Heading to town, I paused on the side of the road to get a picture at one of the neighboring farms.

Until today, we’d only seen them way in the back, in a corral. This farm has been raising bison for many years now.  I was happy to see they still are.

I like our shaggy friends. :-)

Today, we had a visit from someone in home care.  As part of my husband re-establishing the medical and other specialists he lost in the move, we was referred to home care for assessment.

As far as direct home care services, nothing is needed at this point.  Not with three adults in the house to help him.  He will, however, be getting a hospital bed.  Some time within the next two weeks, though it could be as early as Friday (two days from now), depending on the delivery drivers.

Which means it’s now urgent to get my mother’s dressers out of the master bedroom, and we have to figure out what to do with the king size bed.  At least we’ve got a spare twin, so I’ll still have a bed.

Unfortunately, we are now all sick.  Though I am recovering from the cold quite a bit, I’m still coughing a lot.  My oldest daughter seems to have gotten over the worst of it, while my younger daughter is just getting into the worse of it, and now my husband is starting to come down with it, too. :-(

Which means that, at the moment, it looks like I’m the healthiest person in the house!

As we spoke with the woman from home care, I brought up about wanting to put in a ramp outside.  It turns out Occupational Therapy assesses for stuff like that, so she will start that process for us.  OT has been here for my dad before; that’s why there’s arm bars all over the place.  Though my dad did have a wheeled walker, he usually used a non-wheeled one.  At least for inside.  His wheeled walker had a seat on it, with storage underneath.  He kept his tools in there, so it was handy around the yard. :-D

We still have that walker.  I intend to hang on to it, should I ever need one.  I’ve been doing really well, as far as mobility goes, and haven’t needed to use a cane in ages, but I never know when something will suddenly dislocate again, or a knee will bend sideways.  Better to be prepared, just in case!

Anyhow.  A ramp wasn’t included in the mobility improvements done for my dad, though one of my brother’s had intended to build a ramp for him, himself.  Instead, my dad ended up in the nursing home, so it never happened.  She’ll put in the paperwork for OT to come and assess the house and confirm if we qualify to have a ramp put in.  Even if it can’t get done this year, at least we’ll have the information we’ll need.

Tomorrow, however we are feeling, we have to start hauling things to the shed and get those dressers out of the way, so the hospital bed can be put in.  The delivery company will assemble and install it.  We just have to make sure the space is open.  We have been forewarned that it comes with a basic hospital mattress, so we might want to pick up a mattress topper for it or something.

It should be interesting.

This afternoon, I figured I was feeling well enough to start working on moving the wood piles in the garden.  I started in the area I wanted to put the wood, near the fire pit.  There were already dead trees and branches I needed to clear up, so I’ve started one pile for logs and larger branches, and another for the small branches and twigs for kindling.  While working, I kept seeing beyond into the maple grove, with all the dead branches and trees, and was just itching to start cleaning up in the yard.  Unfortunately, my mother has been obsessed with getting the garden area plowed.  I don’t want it done, and it’s far from a priority.  I can’t help but feel a bit angry, because I’m having to focus my limited energy working on the garden, instead of cleaning up around the yard, which needs it so much more.  But it’s her place, not ours, and two out of three of my siblings agree with her, so we’re outvoted, too.

With the snow completely gone, we can finally see the condition of the garden area itself.  I had been told it was very rough (another one of the reasons some family members are insisting it get plowed; it hadn’t been done properly last year, so for some reason, it’s now really, really urgent to do it this year).  Like so many other things, it was even worse than I expected.  Not so much because of how rough it is, but because of how full of rocks it is.  I spent many years helping my mother in the garden, and while there have always been rocks, I don’t remember there ever being THIS many!  Unfortunately, plowing it is just going to dig up more rocks.  Geologically, we’re on the bed of an ancient glacial lake.  This entire area has shallow soil, with lots of gravel, clay, sand and rock below.  What I want to do is build the soil up, not tear it up even more.  I much prefer to use no-till techniques, for many reasons.  Plus, if we do get chickens, they will be kept in the garden area and can help keep the weeds down and build up the soil, too.

So we will continue to work on removing the wood pile from the garden (thank God I was able to prevent it from being turned into a bonfire!), before we start cleaning the yard itself.  There is a lot of work to be done, that’s for sure.  I don’t mind.  I miss the manual labour. :-D

I didn’t get too much done in the garden before I had to stop.  Instead, I started working around the fire pit area.  There are three maple trees in a group with an old awning under them, among other things, that has been sitting there for many years.  I wanted to get the dead branch that’s overhanging the fire pit, which meant clearing that stuff out.

It took some doing to get it out.  It turned out to have been there long enough for soil to build up over the bottom of the frame!

After moving it, I found this…

… in between two of the maples.

I wonder how many years it’s been there?  Probably longer than the awning.  That’s been there long enough that my daughters used it to get into the trees when they were little, so we’re looking at probably around 20 years.

At least it wasn’t another fridge or freezer! :-D

I did get part of the dead branch down.  I basically just reached up and pulled.  It’s been dead and dried up for so long, it broke quite easily.  Now, there’s just half of it, and it’s too high up to reach, so it’ll wait until we bring over a ladder.

I found another odd thing while working around the fire pit area.

Old cow poop.

I found it in the area where I’m putting the wood piles, but I was also finding it around the compost pile, as I cleaned up what had fallen out as the snow melted.  These are two very different areas of the yard.

Now, the farm has been rented out and the renter rotates his cattle here, but this is a fenced yard.  They should not be getting into the yard.

Also…

That’s not cow.  That’s horse.

The only person I know of with horses nearby, is my own brother.  I don’t know if the renter has horses, but even if he did, why would they be with the cows?

So both cows and horses had gotten into the yard at some point, and not that long ago, either.

Oh, along with cow poop around the aluminum ring that contains the compost pile, I was finding small branches and twigs in the pile itself.  Plus a plastic container of the kind sour cream or cottage cheese comes in.

I seem to remember that the wood pile in the garden had originally been put on the compost pile, and one of my siblings was going to burn the whole thing until another said not to.  I don’t understand why anyone with do that, since the compost pile itself is right next to trees.  Burning the pile means burning the trees.  That would explain why there’s so much wood in the compost pile.

*sigh*  Even our compost pile is in worse shape than I expected!  And why would anyone burn it, when it’s right next to trees?

Ah, well.  Little by little, we’ll get it done.

One thing’s for sure.  By the time we are done cleaning up all the dead trees and branches in the garden area, yard, spruce grove and maple grove, we’ll have enough fuel for dozens of wiener roasts!

I’m hoping I didn’t push myself too hard, too soon, by working on this stuff today, but gosh, it felt good to finally be doing it!

The Re-Farmer