broken

Seriously???

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Good grief… and it’s not even noon, yet.

Today is looking like it’s going to be a gorgeous day. It’s bright and sunny, with some cloud expected later, and we’re supposed to get a high of 0C/32F, which means things are going to be melting all over.

It’s also already been a WTF day.

First up, was finding this when I went outside to do the cat stuff.

The cat cave had been tucked into that cube, but it was pulled out like this, today.

Brussel and her babies are just fine inside, but I have no idea what happened.

Brussel did not leave her babies at any time while I did the outside stuff, even when I tried lifting the cave and discovered they were still inside. It made giving her her wet cat food more awkward. She seems fine with how it is now (I did move that loose piece of carboard aside). I was also able to reach inside and give her head scritches. She growled at me the entire time, but she did not pull away, nor did she try to attack me in any way. I got some squeeze treats to use to try and socialize her more, and I might actually be able to do that, now that the opening to the cat cave is easier to reach.

When doing the morning stuff, I go through the old kitchen (our buffer zone) and the sun room. We tie off the doors – sometimes just the outside door, if the weather is nice – so that cats can get in and out, but the sunroom has shifted. We can still close the inside door, I think, but I don’t think we can close the outside door anymore. The problem is, the rain barrel at the corner was allowed to overflow to the point that the sidewalk block it’s on was undermined and has sunk at the end. It looks like it has also affected the concrete pad the sun room is built on, which means the room continues to shift downwards at that corner. The door frame is no longer plumb, and it seems to be ever so slowly getting worse.

That’s the sun room, though, so not really that big of a deal.

Our main entry doors, however, are another issue.

We already had a problem with the door not latching properly; the door itself is splitting at the latch bolt, and the face place is loose. Sometimes, the door would just pop open on its own.

Lately, though, it’s become harder to open and close. It’s really stiff at the hinges and, when closing it from the inside, you really need to put your shoulder into it. When I was heading out today, I tried leaving through that door, but couldn’t close it from the outside. The bottom half of the door seems to be hitting the door frame. I had to go back in, shoulder it closed from the inside, then leave through the old kitchen door (we do have another door to outside in the dining room, but it is not mobility accessible for my husband, so we don’t really use it). We already know the entire frame and door need to be replaced, but that ain’t cheap!

I had just a quick run to the post office to make today, and was soon back home. After parking in the garage, I went to open the door…

It wouldn’t open.

I pulled on the door handle again…

It still wouldn’t open.

I tried one more time…

Yeah. It broke right off.

That left me in a pickle. With the console in the middle, it’s not like I can shuffle over to the other door. I ended up messaging the family, asking if anyone could come out. My older daughter answered, and I told her what happened, but I think she was already booting up and heading out and didn’t see the messages. She though I was injured or something!

Meanwhile, it occurred to me, I could just open the window and open the door from the outside. So I gave that a try.

It wouldn’t open.

I tried again.

Nothing.

When I opened the window, I noticed the door was locked; normally, it automatically unlocks when the engine is shut off. I’d unlocked it, but when I reached to the door handle outside, my arm pushed the lock down again. Once I realized what happened, I was able to open the door – just in time for my daughter to reach the garage.

So what I think happened is that I accidentally locked the door after parking the truck, so of course, it wouldn’t open when I pulled on the handle.

Instead, it broke off.

Looking into the opening with my phone’s camera light, I could see the edge of where it broke off, and that was about it.

I have since sent the photos to the garage, asking if this is the sort of work they do or not. They’re not an autobody place, so I might have to go somewhere else. I haven’t received a response, yet.

Until we can get it fixed, I’m going to have to get used to opening the door from the outside for a while.

What a bloody PITA.

The Re-Farmer

I think we found the problem

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The heat bulb in the sun room has been turning on and off over the past few days. My guess was the cats knocked it about a bit while jumping on and off the platform it’s hanging from. I’d give it a bit of a wiggle, and the bulb would turn on again.

This morning, I gave the cats their kibble and warm water, as usual. Then, as I was going back into the sun room, I realized the bulb was off again. It was on when I went past, maybe a minute or two earlier.

So I did the usual wiggle, and it didn’t turn on. I turned the switch off, checked the lamp and the shade (which was loose), then turned it back on.

The metal lamp shade has a small round opening near the neck. When I switched the light back on, I thought I saw something through the hole, so I turned it on and off again. Was that a flicker of light at the bottom of the filament, visible through the opening?

So I shut it off and took the bulb completely out. The filament looked perfectly fine. I decided to screw it back in and try again.

I changed my mind.

I’d say, we found the problem!

The socket looked clean and clear, though.

I ended up putting back one of the ceramic bulbs that these warmer heat bulbs replaced. It’s heating up as it should, though it’s only 150w, instead of 250w, so it’s not going to be as cozy for the kitties.

The temperatures have warmed up, though. As I write this, we’ve been at 1C/34F for some time, and it’s expected to stay above freezing for a few more hours. Oh! I just double checked the weather app on my desktop, and it now says our high is supposed to reach 2C/36F today! We’re also supposed to get a mix of rain and snow later today, too.

Looks like the driveway isn’t going to be done today, either. Aside from the winds that picked up again, the warmth will make the snow sticky. From experience, I know how quickly that jams up the auger.

The driveway is passable, though, so not clearing it won’t be an issue. The area in the yard that I cleared instead was more of an issue, as the truck was having difficulty in the turn around areas.

With the warmer temperatures, the less warm ceramic bulb in the sun room should be okay. We’ll have to make sure to get 250w versions for next winter, though. I prefer them to the ones that are actual lights for this. The only down side is, if they stop working, we can’t tell without actually checking them for heat.

We should also pick up a few more smoke detectors. One for the isolation shelter and one for the sun room, at the very least!

Just in case.

The Re-Farmer

Okay, we did know this was going to happen

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Did it have to happen now?

For those who have been following this blog for a shorter time, I’ll give a bit of a back story.

When we moved into this “perfect” house, at the request of my mother, we of course found all sorts of problems all over the place.

One of those was the hot water leaking in the bath tub. The rust stain below showed this was not a new problem.

When we had septic backing up into the basement (again) a few years ago, we had a plumber come in to auger the floor drains. While he was here, I asked him about the leaking tap. He asked me some questions I couldn’t answer, like whether or not the pipes could be access from the front, of if they had to be accessed from the bedroom on the other side of the wall.

There is no access panel, there.

When my father got running water and an indoor bathroom for the house, in the early 70’s, the bathroom walls were covered with waterproof paneling make to look like tiles.

The tub surround was installed on top of this paneling, with arm bars added later on.

The caulking for the tub surround was coming loose, and we had no idea what the state of the caulking on the fake tile paneling underneath was like.

The plumber gave us an estimate of $400 to replace the taps – he thought he could fix them, but we wanted to replace them – but he told us the tub surround would have to be removed, and that was not something he did, so we would need to be prepared to replace that.

With this information in hand, we got a replacement faucet set with level taps in stead of knob style – something better for arthritic hands.

We also picked up a new tub surround, adhesive and caulking.

Which has all just been sitting there all this time.

After the illegal lockdowns and various economic disasters, I eventually called the plumber to ask for a new estimate, but he never called back. Considering all the hits to our finances recently, from now having payments on the truck, replacing multiple desktop computers, etc., it really didn’t matter much.

Of course, over time, the leak just kept getting worse. The strangest thing was that, if only the cold water tap was turned on, the hot water tap would start leaking!

Well, today, it finally happened.

My daughter was just finishing her shower, went to turn off the hot water, and the tap just kept spinning and spinning!

Which bring us to another problem with the plumbing in this old house.

A severe lack of shut off valves.

To shut the water off for the tub, we had to shut off the water for the entire house.

Once she was able to get out of the shower, my daughter started working on taking off the taps and faucet.

Yikes.

The one with more rust on the inside was the hot water tap.

Click through to the next photo, and you’ll see the inside of the faucet.

The rust and scale I can understand, but cobwebs???

My daughter then had to start tearing off the tub surround, starting with the one behind the taps.

That was a messy and difficult job.

We then learned three things.

First, we would have had to access the taps from the other room to be able to replace them. We might still have to.

That will require almost emptying by husband’s bedroom. The only thing that wouldn’t need to move would be his hospital bed.

Then we’d either have to remove an entire sheet of paneling – which is what I think has been done over the years – or cut an access panel. Either way, it’s going to be a major issue for my husband.

Second, the rot in the fake tile paneling is really bad. I expected it to be bad, but… yuck.

No, I’m not going to post picture of it.

The water damage extends all around the tub, but the other two walls are not as bad as we feared.

Still, we’re going to have to cut off at least the bottom 16″ of the paneling (4 “tiles” high), then see how bad the damage is, behind it.

Third, this is going to take a long time to get fixed. We don’t even know what we’re going to need to do to get it all useable, yet, anyhow.

Meanwhile, the entire house is without water.

That meant a trip to the hardware store for a couple of Shark-bite style shut off valves.

My daughter then spent almost 3 hours installing them, with me as her flashlight holding assistant. It was incredibly awkward, and hard to get at.

Once they were finally installed, we added a sealing tape around each end of the valve, then went over that with electric tape, just to be on the safe side. We had to install a shut off valve in the hot water pipe to the laundry sink, and it now leaks every time we turn it on to use the tap. That on is an actual Shark-bite brand, and one end never gripped properly.

So we wanted to play it safe.

The first image above is the cold water pipe. That one had to be installed directly above the sump pump reservoir, which made reaching it a bit precarious. It was the easier one to install, though!

If you click through to the next photo, you’ll see the hot water pipe, which is just off where it branches to the kitchen and laundry, and next to the pipe that goes up to the toilet tank, and next to the furnace duct…

That pipe didn’t have as much play in it, either, and my daughter ended up having to cut off more pipe just to be able to get it into the valve end.

To top it off, there was all the water to deal with. My daughter did the hot water tap first, and after the first cut, the water just wouldn’t stop flowing! We ended up having to drain the hot water tank and open other taps, and still had to kept lifting the pipe at a bend to try and get more water out of the pipe. The cold water pipe did that, too, but not as much as the hot water pipe!

Needless to say, my daughter was feeling wet and gross by the time it was all done.

The important thing, though, is that they work. We could turn the water back on for the rest of the house!

While my daughter was finally able to leave, I stayed to monitor the refilling of the hot water tank. We couldn’t just turn the valve on all the way, as it would drain the pressure tank faster than the well pump could fill it again, which causes problems for the pump.

Yes, that still needs to be replaced, too.

Every now and then, I’d have to shut the valve off completely and let the pump finish filling the pressure tank before opening it up again, to stop the grinding noise it was making!

After the hot water tank had time to fill for a while, my daughter turned its breaker back on, so it could start heating up, too.

Then we had to run all the taps in the house to get the air out of the pipes.

That will be all we do about the tub for today!

While we figure things out there, we’ll all be sponge bathing for the next while – and I can’t even guess how long it will take for us to be able to use the tub and shower again! I supposed if we are at least able to install the faucet set, we could use the tub to wash in, and make sure not to splash. We just won’t be able to use the shower until this is all done.

*sigh*

It’s a pain, to be sure, but right now, I’m just thankful that the rest of the house has water, and it’s just the tub/shower that’s out of commission! We’ll just have to deal with things as they are.

It’s not like we have any choice in the matter!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: squash and melons growth progress – and another breakdown!

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Okay, this is getting ridiculous.

I was able to get some progress mowing the southeast yard. I was stopping and starting a lot to empty the bag. The area I was mowing is not infested with creeping Charlie, so the clippings went directly for mulch of the strawberry and asparagus bed, and around the sunchokes.

I’d gotten through maybe 2/3 of the southeast yard when I ran out of gas. As the engine sputtered and died, it backfired, which is the only thing I can think of that was out of the ordinary.

After filling the tank, I tried to start it, but it wouldn’t start.

I failed to start it several more times before I decided to let it cool down for a while. This has happened before and we were able to start it again after awhile.

As I waited, I puttered around with some other things around the yard, before trying again.

It still wouldn’t start.

Worse, as I was pulling the cord to start it, I could hear rattling noises.

I ended up putting it away in the garage and got the riding mower out. I decided it was worth a try to see if it would cut.

It wouldn’t start, either. The battery was dead again.

This battery was replaced just last year.

I put the charger on it, then puttered around the yard some more. Tried to start it again, but it hadn’t charged enough, so I went inside to have a meal.

The next time, it started fine, and I tried mowing.

I don’t know what’s going on with that thing. It will cut for a while, and then… not. As far as I can tell, everything is working the way it should. When it stops cutting, I can reverse it, then try and cut the stuff that was missed. Usually, it starts cutting again, but sometimes I have to reverse and try again a few times.

What makes it even more confusing is that when I got to the end of the strip, I would increase the speed to maximum and drive back to the other end, so that while cutting, the grass was always being expelled over grass that was already cut. I didn’t bother disengaging the mowing bed, and it was set lower than the push mower. While going around, and I could see the mower was actually cutting grass as I went over the grass cut with the push mower. However, once I was back at the taller grass and moving at the slowest speed, it would just for a short while, and then stop.

After a while, I just stopped. It was taking way too long and I was wasting too much gas.

So now we have a broken push mower, and a riding mower that doesn’t always cut. This is on top of three desktop computers in the household that had to be replaced, plus a laptop that is out of commission but will not be replaced. Which is also on top of having to replace the van, my mother’s car is making banging noises – and now has two flat tires, one of which has a broken bead at the rim and can’t be pumped up at all.

All of this is less than 12 months.

This has got to be the worse year for expensive things needing to be replaced or repaired – and things we can’t afford to replace or repair anymore!!

Well, I at least was able to end my time outside on a positive note. I did the semi-daily growth comparison photos of all the squash and melons.

This time, I remembered to get the Crespo squash.

I do see a couple of female flower buds near this one, but it will be a while before they bloom. This is on the side where two vines are growing. The third vine is growing between this new bed and the bed with the peppers and eggplant beside it. That one has shown no side of any female flowers, yet.

I did, however, find some tiny green Seychelle pole beans starting to develop on the trellis netting!

Next is the easternmost bed with the Summer of Melons blend of melons.

I had to split the Instagram slideshow photos into two batches. These is from the east facing side.

It looks like one of those is definitely going to be a loss.

Then there is the west facing side.

I found a new one!

There are quite a few more budding melons, but it’s too early to tell if they were successfully pollinated or not on those.

Next, the pumpkins!

There’s one that’s getting very yellow, and I expect it’s going to die off completely.

The largest and oldest pumpkin is starting to turn colour!

Next, I tried to get photos of the drum gourds.

The problem is, I can barely see my screen in the light, so I couldn’t tell if the camera was focusing properly or not.

I had actually finished taking all the photos and was going back through the beds when I spotted another drum gourd, so I got a picture of that one, too. For all I can tell, there are more of them hiding among the leaves!

Next is the winter squash bed with the peas and beans.

There’s one in there that looks like it might be a loss, too. The rest, however, are looking awesome!

Next are the winter squash interplanted with corn.

Having been transplanted later, these are behind the first bed, but still doing really well.

The second bed of melons had to have the photos split up in the Instagram slide shows, too.

There’s a new melon in there!

I found a new one on the other side, too. After I took the photos, I found a couple more pieces of scrap wood to put under them. As with the Summer of Melons mix bed, I can see quite a lot of developing melons that are still too small to be sure they are pollinated. There is certainly no shortage of pollinators, though, which bodes well for future productivity!

I was definitely feeling better by the time I was done going through the garden.

Now to figure out what to do about our broken lawn mowers.

The Re-Farmer

Here we go again!

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We knew it was coming. It was just a matter of time. In fact, it took a lot longer to happen than I thought it would! There were hints, though, that the limit had been reached, and today, it finally happened.

Our hot water tank died.

While my daughter was showering, of course.

The original tank (I found the original 1963 warranty while cleaning up in the basement and my parents got it second hand in the 1970’s!) died shortly after we moved here. My brother tried valiantly to keep it going, but a few months later, in 2018, we got it replaced with a new tank.

The replacement tank only lasted a year? Two? before it started leaking out the bottom.

It’s a good thing I take pictures of all this stuff, and document it here on the blog!

The first replacement tank started having problems in August of 2019, so about a year and a half before problems started. Water was leaking somewhere and filling the bottom of the tank.

The plumber tried different things, but in the end, it got replaced under warranty in January of 2020.

This is what started happening just over a year later.

Once again, water was leaking and filling the bottom of the tank.

I called the company and got it replaced under warranty again – but this was the last time I could do that. There’s only so many times you can replace a tank under warranty before they start assuming there’s something dishonest going on. Which is understandable.

So in January of 2021, I got a second warranty replacement tank. However, once we got it into the basement, I noticed the leaving the panel off had provided enough air circulation that the bottom of the tank was dry again.

So, we left it. We still had hot water, and we knew by now that our hard well water would likely just kill the new tank in a year. We decided to see how long we could last on what we had.

Amazingly, it lasted until now!

My first hint that something was wrong came when I was checking the old basement and found the concrete under the hot water tank was wet. I took the blower fan that we use to help dry out the basement when it gets wet in the spring, set it to blow directly at the hot water tank, then left it. A couple of days later, it was completely dry.

Then, last night, while doing dishes before bed, I found the hot water was getting way too hot. Warning sign number two!

This morning, I switched out the blower fan for a pedestal fan that uses less power. The concrete under the tank was starting to look damp again. Warning sign number three!. This fan could be set up closer, and I thought it might be enough.

I don’t know if it was. I haven’t gone down to check since then (the stairs are difficult for me to navigate). Later today, though, we simply lost hot water.

We called a plumber and left a message. Since we have the warranty replacement tank, still in the box, it just needs to be swapped out. That shouldn’t cost very much at all. Which is good, because every spare penny we have is being set aside to try and build up a larger down payment for a replacement vehicle.

Meanwhile, I’m bringing my mother’s car back to the garage tomorrow morning to get the spark plugs replaced. Then I will be going into the city for our second Costco shop.

Oh, and the septic guy was able to come by today – the ground was solid enough, even after yesterday’s downpours.

*sigh*

It’s like everything is popping up to make it impossible for us to set funds aside for a vehicle!

Oh, I also got word from the ranch we’re buying a quarter beef from. We’ve been paying $100 a month towards that since March, with the expectation that it would be ready in December. Well, it turns out it’ll be ready in 2 weeks, and what cuts did we want this time? !!!

Also, the weight for a quarter beef is higher this year, too. All together, we were going to be over $400 short!

I explained our situation, and they are going to hold our order off until January, which will make it even easier on the budget. So awesome of them! Once that’s paid for, that’s $100 a month that will be diverted to car payments.

The plumber hasn’t called back yet, but hopefully we will hear back tomorrow. If he hasn’t called by the time I’m back from the city, I’ll try again.

Aside from all that, it was a nice enough day that, once the septic guy was gone and I was no longer on kitten watch, to make sure none went anywhere near the open tank, I was able to get some work done outside. We don’t have high winds today, so my daughter was able to get a burn going, doing our paper garbage and some of the branches that we were starting to accumulate again that can’t fit into our wood chipper.

She’s still out there as I write this!

As for me, I need to try and get to bed early, because I’ve got a long day of running around tomorrow.

Good night, my friends!

The Re-Farmer

We had a fountain!

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I hooked up the hose end for the garden tap to the new connector, and it screwed on without any problems at all! The last few times I tried to connect it directly to the tap, the threads just would not line up, no matter what.

Which means I was able to check out where the leak is.

When I first turned on the water, I could hear it gurgling away, then start sputtering, until I could see water starting to gush out of the ground.

After a while, the pressure just kept increasing, and I had quite the fountain spraying high into the air!

I tried turning on the garden tap and did get some some water flowing. Brown, at first, which is no surprise. After a while, though, so much water was spraying from the hole, barely a dribble was making it up to the tap anymore.

When I grabbed a stake to mark the spot, I at first hit what I thought was a root going over the hose.

I was wrong.

It was the hose (looks like a pipe, actually), itself. I pushed the dirt around a bit and exposed more of it.

I honestly expected this to be buried a lot deeper. I was expecting to have to dig a trench to get it out, and was hoping it wouldn’t be too deep. It looks like it’s barely under the soil surface at all!

Which might explain those holes. They are a series of open lines in a row, not a crack. It makes me wonder if someone went over it with some sort of equipment that somehow punctured it.

When we do get around to pulling this up, I hope to be able to bury the replacement at least a little bit deeper! We’ll see how many roots we have to work around, when we do it.

I thought this whole thing was basically a buried garden hose, like the visble section by the house that gets screwed onto the tap, but the part uncovered looks like PVC pipe.

I am now very curious as to what this set up is.

The Re-Farmer

Good morning!

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Well, this was an unfortunate surprise for my daughter, while she was taking her shower this morning!

While adjusting the shower head, the whole thing broke off in her hand!

Handily, I happened to be using the bathroom while she was in there, so she could just pass me the parts and pieces, then take a bath, instead.

The part that broke is actually a small piece that comes off, and it’s a standard part, so it will be easy to find and replace. Our shower head is actually something we brought with us during the move, as it is a reduced mobility shower head. The hose is extra long, so that it can be used while sitting in a bath chair, and there is a shut off at the bottom of the shower head’s handle, instead of at the wall end of the hose. That would be a bit harder to replace, if it ever broke!

Given how hard and iron rich our well water is, this would be a good time to give the shower head and hose a soak in some CLR!

The Re-Farmer

Well, that took a lot more work than expected

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This morning, I decided to finish my mourning rounds by finally digging out the BBQ, so I could put the new cover on it. I was waiting for a slightly cooler day, when things wouldn’t be melting while I worked.

Though it was still very much a “rubber boot” morning!

This is the cat path from the kibble house to the storage house. The cats made the paths you see on the left with their muddy little feet, while the path veering right goes to the fire pit.

As you can see, there is a low spot right here, filled with snowmelt. I had to slog through it several times while I was working this morning!

With the melt-thaw happening over the last while, the top of the snow has formed a pretty hefty crust. In fact, this morning I spotted our piebald deer through the bathroom window, on the far side of the old kitchen garden, walking on top of the snow. Not only did the snow hold her weight, but when I walked past the area later, I couldn’t even see tracks.

As you can imagine, the ice chipper got a good workout while I was digging, this morning!

I cleared a path along the side of the collapsed tent, removed hard packed snow that was on top of the remains of the canopy, then had to cut away parts of the torn canopy to free the BBQ. Unfortunately, I still had to deal with the piece of tree that had broken the tent in the first place.

That out-of-focus branch tip in the foreground is part of the branch that you see stretching up and out of frame at the top.

I had to break off that branch in pieces to be able to access the back of the BBQ and the other corner of the tent. On the plus side, since the branch was sticking up into the air like that, the pieces are very dry. They’ll be great for the fire pit.

This was the main problem. One of the canopy supports was across the side element on the BBQ. There had actually been a folded up camp chair leaning against it. There’s a little pillow attached, and it actually protected the BBQ. The little bit of scuffing you can see under the canopy support happened just this morning, after I moved the camp chair out.

I couldn’t get that piece off the BBQ. It wouldn’t even break for me, as others did. All it would do is slide back and forth, but there was still too much weight from the canopy remains, and the snow trapped in it, to lift it.

There was a possible solution, though. We had dropped the tent legs as low as they could go, to cover and protect the picnic table and BBQ, making sure it was thoroughly pegged down with the support ropes, to make sure it wouldn’t blow away. What I could do was remove the canopy from the frame as much as possible, then raise the legs up to the first notch.

It took a while – and more digging to reach – but I managed to get three of the legs raised to the next highest position.

Which helped to a certain extent, but that fourth leg by the broken piece of tree would not budge.

I had forgotten just how big it was! The ice chipper is right at the largest end of the piece. Once I figured out where the end was, I could use the ice chipper handle to lever the branch loose, so it was no longer frozen to the ground. It was leaning right against the leg, pushing it over.

As much as I levered and wiggled the whole thing around, it still wouldn’t move off the leg.

There had to be a reason I couldn’t see.

Yup. Here it is.

There was a large branch, hidden in the snow, that I had been trying to roll it against! I stabbed along the length of it with the ice chipper until I found it’s end.

I was not about to dig all that out.

I grabbed a hatchet, instead. I didn’t need to even cut all the way through. Just enough that it would break, and I could finally clear it from the leg.

Which worked, but then I discovered another problem. The leg still wouldn’t move.

I chipped away around it. What you’re looking at is ground level. When the tree fell on the canopy, it drove the leg into the soil. Which is amazing, considering the legs have a flat plate on the bottom, so they can be pegged to the ground. Which they are. So the bottom of that leg, and the base of the part that slides up to raise the height of the tent, are frozen into the ground.

Well, crud.

I ended up having to break as many parts of the canopy frame as I could, to finally be able to clear the BBQ enough to cover it.

Which I finally did!

Then I used some of the heavy blocks of snow that were on the torn canopy to weigh down the bottom edges.

The frame is a mess, but it can’t be removed until the ground thaws out enough.

I like that the new cover for the BBQ has grommets on it. We’ll be able to peg it to the ground in between uses, so the wind won’t tear it off.

The branch pieces were set aside on the snow near the fire pit. Maple will make a nice cooking fire.

Then, since I was there anyhow, I dug a path from the fire pit to the wood pile.

Normally, I’d say we can use the fire pit now, and have ourselves a cookout if we want, but with that big puddle in the path, I think it’ll wait a bit longer. We don’t all have rubber boots.

For now, I’m just happy to have the new cover on the BBQ.

As long as we don’t get any more pieces of tree falling on it, now that there’s no longer the tent frame to protect it!

The Re-Farmer

Finding more storm damage

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With our temperatures hovering around freezing, we’re getting things melting in some areas, and freezing in others.

Which leaves us with this, in front of the sun room. :-D

We have one of those extended pole shovels designed to remove snow from a roof while standing at ground level, and I used it to try and clear the heaviest snow where the two roof sections come together. Like an idiot, I didn’t take the ice pillar out, first. It fell against the window. Thankfully, the window didn’t break! These are dual pane windows, and the pane on the inside is already cracked, so if the outer pane got broken, we’d be in a pickle!

The other downspouts seem to be clear, but this is the only south facing one, so it gets the most temperature fluctuations, and it feels like it’s solid ice, all the way to the eaves! Trickles do make their way through, but that’s about it.

While doing my rounds, I tried to see if we’d lost any more trees in the spruce grove. I didn’t see any newly fallen trees, but it looks like one of them – a live one, not one of the dead ones – lost about 15 feet off the top. It’s in an area that’s hard to get to even in the summer. With this much snow on the ground, it’s completely inaccessible right now.

Not so much the other piece of tree I discovered on the ground.

I was able to make my way over to the broken canopy tent. From a distance, I could see movement under it, showing that that cats are still able to use it for shelter, so it’s going to stay for the winter. This piece of tree looks like it landed on the corner of the tent and broke it even more. I can’t check on the BBQ under it. At this end, it has a shelf with a handle. There are S hooks on the handle for BBQ tools, and you can see one of them on the ground. Hopefully, it just got knocked about, and not damaged.

This is where it fell from. If I remember correctly, this was not a dead part of the tree, either. This is a group of three very large maples, and they do have a lot of dead sections that we would have to hire someone to safely remove.

Eventually, we will clear a path to the nearby fire pit and might be able to, at most, cut up and clear it away the broken piece or, at least, just move it aside so we can access the area.

There are still quite a few areas we can’t get at, with some we won’t even try to until the snow is gone, but in those that I can actually see, the broken branches we found before, plus what I saw today, are the extent of the storm damage. With all the dead branches we’ve been cleaning up these past four years, there are very few smaller branches on the ground that we’ll clean up when the snow it gone, but that seems to be leaving the really big things to fall!

The Re-Farmer

Cleared!

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Oh, it was so nice to see how the driveway looked in daylight!

There is more than enough room to back out of the garage and turn around – and even room for other cars to pull in and park. So awesome!

Though we do still have a bit of clearing to do in front of the garage. It’s just a small job, now!

This picture is taken from the road. Even the cats are loving the lovely, snow free driveway!

The road has been partially plowed. It looks like someone went through with a plow attachment on their truck or something similar. When the municipal plows come through, the clear from ditch to ditch, and there’s room enough for 2 vehicles to pass each other.

Notice the pole of snow pushed into the ditch? Because he cleared so far on that side of the driveway, when the plow does go by, we won’t have a ridge running across the end of our driveway!

I was able to make my way to this fallen branch. You can see where it broke off, above. I was not able to move it. Not only is it really heavy, but it’s frozen to the ground!

While making my way to switch out memory cards on the trail cams, I cold see where the deer are passing through, too.

As expected, there wasn’t much on the trail cams. It was funny to see some of the files from the camera by the new sign. The snow covered the camera lens before the motion sensor covered it, so they were basically just out of focus snow.

Though there is more shoveling to do, especially in the inner yard, I think I’m going to have to leave it to the girls today. My body is definitely telling me I need to take a break! Time to pain killer up and go for a nap!

The Re-Farmer