air quality alert

We got rain!

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Before heading to bed last night, I noticed the forecast was starting to suggest rain by this morning. Just a bit, and a fairly low chance of it.

By morning, my weather app was telling me things like, “rain expected to end in 30 minutes” or the like. When I headed out to do my morning rounds, though, it was barely even spitting.

With today expected to be much cooler, I didn’t water everything this morning, so my rounds were done a lot faster. Then my daughter came by to let me know that she had called in a prescription that she needed to bring to her doctor’s appointment, tomorrow. I didn’t realize just how much faster I was done my rounds until we had left and I was thinking to stop at the post office and realized they had only just opened!

By the time we left, though, it was actually raining. A gorgeous, solid rain!

It was still insanely smoky, though, and the smoke got thicker, the closer we got to town. There’s a large fire on the other side of the lake, so they were getting hit by the smoke a lot more than we were.

Both my daughters were not feeling well all last night, and no one was up to cooking, so they decided to treat us with burgers. When we finished at the pharmacy, they still weren’t open, so we drove around to take a look at the lake.

Which we could barely see! It was still pouring rain when I too the above photo.

It was no longer raining when we got home, and the smoke was far less. The good news was in checking the weather radar. The rain we got was being pushed straight towards the biggest fire across the lake. There’s rain up north, too. As welcome as it is, there isn’t anywhere near enough to do much for all the fires. From the looks of it, we won’t be getting more for almost a week.

My goal for today is still to get more transplants in, but delay due to rain is not a bad thing!

The Re-Farmer

Captured, and orange sun

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We caught a lovely pair on one of the trail cams this morning!

We’ve got them on the driveway cam, too, running down the road, but the fawn is so small and hard to see against the gravel, it was barely visible.

The girls and I checked on the cats and garden beds this evening. While we were out in the main garden, they called my attention to the sun.

The camera had a hard time showing just how brightly orange the sun is right now. We could look right at it, too, with no discomfort at all. The weird thing it, it doesn’t really seem that smoky out. Certainly not like when we had wildfires all around us during the major drought we had, two years ago. Thankfully, this year we’ve had some decent moisture, though we certainly can still use more rain.

While we were out, we picked a whole bunch of spinach. I’m going to have to remember this variety, because even with the heat we’ve been having, they’re only just now starting to show signs of bolting. So we will probably pull the entire bed of spinach soon. I’ll probably transplant more onions into it after that, since I still have quite a few that need to go into the ground.

I also ended up picking a whole bunch of rhubarb. We don’t use it a lot, but my younger daughter has a recipe for rhubarb cake she got from my sister (who doesn’t even remember giving it to her!) that she wants to make. The girls had gone in by then, and they checked the recipe for how much rhubarb it uses – four cups! – so I went and got another bunch of stalks, just to be sure we had enough.

With how messed up my sleep has been lately, I’m thinking of going to be really early tonight. Hopefully, I’ll get some actual sleep and get an early start tomorrow, and try to make up for the lack of productivity today!

The Re-Farmer

Spot the kitten

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Look who I saw, today!

If you look carefully, you’ll see a total of four kittens. Two stay hidden under the spirea.

It looks like the kittens in the cat house are no longer in the cat house. I did see the mama at feeding time. I hope she didn’t move them too far.

My daughter and I headed into town today to run several errands. As we were finishing up, she wondered if the haze we were starting to see what fog or smoke.

It was smoke.

We are now getting air quality advisories for smoke from fires to the east and north of us. Most are on the other side of the lake, but quite a few are way up north, too. As I write this, only two are listed as out of control, and those are nowhere near any towns or villages. Most are listed as under control or being held, with a few as being monitored. Our current fire year isn’t anywhere near as bad at other provinces, but most of those are turning out to be arson. Ours are almost all listed as natural caused.

Right now, I feel like I’ve been totally lazy. Once we got home and put everything away, I tried to catch up on a few things on the computer before changing and heading outside. I was falling asleep in my chair, though, so I lay down to close my eyes for a few minutes.

Almost three hours later, I suddenly woke up, thinking it was morning. !! My brain still feels foggy.

I might still get some work done outside, but we’re at the hottest part of the day now, so not quite yet.

It definitely feels like a wasted day.

The Re-Farmer

Smoked

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The winds died down today, which means that the smoke is back. Today is one of the worst days I’ve seen yet. Usually, we don’t get visible smoke in the yard until the end of the day, but that’s how we started, today!

In going to pick up the meat pack we ordered, I drove to a town north of us. The fires are all well to the north of us. By the time I got to the exit for the town, I could barely see past a hundred yards or so!

The parking lot we met at was near a bridge. The river, thankfully, is not as low as I thought it might be, with our drought, but it is still much lower than usual. The smoke is actually thicker than it looks in the photo. By the time we finished chatting and said our goodbyes, my throat was completely raw from the smoke.

Once I was back on the highway, I just had to pull over to get another photo. Again, the camera on my phone automatically cleans up the haze, and it was much denser in real life.

On the plus side, we got our meat order, and we’re quite happy. The individual packages were smaller than we would see in a grocery store, but we also got a larger variety of cuts. They change up the package, depending on the time of year. For the summer, they try to include things for the BBQ (though they do have a separate BBQ package, too), while in the winter, they try to include more things like stewing beef. It’s all frozen solid, so for now, we’re just thawing out the sausages and peppettes to try, first.

Around November, when they do their butchering, they’ll have half or quarter beef available. They have to figure out new pricing for this year, due to the increased costs of having to buy feed for their cattle this year, but I am hoping we’ll be able to get a quarter beef for the winter.

The Re-Farmer

Orange haze

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20180816-113303_AccuWeatherIt was almost disorienting, getting up to drive my daughter to work this morning.  Instead of the usual brightness for this time of year, it was dark.  Instead of sunshine, everything had an orange overcast to it.

The cloud of smoke from the fires on the West coast that had engulfed our former home for the past few days has finally reached us.

And yet, we weren’t getting any air quality warnings on our weather apps at all – that didn’t come in until several hours later – and it didn’t smell like smoke.

I had planned to bring my older daughter’s camera along, to take photos at the beach after dropping her sister off at work.  I decided to bring it anyhow, leaving the telephoto lens on it.  I honestly didn’t expect to get any good photos, but I did manage a few.

 

(click on the photos to see larger versions)

Everything was just this greyish orange colour.  There was no sun.  We couldn’t even see any sign of where the sun should have been.

I wanted to stay in town long enough to be able to pick up some prescription refills, so along with my usual playing of Pokemon Go, I decided to walk along the wharf and the breakwater.  The wharf ends abruptly, and then there is a gravel path along the stones of the breakwater.  While walking to the end of this section (there is a gap for the larger boats, then it continues into a cove), I had my game up.  I couldn’t help but laugh.

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I can walk on water! :-D

The wharf is on the game’s map, but not the breakwater.

Interestingly, the line of buoys in the lake, marking the closest boats can come to the shore, and the farthest swimmers can go out, is on the map, looking for all the world like a sidewalk, running through the lake.

2018-08-16.breakwater

The stones are naturally more of a pale yellow in colour, but not today!

After  while, I headed to a park that’s part of my gaming routine and stayed a while.  I was just getting ready to leave, when the sun made an appearance, at almost 9:30!

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It was so hazy, I could look directly at it, comfortably.  I tried playing with the settings on the camera to try and get how orange it was, but this is the closest I could get.  The orange that you can see around the circumference is what the entire orb looked like in real life.

Though I couldn’t smell the smoke much at all – it was more than lost in the smell of yeast from the distillery – by the time I was done walking around and returned to my van, I could feel my throat and lungs starting to get irritated.  These conditions would be awful for anyone with respiratory conditions!

I pray that the rains will come and help the firefighters put out these devastating blazes.

The Re-Farmer