I stopped at a Red Apple. Once again, what I was actually looking for wasn’t there, but I did find a blackout curtain for my husband. He has a south facing window, and the sun hits him right in the face while he’s on his computer. We had curtains there before, but they were too long, and the cats destroyed their bottoms. This curtain also turned out to be really long, but we just folded up the bottom out of cat range and clipped it in place for now.

My husband is very happy with it! Plus, it’s wide enough that a second one isn’t needed.

By the time I made my way back to the garage, it was past 1pm, but the truck hadn’t moved from where I parked it yet. I was able to leave my bag of shopping in it, then headed to the hotel next door that has a Chinese restaurant in it, and had lunch.

When I got back to the garage, they were just finishing up with the truck and just had to look up the codes that came up while he scanned it.

So the thing that’s turning on the check engine like turns out to be the Mass Air Flow sensor. Nothing urgent.

The part, however, costs almost $180 (plus labour and taxes).

The other thing we need to get fix, but got away with not needing last winter, is the cord for the block heater. I discovered the plug had been torn off. This being a GM vehicle, they have proprietary cords. You can’t just splice a new plug in. It won’t work. Apparently, GM is the only manufacturer that is like this. A new one is just pennies over $80. Last of all, I requested an updated price for the one of the wheel sensors. That will be just under $105, which is pretty much the same as when I asked about it, a year ago.

Thankfully, none of this is urgent stuff, because we won’t have the budget to get any of it done until next month. I asked which he would consider a priority, if we could only do one at a time. He suggested the MAF sensor. Next would be the block heater cord. Last winter was mild a mild El Nińo winter, so we were fine without it. This year will depend on just how strong the La Nińa current turns out to be.

That done, I made a quick stop at the grocery store across the street, then headed home, with a quick stop at the post office along the way. I had a letter from the government waiting for me. At tax time, I get the caregiver tax rebate, while my husband gets a disability tax credit. These are the only reason why we get anything back at tax time. The caregiver tax rebate is provincial, and has to be renewed every three years. It was time for me to renew it to get it on my 2024 tax return.

It turned out to be easily done online, so that got taken care of quickly.

My intention had been to try and get some more work done outside, while the temperatures were good and there was still daylight.

Instead, I decided to make it a day of rest. Even working on the garden tour video turns out to be something I’m just too tired to do. It doesn’t help that the arthritic in my hands is really kicking in. The crackling noises my finger joints make is truly unfortunate! It makes typing rather difficult at times. At least my wounded finger tips on each hand are healing up nicely. Just the one I dropped the trailer tailgate on is still hurting.

I think today will be a day for an early bed time. I’d like to get a relatively early start for the city. I say “relatively” because sunrise is past 8:20am this time of year, though it is usually pretty light by about 7:30. I do my morning rounds once it’s light out, so I’ll head out shortly after.

I’m glad we got the truck checked today, but I’m not looking forward to doing Costco on a Saturday. Hopefully, making it an early trip will mean fewer crowds.

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: winter sowing two more beds

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Mission accomplished!

I really wanted to push to get the rest of the seeds in for our 2025 garden. I still had to wait until the afternoon to start, so the ground had time to thaw from overnight frost. From there, it was a race against time to finish before I lost light. I even managed to get some quick footage for an October garden tour video. I haven’t checked the files yet, though, to see if they are worth using.

This is what I was able to get done today:

The first area I worked on was along the chain link fence. The long bed in the first image above was mostly done already, since I’d harvested potatoes out of it. I even found a couple of little potatoes that I’d missed when harvesting.

It still took a remarkably long time to prepare it, though. The section that had the purple caribe potatoes that never grew was compacted like crazy, even though I’d loosened at least part of it, to plant the kohlrabi.

Those actually had some leaves trying to grow! If they hadn’t been eaten by flea beetles, they’d still be growing now.

There was also the lone Jabousek lettuce that had seeded itself and survived being munched by deer. I got a bucket to use to collect the seeds. There was a lot for just one plant! I ended up putting a healthy scoop of them with the remaining root vegetable seeds, giving it a shake to mix them in with the other seeds, potting soil and vermiculite.

I also cleaned up the chimney block planters along the other section of chain link fence a bit. I just took down the tomato supports and cut the tomato plants at their bases, leaving the roots. I will be leaving those as is until spring.

As for the narrow bed, once the soil was loosened, weeded and leveled, I scattered the seed mix. This mix has Dalvay shelling peas, a few King Tut purple peas we saved, Royal Burgundy bush beans, Hopi Black Dye and Mongolian Giant sunflowers and a few black Montano Morado corn seeds I’d saved, plus onion seeds.

The onion seeds are so much smaller, though, I scattered the larger seeds first, which probably included a few onion seeds as well, then went back over the bed to scatter the remaining onion seeds. There wasn’t enough to do the entire bed, though, but I made a modification, later.

First, though, I went over the bed several times, looking for the larger seeds and pushing them into the soil, spreading them further apart, if necessary. When I found the bush beans, I pushed them into the soil closer to the brick edging. If I had to move peas, I pushed them into the soil closer to the chain link fence. The Mongolian Giant seeds were easy enough to see, but the corn and black dye seeds are so dark, they were much more difficult to spot. I’m sure I missed quite a few. I also replanted the two little potatoes that I’d found.

If all goes to plan, the peas will be able to climb either the fence, the corn or the sunflowers, the beans will have room to get bushy along the outside edge of the bed while doubling as ground cover, and the onions will dissuade hungry deer.

Once I’d pushed in as many of the larger seeds as I could find, I got some of the shallots and onions I’d set aside earlier for replanting. I transplanted them around the outer edge of the end that did not get the scattered onion seeds. These shallots and onions are there to go to seed – and to dissuade any hungry deer, I hope! Everything in this bed, except maybe the corn, is stuff deer love to eat!

After planting the shallots and onions, the soil was gently raked to make sure everything was covered before getting mulched with leaves topped with grass clippings.

That left the root vegetable – and now Jabousek lettuce – seeds to sow. Those went into the low raised bed that the German Butterball potatoes had been in, which is in the second photo of the slideshow above.

When the potatoes were harvested, the bed was weeded, and hadn’t been touched since. All it needed was to break up soil clumps, pull out any weed roots that got missed, soil clumps broken up and leveled.

With this higher bed, I did things a bit different. Anything along the walls of the bed would freeze, since the mulch can only protect from the top. So I focused on making sure the middle of the bed was readied for seeds, leaving about 6 inches from the walls unplanted.

This seed mix has Uzbek Golden carrots, Napoli carrots (an orange variety), Merlin, Bresko, Cylindria and Albino beets, French Breakfast, Champion, Cherry Bell and Zlata radishes, Purple Prince turnips and our saved onion and lettuce seeds in it.

It sounds like a lot, but this was finishing off packets of older seeds, so there wasn’t much of each variety, plus I don’t expect a high germination rate for any of them.

Once the seeds were scattered and gently raked over, they got mulched with leaves topped with grass clippings.

That is the last of the winter sowing vegetables to do! The only thing that could still be sown before winter is the wildflower mix, and that could even wait until spring, if I wanted. The space I’ll be planting them is still covered with an insulated tarp, and that won’t need to be moved to cover the septic tank for a while, yet.

While I was working on this, my younger daughter was taking care of things in the house, including re-installing the arm based over the new tub surround. She was able to find a way to fit the big L shaped bar in, as well, though it does make one of the corner shelves in the surround of limited use, now. Which is fine. The arm bar is needed more.

Now that the arm bars are in, my husband can finally use the shower! Even with the bath chair, he can’t get in and out without the arm bars.

My older daughter is not well today, and we’re all pretty broken and hurting, so my daughter offered to get us take out, if I were up to it.

Yes. Yes, I was!

Meanwhile, my brother and his wife were coming over for one last trip – to drop off the trailer they’ve been using to bring everything from their property to wherever it needed to go. They arrived after I left for town, but I was able to see them before they left. Tomorrow is the possession date for the new owners, so they not only pushed hard to get their own stuff out, but to make sure the new owners had things like flax bales to cover their septic field, and a few other things that got set up for them.

One thing they did was take off their “road sign” at their driveway. When the road past our driveway was named for our family, the municipality made five signs, but only needed four, so my brother was allowed to take the extra. They’ve had it at their driveway ever since. It has now been removed.

That sure made things feel a lot more final!

It would be good if we could use it at our intersection. There was one when we moved in, but then the stop sign it was attached to was knocked down and the road sign stolen. We’re pretty sure our vandal did that, but have no way to prove it, but like we can’t prove he stole the sign with my father’s name on it off the corner fence post, or that he stole the trail cam we had mounted on that post.

The municipality never replaced the road sign. I suspect that if we put this one up on the stop sign that got repaired, it would just get stolen, too.

Well, we’ve got our own painted sign at the corner, with a camera on it in case there are more vandalism attempts. That is working out just fine.

There is, of course, still lots more work to get done in the garden, but getting this winter sowing done was the thing that had to get done first. Now, we just do as much as we can while the weather holds. At the same time, my brother will be coming out as often as he is able, as he wants to sort things to their more permanent locations. Particularly the farm equipment, now that the storage trailer is in place. A lot of small things just shoved into the barn that will need to be sorted into the storage trailer or bread truck (which will be a workshop). He also has a dismantled shelter he needs to rebuild over the tractor that got its radiator damaged while lifting the discer off the trailer. It will need to be replaced, and he’s planning ahead to be able to do it during the winter, so having a roof over the tractor will be very important.

Anyhow…

They got here after I left to pick up the food, but I got home fast enough to at least give my brother a hug – my SIL was so exhausted, she fell asleep in their truck! – before they had to go.

We’re going to be seeing a lot more of my brother and, hopefully, his wife from now on!

That makes us very happy.

Getting the last of the winter sowing done today also makes me very happy.

😊😊

The Re-Farmer

Seven!

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I can’t believe I missed it.

Well… yes I can. Things have been pretty crazy, lately! If it weren’t for the reminder from WordPress, I would have forgotten completely.

Yup. Yesterday was officially our 7th blogversary.

Boy, have things changed since then! Many of our plans got turned completely upside down, while others got thrown out the window.

Yet, here we still are, chugging away at it!

Hopefully, we’ll be able to keep at it for many more years!

Many thanks to everyone that’s chosen to follow along on our journey!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 garden – I hope!

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Yes!!!

It felt so good to get a really productive day outside. It’s been so long!

I did have to wait until the afternoon, when it warmed up to our expected high of 6C/43F. Even so, some of the areas I worked in that were shaded longer were still partially frozen.

The first thing I did was finish off the bed I was working on yesterday. That little section was shaded and still rather frozen, so it took longer than it normally would have. When I was done, I grabbed a nearby roll of plastic that was rolled up and waiting to be put away for the winter and laid it out on the bed, starting from the shaded south end. It wasn’t long enough to cover the entire bed, but all I really wanted was to get the end that got more shade to warm up a bit, once the sun was able to start hitting it.

Once that was done, I shifted to the old kitchen garden and cleared the rectangular be that had the Forme de Couer tomatoes this year. That bed was shaded by the house on one side so it, too, was partially frozen. After clearing it of weeds and mint rhizomes, I grabbed one of the plastic sheets that had protected the eggplants and peppers earlier, and laid it over the soil. This bed is shorter, so the plastic was plenty long enough.

I had decided to use the high raised bed, which is already prepared, and the open section of the garlic bed for winter sowing, so I didn’t need to clear another bed, yet. Leaving the plastic to warm the soil, I headed into the house and started going through my seeds.

I had already considered what I wanted to winter sow earlier, but I’m always flexible on stuff like that.

After going through my seeds, I decided on some ordered chaos.

I’m also going to need to clear one more bed.

Most of the seeds I will be sowing are older seeds, so I don’t expect a very high germination rate for some of them. I also decided to include some additions.

Here are the beds I was able to finish planting before it started getting too dark.

The first image of the slideshow above is in the old kitchen garden. With that theme in mind, I’ve got more “kitchen” greens. These include:

– spinach – four different varieties
– Swiss chard – two different varieties
– Shallots – saved seed collected from a lone surviving shallot a couple of years ago
– Kohlrabi – both purple and green
– Hedou Tiny bok choi – we got these as free seeds a couple of years ago, but they were smothered by elm tree seeds after they sprouted. A couple of seedling survived and bolted, so I let them go to seed and saved them.

Lastly, I included some onion seeds collected this year. Hopefully including the onions and shallots will keep the deer and damaging insects away.

These and another group of smaller seeds were added to a repurposed herb/spice shaker container, along with some seed start mix and vermiculite I had left over from starting seeds indoors in the spring, and given a thorough shaking.

After emptying this container into the old kitchen garden bed, it was mulched with a thick, insulating layer of leaves that was topped with some grass clippings, as was done with the garlic already planted.

In the next image, you’ll see the bed I had started on last night. This one is now a summer squash bed. Years ago I had accidentally bought three collections of summer squash when I meant to get just one. We’ve been using the seeds for several years now, but they are starting to get old. The only new seeds were the White Scallop patty pan squash. The others are Sunburst (a yellow patty pan), Endeavor (green zucchini), Goldy (yellow zucchini) and Magda (mottled pale greens, similar to zucchini). I don’t expect much for a germination rate for the older seeds.

With these larger seeds, I scattered them from end to end on the bed, then pushed each one into the soil, spreading them out more evenly in the process, used a rake to gently cover them over, then mulched with leaves and grass clippings.

The next two photos – the remaining end of the garlic bed and the high raised bed – have root vegetables, plus protective onion seeds. These include:

– the last loose seeds of Uzbek Golden carrot (I still have the home made seed tape of those)
– pelleted Napoli carrot
– beets – three red varieties left over from before, plus a white Albino variety given to me
– Purple Prince turnip
– radishes – three red varieties left over from before, plus a yellow variety given to me.

Plus, protective onion seeds were added as well.

I used the shaker over the small area next to the garlic, but I honestly couldn’t tell if any seeds got out. I mulched it anyhow, but when I got to doing the high raised bed, I took the shaker lid off and just scattered the mix. I could at least see the pelleted carrot seeds! This bed is shorter, and I ended up not finishing off the container. I’ll find somewhere else to sow the rest of the seeds.

After mulching the high raised bed, I moved the wire cover onto it for winter storage. The wire is open enough that it won’t prevent snow from covering the bed, and the snow is an important part of this winter sowing process.

This left me with two containers of seeds. I decided to plant the flower seeds. I wanted those in the main garden area and decided to use the space by the high raised bed where the pumpkins and drum gourds had been planted. It’s a small space and did not take long to clean up. That last space got:

– Butterfly Flower: Orange shades (a milkweed) that I tried starting indoors this past spring, but never got to direct sowing the rest.
– Forget Me Nots – given to me by a friend
– Nasturtium; Dwarf Jewel Mix – I got those this year and never got around to planting them.

I look forward to (hopefully) have a busy patch of flowers for the pollinators in the main garden area next year! The Nasturtium should also act as a trap crop, luring in insects that might harm some of the other plants.

For flowers, I also have two packages of Western wildflowers mix. I have an area along the edge of the maple grove that has been covered with the insulated tarp, folded in half, since it was taken off the septic tank lid in the spring. I’m hoping that did the job of killing off any weeds under it. Once the tarp is removed, that is where I intend to plant the wildflower mix. It has 16 varieties of annuals and perennials native to Western Canada in it.

I am now left with one last container of seeds to plant, but I was losing light and need to prepare another bed for them. This container has:

– Dalvay peas, including seeds I collected from the ones we planted this past year
– King Tut purple peas; from collected seeds
– Royal Burgundy bush beans
– Hopi Black Dye sunflowers – just one of the two packages I had
– Mongolian Giant sunflowers – I had only one packet of those
– a small number of Montana Morado corn. We’d grown them a couple of years ago and left them to go to seed, as we were going to test grinding them into flour, only to have the cats dump the entire bowl of collected seed. I managed to salvage a few seeds – less than a dozen.

I chose this combination so that the peas could climb the sunflowers, while the pole beans can shade the ground. This group of seeds did also get onion seeds added to it. Everything in here is prone to being eaten by deer, so I’m hoping the onions will be enough of a turn off for them.

After talking to my daughter about it, we figured the place to plant this is in the long, narrow bed along the chain link fence. It’s mostly clear already, as it had potatoes in it this past year. There’s just one self seeded tomato plant still needing to be cleaned up. Plus, the kittens have been using it as a litter box, so that needs to be cleaned out, too.

So that is my plan for tomorrow. To get that last group of seeds winter sown seeds in. Then, I’m hoping to get a bit more clean up before taking the garden tour video I’d originally intended to take in the middle of the month. This will be the last garden tour video of the year.

In the spring, once the snow is melted away, the mulch on all of these will need to be removed, to allow the soil to warm up and the seeds to germinate. If all goes to plan, this will give us a head start to our 2025 garden.

With most of these, I completely finished off the seeds I had left from previous years. I still have plenty of other things that can be started indoors, and others for direct sowing.

Next year’s garden will be very, very different from how this year’s garden turned out. Not having four 18′ beds dedicated to winter squash and melons is going to make quite the difference! We will be planting fewer tomatoes next year, too.

Even if this winter sowing experiment doesn’t turn out turn out, I could get away with not buying any new seed this winter.

I will still buy more seed, of course! Just probably not until a month or two from now. I’ve already got my eye on some rare heritage breeds that I’d like to grow, if only to help keep the varieties going.

Mostly, though, I’d like to finally get some new beds started, and get at least one permanent trellis built.

If the weather holds.

We shall see.

I’m just happy with the progress I got today!

The Re-Farmer

First stock up shop: this is what $374 total looks like

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Today (or, should I say, yesterday, by the time this is published!) I headed into the city to do the first of our stock up shopping trips. I was using the car loaned to us while our truck was being repaired, so it was not at large as it would have been, if we were using the truck.

My first stop was the international grocery store, where I had breakfast – Dim Sum and a drink cost just over $20 – before I started shopping.

This is what $147.62 looks like.

Yeah. That little cart load is almost $150.

This store is where we tend to get some things I would consider treats, though.

The coconut milk was on sale, and my daughters like to use it, so I got a couple of cans. The evaporated milk is for my younger daughter’s baking. They also requested the jar of Lao Gan Ma chili sauce.

The Coke Zero is for myself and my husband, while the Cranberry Ginger Ale is for my daughters – buying both got me the sale price.

My older daughter requested the Monsters, but they are for both my daughters, plus myself, and I took advantage of another 2-for- sale to get 6 cans. The cases were not on sale; just individual cans.

For meat, I got the locally produced smoked bacon slab, some pork chops and some ground beef.

The two types of Gouda are treats. I can’t remember if we’ve tried Forest Mushroom before, but we certainly haven’t tried Smokey BBQ before!

I got an extra bottle of my husband’s favourite soy sauce. For my daughters, I got a couple of cartons of oat milk – the brand of soy milk we used to get is having issues and has started to go bad very quickly, so they’ve requested oat milk in another brand. I thought I was getting plain, but got vanilla, instead! They mostly use it in their tea, though, so that works.

I picked up some black teas that were on sale – a variety pack, plus Irish Breakfast, which was not included in the variety pack. I got a flat of eggs that should last us until we do our Costco shopping, were I get double flats of eggs. I also remembered to grab some recycling bags. They’re smaller than what we need, but it was the largest size they had, and we are completely out. I’ll pick up our usual size bags at Costco.

Using my loyalty card saved me $18.54, which isn’t too bad, I guess.

I had considered hitting a Superstore after this, but I was messaging with the garage and with my SIL about getting our truck home, so I decided to skip it and went straight to Walmart.

This is what $226.69 – including a $10 donation – looks like.

Yeah, that cart looks even emptier.

This is what I got.

The big expenses were the wet and dry cat food. I just got one bag of kibble for the inside cats. I will get more at Costco. For the outside cats, I get 40 pound bags at the feed stores.

Thee was an excellent sale on whole chickens, so I got two. I also found plain oat milk for my daughters – at a better price, too. It’s the same brand.

I got packages of sliced turkey and sliced ham for sandwiches. The light rye bread has gone down in price, so I picked up 4 loaves for now. Oh, and I grabbed a couple of cheeses – Havarti and Old Cheddar.

In the non-food category, my daughters requested some personal care products they will pay me back for later. I also got a 15′ extension cord rated flexible to -40C/F This will replace the one we currently have plugged into an outlet inside the cat house. The current one can have only one thing plugged into it, and it’s used for one heated water bowl. A second one is in the sun room, and now we have a third.

So these two shops came to a total of $374.31, including taxes and a donation.

On the way home, I picked up a bag of kibble at the feed store, which came out to just over $63 after taxes. Next time, I’ll go to the feed store to the north of us, where they have a brand that costs less, and the cats seem to enjoy more. Variety is good, though.

Adding in the feed store kibble and the food, that brings things up to about $457. Plus, I filled the tank on the loaned car for $38 and change, then put $30 of gas into the truck after we picked that up, though my CAA card gave me a bit of a discount. Gas prices had dropped to $1.279 today, so that helped. All in all, we’re looking at $525 total, give or take some change, for the day.

Oh, and another $320 for truck repairs and an oil change, bringing our total spending for the day up to about $845. My daughter will be covering the cost of the truck repairs later, though, so at least that will be going back into the budget!

The next trip to the city for our Costco shop won’t be for a few days. Possibly not until after the weekend. We’ll see how things work out.

If nothing else, it’ll give more time to catch up on getting things done for the winter, outside!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: A quick garden bed before and after

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I had a bit of time between coming home from a city shop, and my SIL arriving to help bring our truck home. So I took advantage of the daylight and started preparing the next garden bed, hopefully for winter sowing.

I didn’t quite finish, though.

Here is how it looks so far.

Click through to see the “after” image.

This is the bed that had the San Marzano tomatoes and yellow bulb onions in it. With the onions filling in the spaces between the tomatoes, it didn’t get mulched much at all. Mostly, a grass clipping mulch was added around the outside, mostly to prevent soil from washing away when watering.

With our compaction problems, I was pleasantly surprised how almost fluffy the soil was. Aside from some Creeping Charlie showing up at each end, it wasn’t all that weedy, either, though there were certainly plenty of weed roots and rhizomes to remove. There wasn’t anywhere near as many elm tree roots invading as in the previous bed I’d worked on, either.

I did find quite a few onions missed during harvest!

The one problem I had in clearing this bed is that I could only use my right hand. I had to dig into the loosened soil to get those roots out, which is when I discovered I managed to somehow cut the tip of my index finger on my left hand. Even with gloves on, it was too painful to push my fingers into the soil – which is how I discovered the injury!

Unfortunately, when I dropped the tail gate of my brother’s trailer on my fingers later on, it was on my right hand. Now, the tip of the index finger on my right hand is all swollen and rather purple.

It’s going to make things interesting, as I try to finish the job tomorrow!

I think after I get this bed ready for winter sowing, I’ll move on to the rectangular bed in the old kitchen garden. The high raised bed in the main garden area is already prepped. It’s a much shorter bed, but with the open space left where the garlic is planted, that should be enough. I think, in the main garden area, I’ll try winter sowing summer squash in the bed I’m working on now, then do a mix of root vegetables and onion seeds in the high raised bed and the remaining space with the garlic. Then, in the old kitchen garden, I’ll do a mix that includes more onions with kohlrabi, peas and spinach, and maybe some other greens. Once the beds are ready, I’ll go through my seeds and see what I have.

If the winter sowing works, that’ll be a great head start for next year. If not, I will still have plenty of seeds to plant.

For now, looking at the long range forecast, it seems we will have almost 3 weeks before our first potential snow. With only one more city shopping trip to get done, no more trailer loads being dropped off, the hot water tank working again, the truck repaired and home… I should be able to finally focus on getting things done outside again!

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

We have a truck again – and hot water!

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Woohoo, what a day!!!

I hadn’t heard from the garage about the status of our truck, but today was my day to do our first stock up shopping trip (which will get its own post later). Once I was in the city, I texted our mechanic and let him know I had a reliable signal, so he could update me whenever he had the chance.

Long story short, it was fixed and getting its oil change, and would be ready soon.

Yay!

Now, to get the truck, I was thinking I would have to do it another day, as I would first be driving to the city to get my SIL, then we’d drive back to the garage, pay and get the keys, then my SIL would take their car to their home and I’d take the truck to ours.

Well, after much messaging between my brother and his wife, and the garage, it was worked out to get it done today! My brother was bringing one last load here to the farm, with my SIL coming along to help me get the truck, but they weren’t going to make it until well after the garage closed.

With a discount for paying in cash, the total was $320. On the way home from the city I still had to stop at the feed store for a 40 pound bag of cat food to tide us over until my husband’s main disability pay comes in. A branch of my bank is in the same town, so I got the cash, then drove to the garage to pay for the work and get the keys before they closed, leaving the truck until I could come back with me SIL.

I was able to briefly talk to the mechanic about the truck. It turned out to be probable the best of all possible scenarios.

The oil pump’s sensor needing replacing.

He said this is so common, he changes out about one of these every week – which is a lot for a town this size.

There is no damage to the engine at all, which is a HUGE relief.

From there, I finally went home to unload the shopping of the day, then had a quick supper. I took advantage of the daylight to work on a garden bed until my brother and his wife arrived. She and I then left pretty much immediately to get the truck.

Their car is a sweet ride, but it sure felt good to be driving our truck again!

After a quick stop to add a bit of gas, I headed home – absolutely paranoid about all the gauges and lights and warnings a long the way!

It was fine. Apparently, this is why the check engine light had been on, too.

Once we got back, we helped my brother unload. When things were mostly done, my SIL headed home ahead of him – it was already full dark by then. While this is the last load for the farm, they still have a few more things to take care of on their property before the new owners officially take possession of it.

I continued helping my brother until it was all done. The only down side was when I popped the tailgate back onto the trailer. It’s made to slide down channels on the sides, but if it doesn’t drop straight, one end tends to catch. That happened and when I got it loose, it dropped straight down.

Right onto the tips of two of my fingers!

One of them is now quite swollen, making typing rather difficult! 😄

Once everything was closed up and put away, my wonderful, awesome, amazing brother took the time to work on our hot water tank!

The first thing he did was use a different handle for the socket, and was able to get the old anode rod out, while I held the tank in place as best I could. Once those tanks are empty, they are really quite light!

The anode rod was longer than there’s space above the tank, so he had to bend it to get it out. It was quite covered in crud, of course. I honestly expected it to look worse.

Once that was done, it was a relatively simple matter to install the powered rod (not an affiliate link). This is how it looks now.

The rod itself is a lot shorter than what we pulled out, so that made it easier to install. It sticks out a lot further than I expected. There is a ground wire now attached to one of the screws around the top of the tank.

Then it was time to remove the elements.

When he tested it with his meter before, the top one was out. He didn’t have his meter with him this time, but I was sure the bottom one was also burnt out.

After removing the wires, it was quite easy to get the top element out. After making sure the threads were clean and clear, the new element was installed and wired up again.

Then it was time to take out the bottom element.

Wow. That was… something.

It wasn’t difficult to unscrew it, but once my brother starting trying to pull it out, it did NOT want to come out. It was completely covered in crud! He kept having to twist it back and forth to break off the crud and try to pull it out, little by little. It turned out to be longer than expected – and then there was a bend at the end!

Once he got it out completely, we could see that it was supposed to be bent back on itself, but it was so full of crud that, as my brother pulled it out, he actually straightened the element out in the process.

After he pulled it out, he bent it back like it was originally supposed to be – sort of.

Here is the old and new elements.

Yes, they are different elements; this part number for the new one is the number I was given by the company for the bottom element.

Here are all three parts. Instagram cuts off part of the photo, so you can’t see the tip of the anode rod, which has even more crud on it than the rest.

The straight element it from the top. That’s the one that was dead when my brother tested them. How the bottom one was still live at the time, I have no idea! That one was so encased in crud!

The new powered anode rod is supposed to keep that from happening again. Or, at least, not so quickly. This tank was installed only a year ago! The shorted life span of any of the tanks we had – though the previous ones started leaking from their bases somewhere inside, and this one hasn’t.

Once everything was installed, it was time to start filling the tank.

When there was enough water in it, we allowed it to drain out the bottom, to take some of the crud out with it. We didn’t see a lot, though.

As the tank filled, we ran the hot water at the old laundry sink in the basement, while my daughter ran all the hot water taps upstairs, to get the air out of the pipes and clear out more crud. Once the tank was full, we did it again, before finally asking my daughter to turn on the breaker. We also plugged in the powered anode rod.

My brother waited a while longer, checking the elements to make sure nothing was leaking, etc. He couldn’t stay until the entire tank heated up, though, and left soon after.

We do now have hot water, though! In fact, it’s now so hot, we might want to turn the thermostat down on the tank!

No more heating pots and kettles of water, for dishes and sponge bathing!

We’re all so paranoid of things breaking, though, no one has dared to take a shower, yet. 😄

Meanwhile, with this new powered anode rod, we should also no longer have that sulfur smell from the hot water. We’d been treating the tank with hydrogen peroxide to get rid of it, but it never lasted long. Eventually, we just stopped bothering, and put up with the smell.

I am so glad my brother was able to take the time to help us with this. Especially when they have so much going on with their move right now. In retrospect, while we might have been able to do it ourselves to a certain point, when it came to getting that bottom element out, we could not have done it. I’ve lost so much grip strength due to arthritis, I couldn’t have done it. My younger daughter injured her wrist while installing the tub surround, and both my daughters have all the joint issues that comes with PCOS. My husband, of course, is the most broken of all of us, and shouldn’t even be doing the stairs.

My brother is the best!

The Re-Farmer