Getting some progress, though not as much as I’d hoped

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Today turned out to be a gorgeous day. We reached a high of 22C/68F and, as I write this at almost 9pm, we are still at a lovely 14C/57F.

As usual, my day started with the feeding of the outside cats and my morning rounds.

I got an enthusiastic “thank you for a warm breakfast!” cuddle from Colin.

We were expecting my brother to come out today with their storage trailer; they had to hire a semi truck driver to haul it out for them. With that in mind, after I had my breakfast, I headed back outside to start re-bagging the aluminum and removing the mixed metal. Quite a few of the bags have been torn open by the cats; they can smell all the empty cat food cans in there.

After opening the gate for my brother, I set myself up by the garage, where the bags are stacked, with a folding camp chair, a crate for the mixed metal and the magnet keychain the salvage yard gave me.

And gloves.

Definitely gloves!

Then my phone started going of with messages from various people, including my SIL, keeping me up to date on their progress, so I would know when to expect them. It was a pleasant surprise that my SIL was able to come along this time.

With all the interruptions, though, I barely got through sorting half a bag before they arrived with the truck driver!

So, of course, I joined them and got some video to sent to them later on.

While my brother and the truck driver got the trailer lined up with where it needed to be, my SIL and I were staying a safe distance away. This put us near the old log building by the fire pit with the collapsed roof. Thinking about by brother’s suggestion to have the metal salvage company come out in the spring, instead of this fall, to give us time to add more to the salvage pile, I decided to take another look inside the log building to confirm my memory.

Yes, there were several old appliances in there, and even an old wringer washer. In fact there is quite a lot of metal in there.

Including…

… what that another grinding wheel sharpening stone? (I’d found another one, several years ago) Also…

… what was that I was seeing next to it?

Something that most definitely NOT be going for salvage!

What a find!

I can’t see well enough to know how this old grindstone was powered. The gears are all ceased, but that can probably be fixed.

If you click through to the next photo, you’ll see the grinding wheel still has its axel, unlike the one I’d found back in 2020. It’s a shame there’s no sign of the pedal powered frame it would have been on, though the pieces may well be buried in there.

I showed them to my SIL and told her, I’m thinking we have enough to have the salvage company come out this fall, then come back again next year. As far as I know, they won’t go into a collapsing shed like this to get stuff, so we’d have to pull out all the metal ourselves.

I forgot to talk to my brother about it, though, by the time the trailer was set and the driver left. They then needed to check inside to make sure nothing fell over or got damaged, so I left them to it and started going through the aluminum again.

They had to leave soon after checking the contents, but they will be back again next week, this time with a friend and a second trailer to haul things! They’re going to be running out of space to store things soon. 😄

After they left, I finished the bag of aluminum I was working on, then headed inside to help my daughter. Today was the day we could finally put up the tub surround!

That took way longer than either of us expected.

The problem was figuring out where exactly to cut the holes for the taps and faucet, then how to cut the holes themselves. We don’t have any hole cutting tools.

After much measuring and marking and measuring some more, my daughter marked out where the holes needed to be on the back of a panel. Then we headed outside and used incrementally larger drill bits to make the holes. My largest drill bit wasn’t going to make a large enough hole, of course, but I could still use it to enlarge the holes before we switched to using a utility knife – one of the alternative tools recommended in the instructions.

Eventually, we got them done and set it over the pipes to see how it fit.

For all her measuring, one of them didn’t.

The problem is, there is nothing level or plumb in our bathroom – neither the walls nor the tub!

We took turns carefully shaving off more and more of the opening over the hot water tap until we could finally get it on, and the panel was flat against the wall.

Which is when my daughter discovered her mistake.

Before we started measuring for the holes, the panels themselves had to be set against the walls, with their positions marked off, so that the corner pieces could properly cover the edges.

She measured and marked the back of the panel, as if it were the front. The whole thing was off by about half an inch.

But only at the top.

🫤

We’ll just have to figure it out.

Last of all, a notch had to be cut out at the top to fit under the shower. The previous tub surround fit under it, but these panels are ever so slightly taller.

They are also ever so slightly narrower. Which means that areas of old adhesive cannot be covered by the new panels.

We will also have a bit chunk of open wall open on one end.

We’ll have to figure out how to work around this.

Meanwhile, I had to move on to other things while my daughter got out the caulking gun to apply the adhesive. I was able to give her a hand as she was finishing with the second panel, then helped her with the third.

After being adhered to the walls as best could be done with how things are, they were taped in place and left to sit for about 20 minutes, before she could remove the protective film, then adhere the corner pieces.

So I headed back outside to work on the aluminum again.

I ended up out there for several house, coming inside only long enough to hydrate or use the bathroom!

Here is how things looked when my daughter finished adding the corner pieces.

It now needs to sit for 48 hours before they can be caulked with a silicone sealant.

Which is probably what we’ll have to use to cover the gap between the panel over the taps, and the corner piece.

Once the sealant has had a chance to fully cure, we will finally be able to put the new taps and faucet back on, and the tub and shower will be useable.

Though we still don’t have hot water.

I was supposed to call and see if we might still be able to get a warranty replacement, but never got to it. Meanwhile, the powered anode rod we ordered is ready for pick up, and I wasn’t even able to do that!

I did, however, get some decent progress on the aluminum.

In the first photo above, you can see the six bags of sorted aluminum. I had only two new clear bags left, so I have been finding ways to salvage bags that weren’t too badly damaged, and reusing them. With the mixed metal removed, and filling the bags as much as I could while still being able to tie them off, I was able to combine at least 8 bags into those six. I wasn’t really keeping track, but … hold on. Maybe I did…

If you click through to the next photo, you can see the rest of the bags that need to be sorted through, on the left. On the right, there’s one bag with mixed metal in it, had half a bag of aluminum (it got too dark to continue). I had to throw away three bags that were too torn up, one of them a smaller blue plastic recycling bag, but a couple of bags were double bagged, and I was able to salvage the outer bags. When putting things aside for the night, I stuffed three empty bags to reuse, into the crate. Not counting the two new bags… That makes 10 bags of that I’ve sorted through, for 6 1/2 bags of aluminum, and almost a full bag of mixed metal.

Tomorrow, I plant to keep at the sorting, then we’ll see how many we can fit into the truck. Unfortunately, we are now expecting to get rain between 8am and noon. If it’s raining, I’ll move the truck out so I can bring the bags into the garage to continue sorting. I don’t expect to be able to head to the salvage yard until the afternoon. After that, I’ll be heading to the nearest Walmart for more cat food. We are almost out!

While was writing this, the Cat Lady started messaging me. She has someone who is looking for two male feral cats – actual ferals – to adopt! That would require trapping. We’ve got a few that we can’t get close enough to see if they are male or female.

We should be able to catch 3 female kittens and one adult female without need of a trap, so she will see about booking us for spays next month.

I told her about my plans to go to the salvage yard with some aluminum tomorrow, then to the Walmart, near where we usually meet up. She had asked me to let her know when I’d be going there next, as she has some cat beds and a cat tree for us! When I told her I was needing to buy kibble, she told me she would get a couple of bags for us, and can meet me tomorrow afternoon. That is so awesome of her! Every little bit helps. That 40 pound bag I got just a little while ago is already almost gone, partly because I had to use it for the inside cats, too.

So that’s my plan for tomorrow, I guess!

Which means I’d better be getting myself to bed.

Until next time, then…

Have a wonderful day!

The Re-Farmer

Before and after, times four

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Oh, it feels good to have such a productive day!

Even if it wasn’t where I intended it to be. 😄

In the main garden area, I can happily say that the high raised bed is done! Here are the before and after pictures.

I got the first picture after cleaning up all the supports and netting, and collecting all the twist ties, the sheets we used to try and protect the peppers from frost, and finally removed the cover. You can click through to see the “after” photo.

After cleaning up the dead pepper plants and finding shallots that had been missed, the grass clipping mulch was removed and I started loosening the soil and weeding it.

Compaction is a real problem. That soil was rock hard!

After getting out as many weed roots and rhizomes as I could, I dug a trench down the middle of the bed for trench composting. The pepper plants I pulled out where cut into smaller pieces into the trench, and some of the grass clipping mulch went in as well. After the material was covered again and the soil levels, I scattered more grass clippings over the top and used my little hand cultivator to work the clippings into the soil. Hopefully, as it breaks down, it will help keep the soil from compacting so much.

Next, the soil was pulled away from the edged and mounded in the middle. More grass clippings were stuffed against the logs. Especially in the corners where the logs have some gaps, so the soil won’t wash out. Finally, the mound in the middle was leveled out again.

When we get to direct sowing seed to overwinter and, hopefully, get an early start next year, the beds will not be watered. We don’t want them to germinate yet. For now, however, the high raised bed got a thorough watering, to kick start the breakdown of the plants matter buried in the trench. The top of the bed got a scattering of grass clippings to protect the soil.

I was just finishing this when my brother arrived, so I headed out to help him as best I could. They are bringing their storage trailer out tomorrow, and it will be full, so he had brought large concrete pavers that will go under the tires, so it won’t sink into the soil

He also brought two snow blowers.

One of them even works!

Well… the other one does, too, but it has an issue that he needs to tweak for it to run properly.

Which means we will have access to a working snow blower this winter!!

We might get to retire little Spewie – or just use it to make paths around the house, instead of the entire driveway.

With the trailer coming tomorrow, my brother wanted to clear away some low hanging tree branches, so it could get through the more solid part of the driveway past the pump shack.

So, while my brother went to unload some stuff out of his truck, first, I started a different job that needed to be done.

Clearing around the pump shack.

Across from the pump shack is a lilac bush. It had been planted with an old tire around it, but it has spread quite a bit. So I decided to cut the suckers back to the tire, widening the drive again.

Here are the before and after pictures.

First, one corner of the pump shack.

To the left of the first photo, you can see part of a maple that keeps growing back. This has become an unintentional coppice. There are some really nice, straight stems in there. I will leave them for now. I’m hoping they will do well for some future wattle weave garden beds I’m thinking of doing.

I didn’t get the “after” photos until after my brother left, and things were starting to get pretty dark! I had the charger for my mini chainsaw set up in the shack. Very handy.

Most of what got cleared away from this corner was self seeded raspberry bushes.

After clearing this corner, I went to the other side of the drive to work on the lilac bushes until my brother came over to cut the largest branch he was concerned about, which was almost directly above the lilac. I finished clearing the lilac after all the branch cutting was done and cleaned up. Here is the before and after on that.

Now that the south side is cleared away, the suckers growing behind them will get more light. I don’t mind this lilac spreading out to make a bit of a hedge, but not towards the driveway. Once I could access the tire, I could see that the parent plant had long died away. There was nothing but old and rotten pieces of it left. So this bush is basically all suckers from that original, now dead, lilac.

Once that was done, I went back to finish off the other corner of the pump shack.

Here are the before and after pictures of that.

I cleared those trees away back when I dug out my dad’s old makeshift forge, which is now against the wall. It didn’t take long for them to come back!

If you click through to the next photo, you can see what a huge difference it made to clear those away!

When my brother started using his extended pole chainsaw to clear away the big branches, he also used it to cut down the largest of the trees coming up by the pump shack for me, too. I still went back over the stump with my mini chainsaw – there were about 4 stems coming out of one tiny old tree stump! – to get rid of as much of it as I could. Drained one of my batteries in the process!

Most of this clean up was done with a pair of loppers, though. The mini chain saw was only used for the few things too large for the loppers, including the dead lilac stems I uncovered.

All of this, including the branches my brother cut away, went onto the burn pile. Some of the branches will need to be broken down further, though.

The large branches are all maple. As they get broken down, I think I will set some of them aside for fire wood, for future cookouts in the fire pit.

Eventually, we will need to burn that pile. It’s not something that can be chipped, as we have been tossing things like diseased apple trees and squash vines with powdery mildew on them. With how big the pile is getting, this will likely happen after there is snow on the ground, when it will be safer to burn.

My brother had a couple of surprises for us, as well. For my daughter, he brought over an old bike his son had attached a motor to. His son had even used it to get to work! It needs new tires, but he’s pretty sure the motor still works. That would be very handy for quick trips to the post office, rather than taking the truck.

He also gave use several boxes of spray paint, most of which have never been opened, new tubes of caulking, roofing tar and even a caulking gun. All stuff that will come in very handy here, that he doesn’t need anymore.

He even loaned us a socket set. A very unusual one, with all super large sockets! We’ll be able to use it to practice removing the anode rods from the old hot water tanks.

Tomorrow, I’m going to call the hot water tank company. We shouldn’t be able to get another replacement tank on warranty, but it is still within the 6 years, and this tank only lasted one year after installation. It’s worth a shot.

If not, we’ll see about getting replacement heat elements and, hopefully, that will be enough to get it working again. And if we replace the anode rod with the powered one that should arrive next week, they will hopefully last longer, and we won’t have that sulfur smell in our hot water anymore. Even if we do get a warranty tank, we plan to install the powered anode rode. We might be able to get a plumber to install it, too; it won’t be as expensive to have a hot water tank installed, if we already have everything needed.

We shall see.

So that is where we are at now!

Tomorrow, we are looking at another nice day, with an expected high of 20C/68F. While I do plan to work in the garden more, I want to re-bag our aluminum, removing any mixed metals in the process, and see if I can get it to the salvage yard either tomorrow or the day after. The bags are mostly old cat food cans, to the outside cats keep digging in them and making a mess! Plus, once we remove any mixed metals that got in there, we will get a much better price, and I really want to get those bags cleared away.

As for the garden beds, based on the long range forecast, I am looking to have enough beds ready to do the winter sowing in the beginning of November. We’ve got some cooler days coming up, but only one day with possible rain, and then we are supposed to be slightly warmer. There’s even a day predicted to be 22C/72F before the end of October!

We shall see.

Meanwhile, my daughter got the last coat of milder resistant primer over the spacers around the tub. Which means that we can start installing the new tub surround, tomorrow!

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Little by little, it’s getting done

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It is turning out to be a lovely day today! We’re at 19C/66F right now, which is our predicted high of the day, with almost no wind at all. Which means I’ve been able to get some stuff done in the garden! Finally!

The first thing to get done was take down the last of the nets and support stakes on the future trellis bed and around the strawberries. I was surprised to find more strawberry plants have been eaten, though! As near as I can figure, a deer managed to get its heat under the netting on one side.

*sigh*

I had some chicken wire around the side where a hole had been made in the netting. Once everything was cleared, I put the chicken wire over the bed for now. The strawberries – what’s left of them – will be heavily mulched for the winter, but at this point I’m thinking we may need to transplant them closer to the house, where we can more easily keep the deer away. I’ll decide that later.

With all the hardware collected and set aside, I started cleaning up the high raised bed – mostly because it’s easier on the body!

I was expecting to find shallots that I missed harvesting, once I started cleaning up the dead pepper plants, and I was right. I found quite a few, actually, considering how small the bed is.

I’ve decided I will find a place to transplant these and mulch them over the winter, so that next year, we will have shallot seeds.

I removed the grass clipping mulch on the high raised bed and got about half way through digging out weeds and their roots, when I got a message from my brother. He’s on his way over with another load. He plans to cut away some tree branches while he is here, as they have a storage trailer they will be bringing out tomorrow, and they are in the way.

I’m more than happy to get those branches cleared away!

So I paused in the garden to come in and have lunch before he gets here, as I plan to help my brother as much as possible once he gets here.

While I was waiting for my food to heat up, I tended to the dehydrated peppers.

This is three trays of peppers, combined into one. They’re back in the oven for now, while it cools down (we used the “warm” setting at 150F to dehydrate the peppers). Later on, we might pop them into a jar for storage, or perhaps powder them. I’m not the pepper eater, so I will let the family decide which they would prefer.

Time to head back into the main garden area until my brother gets here. Now that all the stakes and netting are down, it should go faster. My goal right now is to prepare as many beds as I can to direct sow into, then cover with leaves for the winter. Hopefully, we will get a head start on the garden next year by doing this, but if it doesn’t work, the beds will still be ready for planting in, in the spring.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Processing

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Well, we may not have had many yellow peppers in the garden, but now that they are ripening in the living room, we have a LOT of yellow peppers!

I neglected to take any photos, though, so here is a WordPress AI generated version…

I specifically told the AI generator “long slices”, but it gave me rounds, instead. 😄

There are two types of yellow peppers in the short season collection we got. Yellow and orangey-yellow. Once I had them under the kitchen like while washing them, I could finally tell the difference!

I prepped and sliced enough yellow peppers, plus I think one or two orangey-yellow ones, to fill a gallon size freezer bag.

The remaining orangey-yellow ones were starting to dehydrate all on their own, so I sliced those ones super thin and set them to dehydrate in the oven. That got me three 9×13 baking pans, which required a bit of creativity to fit on the two oven racks. I’ve got a tray meant to cook vegetables on the BBQ, so the bottom is perforated, to use as a spacer between two pans on top of each other.

There were other purple and Sweet Chocolate peppers that could have been processed, but I left those for later and got almost all the tomatoes that are in the living room. A few ended up in the compost, as they were over ripe. The rest got washed, then topped and tailed. I was able to fill one gallon size freezer bag with San Marzano, plus some Roma VF (I assume) compost pile tomatoes. Another gallon bag got a mix of the Forme de Coure and what are probably all Black Cherry tomatoes. There might be some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes mixed in there. Once off the vines, I can’t tell them apart.

The bags all went into the small freezer for now. The chest freezer has bins and boxes of ripening tomatoes covering it right now. I go through them regularly and pull out the ones that are ripening the fastest, and move them into my harvesting colander. Once that’s full, they get transferred to the living room to continue ripening.

Eventually, we will be able to combine the contents of bins so that there’s fewer of them, and have easier access to the chest freezer. Moving a bin or two is not an issue. Moving five bins, a box and a colander to get into the freezer it something else entirely!

All in all, that’s a pretty good haul to quickly process, considering these are all things that were harvested early, before they got hit with frost. There are many more tomatoes ripening, including the ones from the compost pile that look like Indigo Blue Chocolate, though I suppose some might be Black Beauties, from last year’s garden. The basin of unripe hot peppers in the living room is looking more and more red. There are still a lot of green sweet peppers, some of which I can tell are the purple Dragonfly peppers, with a very few Purple Beauty left, and others are the brown Sweet Chocolate peppers. The remaining ones, I expect to turn yellow or orangey-yellow.

So we will have plenty more vegetables to process for the winter over the next while.

Tomorrow we are supposed to reach a high of 19C/66F and, more importantly, we are NOT expected to have high winds again. Since there is nothing more we can do in the bathroom until the sealant has finished curing, that means I should be able to finally get outside and clean up in the garden, and prepare beds for fall planting. It’s time to get garlic planted – we will be using our own garlic from this year’s harvest – and I want to try fall sowing seeds that will hopefully survive our winter and give us an early start in next year’s garden. At this point, looking at the monthly forecast, it seems we will be in for a relatively mild winter. I certainly hope so. We’re supposed to have a La Nińa winter this year which, for our region, usually results in bitterly cold temperatures.

I could really do without that.

While I can no longer tolerate heat like I used to, I find I am absolutely dreading the cold of winter more and more, every year. Especially this year, as we have not been able to slowly stock up quite as much as we have in the past, on the assumption that we will get snowed in or whatever, for weeks or even months again. Everything is so much more expensive now, it’s getting harder and harder to get any extras at all.

So the more we can process from our garden and put up for the winter, the better!

The Re-Farmer

Progress so far

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My plans to work outside today have been derailed by high winds.

Hopefully, all the leaves in the yard haven’t been blown away, because I was planning to use them as mulch!

Stuff did get done, though.

But first, the cuteness!

The kibble I picked up yesterday is a different brand from what I’d picked up at the beginning of the month. The pieces are quite a bit smaller. When I set them to soak, it was absolute mush by the time I headed out to feed the kitties.

They didn’t seem to care one whit! They are just loving their warm breakfasts!

Once back inside, my first priority was to see if the leftover pieces of wood lath could be used as spacers in the cutaway portion of the wall around the tub. I was afraid they would be too thick, but they turned out to be the same width as the fake tile paneling. They were too thick for some places that already had spacers of a sort in them. We’ll just have to work around that.

My main focus was around the pipes, and the outer edges. There were also a few nails that simply would not come out, nor could they be hammered in, along the back wall, and I wanted to make sure there were spacers in between them. The areas you can see in the photo above with no spacers added are where there are already spacers of various sizes.

After that was done, my daughter grabbed the tube of mold and mildew resistant sealant. Unfortunately, when she started to apply it with the tip of the tube, the back end of the tub popped open! So she ended up squeezing the sealant out the back and using her finger to scoop it and spread it. If you click through to the second image, you can see part of where she used it. She sealed the cut edges of the openings around the pipes, and every corner and edge around the cut out portion.

She used most of the tub, but there was still a bit left. Since the tub was broken, it wouldn’t last and we didn’t want it to go to waste. I was able to use the last of it for what I’d bought it for in the first place; this stuff is both sealant and adhesive, and I used it along the edge of the overlapping roof panels on the cat isolation shelter.

Unfortunately, there is just no way to clamp it down. I put weights on, but some places still just did not want to stay together. We will just pick up another tube – this stuff is very inexpensive – and go over it again later. The catio roof needs to be seals, too.

Working on that roof was somewhat alarming, though. I’m glad the entire structure is as heavy as it is! It’s in a sheltered area, but not from the south winds we have today. The south facing edge of the roof panel was being rattled by the wind quite a lot.

Thankfully, we screwed the roof panels down quite securely. It could still potentially get blown off, but it’s not that bad, yet. We will need to keep an eye on it, though, because the wind could loosen, if not tear off, some of the screws.

Speaking of which, I was curious about what is officially considered “high winds” so I looked it up.

Did you know there is a wind scale, like there is an earthquake scale? It’s call the Beaufort wind scale.

According to the weather app, we’re getting 30kph winds. On the Beautfort scale, that is a “fresh breeze”, when “Small trees with leaves begin to sway.”

Yeah, I’m calling BS on that. Based on what I was seeing when I was outside, we are somewhere between a 6 and a 7 on their chart – a “strong breeze” or “near gale”, with the occasional “gale” gust strong enough to take down branches. I’m finding small branches all over the place, these days.

Anyhow… where was I?

Ah, yes. Sealant.

The sealant needs a full 36 hours to dure. After that, everything will get one last coat of paint.

Once that is dry, we can try and figure out exactly where we need to cut holes into the tub surround to fit over the plumbing.

So we’re looking at a couple more days before we can start installing the tub surround.

Since there is nothing more we can do in the bathroom for now, and it’s too windy to work in the garden outside, my daughter and I really pushed to get as many dishes done as we could. Without hot water, we’ve been mostly just using the kettle for hot water, which doesn’t go very far when it comes to doing dishes. This time, we filled up our stock pots (not the giant one; that would be too heavy for our glass top stove) to heat, then kept refilling and heating more. We were finally able to get those odd items that gets set to one side as we do loads of things we use the most often that somehow never get done.

My older daughter, who was working all night on commissions, sent me some funds for take out, so as the last of the dishes were being done, I headed into town to pick that up. We’ve had more take out in this month than we’ve had in years!

When I opened the garage door for the truck, I saw something curious on the tailgate.

Tiny little hand prints in the dust, from something that was climbing up to the box cover.

Those are not kitty paw prints, that’s for sure. Those are tiny little racoon hand prints!

What I don’t know is, why would racoons be climbing the truck? The box is empty, and there isn’t even food garbage anywhere in the truck or garage.

As long as they don’t damage anything…

Anyhow…

The sealant in the bathroom needs dry conditions as it cures, so no one is going to be heating up stock pots of water and use the tub for washing. Back to sponge bathing in the sink!

With getting as many dishes done as we were able to, though, I was able to set up the slow cooker with just water in it. That can be left without someone continually there to keep an eye on it, and we’ll have a larger amount of hot water handy for general washing and can just top it up as needed. Much better than our poor, over worked kettle! Our kettle is clear glass, and we can see just how quickly the rust and scale builds up! My older daughter gave it a good scrubbing last night.

Well, we might not be able to get more done in the bathroom until the sealant cures, not work done outside, so I guess this is a good day to collect the ripened tomatoes and peppers in the living room and see if there is enough to process for the winter!

Time to get back to it, then!

The Re-Farmer

A pretty good day

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I didn’t get as much done today as I’d hoped, but I got the important stuff done, and that’s what matters.

As usual, my day started with feeding the outside cats before doing my morning rounds. Since I was going to be helping my mother with errands today, my rounds included making sure things were set up in the truck for the day. By the time I was done my rounds, the cats had polished off all the warm, softened kibble they now get in the mornings, and were starting to settle into their cuddle puddles!

Like this one, near the heat lamp. Not directly under it – I expect to see more of that when things get really cold! – but close.

There is one adult cat in this pile.

That old feed bag, which is stuffed with packing material, had been on the nearby shelf for them to use as a bed while looking out the window, but it kept getting knocked down, so we’ve just left it. They quite like it there. Underneath is mostly bare concrete.

Since my mother was getting her Meals on Wheels delivery today, I didn’t have to leave as early as I usually do, and had my own lunch early.

I still got there early enough for us to have a bit of a visit before her Meals on Wheels was delivered. As we were talking, she showed me this.

If you click through to the next image, you’ll see the other side.

My mother had been going through her things, trying to figure out what to get rid of and what to keep, when she found it.

She told me that when she was in the hospital, in labour with me, there was a nun who visited and prayed with her. After I was born and my mother was ready to go home, she held me while my mother got into the car, then put me in her arms.

No car seats, or even seat belts, back then! 😄

This nun had also given my mother this… Hmmm… I don’t know what it’s called. Not a medallion, of course, but a laminated paper version of a medallion.

Now, she wanted me to have it!

I gratefully accepted it. What a connection to my own birth! I now have it in my wallet, under one of the plastic windows, so I can see it. I’m amazed she managed to hang on to something so small, all these decades!

Soon after, my mother’s Meals on Wheels arrived. She is so very happy with these meals. Today, it was salmon with mushroom rice, cooked broccoli with other vegetables I couldn’t make out, and cream of potato soup. There was a packet of tartar sauce for the salmon and soy sauce for the rice. For desert, there was a cube of bright green Jello, with what I think was pineapple in it. She quite enthusiastically enjoyed her meal!

After she was done and we were having tea together, I asked about her shopping list and got a bit of a surprise.

She didn’t need a grocery shopping trip anymore.

Yesterday was a nice day, and she decided to go ahead an walk to the grocery store. It’s just a couple of blocks, but she insists on taking the “short cut” through the empty lot – almost a field – between her building and the street the grocery store is on. I just shake my head that she insists on doing this, because it’s “shorter”. For starters, it’s not level and doesn’t get mowed regularly, so it would be rough to go over with her walker. She would also have to go around some fences and a building to get to it. In reality, the “shorter” path probably isn’t saving her anything. My concern is that it increases her chances of falling, but she insists that her “helper” (her walker) will prevent that.

Plus, it’s trespassing, but I don’t think anyone cares. As I understand it, the owner lives in the city and doesn’t even come out to mow it. The town does it every now and then, then bills the owner for it.

When she got to the grocery store, who should she run into?

Our vandal and his wife.

*sigh*

At least his wife was with him!

Long story short, they offered to bring her stuff home for her – it was too late in the day for the grocery store to do a delivery – so she was able to do a larger shopping trip. I don’t know which of their many vehicles they had, but when the time came, they didn’t have room for her walker, so our vandal drove her home with the groceries while his wife walked the walker over.

One thing my mother noted: his wife has never, ever, said anything negative about me or my brother. I told my mom, I don’t think his wife has any idea what our vandal is still doing. He certainly wouldn’t have left a voice mail message like the one he recently left on my brother’s phone, if his wife were around to hear him say those horrible things.

So my mother got her grocery shopping done, and didn’t need me to do it today. I only wish she understand that, while his wife may be genuine, our vandal doesn’t do stuff like this out of the kindness of his heart. It seems, no matter how bad he gets, my mother will always make excuses for him. But my brother, who has never been anything but kind and helpful to her, has pulled her butt out of the fire many times out of the years, and takes such good care of, she treats like crap.

How does that make sense?

Anyhow.

She did still need to go to the bank, plus she needed to get her prescriptions and a couple of things at the pharmacy. While she setting up to leave, I went out to get her walker ready; she keeps it parked outside her door, under a tiny corner shelf that all the apartments have. Like most people living there, she has a little display set up on it. Usually, religious in nature.

That’s when I saw something unfortunate.

Part of her display was a small card with a picture of a famous painting of Jesus on it.

It was torn in half.

My first thought was, our vandal did it as he left. One of the things he constantly has said to her, since my late brother died and more so after my father died, is that she will never go to heaven to be with her husband and her son, because she didn’t leave this property to him, like they would have wanted (which they most certainly did NOT want). Knowing she is deeply religious, he would often invoke God in some way in the many abusive messages he left on her answering machine until my brother finally got his number blocked.

When I brought it in to show my mother, though, she told me it was done by one of her neighbours. ??

My mother is not happy with some of the “homeless people” and “aboriginals” that have recently moved into her building. Apparently, one of them has behavioral issues, and tearing up my mother’s picture of Jesus would be something she would do.

My mother didn’t actually see it done, though, so who knows. My mother used to have a card with her name above the peep hole on her door that disappeared, and she thinks the same person did it. Unfortunately, my mother has a bad habit of accusing people of things, with no actual evidence for it, so there’s no way to know what actually happened.

She then asked me to put the pieces back outside her door, so others could see the sort of things this person (or whoever it was) will do.

*sigh*

Anyhow.

We were soon on our way out and on our way. My mother really struggled to get up in the truck but, my goodness, she manages! When we got this truck, I thought for sure she would never be able to get into it, yet there she is!

Even so, she was only up to going into the bank. Once at the pharmacy, she stayed in the truck while I went in to get her prescription and other items. Once I knew, more or less, how much it would be, I went to the truck for her loyalty card and cash, then went back in to pay for her items.

The staff at the pharmacy are quite familiar with my shopping for my mother by now. 😄

That done, I took my mother home. She told me she would have wanted to go somewhere else, like to a restaurant, just for a change of scenery, but didn’t want to be getting in and out of the truck any more than she had to.

She was pretty tired by then, anyhow, so I didn’t stay too much longer.

I remembered to grab the extra plumbing parts and pieces my daughter didn’t need to use when working on the bathroom taps, so after a quick stop at the feed store to get a 40 pound bag of kibble, I headed to the two store we got the parts from to return them. The one in the town nearest us is also near our usual grocery store, so I made a quick stop there. From there, it was a quick stop at the post office, then finally, home.

Where I found this to greet me as I headed to the house.

They were more than eager for their evening feeding, and prowling like ravenous lions! 😄

I took care of that as soon as I could. 😊

One of the things in the mail was something from the hospital my husband is supposed to get a sleep test done in. He is looking to switch from a CPAP to a BiPAP. His CPAP is due to be replaced. It is 90% covered by insurance, but that is done by paying for it first, then submitting the receipt. For the price of a CPAP, we could have hired a plumber to fix the taps and replace the hot water tank with a new one, and still had money left over. Plus, he’s having a hard time getting replacement hoses. Our province covers the cost of a BiPAP, though. To get one, he has to be reassessed, and that’s why he’s been referred to this hospital.

What he got in the mail was their questionnaire about his health history. Which was fine until he got to the end when, as he put it, he almost cried.

They wanted a list of his medications, and doses.

He cheated.

He cut off the list that’s on his bubble packs to put in with the form, and wrote “see attached”. Then he just had to add the “take as needed” medications, and his injections, to the list.

Tomorrow is Saturday and our post office is closed, but I’ll still make sure to get it in the mail box right away.

The next thing he’ll get is a telephone appointment. We’ll see if they need him to actually come in to do a sleep test or not. When he was first diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, we were living in this province, and there was an actual sleep research lab at the same hospital that now has the provinces cardiac clinic. I don’t think there is a sleep research lab anymore, and it looks like they no longer have people actually spending the night in the lab, hooked up to various monitors, while two technicians observed all night. When my mother was tested for sleep apnea, my SIL picked up the test machine in the city and I met her part way to get it. When my mother was ready to go to bed, I brought it over and helped her put on the hoses and heart monitors. I then came back in the morning to get the machine and delivered it to a Medigas office in the city for data analysis.

Which is more or less what I expect will happen with my husband, this time around.

Hopefully, this will all get processed fairly quickly. I think a BiPAP would be better for my husband. They weren’t available when my husband was first diagnosed.

So I didn’t end up getting anything done outside, like I’d hoped, but that’s okay. The important things got done, so that makes it a good day!

The Re-Farmer

Testing, testing…

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Yes! We have major progress!

But first, the cuteness.

I did my evening rounds after giving the outside cats their evening feeding. As I was coming back to the hose, I saw this adorable face watching me.

We can most definitely consider Kohl well socialized now – and boy, does she ever want to get into the house! It’s a good thing we have the old kitchen as a buffer zone. She and several others often manage to dash inside while I’m struggling with the doors and a bowl full of warm kibble for them.

The Cat Lady was asking me if we could be able to catch any females for spaying this fall. Among the kittens, we should be able to easily catch at least two – Kohl and Magda – and possibly a third. There’s also one adult female we should be able to catch, but the clinic that we’ve been going to has special pricing for spaying cats under 6 months old now. Kohl may be too old for that now, though. She is from the very first litter of the year.

Meanwhile…

I’m happy to say, the parts and pieces of plumbing for the tup that needed to be replaced, have been replaced. We were able to attach the fixtures, turn on the water and test it out.

While my daughter was working on the other side of the wall, I stayed on the tub side to turn things on and off whenever she told me to. I took advantage of the wait in between to scrub and clean as much as I could, then scrape off any remaining old caulk that I could find. In the process I discovered that I could scrape off much of the rust and scale that had accumulated under the hot water tap when it leaked during use. CLR wasn’t getting it all for a reason!

After the first test, we found that the cold water was leaking at the tub, while the hot water was leaking at a Pex to copper join in the basement. My daughter spent the next while tightening and taping everything, while getting me to turn the taps and shower on, as needed.

It looks like we finally have everything tight and leak free!

My daughter is just amazing. She was working in some really tight spaces. Especially in the basement, which had the added issue of cobwebs to deal with, even though she did sweep away most of them, first.

My daughter does not do well with spiders, so her doing that is really, really something.

Once the testing was done, the water was shut off again, and the fixtures removed again.

The next step will be to add mold and mildew resistant sealant around the tub edge, in the corners, and anywhere else that looks like it needs it. I will be bringing some wood lath over from the garage to place in strategic areas where the paneling was cut out, so the tub surround will have something to adhere to in that area. Only if it’s thin enough, though. It might be too thick. We shall see.

If we do add the wood, the cut out area will get another coat of the mold and mildew resistant primer.

Then, once everything has had a chance to dry and cure, we will finally be able to install the tub surround.

Last of all, we put back the arm bars.

In between all that, we need to pick up a couple of heat elements for the hot water tank. Hopefully, that will be enough to get us hot water again. I would hate to have to buy another tank, considering how much the price has increased since we got the last warranty replacement in 2020.

I’m not sure when we’d be able to do this, though. I got a call from my mother tomorrow, telling me “her fridge is empty “my fridge is empty!”

She isn’t actually out of food; that’s just her way of telling me she needs a shopping trip.

Still, she was wanting me to come over today! I told her I was going to be helping with the plumbing today, so it’s arranged for tomorrow. She has her Meals on Wheels coming in tomorrow, so I don’t need to leave as early to pick up a lunch for us. She still needs to get to the bank; she wasn’t up to it last time. I was hoping my sister would have been able to come over with her smaller car to help her, but she and her husband are out of province right now. So my mother will have to clamber into our truck again!

I’m not sure how long I will be gone tomorrow, but I still hope to get at least a little bit more garden clean up done. Tomorrow is supposed to be a bit cooler than today was, but it’s then supposed to warm up for a few days – there’s even a high of 21C/70F in the forecast! – so I hope to get more done on those days and, if all goes to plan, start direct sowing seed for next year’s garden.

We shall see!

Meanwhile, I’m going to start heating up water so I can actually bathe. The tub now is clean enough to use instead of the sink!

Man, we have had to heat water to bathe way to many times since moving out there! 😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Well, that’s not gonna happen, and we are SO lucky!

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I’m just pausing to write a quick post, before I go to help my daughter with the bathtub plumbing.

We got the new hot water tank element tool out just a little while ago, and headed into the basement to see what we could find in the two older tanks. The hope was to be able to use one of the elements from the old tanks to replace the burnt out one in the current tank.

Yeeeeaaaahhhh….

That’s not gonna happen.

This is what we pulled out of the first tank, where I’d already opened up the panel for the top element. The bottom one was encrusted in scale on the outside, so that one was clearly not going to be good.

Click through to see the other side of the element.

Wow.

Yeah, that’s toast.

So we opened up the panel for the other old tank.

The first warning that things were not good was that I had to tear the panel free of the insulation.

The outside of the insulation had rust on it, and we could see damage to the wires.

After tearing away most of the insulation, this is what we found.

Yeah. That plastic cover is melted. That thermostat is burned.

Click through to the next image, and you can see more of the damage, and how completely encrusted the outside of the element is!

It is an absolute miracle that there wasn’t a fire started.

As for the current tank, we no longer even have warm water, so we’ve shut the breaker off. It looks like both elements are burned out now. Seeing what we pulled out of the old tank, I’m not at all surprised!

When the first tank died, it was after less than 2 years of use, which is why we were able to replace it on warranty. About a year later, when we saw the replacement tank starting to leak on the bottom, we were able to replace that on warranty, too, even though we should not have been able to. We kept the new tank in the box until the second tank finally died. It lasted far longer than we expected.

I just looked up my old posts. This current tank was installed just over a year ago – Oct. 10, 2023, to be exact. We were able to pick it up as a warranty replacement in April of 2021. Before that, we got a new tank in January of 2020, though it took a bit longer before we could get it installed. The tank that was originally here was replaced in December of 2017, just in time for Christmas. All four of us had been here for little more than a month at the time!

Not counting the original tank – I found the original warranty papers for that, dated 1963, if I remember correctly – we have gone through 3 modern tanks in less than 7 years of living here.

The most recent one lasting just over a year after installation.

That. Is. Insane.

It all really comes down to our water. I remember talking to the plumber during one of the installations, and he told me that this is pretty typical for hot water tanks in our area.

When all this started, these tanks cost a little over $400. Looking at them now, I see they cost about $700 for the exact same tank.

The elements cost about $40 each.

With the powered anode rod that should arrive next week, that will hopefully keep the tank going longer, though we still need to get the right tool to remove the old anode rod. I thought the tool we got for the element might also work for the rod, but it’s way too big. We need to buy the right size socket to be able to remove the anode rod.

For right now, though, I need to go help my daughter. She was able to get the piece out that needed to be cut out. With the adapters, we might not even need to replace the copper pipes to the basement, though the hot water one has the 90° elbows in it, so that one should probably be replaced with Pex, at the very least.

But I digress!

Time to go assist my daughter.

The Re-Farmer

Garden clean up started, and water woes update

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Today is the first of a short spell of warmer days we are expecting. As I write this, at almost 7pm, we are at a lovely 12C/54F. The weather app says it feels like 5C/41F, but it doesn’t seem that chill around our home.

This afternoon, I took advantage of the warmer temperatures and finally got to work, cleaning up in the main garden area. What I’m shooting for is to get some beds ready to try some fall planting – because garlic, that is. I’ve been inspired once again by Gardening in Canada.

The more we can get done in the fall, the easier it will make things in the spring!

I’m surprised by just how much can be planted in the fall, with our zone 3 winters. Her list includes wildflowers; particularly poppies, hollyhocks, sunflowers, coneflowers and columbine. Now that I think about it, all of those make sense; we’ve had all but coneflowers sow themselves here, and the only reason we haven’t had coneflowers overwinter here is because we don’t have them anywhere to begin with. I do still have a native wildflower mix that needs to be sown, but those will have their own space to be seeded in.

For vegetables, she listed them in groups. One is the alliums; onions, leeks and shallots. We’ve got our own onion seed this year, so that is an option for us. We should also be able to use our own garlic for planting this year, too.

She mentions root crops like turnips, carrots, radishes and beets, all of which benefit from winter sowing by becoming sweeter and more flavourful, the following year.

Peas is something she plants all over, as she uses them as an indicator plant. You can tell how warm the soil is becoming by when they germinate.

The next group she mentions are brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, kohlrabi and possibly cabbage.

Last of all, she mentions squash and pumpkins. Considering the squash we had in our compost pile last year, we’ve already had those by accident!

They are normally a hot weather plant, but our compost tomatoes shows that, in the right conditions, tomatoes could be added to the list, too. Hmm… so can beans, for that matter.

Looking at her list and remembering what I have for seeds right now, we could plant onions, turnips, carrots, radishes, beets, peas, spinach, kohlrabi and both summer and winter squash.

What I might end up doing is just mixing up the seeds for onions, turnips, carrots and beets and planting them randomly in one bed – mostly because the onions could protect the things it’s planted with from deer. I could probably interplant onions with kohlrabi, peas and spinach, too, though I’d have to watch the spacing more. Squash… well, they take up so much space, they would be on their own, for the most part!

In order to do this, there are two things I need to get ready. First, is prepare the soil by increasing organic material. Compaction is a huge problem with our soil. I can do trench composting again, which really seems to make a big difference in production, but the soil itself needs to be amended as best we can.

Then, once seeds are planted, the other thing they will need is a light and fine mulch. Grass clippings and leaves would be what we have on hand to use. She recommends piling snow over the seeds in the winter for added insulation, but for the main garden area, I don’t see us needing to do that. That whole space gets well covered with snow over the winter!

Right away, I can see that we would have a very different garden next year, if we do this fall sowing.

We shall see if we can get to that point over the next week or so!

With that in mind, I focused on the main garden area. Here is a slideshow of today’s progress.

I started off using the weed trimmer. I hadn’t been able to do much clearing of the paths, once the winter squash, pumpkins, drum gourds and melon bed vines really took off. In some paths, I could barely walk through them without stepping on a vine.

I started to use the weed trimmer in where the next raised bed that will be part of a squash tunnel will be built, but not too much, just yet. I’ll clear into there more when I have to access the stack of what will be vertical support poles attached to the existing bed.

After trimming one side of the high raised bed, I stopped to pull up the winter squash vines. All the squash got powdery mildew towards the end of the season, so all of these were for the burn pile, not the compost. In fact, the only squash that did not get powdery mildew was the Crespo squash, in a completely different area.

I ended up spending most of my time on the pole bean trellis. There were only 5 surviving plants but, my goodness, they sure took over that trellis netting!

Also, folding up that netting for storage is a lot easier when you lay it out, then weave a bamboo stake through one short end.

After the first squash bed was cleared, I moved the corn stalks over from the other squash bed, so I could get at the vines under them. Later, I plan to trench compost the corn stalks.

Pulling up the squash vines was truly interesting, at times. I couldn’t believe how long some of them had gotten! These would have been so awesome on a trellis tunnel!

The only two beds I did not clear this time were the high raised bed, and the first trellis bed. I did finish weed trimming the paths, though. Right now, the bed that needs the least amount of work is the westernmost one, where I’d already prepped half of it after harvesting the onions and covered it with plastic.

The solarization doesn’t seem to be working, though. I’m seeing a lot of green growing under one end. The problem is, that end of the bed gets a lot more shade, this time of year, so it doesn’t get a chance to get hot enough to solarize. At least not at the south end. There may be greater success towards the middle of the bed.

Around the time I finished the weed trimming, I found some messages from the family. My daughter had spent some time going through all the fittings I picked up, working out which would be needed, which wouldn’t, etc. In the end, we were going to need more of two fittings – and will likely have quite a few to return to the store, once the job is done.

It was past 3:30 by then. The store we needed to go to was the second one I’d gone to, yesterday. Thankfully, they weren’t going to close until 5:30 – the local one closes at 4. My daughter came along with me.

While she was looking at the fittings, I looked around for the hot water tank element tool I needed, then asked for help, because I couldn’t even find the section. It turned out to be tucked away in a corner. 😄 I also asked about a socket large enough to remove the anode rod but, in the end, I think the same heat element tool will fit the anode rod. I’ll test that out, later.

Then my daughter needed help, because one of the fittings she was looking for was behind locked doors! Quite a few displays in this store were behind glass. I would not have expected theft to be more of a problem in this location, that the store I usually go to!

After we got what we needed and were heading home, I missed my turn to cross over to the other highway – the streets look no different than driveways in this town! That meant we ended up driving to the town closer to home.

My daughter hadn’t eaten anything since early in the morning. Since we ended up in town anyhow she, being the sweetheart that she is, sprung for some Dairy Queen for all of us.

It now looks like we have everything we need to replace the pipes and faucet set for the tub. The hard part is going to be cutting the copper pipe to get the old pieces out. There is very little room to work in. Especially since the cutter needs to spin around the pipe.

While I might be able to assist, this is a job mostly for my younger daughter. She’s the most able bodied among us – and considering she has PCOS and all the joint pain that can come with, that’s not saying much!

Hopefully, I will be able go get more progress in the garden instead, and if all goes really well, be able to plant things for next year in a few days!

If all goes well for my daughter, we might even be able to use the tub and shower again, soon, too!

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Morning adorableness

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Before I post about the day’s activities, I just want to share some of the adorableness I got to enjoy this morning.

Starting with these two fluffballs, both of whom like to follow me around while I do my morning rounds.

I just love unexpected and serendipitous shots! In this case, Syndol getting the spruce tip, and Magda getting Syndol. 😄

By the time I finish my rounds, the cats have generally finished eating, and are settling in. They had a treat this morning, too. I’d put the turkey stock I’d made in the slow cooker into freezer bags to cool down before going into the freezer. This morning, we found one of the bags had sprung a leak. So I added it to the bowl of kibble that had been soaking in hot water. The stock was just turkey bones, the extra bits that were tucked in the cavity, and water. Nothing else, making it cat safe.

It did mean the bowl had a lot more liquid in it than the kibble could absorb, but it all goes into bowls and trays that can hold liquid. They finished off the liquid before starting to eat the softened kibble!

Tummies full, I came back to find this cuddle pile.

There might be six kittens in there, but I’m not 100% sure! 😄

No adults in the pile, for a change.

Speaking of adults, when doing an afternoon top up, I spotted a bit grey tabby I didn’t recognize. This one has a nose patch similar to Nosy, in the photo above. There are quite a few cats with that distinctive nose patch. I suspect they are descendants from the visiting tom, Nicky the Nose, whom we haven’t seen in years now.

Oh, that reminds me. I sent some photos of Eye Baby to the Cat Lady, thinking his eye is looking so much better. She messaged me back, asking if we still had antibiotics, which we do. She spotted swelling of the inner eyelid on the uninjured eye, along with the gooby nose. She recommended putting him on antibiotics for a week. The girls will start that tonight. She mentioned that Button is back on antibiotics, too, with similar symptoms. I’m so glad she was able to give us so much of the antibiotics. We have more than enough left over, even after having Eye Baby on them for 3 weeks, to help with his eye. We didn’t even need to use any on the little tabby that was acting kinda sick and not eating. I’d fed that one Cat Soup with a syringe just a couple of times, and he bounced back soon after.

Aside from the cat shenanigans, I’m happy to say that I finally got some work done, cleaning up in the garden, but that will be in my next post. 😊

The Re-Farmer