Clean Up

Garden prep and transplanting

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Once I was done winter sowing in between the garlic and mulching that bed, it was time to start getting the old kitchen garden beds ready.

In this garden, the plan is to have things that mature faster, or that we can harvest from regularly throughout the season, with it eventually becoming more of an herb garden. I do plan to winter sow in at least the two larger beds, so it was time to get cleaning!

I decided to start on the wattle weave bed, and to finally transplant those tiny strawberries.

Which, amazingly, are not only still very green, but still blooming and producing! At this point, though, the tiny strawberries get mushy almost as soon as they ripen.

These strawberries were grown from seed that came in a kit aimed at kids that I got on sale a few years back. There was no variety named, and it was a surprise to find they produced such tiny strawberries. I don’t know if they are a variety of wild strawberry, or an alpine strawberry or whatever. They are very productive and ridiculously hardy, but the berries are so small and tasty for about an eye blink of peak ripeness, I don’t want them taking up space in the garden bed that could be used for something more productive. However, I don’t want to just get rid of them, either. I’ve been debating with myself for some time, trying to figure out where to transplant them where they can stay.

The first photos is the first section I wanted to work in, with two clusters of strawberries, plus three more in the bend of the L shaped bed.

I decided to transplant them into the retaining wall blocks along the west end of the garden. At one end, three blocks have chives in them, with one open block right at the corner. The rest of the blocks have mint planted in alternating blocks. The other blocks have had a variety of things planted in them, but this year I hadn’t tried to grow anything in them. There were just a few onions surviving from several years ago; they start growing every year, but never get far, yet somehow survive to grow another year!

Surprisingly, the mint has not been doing very well. The original of this mint is from my late grandmother’s garden, and had been taking over a large area of the old kitchen garden. I do want to keep some and transplanted them into the blocks, so we could focus on getting rid of the ones that were invading the rest of the garden. This spring, hardly any mint grew anywhere, though the blocks turn out to be doing a poor job of controlling their spread. Still, we didn’t have enough to make it worth harvesting any.

Since I didn’t plant anything in the “spare” blocks this year, they just needed a quick prep. Right?

Ha!

They turned out to be so full of roots! There were invasive flowers and roots from the ornamental crabapples, mostly. I pulled out so much material, some of which you can see in the second picture of the slide show above, the soil level in the blocks dropped by several inches!

I also found three surviving onions to transplant later. One bed that should have had mint in it, didn’t anymore, while the bed next to it had mint that it shouldn’t have, so I transplanted those right away.

Once the blocks were cleaned out and ready, I dug out a clump of strawberries and started separating individual plants.

After failing at that for a while, I got a bucket of water from the rain barrel and started dipping and swishing the roots around until I could finally start pulling them apart.

There were so many individual plants in there, I ended up filling all nine available blocks, some with two plants in one block.

There were still four more clusters of strawberries!

You can see the blocks after transplanting in the next photo. They got a thorough watering. The blocks dry out pretty fast, plus I need to empty the rain barrel.

I decided to leave the three clusters in the bend of the bed, but what was I to do with the second cluster in the area I needed to clear?

Well…

I did have more of those blocks to plant in.

In the next picture, you can see there’s a row of eight of them along the chain link fence by the people gate. I hadn’t planted anything in them this year. I had some concerns on how they would be. The last time I tried to clean up those blocks, I ended up having to move them out completely, because they were so full of Chinese Elm roots, it was the only way they could be cleared.

The last time I tried to grow anything in them, it was tomatoes in 7 of them, and a summer squash in the eighth. The tomatoes did okay, but the squash really struggled. My expectations for today were quite low.

Much to my surprise, they actually were pretty clear! It was mostly crab grass I had to remove. I was pleasantly surprised.

That done, I dug out the other cluster of strawberries and – live and learn! – dumped them into the bucket of fresh water from the rain barrel and brought them over. The next while was spent getting the individual plants separated – these strawberries do not have runners! – and setting them out. This time, I counted.

In the end, I had 21 strawberry plants to go into 8 blocks.

Most of them got three plants each, but I saved the largest ones to be planted in pairs, which you can see in the last photo.

I have no idea if the strawberries will survive in these blocks, but they are so hardy, I figure if anything can, it’s them!

That done, I could finally start cleaning up the wattle weave bed!

Here is how it looked before I started, with the frost killed pepper and remaining three eggplant plants still there.

Those Turkish Orange Eggplant did not handle any cold well, but they had a surprise for me. When I’d harvested most of the eggplants, I’d cut the stems with pruning shears rather than pulling them out by the roots. The remaining stumps were showing new growth!

Where the eggplants had been, there’s a protective collar around a few mystery plants I’d found while cleaning up other beds in the spring. They appear to possibly be types of lily. I want to find out, so those were left alone in their protective collar. They are still green and growing, whatever they are! Perhaps next year, they will bloom and we’ll see what they are.

Near where the remaining strawberries are, there had been a few red onions growing, one of which had gone to seed. I dug those up for transplanting while cleaning up the bed.

It went quite quickly. There were basically no weeds in there, though there were some roots from the double lilac the bed wraps around. A bit of crab grass and another type of invasive flower we’ve been fighting, and that was it.

Once the bed was clean and clear, the red onions, plus the yellow onions I dug out of the retaining wall blocks, were transplanted at the end near the protective flower collar, which you can see in the second picture of the slide show above.

When I clear the rectangular bed, I expect to find more onions, and possibly garlic. Depending on how many there are, I will transplant them all along the front of the south facing section of the wattle weave bed. Aside from that, I will be planting the dwarf peas in there. These are a variety that don’t need trellising, so that should work out in this bed.

Next, it was time to work on where the peppers were grown. The dead plants were pulled – all of these were set aside for trench composting, later – and the soil cleaned up and loosened, which you can see in the next picture. Once again, there was almost nothing to clean out. It did have more of the lilac roots invading, but nothing major. I haven’t decided what to put in this section, yet. I’m thinking herbs. Possibly fennel, as both herb and vegetable, but that will not be for winter sowing.

One of the pepper plants had a tiny pepper I hadn’t bothered to harvest when I brought them in to ripen indoors. As an experiment, I broke it open and it did have seeds in it. I had loosened the soil between the strawberry plants, so I scattered the seeds between the strawberries and the back of the bed and lightly buried them. Who knows. They might survive the winter, and we’ll have pepper seedlings in the spring!

The last picture is how it looked when the bed was all cleaned up.

By then, it was past 3:30 and I hadn’t had lunch yet, so I headed indoors for a while. My younger daughter had food ready, so I was able to get back out again, while it was still light.

I didn’t want to start on the rectangular bed, as that will involve harvesting the last of the Swish Chard, and transplanting any onions and garlic I find. There wasn’t enough daylight left to start that large of a job.

Instead, I started working on stakes. These will be for what had started out as a wattle weave wall in the bed beside the retaining wall, which wasn’t working out. I’ve decided to make a different type of wall, and need a lot more stakes to hold things.

My brother had cut away the maple sucker that were growing back behind the pump shack, so he could access things and run power to their home-away-from-home. I’d cleaned up the pile and set aside the straightest ones. Today, I moved those over and trimmed away side branches and twigs and so on. I got quite a nice pile of strong sticks to use as stakes.

The stakes will be shorter than the ones already in place, so I went looking for the shortest of the pieces I had in the pile, which was pretty much the size I wanted. I then fired up the miter saw and trimmed the ends. That became the piece I cut all the other ones to match in length, more or less. They don’t need to be exact as, once they are pounded into the ground, they’re never going to be exactly the same height, anyhow. They just need to be close, and will be trimmed later, if needed.

I double checked my count, and will need 15 stakes to add to this wall – three in the spaces between each of the stakes currently there. I cut 16, just in case. I was also left with some leftover pieces that were shorter, but close enough that they could be used, if necessary. Those are set aside, just in case.

Once I had the pieces cut to size, I got to use my favourite tools to work with! My draw knife, and the big vice in the workshop side of the garage, which you can see in the next photo.

There is something so satisfying about using a draw knife.

The next photo, all the stakes now have points on them. It was time to debark!

I set up a camp chair in the old kitchen garden, next to a spot that had been overrun by mint at one point. I’ve been putting rhubarb and kohl rabi leaves over it as a mulch to choke out the mint and crab grass, and that’s where I wanted to drop the bark. The next while was spent pulling the bark off, withthe aid of a utility knife. The wood was still very green, so it was easy going, overall. By the time I was done, it was around 7pm and starting to get quite dark! I took the pile of debarked stakes into the sun room, where there was enough light to get a picture, which is the last one in the slide show above.

It’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow, so I won’t be able to get any more progress done outside. The day after, the installers for the door should be able to finally come over to get the job done. I’ll be leaving for my eye appointment, shorter after noon, but I should have time to at least drive the stakes in where they need to go. That’s Tuesday. Wednesday, I’ll be at my mother’s to do her grocery shopping and for her appointment with home care for a re-assessment of her care needs. Which means the earliest I’ll be able to continue prepping beds and winter sowing is Thursday.

Things are supposed to start warming up on Friday and for the weekend. At this point, I have no appointments, nor planned errands other than a dump run on Saturday. If all goes well, I hope to actually be able to finish cleaning up all the remaining beds, and get the last of the winter sowing done.

If things go REALLY super-duper well, I might even be able to harvest more dead spruces and build more beds before the snow flies.

Wouldn’t that be something!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 garden: bed ready, and seed onions planted

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I am very happy to say, I got another bed in the main garden area done today!

I decided to work on the trellis bed, as I figured it would take the least time. I was going to loose light fast, and it was getting cold and damp!

This bed had the sunflowers, pumpkins, red noodle beans, onions – mostly self seeded – and self seeded Spoon tomatoes in it.

My first order of business was to loosen the soil enough to pull up the remains of the sunflowers and set them aside in the wheelbarrow, for later use.

You can see how the bed looked, once the sunflowers were out.

From there, I wanted to work the opposite side, where there are still onions. Some grew well and went to seed. Others just sort of disappeared. Still others were tiny self seeded onions that I transplanted along the one side, in hopes they would have enough season to grow.

Most of those disappeared, too.

Some, however, had started to show new growth!

I wanted to dig up what onions survived and replant them as seed onions again.

For the first pass, I just loosened the soil with the garden fork enough to find and remove what onions I could see. A couple of the ones that went to seed were completely spent and went into the wheelbarrow, but all the onions I found were set aside for later.

In the second picture of the above slide show, you can see what I pulled up, plus four tiny onions I’d found while cleaning up elsewhere and set aside for today.

I knew I would find more, once I started doing a thorough weeding, which I certainly did. Quite a few were hiding in the soil. There were a surprising number of larger ones that should have grown and gone to seed this year. Some of them were showing growth only now! In the third picture, you can see the final number of onions I’d found. Most were red onions, but a few little ones were yellow onions. There’s one big yellow onion that had gone to seed.

Cleaning up the bed did go a lot faster than the other beds. What a difference one more log in height makes! I did find tree roots, but nowhere near as many, and not as close to the surface. There were also almost no rocks at all. I was hitting rocks with the garden fork as I loosened soil, but they were further down than what I was clearing of weeds. What few rocks I uncovered could be tossed into the trees. No bucket needed!

Towards the end of the clean up, I was really pushing to get done. I could hear thunder in the distance, and the wind was picking up. I thought I might have to stop before finishing when it started to rain, but then the rain moved on, and I got it done!

Once the weeding was done, I used the landscape rack to pull the soil to the sides to make a trench in the middle. That’s where the sunflower stalks and pumpkin vines got trench composted. I even included the frost killed sunflower heads. They were killed off before any seeds could reach viability, so they should be okay to bury.

Once the stalks and vines were laid out in the trench, I stomped on them a few times. Then I paused to take the next picture in the slide show above, before burying it.

When everything was buried, I raked up the weeds and roots I’d pulled out. In the next picture of the slide show, you can see what was the smallest pile of weeds I’d pulled up yet!

Then, I started planting onions. In the next picture of the slide show, there’s the finished bed and the onions visible. They were planted all along one side, plus the ends.

The last picture is of the row along the side of the bed.

For this bed, I am considering winter sowing one of our shelling pea varieties along the trellis side of the bed, then something planted in the spring, in between.

While these onions are meant to be left to grow seeds, I do intend to start onions indoors for spring transplanting. They would need to be started in January or February.

I’m so glad I got that bed done, and got rained on only a little bit!

There are a couple more beds there to work on that I expect will have a lot more elm roots in them. I am hoping to be able to get at least one bed done tomorrow. Two, if the weather holds!

I’m actually kind of dreading it, though, as I expect the roots to be bad in them.

Meanwhile, as I was putting things away and tidying up, I noticed a lot of dead walking onion stalks and a WHOLE lot more new growth. I cleaned up the dead bits, being careful not to damage any of the new growth. Any bulbils on the stalks I cut away got broken off and returned to the soil for more growth.

There are so many weeds in there, but that doesn’t seem to bother the onions any!

You can also see almost all the herbs in the tiny raised bed are doing well. Just the basil got killed by the cold. The chives are also doing well, and some are even blooming!

By the time all that was done, I was more than happy to get inside to warm up with a hot cup of tea and supper…

… plus my daughters’ fresh baked cookies, for dessert.

All in all, it was a productive day, even in the garden, after being gone for so long!

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Victory, fixing an angel, wind damage, and finally done!

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I’d say I did have a productive day today, though not quite how I originally planned.

Being a warmer day, I was going to head outside to work in the garden earlier, but with my telephone appointment from the sports injury clinic in the afternoon, I decided I didn’t want to be working in the dirt before handling the phone.

So I worked with epoxy, instead.

My mother had an angel statue in her apartment for many years. It’s meant to be outdoors in a yard or garden, but she kept it in her living room. It’s about three and a half feet tall and, I’ve determined today, made of fiberglass.

My mother has been trying to get us to take things or claim things of hers for when she “goes up up”, and she decided the angel should go here to the farm. My brother and I decided that it will be set up by the gate, for our vandal to see the next time he gets all creepy for the cameras again. My mother loved that idea!

As we were taking it from her place, though, my brother discovered one of the wings was cracked. We didn’t want water to get in, so we wanted to use some epoxy on it to seal it up, first.

I decided I would do this today, so that we could get it outside by the weekend. We already have a spot for it, with a chunk of old side walk block for it to stand on. I just have to figure out how to secure it, or the angel will go flying in the wind!

I had picked up some clear epoxy for it. When my brother came out this past weekend, he brought me some clear epoxy for it, too – the exact same stuff that I’d picked up! So we have extra now. 😁

The type I got has a plunger that squeezes out both the resin and hardener in equal amounts at the same time, which made things easy. I mixed a bit up and applied it to the crack. There’s no way to clamp such an odd shape, though, so I had to try and press the edges of the crack together with my hands while the epoxy set.

Which is when the entire wing broke off.

!!!

So now I had to figure out how to set the angel so I could use gravity to help me hold the wing in place, so I could epoxy the whole thing together. At least we could see that no water would get into the body of the angel.

As I tried setting the angel flat on the floor, I heard another cracking noise.

The angel is holding a bird in its hands. I just broke a wing tip off.

*sigh*

I was able to lean the angel against a shelf, applied the epoxy to the wing and had to stand there and hold it in place for at least 5 minutes, which is what the packaging says is the set time. It was probably closer to 10 minutes before I felt I could let it be and could go do something else for awhile.

While I was standing there, holding the wing in place, I could see on the other wing why it broke off so easily. The wings were added onto the angel separately, and I could see a seam where the wing joined the body.

You can see on the second picture, how it looked before I finally dared straighten the angel back up again. Then I mixed up a bit more epoxy, and attached the broken wing tip onto the bird. I had to sit there and hold it in place, too. This time, I remembered to use the timer on my phone. After 5 minutes, I moved away to start putting away the epoxy syringe into its packaging when I heard a clunk. The wing tip fell off! So I held it for another 10 minutes. It seems to be holding fine, now.

When it gets set out, I’ll probably just find a way to tie it down to the concrete base to keep it from blowing away, for now. Eventually, I will make a little flower garden around it. Since that area is lower and tends to flood in the spring, I am thinking to dig out some of the sod in the lower area, where I can see someone started to make a ditch at some point, and use that as the base to build up soil around the agnel. I am thinking of bringing rocks to frame the flower bed. Digging up sod from nearby will create a deeper, mini-pond like area for the spring run off to collect in, and maybe I won’t be slogging through water when switching out the trail came for a change!

That is for the future, though. The important thing is so make sure the wind won’t carry the angel away!

Like it tried to do with this tree I noticed while doing my evening rounds today.

We never heard it go down, but it clearly came down during the recent high winds. You can see the difference in the wood from the freshly fallen tree and one that fell many years ago.

This tree is one of the ones I wanted to harvest for raised bed walls. It’s hung up on other trees, but pretty low to the ground, so I should be able to harvest it to use in the garden, still.

Anyhow…

After I got the angel done, I basically just stayed indoors until I got my call. The doctor was right on time, too! It was a very quick call. When the doctor asked how I was doing, I was able to give him a glowing report on what a huge difference the injection made for my hip. From the sound of his voice, I don’t think he gets such an enthusiastic response very often! 😄 In the end, all he had to do was tell me to get back to them should I have issues again in the future, and we were done.

When it was time to head outside, my daughter came out with me to help put away the things I organized last night. I fed the cats first, and she took advantage of that to try and pet as many kittens as possible. There are a few that are starting to allow touches, if not outright pets.

There was, however, a major victory.

She was able to pick up and cuddle Smokey!

Smokey was purring and snuggling and enjoying every minute of it!

Oh, she is going to make someone very happy when she gets adopted out!

Just a few more days, and she’ll be off to the rescue with her brother, along with four others, for fostering as they get prepped for adoption. She and her brother, plus one other cat, are large enough for spays and neuters. The three littles we’ll be snagging will need to grow bigger before they are ready.

Once my daughter sadly put Smokey down, she went ahead of me to the old garden shed to make some space in it, and get the rolling seat in, first. From there, I started bring stuff over for her to put away in an organized fashion. She’s very good and Tetrising things!

Once everything was put away, I wanted to finally finish off the garden bed I’ve been working on for way too long now! Between being pulled away to other things, and the weather, it’s been very slow going even without the issues with roots.

It is, however, now finished!

I had so little left to do, but there were so many tree roots in there! I can’t believe how bad it was! No wonder the peas and carrots didn’t do as well as they could have. It wasn’t just drought conditions! I’m amazed they survived at all, with so many roots choking them out.

Once the bed was leveled out some more – the back of a fan rack is great for that – I brought out the plastic that was used to cover the winter squash, folded in half, so the big hole was not an issue, and set that over the bed, to protect it from cats until I can winter sow into it. Even while I was working on it, not only was I finding “presents” the cats had left, but when I stepped away to do things, like get the loppers to cut the larger roots, I came back to find fresh presents in the soil! Grommet (you can see him in the second photo) was particularly interested in what I was doing and, at one point, was about to use the spot I was working on, like I’d dug it out just for him to use as a litter box, while I was right there, picking out roots, weeds and rocks!

What a cheeky bugger!

That done, it was time to head inside for sustenance and hydration that my daughter prepared for me. I didn’t head out again as, by the time I was done, it was getting too dark.

Meanwhile, I’ve heard back from the company about our main entry door replacement. The door was delayed during the pre-painting process, but it will arrive tomorrow afternoon (Thursday). The guy was working on booking the installers, but it’s expected to rain on Friday, so he’s hoping they can come in on Saturday.

*sigh*

I’m looking at the forecast now. It has changed, of course. We are now expecting to get rain starting tomorrow afternoon, continuing off and on through Friday.

Which means that if I’m going to get more beds cleaned up and ready for winter sowing, I’d better be getting out there much earlier tomorrow!

Hopefully, the remaining beds won’t be as ridiculously full of roots like this one was, and they will go faster! There are four beds left to do in the main garden area – these are the 18′ long ones, so I want to get them done, first. There is a 9’x3′ bed, plus a 4′ square bed to do in the east garden area, and then the old kitchen garden needs to be done. Once the main garden beds are done, the others should go a lot faster. Aside from being smaller beds, they shouldn’t have as many tree roots growing up into them!

Looking at the long range forecast, it does look like we’ll have the weather to get this done. Amazingly, it has changed from the possibility of snow in the last week of October (I can’t believe the month is half gone already!), to warmer temperatures, and even a day that’s forecast to hit a high of 20C/68F! Then it’s supposed to rain during the last 5 days of October. That’s when we’ll be doing our city stock up trips, so that actually works out for me.

Of course, the forecast will change when I look at it again, tomorrow. I’ll take what I can get for pleasant weather, though. It’s not as pleasant as the one fall where we got our first frost in November, but still better than getting snow storms, like some have gotten up north already, but I’ll take what I can get!

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: winter squash and garden clean up

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When I was doing my morning rounds, everything was still covered in frost, as we dropped below freezing last night.

I noticed the cover on the winter squash, which I haven’t lifted for awhile now, looked rather different.

Yes, there was frost on the cover but, if you look at the next photo in the slide show above, much of that frost was coating the inside of the cover!

I waited until things warmed up after I’d run my errands today before taking the cover off to see. In the third photo, you can see that all the plants were killed by frost. The next few photos are of the winter squash that seemed to have survived the cold. Two Baked Potato and three Mashed Potato squash made up the littler harvest you can see in the last photo of the slideshow above. The little ones should still be okay to eat. I am curious if the largest one has mature seeds inside. These are not varieties that produce large squash, so that one might actually be the full mature size.

That done, I then started working on gathering up all the hoops and stakes and netting and protective collars. The plastic cover that was over the winter squash got folded up length wise – it has a hole in it but, folded in half lengthwise, it should still be useable – a couple of times before getting rolled up.

Folding a very long, damp sheet of plastic took quite a while! Thankfully, there wasn’t much wind, but what little breeze there was sure didn’t help!

The trellis netting and the stakes holding them got taken down. Finding a way to store the netting, which has 4″ squares, without getting it all tangled took some doing.

For the past while, I’ve been putting the material together by the tree stump bench near the old garden shed. Aside from what is still covering the garlic, I think I’ve been able to gather everything from all the garden beds. I’d already partially sorted and bundled some of it. Today, I worked on finishing off the organizing, bundling and collecting it all.

The first photo above is how the garden looked, after I took all the stuff down. The garlic bed will be done after I’ve winter sown something with it, then give it a thick mulch of leaves. Until then, the cover is needed to protect the bed from cats wanting to use is as a litter box!

The next photo is all my bundles of stakes, hoops, the hoop nets I can still use, and even the twisted up wire hoops. I’ve got my soaker hoses all rolled up. The garden hoses will be done soon, too, but they are still being used. Ties, clips, short stakes to hold the Pexx hoops in place, and even the pieces of pool noodle used to go over the support posts that had twine threated through them, when used to hold netting over a bed to keep the cats out. I’m even hanging onto the water bottles that were set on the tops of stakes to rattle in the wind and hopefully startle deer away. I’ve got a bundle of 8 metal posts I found at the dollar store in there, too. Four of them had been used to support a trellis for the melons that they never grew big enough to grow up on. The other four were ones I found more recently and have not been used yet.

In the future, I intend to get more of the tallest, plain metal stakes, but I also really liked the taller tomato cage sets. The sets are three posts with connectors. The shorter ones came with two connectors per post, the taller ones with three connectors per post. The same connectors can fit both lengths of posts. I have two sets of the larger ones currently around the plum tree, supporting chicken wire, to keep the deer from eating it. I have shorter sets around the gooseberry bush and apple tree. I used several sets of the taller ones to make a deer barrier in front of the pea trellis. I can see being able to use them in a lot of other ways, too. They are surprisingly sturdy for a dollar store purchase, and I plan on getting more in the future.

The last picture has the collection of protective collars on t-posts, to keep them from blowing away. The round wire tomato cages that were used for the pepper and eggplant are all stacked up, with a large plastic bottle covering the sharp points. The water bottles used to help keep the frost at bay under covers are hanging off a smaller stake set into the wire cages to hold it up. The water bottles with their bottoms cut off that were used to deep water the summer squash are stored on there, too. There’s a couple or rolls of the black netting, plus a couple of roles of wire mesh, as well, plus the rest of the T-posts.

Now that I have all these sorted out, I need to figure out how to store them. Some can fit in the old garden shed, but the rolling garden seat needs to fit in there, too. I’ve got more stuff to store than last winter, plus there are the hoses and the garlic bed’s hoops and cover to add to the pile, and it won’t all fit in there. That shed is in serious need of replacing, too. Lots of rotten spots in the walls and roof that are slowly getting worse. In the last photo, you can see part of it. The door is a simple piece of plywood, and it’s comping apart in layers from weathering!

I’ll figure it out.

The next couple of days are supposed to be warmer. Friday is supposed to be the warmest day, but it’s also supposed to be raining off and on all day. If the long range forecast is at all accurate, aside from the one rainy day, we should have about a week and a half of decent, if chilly, weather to finish preparing garden beds and getting the winter sowing done. That’s the priority. After that, I can work on finishing the wall on that garden bed in the old kitchen garden that I’ve decided to do slightly differently. It would be nice to finally get that bed finished!! I can’t believe how long it’s been taking to get it done. That’s what happens when a job gets worked on piecemeal. 🫤

So while I didn’t get any progress on preparing beds for winter, I did actually get a lot done. By the time I was done with all the sorting and bundling for storage, it was getting pretty darn cold out there (we’d already passed our high of 8C/46F by the time I started). I’m hoping to get an earlier start tomorrow, partly because I have an afternoon telephone appointment with the sports injury clinic about my hip. Not only is it expected to be warmer tomorrow, but we’re supposed to stay at our high of 11C/51F for about 6 hours, rather than the eye blink of time we were at our high today! We’ll be dropping down to 8C/46F again by Saturday, then warming up a bit again. I will be delivering cats on Saturday, anyhow, so that works out!

All in all, I’d call it a productive day.

The Re-Farmer

Puttering about, and so many cats!

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Well, the wind never really slowed down today until is was basically dark out. I was really feeling it when I headed out to visit my mother for Thanksgiving, fighting the wind for the entire drive. It wasn’t as bad on the way home, as I no longer driving against the wind, but it was still threatening to blow me off the road!

My mother was quite happy with my surprise visit. I made sure to time it for after she got her Meals on Wheels, which she said was extra special for Thanksgiving. She was back in bed when I got there, so I went to her to show her what I’d brought. She told my that my brother had visited the other day, also bringing food for her, and how we feed her so well! I told her, it’s Thanksgiving! It’s all about the food! She was also quite happy when I told her the girls had done all the cooking, so I could get some rest.

I stayed for a fairly short visit, letting her know what the weather was like, and that I wanted to get back home again sooner rather than later, because of it. It was even a good visit, with only one side track when she started going off on a racist tangent and I started saying it was time for me to leave. She stopped and asked me to stay, and that she would stop. Which was a first! Usually, she doubles down!

Since I was there anyhow, I did a few little things about the apartment for her and made her some tea, then we just sat and talked for a while before I headed home.

I didn’t mention it to her, but my brother and SIL were at the farm when I left. My brother wasn’t up to visiting with her along the way, as he had things he needed to do while there was light to do it, and she would have demanded he stay longer than he was able to. When I got back, they were settling in for a late lunch and messaged me when they saw me get back, inviting me to join them. Which I was happy to do, and we got all caught up, until my brother had to get back at things, so I left to get out of their way. 😄

I was soon back outside to try and get things done. It was too windy for some things, but I was at least able to putter around and get quite a few little things done.

I had lots of cat company, like Fluffy, watching me from the top of the shelf in front of the bathroom window.

What a stunning cat! We can even pet her, sometimes.

Most of what I needed to go outside was putting things away for the winter, though some things were kept handy so I could use them when we have a calmer day. The 100′ extension cords were all wrapped and put away, the space around the old basement window was cleaned up again, and the winter window put in. The folding camp chairs that had been in the sun room got brushed clear before getting stored in the old kitchen. I’d given the “roof” of the broken market tent a good scrubbing with the stiff bristled sun room broom, then hung it on the chain link fence to dry. The wind was starting to blow it away, so I made sure to fold it up and stored in in the old kitchen for the winter. The frame may be broken, but the canopy and four wall panels are just find. I’m sure we can find some way to make use of them.

I didn’t work in the main garden area, but I got to put things away from the old kitchen garden and the portable greenhouse. That is also slowly being set up so that the cats can use it for shelter in the winter, with a couple of food bowls in it. One of them had been kept on the well cap with the isolation shelter’s entry protecting box over it. That’s at the isolation shelter now, and I didn’t want to leave the food bowl out without some kind of shelter over it. I did end up setting it over the isolations shelter door to try and block at least some of the winds that’s blowing things around inside.

Stinky is quite happy that it’s there! I’ve seen a few cats sitting on the ramp, now that the box is there, taking advantage of the shelter. I’ll need to figure out a better way to secure the vinyl that will be wrapped around the bottom, to protect it from the winter weather. Last winter, I just used tacks, which mostly did the job, but they weren’t enough for the severely windy days.

While cleaning things up and putting things away outside, I had a pile of scrap pieces of rigid insulation in odd sizes I needed to deal with. One of the walls in the upper level of the isolation shelter has a piece of insulation cut to fit that the cats have been using as a scratching post. to the point that one corner is basically gone. I didn’t have any pieces large enough to cut a new piece, but I did have a piece larger enough to cover the area that was scratched out. It fits snug enough that it’ll take quite a bit for it to be pulled out of position by cats.

Then I decided to use some of the pieces in the cube shelf in the sun room. A few cats are using it, but it’s a harder surface and could potentially get cold on the toa beans over the winter. So I found a piece large enough to cut to size and fit on the bottom of a cube. Once I had the size worked out, I used it as a template to cut as many more as I could, out of the scrap bits of insulation I had to work with.

I was able to cut enough to set into 7 cubes. They are really snug, so they won’t get knocked out of the cubes easily. It wasn’t long before I saw cats and kittens checking the cubes out. If I happen to find more scrap pieces of this rigid insulation that are large enough, I want to cut and add more to fit into the cub shelves. This way, in the winter, the cats can use the shelf to watch things out the window, and their to beans won’t get too cold.

I also found a place to secure the second heat lamp. This one has a 150 watt heat bulb. The other one is 250 watts.

That side of the sun room should be fairly warm in the winter, with those lamps. For now, though, the kittens like a different way of staying warm!

There are 11 kittens in that bottom shelf, plus Grommet under the heat lamp. That tuxedo in the front is, I think, the one that I expect we’ll be able to snag for the rescue, next weekend.

Speaking of which…

As I was heading inside, I spotted Smokey on the hand rail outside the sun room. It took a little while, but I was able to start petting her, and she started purring! Then Collin came by and pushed his way under my hand, and Smokey jumped down onto a bin that’s stored under the rail. I was still able to pet her there, and then…

*drum roll please!*

… she let me PICK HER UP!!!! Not only that, but she let me cuddle her for about 5 minutes, purring the whole time!!! That is massive socialization progress! By the time we bring her in to the rescue, I’m hoping she will be fully socialized.

Now, that is something to be thankful for, this Thanksgiving day!

All in all, I was able to actually get some decent work done outside before It was starting to get dark. Stuff that I would normally defer until later, while I prepped beds for winter sowing. Since it was too windy to prep garden beds for the winter, I’m quite happy to have been able to get the work done on a day like today.

As I write this, we are at 3C/37F, or 1C/34F, depending on which app I use. The wind chill right now, has it feeling like -3C/27F right now. Among the things I did was bring the rechargeable battery tools for winter storage indoors.

Meanwhile, good progress on getting things ready for the winter, though it does ten to be… questionably, that is! There’s still lots to do. We shall see how it works out.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Today’s progress – running around and work accomplished… sorta

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I am so glad my brother said he would take care of my mother’s morning meds today, after we got the call from home care saying they didn’t have anyone to do it!

After feeding the outside cats and doing my morning rounds, I grabbed breakfast, then backed the truck closer to the inner yard. I didn’t want to go too close to the house while loading the back, because of all the very curious cats and kittens!

Speaking of which, I did a head count of all the cats and kittens I could see this morning. I counted several times and got a different number each time, but the highest count was 42. Mostly kittens. I’ve been messaging with the rescue group and mentioned this, commenting on how I can now see why we’re going through kibble so fast. I told them I got four 40 pound bags when disability came in at the end of Septembers. Sixteen days, and we’ve gone through three of them. I had to start the fourth one, today. They asked if I could last a week. I think we might be able to. They also asked about the prices for 40 pounds bags, and I was later able to send them pictures of a couple of receipts from the two different feed stores I go to, and the two different brands I get from them. A rescue would certainly be on the look out for better prices on kibble!

Anyhow…

I am so happy we have that new cover installed on the truck!

We were finally able to take the garbage from cleaning out the sun room to the dump. After I loaded those much bigger bags from the sun room clean up, with my older daughter distracting kittens away from me and the truck as best she could, she helped me get the household garbage out of the old kitchen, where the bags go until we can do a dump run. With all the kittens running around, it’s easier to have one person pass these smaller bags through the screenless window in the storm door to a second person. That way, only one person has to dodge kittens! 😄

This is the first dump run we’ve been able to make since we took the truck in for repair and getting the new cover installed. With the extra garbage from the sun room clean up, it filled the entire space under the cover – and no worries that something would blow away on the highway!

Once the truck was loaded, I was off to the dump. I got there right at 10. There was already a truck parked on the road, waiting for the gate to be unlocked. It turned out that the car in front of me was the attendant! I had it in my head that they opened at nine, forgetting that winter hours starts at the end of October, not the beginning. Glad I didn’t leave for a 9am opening!

By the time I unloaded the truck, there was a whole crowd of vehicles that had come in behind me, including a dump truck with two huge crushed cubes of garbage. !!! I’m happy to say that the area in front of the pit was relatively clear of huge piles of garbage. I’m still nervous about getting a flat tire every time I got in there, though.

That done, it was off to the pharmacy in town. I wanted to get refills before I ran out. I’m glad I didn’t wait. I have my anti-inflammatories, and my stomach meds to protect from the anti-inflammatories. I take the stomach meds only once a day, but can take up one or two anti-inflammatories, up to three times a day. If I were to take the max dose of the anti-inflammatories, I would finish both at the same time. I only need to take a couple of anti-inflammatories once a day, though, so those last a lot longer. I’d actually picked up a refill a while back, but it has disappeared, and I never used any of it. I’m still finishing my first bottle. I suspect a cat knocked the second bottle of the shelf, but I haven’t been able to find it, anywhere! So I had to get another refill.

The stomach meds, though, have already been refilled twice before, and my prescription was done for refills. The pharmacy would have to fax my doctor to get an extension. Unfortunately, today is a Saturday on Thanksgiving weekend, which means the earliest the doctor will get the fax is on Tuesday.

Once again, glad I started this now, and not later! I’ll have enough to last until the updated prescription is in. If I’d waited, I would have run out, and I really don’t want to do that. These have saved me from so much pain and stiffness, it still amazes me.

Meanwhile, I was able to get the other refills. While the pharmacy was taking care of that, I headed over to the grocery store to pick up a few things before Thanksgiving.

I didn’t have much on my list, but I did spend time going through the store, looking for something I might want to add to our Thanksgiving dinner. I should have picked something up while in my mother’s town, yesterday! They had much better sales on pies. This store had sales, too, but they were not only more expensive even with the sale price, you had to buy two of them to get the sale price, Otherwise, they were regular price – and there was no way I was paying that much for a small pie!

Taking my time at the grocery store gave the pharmacy the time then needed to fill my prescriptions. They were just bagging it up when I got there. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get the missing one on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, my brother had surprised my mother by showing up to do her morning med assist instead of the home care worker. He also had a couple of Thanksgiving dinners my SIL had packed for her. She was very happy about that and said they would be her lunch and supper! 😊 He stayed long enough to take care of her portable air conditioner and the window set up for the winter. He was done and already here at the farm before I got back from my own errands, so I went over to see how things went. She can be particularly cruel to him.

She turned out to be having a good day today, and was actually mostly kind to him. As we were catching up, he remembered to tell me my mother brought up about me and the farm. I immediately became suspicious, but he told me it was good. She had brought up about how we are paying for the utilities here, and he said yes, plus things like the internet, and fixing things, and so on. She started to say how she wanted to help. I told him, she has teased about helping with the door replacement a couple of times, but I don’t expect her to. He assured me, she’ll help with the door replacement. As her PoA, he could even make it easier for her and do an etransfer, or she can write me a check, if she prefers, but he says she intends to help with the door. She wants this place to be in good shape.

I don’t trust her. She’s burned all of us, at one time or another, by making promised and then backing out at the last minute. She has cost my brother many thousands of dollars by doing that. Even the times she has helped, like with the new roof and replacing the septic ejector, it was because my brother made sure she followed through. She actually tried to back out of paying for the roof like she promised, after the work was done, because she refused to believe it should cost more than a thousand dollars (it was around $15,000, I think), even though we got estimates and showed them to her.

I trust my brother, but there’s only so much he can do, and I don’t trust her.

We shall see. Lord knows, we could use the help after this past very rough couple of years, and my brother knows it.

Meanwhile, as I got caught up with my brother, I came into the house to find my purchases had all magically put themselves away. 😄 That allowed me to go back outside and try and get some work done.

Painting the isolation shelter and a few other things, were priority. It was supposed to be a much warmer day today, but it has been insanely windy.

I did get the painting done, though. The new paint is very noticeably lighter! I don’t care, though. I made no effort to try and keep the new colour off the painted parts. When I find something better to bring in for colour matching, we’ll get another can of paint in the right shade, and give what I got painted today a second coat, after winter.

The sliding windows had to be removed, of course. I was careful when painting the tracks, as I didn’t want them to get filled with pools of paint by accident.

In the first picture, you can see the box to shelter the ramp opening. Later on, I want to flip it upside down to paint the inside, but that’s not a priority. I got the old plant stand painted, and it’s sitting on a couple of broken sidewalk block pieces to keep it above ground.

The second picture is the side where the sliding window can only side towards the front, not over the insulated side wall. There was a bit to do in the front, and a single piece on the back that needed to be done, but most of the painting needed was on the sides.

I did not do the wire mesh door. It was so windy, I was starting to get an ear ache and had to head inside for a while.

After a break, I headed out again. By then, the paint was no longer wet to the touch, so I put the sliding windows back, which you can see in the third picture. Everything was sliding just the way they should!

That cats could now use it, too. Without those windows, the wind was blowing through so much, it actually blew a corner of the hammock loose!

My next project was to continue that garden bed I’d done half of.

Just in time for it to start raining!

I stayed out as a light rain came and went, while thunder rumbled in the distance, until it finally started coming down too hard to stay outside.

The first picture is the “before” shot. The second is how far I got before it started raining too hard.

So. Many. Tree roots. I think I got about half way down that side. Maybe a bit less. The rock bucket is a little over half full.

Once the roots and rocks were cleared, the soil was wonderfully light and fluffy. Perfect to grow in – if we didn’t have to worry about those roots coming back!

I’m glad I got as much done as I did. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back at it. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer, but rainy. We’ll be having our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, anyhow. I plan to pack up a care package for my mother and visit her on Thanksgiving day. She will be getting her Meals on Wheels, though, so it will be for later in the day. Monday and Tuesday are supposed to be quite chilly, with overnight lows reaching below freezing, but then it’s supposed to warm up again. That will be my time to get the beds finished, then start some winter sowing! I’ll have to go through my seed packs and work out where I want to plant things. Some things will be more appropriate for the old kitchen garden, right against the house. Others can be planted well away from the house, as they would get harvested in the fall. Some beds will get the winter sowing marked clearly, so that I can sow other things among them in the spring.

I’m really looking forward to having a better gardening year than this one was!

The Re-Farmer

Change of plans, and still creepy

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One of my goals for today was to get more done in the sun room. Which did happen, though quite a bit later than I originally intended. My daughters had their own grocery shopping to do that was worth a trip into the city, which we ended up doing today.

Last night, for some reason, was a sleepless night. It was one of those nights where, the more I wanted to sleep, the more wide awake I became. Not because of pain, or busy brain, or cat shenanigans. Just… awake. I finally fell asleep somewhere around 5am. I woke up a couple of hours later, as it was starting to get light out, and ended up asking my daughters to do the morning routine outside, so I could get some more sleep. The only thing they didn’t do was switch out the trail cam memory cards. Which was okay. I was considering changing from switching them in the morning to switching them in the evening.

Which turned out to be a good thing.

My younger daughter and I started heading for the city in the late morning. I was in the truck at the end of the driveway while my daughter closed the gate behind us. By the time she was in the truck and buckled in, I saw that a tractor on the road was close enough that I waited for it to go by.

I didn’t recognize him at first, but it turned out to be our vandal, sporting a new beard. Instead of driving past us, he stopped his tractor on the road, directly in front of us.

When it looked like he was going to get off the tractor, I drove around him and down the road. It’s just a short distance to a stop sign, and I could see in my mirror that he was still sitting on his tractor, in front of our driveway.

Creepy Creeper was creeping again.

As we continued on our way, my daughter texted the family to keep an eye out on things. Then she checked the security camera’s live feed and he seemed to be gone. She updated the family again as we continued on our way.

When I switched out the memory cards this evening and checked the files, I could see from the time stamps that he sat there for a full two minutes after we drove away, before finally leaving.

Creepy.

The rest of our trip to the city was uneventful, thankfully. My daughters’ shopping list was for the international grocery store I’d skipped when I did our stock up shopping last week. It happens to be near a Dollarama, so I went there first while my daughter started her shopping. I’ve been getting a particular pattern of dishes from there, but the cats knocked a couple of bowls off the counter and broke them, and I wanted to get replacements. Of course, I found a few other small items that would be useful, then met up with my daughter at the grocery store. I took advantage of the trip to pick up a few other things – bread, milk, eggs, mayo and a box of large slide-lock freezer bags (generic brand). Those five items cost over $50!

My daughter had a much larger shopping list that ended up being over $200. It looks like they’re going to be doing a lot of Asian themed cooking over the next while!

That done, we headed home, backing into the yard to unload. It was getting around 4pm by then, so I fed the outside cats to distract them so we could unload. It almost worked! My daughter unloaded the truck to the door, where I grabbed the stuff to bring in the rest of the way. She kept having to use her cane to push kittens away from the door! Even so, Sir Robin and one of Frank’s tinies still managed to get through the door once. They are so fast! Sir Robin would happily be an indoor cat. So would all three of Frank’s grublings!

Once the truck was parked and everything was put away, I headed outside. I didn’t get too much done inside the sun room. There were two plastic storage shelves, one large, one small, that could be brought in the corner I want to keep covered so the critters won’t do their business in it. I might still change things, but I put the larger shelf in front of where the bathroom window is, and the smaller shelf in the corner. The cats like to climb up to the window to say hello, but the cube shelf that was there before is a lot shorter. Cats would scramble to reach the window to look in. Now, if we decide to leave the shelf there, cats could potentially go on the top two shelves to look in.

Yes, I’m a suck for the cats!

It also means they won’t be scrabbling up the wall to reach the window sill, scratching things up, and they’re less likely to fall and potentially hurt themselves.

I moved a couple of other things in – parts of the platform we’d had on the other side, previously, a metal garbage can we used to store things like hoes and spades, plus the actual garbage can. Those were moved mostly because we might get rain tonight, and I didn’t want water getting in them.

Another part of the platform was our “summer door” to the old basement. It allowed us to keep the door open for air circulation on hot days, while keeping the cats out. It didn’t get used that way this year, because it was part of the platform and had the clamp lamps hanging off of it still.

That will get stored in the sun room, too, but first it needed a good hose down and scrubbing of the wooden frame. I’ve got it set under the canopy tent to dry. Now that we have a gallon of paint to cover the exposed wood on the isolation shelter and the box that will go in front of the ramp door to block wind and snow, I will paint the frame of this summer door, too. One of the plant stands that the cats used to get up onto the platform was also in need of a scrub. I’ve decided I will paint that, too.

With the shelves in place in the sun room, I spread the kibble trays out a bit, so they’re not all crowded on one side. I’ve been watching the live feed on the critter cam and the cats and kittens seem to be really happy with the set up. They’ve been running around and playing all over the nice, clean floor!

I could probably bring the floor mats back in, too. I forgot that they’re still hanging on the chain link fence, after getting pressure washed with the hose. These are indoor/outdoor water proof mats with a carpet-like surface. One more thing to protect tiny toe beans from a cold concrete floor, in the winter.

I still don’t know how I’m going to set up the heat lamps. One is a 250 watt ceramic heat bulb and has a protective cage so nothing can accidentally touch the bulb. I would like to have that one over the open space between the cat cage the the shelf at the window. I can’t clamp it to the shelf itself, which would be the easy thing to do, as that shelf is all cat beds, and it might get knocked about as they move around the different levels. The only other thing above the area I want to set the heat lamp is the hanging pair of shop lights. Nothing stable enough to hold a heat lamp, there.

Must think about this some more.

The second lamp should probably go closer to the cat cage, more or less where the heated water bowl will be set up, once it’s plugged in. There’s an arm bar on the wall there, but I don’t think the clamp lamp would hold onto the chrome surface very well. I could set it up on the other side of the door, but I’d rather encourage the cats to use the west facing half of the sun room.

All things to figure out over the next while. I’ll need to sort through the bins that will go into the shelves I set up today and reorganize them, which will include storing things somewhere else entirely. Once the space under the canopy tent is clear, I want to roll the isolation shelter under it, so it can be painted and protected from any rain (or snow!) we might get over the next few days. The weather apps said we might get rain storms this evening. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to get rain all day but, again, I think it’ll mostly be south of us.

I will be heading to my mother’s do to her grocery shopping tomorrow, anyhow.

*sigh*

I’ll be honest; I’m not looking forward to spending time with my mother. I never know, from one day to the next, if she’ll be having one of her good days or, more frequently, be on one of her nasty days. Ah, well. It is what it is.

Tomorrow is looking like our last warm-ish day for a while. From the long range forecast, I’ve got maybe two weeks to prepare more garden beds and get the garlic in. I might be able to hold off until the the second half of October before I do the winter sowing. Once the isolation shelter is painted, we need to set it set up by the house for the winter, where we can plug in the heat lamp and heated water bowl.

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting on that new pre-hung door that needs to be installed! They have to move a hand rail against the wall to do it, which means the isolation shelter can’t be set up against that wall until the door is installed.

Lots to do, and not a lot of time to get it done.

On a completely different note, while I was doing my evening rounds, I was happy to see more flowers blooming.

Not only are both the asters and Cosmos blooming, but there are even a couple of late nasturtiums!

I’m still holding out hope that the warm weather will last long enough that I can collect seeds from the memorial asters.

The Re-Farmer

Winterizing progress, and a sad find

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This afternoon, I was finally able to get back to working on the sun room. I could tell the kittens were really wanting to have their beds back!

I’m not sure if there’s eight of nine jammed in that one shelf!

We have been able to finish deep cleaning the west facing side, and it was ready to have shelves brought back in. The other side was half done, but we still needed to move out the counter shelf and table saw so we could do a deep clean under them.

The counter shelf is something we have under a built in shelf between two smaller windows. The inner panes on both of the windows cracked a few winters ago – likely a combination of temperature differences and the entire room slowly shifting downwards at one corner. The pane on the bottom window broke apart to the point that there were shards, so I removed the broken inner pain as best I could, and then we set insulation against it, to protect both the glass from temperature differences between inside and out, and the cats from any broken bits of glass that couldn’t be removed.

The shelf itself is sitting on bricks to elevate it a few inches. Kittens and skunks like to hid under it, but the – and the raccoons – also get between the shelf and the window. Things that had been stored on top of the counter also got knocked in between the shelf and the window, as well as under the shelf itself.

So… basically, I was expecting quite a mess under there.

Before I started, though, we fed the outside cats. My younger daughter was on cat herding duty, getting any cats and kittens that made a dash while I stepped out with the food bowl. Once she got the doorway clear, she could close the doors for me – usually at least the storm door with the missing window screen that makes it so incredibly handy.

As I was scattering kibble in different trays, my daughter got the storm door closed and was waiting to see if I needed anything else. That’s when we both spotted something strange, sticking half out from under the counter shelf, near a kibble tray we keep under the table saw.

Strange, flat and furry.

It was the remains of a kitten.

My daughter was horrified and had to leave. I can’t say I blame her.

Once I finished putting the food out, I got a shovel to use to get the remains the rest of the way out, after moving the kibble tray and the table saw.

It turned out to be really easy. The sun room has been hot and dry all summer, which basically mummified the remains. My guess is that a skunk had gone under the counter shelf and, while scrambling around, pushed the remains out one side.

It was a larger kitten. A grey tabby. That’s all I could tell. There wasn’t much left of it.

With how often cats and kittens appear and disappear, we just can’t tell if any are missing because they’ve wandered off, or because something happened to them. This is the first time we found one that passed under that shelf, though.

After I buried the remains, I was pretty nervous about moving the shelf, but thankfully, there was just stuff knocked off from the top to clean up, and a whole lot of insulation bits from the cats scratching at it.

So all that got cleaned up, and then the area got soaked and scrubbed and soaked and scrubbed and soaked and scrubbed again!

When it was time to let the floor dry before moving the shelf back, I was able to start moving shelves into the other side of the room. I decided to put the cube shelf right against the west facing window, and then set one of the large plastic storage shelves next to it. The main goal was to fill the corner, so there would be no space for critters to do their business in it. Both shelves were set on bricks, just in case the floor gets wet, as water flows towards that corner.

We won’t be able to set up a platform again, with this set up. I’m going to have to figure out a way to hang one of the heat lamps there. The platform worked well for that, as they could be hung under it.

Something to think about.

Once the shelves were set up, the cat beds that were hosed out and sitting in the sun to dry were brought back in, along with the two cat caves, which now have wire supports inside them to keep them from collapsing and being smushed flat by kittens crawling on top of them.

The first picture is of the counter shelf corner, after clean up but before scrubbing and mopping. The window sill got a scrubbing, too, but I didn’t take the insulation out. The shelf shelter is on the other side of the window. Between the two, it should keep the now single pane glass window protected on both sides from temperature extremes.

The second picture shows the new set up in the west facing side. The cube shelf will be left empty, so that cats can sit and look out the window in their own little shelves. The second shelf from the bottom has the self warming mat, which is tied down so it won’t get knocked off the shelf easily. The blue striped cat cave has a loop at the top. I used that to tie it to the shelf above, so it won’t get knocked out.

The plaid cat cave above is a really weird design. It’s basically a bit drawstring pouch. It could never hold itself up so, for the longest time, I rolled the sides down to make a cat bed. It still got squished out of shape. It now has a wire frame inside to hold it up, while still allowing the drawstring cord to be pulled partially closed. It’s still tippy, though, and it’s now tied to the shelf above, too.

Cats were moving onto the cat beds in the shelf before I was finished setting it all up!

That side is now essentially done. Once the other half is finished, the kibble trays will be rearranged so that it’s not all on one side. Some of the cats get pretty aggressive at feeding time, so it’s good to split up the trays to give them more space from each other.

The cat bed from inside the cat cage is back in its cube, which now has insulation pieces on the bottom and outside walls. The bed itself will keep the wall pieces from falling in. So far, the cats have been ignoring the bed in favour of the cubes above, now that those have insulation pieces as floors.

When that was all done, the floor was dry enough to return the counter shelf and table saw to their spots. Then the rest of the floor in that corner got another sweeping, soaking, scrubbing and mopping.

By then, it was getting dark, so that was in for the day. Tomorrow, I’ll start bringing in the last two storage shelves and figure out how to set them up so that cats won’t use the corner on that side to do their business, either. Drives me nuts when they’ll use the concrete floor, right next to a litter box!

Then I need to go through the storage bins and other stuff that were on the shelves before we took them out. It’s all sorts of tools and supplies that I want to have easy access to, while also keeping the cats out of them, or keep them from knocking things right out of the shelves. There’s no way to stop the cats from going into the shelves, so I want to plan around that.

There’s still the things we used to make the platform, which need to be stored somehow/somewhere.

That’s something we’ll figure out as we go along.

For now, though, the cats have their beds in the sun room again, and they are very happy about it!

The Re-Farmer

Winterizing progress

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It seems weird to be winterizing things when we were hitting 27C/81F! It is, however, the best time to be doing it, this late in the season.

My daughter had intended to work on the sun room more, but for the past few days she’s been in so much pain, she can barely move at times, and is caning it in general.

Side note: she got a letter to say she was approved for our province’s disability assistance. She’s going to be getting a whole $200 a month for six months, when it comes up for review.

Well, it’s $200 a month more than she had before, but it does make me wonder about all the people on disability I know that have government income assistance much, much higher than that. That was in another province, though.

So with my daughter out of commission, and my being able to be home all day today (I completely forgot that my medical appointment in the city is tomorrow, not today!), I set to work in the sun room.

The room is mostly empty already, so it was basically to continue the cleaning in the one half. The wooden molding around the three huge windows is drying out, so I gave it a cleaning with Murphy’s oil. I even remembered to clean the old kitchen window’s frame, too.

My daughter had mopped the concrete floor already, but kittens immediately went back to doing their business in the corners again. That got a quick clean up, then litter pans were put in the corners. Today, those got moved out and I used our stiff bristled broom to soak and scrub and soak and scrub and soak the affected areas some more. I rehung the large number dial thermometer back up before cleaning all the windows. The old kitchen window was the worst. Cats like to sit on the sill to look inside while their kibble is being readies. The bottom pane was covered in kitty nose prints!

That was enough time for things to soak on the floor, and I was able to finish with a mop. I then had to leave it to dry completely, before I could start moving things over.

All the cat beds, meanwhile, were taken out and hosed down to clean as best I could. We’re not comfortable putting these in the washing machine. Once they got cleaned up and squeeze out, they were set out on the kibble and water bowl shelter roofs to dry in the sun.

I was planning on completely changing the set up in the sun room. With that in mind, one of the things I did was move the power bar from where I’d had it hanging between the two west facing windows, and attached it to the wall between the door and the old kitchen window. This freed up the extension cord I was using for the critter cam, as I could now plug it into the power bar.

I then spent the next while setting the shop lights back up. I had to replace a couple of the hooks I had lines attached to, as the lights are hung from wall to wall, not from ceiling. I was able to set the lights up a bit higher than before. Much easier to do while that side of the room is empty! The lights are designed so that one can be plugged into the end of another in a series, so I had only one cord to plug into the power bar to power both lights. The heated water bowl was cleaned up and set up in reach of the power bar, too, though we won’t need to plug that in for quite a while, yet.

The floor wasn’t dry enough yet, so I started working on the shelf shelter outside. This is an old shelf that used to be in the upstairs of the house. It was meant to go into storage, but we set it aside outside the sun room until it could be moved again – it’s quite awkward to move – and it was so handy there, we kept it! The bottom two shelves, and half the top shelf, have been turned over to the cats. Previously, I’d used pieces of rigid insulation set inside, and longer pieces nailed to the outside, to make it a better shelter.

Well, those didn’t last. A spooked cat dashing through the opening was enough to break them apart, even though I’d nailed on some old salvaged paneling to secure it better. Until today, the only thing left were nails sticking out of the shelf!

Those were the first to take out.

I then went to the garage to dig out what used to be a clear roof panel on the donated catio. There had been three of them, but two blew off during transportation. I took that off and replaced it with a different style of clear roof panels.

I was very happy to see that the salvaged panel was just the right size, with a bit of overlap.

It’s nailed into place along one side, the bottom and the two shelves. There’s nothing to nail it to at the top, but that’s okay, since that’s where I store some garden stuff. I bit of flex will make it easier to reach things.

I think this will work out much better. Not only can we still see any cats inside (since they sometimes give birth in there!), but the clear panel will give a bit of passive solar heat on sunny winter days. I think any cats using it will not get startled as much, if they can see out, too.

Now I just need to figure out what I can put on the top as a waterproof roof. The plastic I’d used originally has long since disintegrated.

By the time that was done, the floor was finally dry enough. I got the cleaned out interlocking foam mats and set them up in the corner against the old kitchen wall. The cats and other critters have been making messes in the corners the most, so I want to block those off as much as possible.

With the mats in place, I moved the cat cage on top, but not into the corner, yet. When we moved it across the room during cleaning, I’d put a broken piece of rigid insulation under it. I used that to cut pieces to fit inside the cage, using the top to measure my cuts. Cats like to use the upper levels inside the cat cage, but keep knocking off any “floor” we’d put on top of the wire frames to keep their feet from falling through. I cut pieces of insulation to fit snugly on there. Hopefully, they won’t get knocked down anymore!

The cat bed had been removed for cleaning, and there were no dry cat beds to put in the sun room for the night, so I cut more pieces for a floor and two walls around where the cat bed goes. That cube, and the one above, will be closest to a single pane window, so extra insulation in at least one cube is a good thing. The cube next to it has the litter box, so I didn’t do anything to that one. The front is open, with no cubes, so I just put some leftover pieces of insulation on the floor and that was it.

Once that was done, the cage got tucked into the corner. I put the old reflective car windshield sun protector on the top again – the cats seem to really like lying on it! – and secured it.

I still wanted to have something to act as cat beds, though, so I brought back the mini greenhouse frame. The shelves on it are open wire. The top already had something secured on it so the cats could use it without their feet falling through. There was a cat blanket available that I used on the bottom self. The other two got pieces of cardboard secured onto them. Then I brought back a small plant stand for the smaller cats to use to get to the top of the cage, and set one of the carriers on top – not realizing a kitten was inside it, napping!

The cats seem to like the new set up!

So this is what they’ve got so far. I’m not sure where we’ll hang the heat lamps from, yet. We’ll decide that when the other shelves are returned.

I ended up adding a second carrier on top of the cat cage, later on. Two more got set up in the opposite corner, to make sure no cats did their business there, and to give more safe places to sleep.

For now, the sun room food trays have been moved over to this side, and we can start working on the other side tomorrow or so. We still need to move the table saw and the counter shelf, and wash under that corner. Once that’s done and the counter shelf and table saw returned to their places, we can start bringing the other shelves back in and figure out how to set them up. I’d still like to set up a platform for the cats, if possible, but that might not be an option with priority being to put things in the corners so the cats (and skunks, and raccoons) will stop making messes in them.

Gah!

I had the critter cam up on my phone while working on this. I saw a couple of skunks going into the sun room and was able to chase them out through the camera.

Then a raccoon came in. I used the camera to “yell” at him and he left, only to come right back in. This time, instead of being scared away by my voice, he went into the cat cage!!!

When I came in, the bugger started to “hide” in the litter box! I ended up having to stick a broom handle through the sides to chase him out. Had to be careful. Raccoons can be a lot more aggressive than skunks – skunks are pretty chill – and this beast was snarling.

Raccoons have a really vicious sounding snarl.

Anyhow…

By the time I got all that done, the afternoon was gone and I was just melting in the heat, so I called it a day. No sense in starting on the other side until I have another several hours in a row available to work on it.

Looking at the weather, we’ve got a few more warm-ish nights ahead of us, and then some overnight cold temps, approaching freezing. I’m hoping to have everything set up again, including the heat lamps, before then to help keep the littles warm.

It’s been a huge job, but that room was way overdue for a deep cleaning like this!

Also, I just had to pause and chase the frikkin’ raccoon out of the sun room again!! At least the cats had a chance to eat first. There isn’t much kibble left.

That’ll be another good thing, if we are able to have rescues come and trap cats. Less cats, less cat food, less raccoons and skunk thieves!

We might even be able to use the sun room to just sit in and enjoy again! Wouldn’t that be something!

The Re-Farmer

Work in the garden is good for the heart – especially when our mothers aren’t.

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I had two main goals for today. The first was to take care of my mother’s morning med assist and do her grocery shopping. The second was to get more progress cleaning up in the garden beds.

My mother turned out to be having one of “those” days.

It actually started off okay. She was in bed and not wanting to get up. I can’t say I blame her! She told me she feels like she just wants to lie in bed all the time, these days.

I got her morning meds out. I took out her other type if inhaler, too – the one that home care workers aren’t allowed to give her. I’d already talked to her about the doctor removing it from her med assist list for home care, and she doesn’t need to take it anymore, but when I’d called last night to let her know I’d be coming over, she told me she decided she would keep taking it after all.

When I brought it out, I told her again, she doesn’t need to use it. The doctor removed it from her prescription list. The experiment was to see if she had asthma, and she clearly doesn’t. It won’t hurt her to take it, but it’s not helping her and she doesn’t need to.

Usually, my mother is all about trying to drop her medications because she doesn’t think they’re helping. If they were helping, why does she feel this, or that, or this other thing? when her meds are for completely different things. Now she has a medication that was a trail, it isn’t helping her, she doesn’t need it… and suddenly she wants to keep taking it?

I told her I’d planned to take it to the pharmacy for proper disposal, but in the end I just left it out of the lock box for her to take or not take. It only has 28 doses left in it, so 14 days of daily use, if she keeps it up.

She had not made her shopping list, so after she took her medications, I went through her fridge and cupboards and we talked about what she needed before sitting down and making her list with her. Then she gave me cash in an envelope; I always make sure that the change and receipt is put back into it for her to go over at her leisure, later on.

All of that went smoothly, and I was soon back and putting everything away for her.

My brain is already trying to wipe things out, but I think it was the spaghetti squash that started it.

This is what WP AI image generator thinks my mother looks like.

My mother no longer has a garden plot, officially, but she did grow a spaghetti squash along the fence outside her window, which produced for her a single spaghetti squash. She’d already eaten half of it, but struggles with the hard skin, so she offered the other half to me. I politely declined, saying I was the only one in the family that likes spaghetti squash.

That lead to a lecture on how we’re all so fussy, and that it just needs to be cooked right (she still thinks I don’t know how to cook), etc.

Then she offered me some of the seeds she’d saved from her spaghetti squash. Again, I politely declined (I just told her I’m the only one that likes it; why would I grow something no one else wants to eat?) and told her I have lots of seeds.

While all this conversation was going on, I started sweeping her floor and doing other little things, as I usually try to do for her. She kept going on about the garden, asking me about how our garden is. I had told her before that it was a messed up year, but I told her again, things were really behind this year. We had the spring with hot days in May, but too cold nights. Then we had drought conditions, heat waves, and wildfire smoke. So the garden really sufferred.

Oh, I’m the only one complaining about the smoke! No one else is! (I wasn’t complaining, just listing it among other things) I have two daughters to help me! I should have a big garden, etc. etc. etc. I should have so much food from the garden, etc. etc. I told her, we did have some, just not much, and even tried to show her pictures of the winter squash and said I have been managing to keep them from freezing. Freezing? she asked. I guess she forgot that we’ve already had frost, and that our nights are getting pretty cold.

Then she just flat out said: I’m a bad gardener

My response was, And you’re very rude.

She agreed.

???

It was around that time, when I’d just finished sweeping her floor and was about to start emptying all her garbage cans, that the door opened and my brother walked in! He’d been on the way to the farm and decided to swing past my mother’s place to see if I was still there. He saw a Caravan parked, and knew the courtesy vehicle I had was a Caravan, so he decided to pop in.

He barely walked in and gave her a hug hello when she started going at him, immediately asking about pictures of his grand kids. My brother has shown her digital pictures, but she wants something she can tack onto her wall. The problem is, the last time he gave her prints of the grand kids, the first thing she did was ask if one of his grandsons was Downs Syndrome or something. Which neither of them are, but she didn’t like how one of them looked and basically said he looked retarded.

Needless to say, he’s not eager to give her more photos of his grandsons.

I don’t even know if he has a printer anymore. My sister’s the one that’s into that stuff, so she’s got a high end printer. I think my mother even paid for it. Anyhow, I tried to distract her away from that, then continued into empty her garbage cans into one bag then, emptied her commode.

Which is how I missed the first part of what they’d started talking about. I didn’t get the straight of it until much later, here at the farm, as we filled in my SIL.

It turns out our vandal had showed up at my mother’s place on Tuesday. The day the mental health assessor was interviewing my mother. It seems he walked right into her apartment and immediately started ranting at her, right in front of a stranger, about how she gave the farm to me (????), then started saying nasty things about my one of my daughters, (getting them mixed up, apparently) that were complete fabrications. He hasn’t seen either of them in years. Someone, however, seems to be telling him things (like my younger daughter having a PCOS beard), and then he’s going from there and just making things up. He didn’t even use my daughter’s correct name! Whichever one he meant to be talking about, anyhow.

My mother, however, believed him. ?!?! She started saying that it was true. As if she knows any better?

I’d asked my mother before about how that meeting with the mental health assessor went, and she just brushed her off in disgust, saying she wasn’t any use, and had told my mother something along the lines of, “there are people worse off than you”. Which is true, but pissed my mother off. My mother did NOT mention that our vandal showed up.

Or that the interview was cut short and that the assessor left with our vandal.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Red flag time!

Now that we know this happened, both my brother and I plan to phone the mental health assessor. If I’d known earlier, I would have already phoned her by now!

Meanwhile, in the middle of all this, my mother found the time to ask us to take her angel here to the farm. Years ago, my brother bought her a resin garden decor angel that my mother just loves. She’s been doing a lot of “when I go up-up, who is going to take this? Who is going to take that?” After confirming that no one else among my siblings wanted it, I assured her it would go to the farm. It’s made to be outdoors, so I said I would set it up somewhere nice.

My brother and I then joked that we should set it up facing the gate, so our vandal would see it and maybe be reminded that the things he’s doing isn’t particularly Godly. Or whatever.

Today, my mother brought it up and asked if we could take it.

That was our cue.

My poor brother was there for less than 10 minutes, and got jumped all over right from the moment he came in. He didn’t even have time to finish giving her a hello hug before she started, and he was more than happy to leave right away.

In bringing the angel out, he noticed there was a crack under one wing. That led to a whole other thing with my mother, because she didn’t know it was there. My brother suggested it had fallen over, but she said it had never fallen. We quickly distracted away from guessing, though. Later on, my brother said it probably happened when her apartment was being fumigated, and someone knocked it over. She’s already convinced the exterminator stole things from her, so my brother wasn’t about to bring that up around her!

We headed out together, with me taking her garbage out and my brother carrying the angel to load into the van. I used the fob to open the rear gate for him before going out the other door to the building’s garbage bin.

As I came around, my brother was trying to figure out how to get the angel into the back. One of the third row of seats would need to be folded down. As he was looking around, I decided to open up the side door to try and see from the other side. I had the key fob in my hand as I did.

I accidentally hit the panic button on the fob – or so I thought. The horn started honking an alarm.

I tried hitting the panic button again, but it only changed the pattern of honking. I couldn’t see how to shut the honking off, and the buttons I pushed didn’t work! My brother has seen this type of square key fob before, so I showed it to him, but he didn’t know either. He just started smashing buttons, and it stopped.

Well, the entire neighbourhood now knew we were there!

In the end, I figured out that I hadn’t accidentally hit the panic button. I had tried to open the door, while it was still locked. I didn’t even know the van had an alarm, but with the rear gate open, I thought the other doors were unlocked as well for some reason. So I had set off the car alarm. I think it stopped when my brother hit the unlock button while button smashing!

At least it worked.

We then headed off here to the farm.

I brought the angel to the door, messaging a daughter to bring it in. Because of the cracked wing, it will need to be repaired and sealed before we set it up outside. Otherwise, water will get inside it.

I joined my brother and SIL in their “new” camper – it’s the first time I’ve been inside it – and we had a chance to catch up my SIL on how things went. My brother and I both needed to decompress, that’s for sure! There was more than what I mention here, of course. The main concern was our vandal showing up like that – and leaving with the mental health assessor!

After we had a visit, I left them to their work. They needed to winterize the camper and the trailer, and would only be around for a few hours. I headed in to grab lunch, change and get to work in the garden.

Which was very therapeutic. Part way through, my younger daughter even came out to check on me and make sure I was okay, after that visit, which was much appreciated.

My focus for today was on the beds with carrots in them, both winter sown and spring sown. I started on the East yard garden bed, removing the bamboo stake trellis that was holding up the radish bushes, first.

After the trellis was removed, I pulled all the remaining radishes – this bed had quite a few go to seed – and lettuces. Some of the lettuce were going to seed, so I broke off the tops and set them aside to collect the seeds later. Everything else went onto the compost pile.

While this bed had the same root vegetable mix as the high raised bed, it also had lettuce seeds added. Those grew so well, they became a weed and choked other things out. I was curious to see how the carrots did, under those conditions.

The answer is “surprisingly well”.

They’re mostly small, and some of the smallest ones at the end just got added to the compost pile, but it was actually better than I expected. There were even a few of the orange “Napoli” carrots in there. Those seeds were pretty old, so I wasn’t sure what to expect with them.

Once the carrots were harvested, I went over the entire bed, loosening the soil and pulling weeds, none of which could be added to the compost pile, or they’d start growing again!

There was one carrot that had gone to seed, so I gave it a support stake and left it to finish maturing.

The soil was pretty compacted and hard to clear. I know there’s still lots of weeds in there, but I plan to amend the soil before any winter sowing gets done, so there will be time to get more of them.

From there, I moved on to the high raised bed.

Again, I pulled the few radish bushes that were left in there, then started on harvesting the carrots. These ones were not crowed out, like the other winter sown bed was, and I could really see a difference!

I was pleasantly surprised by how many orange Napoli carrots there were.

Once the carrots were out and I started weeding, I found these…

A couple of those beets are supposed to be white, but they look more yellow than white. Then there are the teeny onions. I’d picked what beets we had, earlier, but these had no greens left (thanks to the deer), so I’d missed them. As for the onions, I’d included onion seeds in the mixed, but only a couple managed to form proper bulbs. With these ones, I could potentially use them as sets for next year.

Once again, I left a carrot gone to seed. It had branches sprawling all over, but now they’re held together in the support stake. I’ve already cut some of the seed heads off a while back, as they were fully dry, and now there’s more that I could probably harvest now.

The next bed to work on was the spring sown bed. Being in an almost ground level bed, it was easier. I could just go along each side with the garden fork to loosen the soil, first.

Which was much needed. Compaction is a definite problem.

The first carrots I picked where the Uzbek Golden carrots using our home made seed tape.

I’m rather surprised by how well these did.

There was also a surprise orange carrot among them! I also noticed that some of the yellow carrots had a more orange caste to them as well.

The other side were the Atomic Red carrots.

With these ones, we’ve been thinning by harvesting, as needed. That gave them space to get bigger… but they didn’t get much longer! These are supposed to be a deep red and quite long. Instead, we have light orange and stubby.

Odd.

I didn’t continue cleaning up the bed, though. That’s for another day. This took several hours – my brother and SIL headed out before I even finished the first bed, it took so long – and it was time to stop.

Not before gathering the harvest and giving it a quick hose down, first.

A lot of them are pretty small, which will make them harder to work with, but that’s a pretty decent amount of carrots. Plus a few bonus beets!

I was glad to have the work to do. Physical labour goes a long way to working out any stress and, after being with my mother this morning, I had plenty of stress to work off!

Now, I need to head back outside. It’s getting dark, and we’re in for a cold enough night that the winter squash need to be covered again.

But I’m such a bad gardener, don’t ya know!

The Re-Farmer