Look what I found

June 13, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Yesterday, I’d done the south lawns, including along the fence line and behind the “spare” house (more as a space to turn around with the mower, than to cut anything, since there’s barely any grass there).

Today, I set aside hoses, picked up branches, and so on, before I finished mowing the rest of the lawn.

Later, I went back behind the other house to see if I could get down some more of the dead branches. A lot of it involved simply reaching up with the extended pruning saw, which has a hook at the point, grabbing onto an attached dead branch, or dangling broken branch, and yanking until it fell to the ground.

I even remembered to take a picture of how it looks, after my daughters did such a great job raking up under there.

Which is when I found this.

The branch is so big, I actually missed it at first, thinking it was just another part of a tree. Nope. A big ole branch broke, some time after I’d mowed here yesterday, and was hung up in the other trees.

I couldn’t even tell which tree it came from.

In the picture, you can just see the power line that goes from the other house, to the pump shack (which isn’t hooked up now, thank God!). It wasn’t on the power line, but the branch that it was stuck on, is just above the power line.

Once again, I used the extended pruning saw to grab and yank it down, though I did have to cut down a branch from the tree outside the yard that was hanging over the fence, and in the way.

Finding stuff like this is why I’m on such a drive to get the dead and dying branches down, as much as possible. We’ve got entire trees that are ready to come down, almost on their own. One is right in this area, in fact; I cut away some of the lower branches that I kept getting hung up on, and the entire tree was shaking and making cracking noises at the base. I could probably push it right over, if it wouldn’t fall directly on that power line I mentioned earlier.

After this, I did some other clean up in the yard, but I will post about it later. After I shower. I keep finding little bits of dead tree stuck in my hair!

The Re-Farmer

Dead Wood Down

June 11, 2018June 11, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

When today’s fire pit fire was almost burned down, I just couldn’t help myself. My tools were still out, and there was this big dead branch that I really wanted to take down.

I had started to cut through it with the extended pruning saw, a while ago, so I just had to continue.

Towards the end of it, the pressure from the branch got my pruning saw stuck, so I had to take it out, then finish the last fraction of an inch with the hand saw.

This is the branch, completely cut through.

It wasn’t moving. At all.

This is why.

The branch had long been rubbing on a branch in the tree next to it. Now that it was cut, it was just leaning and being held up by this other branch.

We use a steel pole we found somewhere in the yard to move the wood around in the fire, so I used that to push the branch off the trunk.

Alrighty, then. I’ve got the base down, but it’s still hung up on the other tree.

After moving the barrel, I pulled the base of the branch out until it fell into the V of the other tree. I then swung it around to the right until I broke a branch that you can see higher up, which freed the main branch up and I could finally pull it away until the old, rotting wood at the top broke under its own weight, and it came down.

Then I had to go back and pull down the broken pieces that were still stuck in the other tree.

You can see the wound in the branch or the other tree, where it was being rubbed for so many years.

This is probably the last of the big dead branches to come down in this area. There are others, but they are too high to cut, even with the extended pruning saw. I can add another extension and might even be able to reach them, but reaching them and cutting them is something else entirely. There are also others that are partly dead, that I have to decide on cutting down entirely, or leaving for now.

It felt good to finally get this big one down.

All this clean up, however, is making it very difficult for us to use up the pile of dead wood for the fire pit! We keep adding more than we are burning.

We’re just going to keep having lots of cook outs. :-D

The Re-Farmer

There be Cows Here!

June 11, 2018June 11, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

We had a nice rain today and, when it was down to a drizzle, the girls decided this was a good, safe time to get the fire pit going and burn down the pile of wood we had in it.

Then we had a cook out. Because, why not?

While we were out, I could hear the sounds of cows mooing. Not unusual, except that the sounds were much closer.

Like, really close.

This is taken from the gate beside the fire bit.

My mom rents most of the land out to someone, including the other quarter section. He’s had his cows grazing there for a while, and now they are here.

While we had the fire going, even though it was still kind of raining, I couldn’t help but work on the area near the fire pit, cleaning up the area next to the log cabin that’s got a collapsed roof. There were a lot of dead branches to clean up, plus saplings to trim away, etc. More stuff for the fire pit! :-)

The roof of the cabin is decidedly interesting.

That is a lot of nails.

This would be the remains of one of the trusses.

This board would have had shingles nailed to it. They were all wooden shingles, most of which seem to be gone, now, leaving their nails behind. !!

We also had a squirrel go onto the roof, where it seemed to find something to eat among the pieces of fallen roof!

My head just clears that truss piece, as I walked back and forth under it, making my daughters very nervous! :-D

As I was cleaning up along here, grabbing dead branches and dragging them out, the toe of my shoe caught on something under the decaying leaves along the wall, and I almost tripped. Going back to pick up what I got caught on, I found it was a piece of board.

With nails in it.

Pointing down, thankfully.

I pulled more boards up out of the decayed leaves, also with nails in them, until the girls insisted I stop working in there.

Cleaning up under there is going to have to be a very careful job!

After we had our cook out, I stayed outside to burn more of the wood pile. While there, I started to hear strange metal noises coming from the barn.

I knew exactly what it was.

I got my younger daughter to tend the fire for me, while I went to check on the cows.

Who, for some reason, decided they needed to graze around this collapsed shed, with all the sheets of metal lying about. They were walking over the metal, and that’s the sound I was hearing.

They didn’t like me coming over and were already moving away when I took this picture.

The wire in the foreground is an electrified gate. There are two of them the renter puts up before he brings the cows over, so they don’t go into the house area; this one by the barn, and another closer to where the cows were in top photo.

With the electrified wire there, I went through the barn to get to where the cows where.

I moved things around as best I could but I’d really rather fence this area off until we can get this stuff hauled away and cleaned up. There’s little I can do about it. Some of the metal bits and pieces could not be picked up and moved, so I used sheets of tin to cover them as much as I could, then adding whatever I could on top, to prevent the wind from blowing them away.

On the far side, I stepped on something that felt like a potential problem. It turned out to be part of fence wire that was likely rolled up and left there. Except it was there for so long, it was now covered in ground and I could not pull it up. It was completely hidden in the grass, and a definite risk to hooves! So I covered it with sheets of metal, then dragged a metal headboard out of the pile (I have no clue why anything like that would be there!) and tossed that on top, both to weight it down, and to make it more visible.

I really look forward to when we can start getting rid of piles like this. It might be a few years before we get to the stuff on this side of the fence, though.

The Re-Farmer

Sun Room Cleanup – West side

June 8, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Once I had cleared out half of the sun room, I had the space to work on the other half.

Here are some before pictures.

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The moving boxes, I added to have them handy to pack things. We’ve been using empty cat food bags as garbage bags, slated for the burn barrel. Except we’ll probably just make another dump run tomorrow, with all the stuff we found. Including many, many phone books for various cities, and years of seed catalogs.

Aside from the box for the weed trimmer, the rest of the boxes on this seat were here when we got here. Including the one under the cat food bag with a toilet seat in it.

Also, an empty bottle of vodka. ???

The orange extension cord coming out from under the door is plugged in in the old kitchen. There is another old household extension cord coming through the kitchen window, that my dad used to power a clock and a radio. I needed something more heavy duty for the trimmer. When I got the room cleared out, I was able to put it through the kitchen window, too.

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The dresser in the foreground had been upstairs, and was slated to go into the shed for storage. I have decided to instead keep it in this room, and plan to put it under the shelf across the window in the other side of the sun room. It will be good to hold things like our tools, gloves, etc. The extension cords on it are the 100ft cords my older brother and his wife got us, so we could have electricity in the garage to plug in the block heater for our van. Lately, I’ve been using them for the weed trimmer.

After getting the top of that couch cleared, I moved it to the cleared side of the room and found…

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A whole lot of crap. Literally.

And bird seed.

I moved the bird seed out so we could put it into the bird feeder, when I noticed something odd in it.

A used strike plate for a door knob.

Because where else would you store a strike plate? Right? LOL

The outside cats made a MUCH bigger mess under here.

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That plant was there when we moved in, in the fall. I have no idea if we were supposed to tend it, but by the time we noticed it, it was too late. Not that we could have reached it, anyhow.

The table it’s on turned out to be a very old metal topped table with a drawer. The drawer had some tools, and all sorts of odd bits and pieces; outlets, screws, a refillable lighter, scrap bits of fabric… With that curtain being used as a table cloth, no one would have been able to access the drawer. Who knows how long it was all there!

The box you can partly see under the table had decorative bottles, a bag of chess pieces, and… very familiar toys. Toys my girls played with, when we last lived in this province.

No clue why they were kept, and why they were left there!

That laundry basket has been there so long, when I tried to move it around, it practically shattered on me.

The old boots ended up being tossed. There were also a number of single shoes.

We’ve found all sorts of old shoes while cleaning things up, in some very odd places.

Here are the after pictures! :-)

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I swept up so many dead bugs and spiderwebs. *shudder*

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Right in the very corner, I found another nest of dead Asian Lady Beetles. :-(

What a difference!

After this, we basically just put what we were going to keep, back into the room. It’s supposed to rain tonight, but… well, the weather predictions have been calling for rain or thunderstorms a few times, and we’ve not been getting them, so who knows.

The next big thing I will do here is empty the room completely, then mop the floor.

Meanwhile, we have more boxes and other stuff to haul to the shed for storage.

I look forward to this being a usable room again!

After this, the only room left to pack and clean is the old kitchen. THAT is going to be a challenge. :-/

The Re-Farmer

Sun Room Clean Up – East side

June 8, 2018June 8, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Today, while the girls finished raking up behind the other house and adding to the flower garden, I finally got started on the sun room.

This addition to the house was the brainchild of my late brother, to create a space that my parents could sit and enjoy “outside” without being exposed to the elements. My late father used to love sitting there. It was also easier for him to get outside with his walker, as there are no steps to clamber up and down, like at the main door.

We’ve been using the room to store bags of feed for the outside cats, deer and birds, and now we’re using it to store the yard work tools we’ve been using. However, we’ve basically only been able to use one side of the room.

Here are a couple of before pictures.

20180608.sunroom.cleanup.eastside1.before

My dad’s walker is still there, and still used by my mother, so she doesn’t have to struggle with bringing her own walker over here.

Behind it is what appears to be an antique prayer kneeler.

I’m keeping that, and hope to be able to refinish/preserve it.

That plastic church on the shelf across the window is something I thought was one of those Christmas village things. It wasn’t until I started packing it that I realized it’s a hanging bird feeder!

It is now hanging off the stand in front of the living room window, waiting to have some bird seed added to it.

20180608.sunroom.cleanup.eastside2.before

We’ve been using my dad’s old seat to hold the feed bags (just cat food, right now). It’s one of those glider rocker type seats.

The crutches in the background, leaning against the shelf on the right? Those were there so long, the padding of the handle leading on the shelf was actually stuck to the wood!

Of course, cleaning this all up was… interesting.

I started at the window, taking things outside and getting it cleared enough that I could move the seat outside.

When I moved the green garbage can, I figured I’d better check to make sure there wasn’t any actual garbage in it.

I found a plant pot.

Full of gloves.

Then I spotted a… wire whisk?

Ugh.

20180608.sunroom.cleanup.eastside.during.wisk

I don’t want to know what’s on that.

It got thrown out.

Yes, I was wearing gloves for all this!

When I finally could move the seat, I found this, under it.

20180608.sunroom.cleanup.eastside2.during

The cat poop, I was expecting. During the winter, we sometimes found one of the outside cats had snuck into the sun room while we were putting food out, and at least twice, we discovered a cat in the room the next morning. There is no way a cat could be in there that long, without making a mess. Unfortunately, we had no way to even look for it, never mind clean it up, until now.

I also found the world’s cheapest, dullest knife.

Once I could access the shelves, I finally could start packing up the books, magazines and old Polish newspapers, as well as the various odds and sots around.

Speaking of odds and sots…

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There were tucked away behind the kneeler. Mouse and rat traps.

Very gross traps.

The got garbaged.

The scrap carpet got added to the haul-away pile, outside the yard.

Here are the after pictures.

20180608.sunroom.cleanup.eastside1.after

The far wall is one of the log walls of the original part of the house. Behind the bookshelf that was there, I found a pile of dead Asian Lady Beetles, that had made themselves some sort of a nest to hibernate in, partly under the paneling.

I really hope I swept them all out, but probably not. We’d have to remove the paneling.

I’ve left the shelf across the window to finish clearing later.

20180608.sunroom.cleanup.eastside2.after

What a huge difference!

Once this side was clear, I had the space to start moving things around to work on the other side.

Which will be in my next post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Front Yard Clean Up – the shrine

June 6, 2018June 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Cleaning up the south yard, I finally got around to working on my mother’s little shrine area.

Here are some before pictures.

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That statue of Mary has been featured in a few different places in the yard, if I remember correctly.

I don’t know what the pedestal was for.

The little structure to the right is an actual shrine. My oldest brother built it for my mother; it is based on the kapliczki, or roadside shrines, in Poland that my mother remembers from her youth. Sadly, it has not been maintained over the years, and the wood is starting to rot in many places. For a while, it had a place of honour, right on the concrete landing at the main entrance.

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Another “before” view of the area, at the fence line. The post in the foreground is for the clothes line. I’m guessing the rope is to keep the post from being pulled by the weight of clothes on the line, but with the amount of slack on there, I’m not quite sure what it is really there to accomplish. :-D

The first area I started cleaning up was the tractor tire planter. It was overrun with vines! The roots had circled under the edge of the tire, with two big clumps of vines pushing their way out in such a large mass, they actually deformed the tire!

I’m starting to develop a strong dislike for those vines. ;-)

Once I was able to reach it safely, I took the statue out completely. Then started working around the back, cutting away and pulling up a huge mass of dead vines.

I then found a whole other flower garden area!

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Bricked up and everything.

I vaguely remember noticing a couple of bricks there, shortly after the snow melted away, but did not expect to find this!

It had nothing but dead vines and leaves in it. Any flowers that were ever planted there were long gone.

Feeling how my feet sank when I stepped in it to cut and clean away the debris, I figure it never actually had soil added to it. It’s all basically composted leaf debris!

Here are the after pictures.

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When the tire planter and bricked areas were clear, I pruned what I could reach of the willow trees, taking down more vines that had climbed their way up the trunks in the process.

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Then I gave Mary a good scrubbing, before returning her to her concrete block. There was moss starting to grow on her!

You can really see the one spot where a clump of vine roots distorted the tire. The other spot is hidden by the pedestal.

With this area, I don’t know about planting anything there again. What I’d really like to do is get rid of the tire planter. I’d like to get rid of all the tire planters! It will be a huge job to clear the tractor tire planters, so it might end up waiting until next year.

Until then, I just want to make sure those vines to take over again!

After finishing this, it was all I could do not to just keep on going and work in another section of the yard!

Have I mentioned, I really love this kind of work? :-D

The Re-Farmer

Front Yard Clean Up – by the gate

June 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Today was another awesome day of clean up in the yard. It is looking so great!

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I so missed this kind of work! I love it so much. There’s the feeling of accomplishment, and at the end of the day, when the body is sore and achy, and I’m tired – it’s a good tired. You know what I mean?

Oh, and I also got some great news today. I got an email from the electrician. The new pole to replace the one the movers broke will be delivered in the next couple of days. Whoot!

Meanwhile…

While the girls started on the HUGE job of raking between the trees I cleared out yesterday, and adding them to the flower garden, I started working on the south yard. I figure, it’s about time I did some work on the parts of the yard people see when they come to our place, rather than the parts hidden away behind houses. ;-)

The first section I worked on was West of the people gate. This is where there was a mass of dead plants that turned out to have a wire fence in it – and a bottomless glass bowl. :-D

Here is what it looked like, before.

Tree tire is tired and broken.

This is how it looks now!

20180606.front.yard1

Cutting away those vines – both the old, dead ones, and the new ones that had started to grow – was a huge job, all on its own. The mass was so thick, it was hard to find what I needed to cut with the pruning shears (those anvil shears (affiliate link) are amazing!).

Then, after getting the big stuff off, I had to go back and find more vine roots and clip them. They spread through their roots, so there was a lot of pulling up.

I like vines. I really do. But my goodness, they are invasive!!

That done, I moved on to the lilacs section.

20180606.front.yard2

This is how it looked after I first started working on it. There was a lot of clipping and pulling out of vines, cutting away dead and dying branches, and figuring out what lilac stems were keepers, and what had to go.

Lilacs also spread through their roots, and can become invasive, if they’re not kept in check. Except when they’re being choked out by vines. :-/

As I worked my way to the far end, I found…

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… Seriously?

The biggest lilac bush at the end of the row was growing straight out of a pile of horse droppings.

I’m getting really tired of finding horse droppings all over the place.

Here are the after photos!

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This is from the West end of the lilac row, after trimming and raking.

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And here’s how it now looks from the East end.

With all the vines I pulled out of there, I think I just extended the life of these lilacs by quite a few years! Well. As long as we keep on top of cutting back the vines as they try and grow back, that is.

I’m pretty sure my mother had flowers planted in here, too, but they don’t seem to have survived the vines. I don’t have any plans to plant anything here this year, but we’ll see what we decide to do with the area next year.

Next post; cleaning up my mother’s… shrine?

The Re-Farmer

Fire Pit Area Cleanup; between buildings

June 5, 2018January 14, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I went back to cleaning up the West yard, by the fire pit area, today, focusing on the area between the other house and the log cabin that’s slowly disintegrating.

Photo heavy post ahead! :-D

The girls finished clearing away the last wood pile from when I cleaned up in the East end of the maple grove. Before they went into the house, we got rid of the old freezer that has been sitting along the side of the other house, for many years.

It was a beast of a freezer, but it is now finally out of the yard, and in the pile of stuff that will be hauled away in the fall.

The baskets and foam were inside the freezer. The chair and the plastic thing on it were dug out from between some maple trees.

It took two of us pushing, one pulling and steering, to drag that old freezer out!

Modern freezers are much lighter. :-D

When I started cleaning up the remains to haul away, I found even more Styrofoam, buried under the leaves.

Time to start working on the rows of trees directly behind the other house.

This involved cutting away dead branches, suckers and picking up fallen branches, just to GET to the stuff I needed to clear away.

The rain barrel that was there appears to not have any cracks or holes in it, so I just set it aside for now.

The roll of wire fencing was almost completely buried in leaves and dead branches.

That plastic bin on top? It was upside down on the ground. After lifting it up, I found…

… old cat litter.

As I was clearing away an area at the base of a maple tree, I found more cat litter, under the leaves and branches.

It appears that, when my dad had a cat, this was where the old litter was dumped. I think that plastic bin is what was used as a litter box and, when the cat died, it just got dumped into the trees and left there.

That cat died many years ago.

I was also finding lots of horse droppings. I’m told my younger brother had let his horses into the yard. Considering how many piles of their droppings I’m finding all over the place, this was either done often, or for a very long time.

I’m not impressed.

More stuff to add to the haul-away pile. Some stove pipe, a roll of cable, aluminum sheets and… I don’t know what that plastic thing is, but it made moving the stove pipe out much easier. ;-D

While clearing dead branches away near the building, I found all sorts of things buried in the leaves. I’ve just leaned them here, for now, for clearing out later.

More was added, before I was done for the day!

In the foreground is an area I’d gone into with the weed trimmer recently. I had to stop, because I was finding so many dead branches, so I started a pile at this end that I cleaned up today. In the background, you can see where I hadn’t used the weed trimmer yet.

There was a LOT of dead branches in here.

I also cleared dead branches from the trees themselves, as well as pruning back live branches and seedlings.

This is another section I’d used the weed trimmer on previously. For now, I’m ignoring the dead branches and trees on the other side of the fence.

That tree in the foreground?

Completely dead. I thought there was one branch that still had green leaves on it, but that branch is from the tree on the other side of the fence.

So this is going to have to come down at some point.

While clearing away the dead branches, I found more metal, buried under the leaves.

There was some cable leaning against the building that I thought was rolled up, like some I’d already cleared away elsewhere. It turned out to be only partially rolled up. Most of it was stretched almost the length of the building, all buried under the leaves.

When my daughter came out to let me know supper was almost ready, she helped me take down this dead branch from one of the group of three maples near the fire pit. I started cutting it with the pruning saw while she used a rake to reach the other end and applied gentle downward pressure to make it easier for me to saw. Then when it started breaking under its own weight, I just stepped back and let her pull it down.

I feel so much better, now that it’s down. There is another huge dead branch just above it, but it will have to wait for another day.

Here are the rows of “living fence” my mother planted. There is a third row closer to the log cabin. I did more clean up and weed trimming after this picture was taken. We will have to go back and work our way towards the log cabin. That area is filled with dead branches, so I can’t even go in with the weed trimmer, yet. There’s quite a bit of oak in there. I’m hoping my mother will let me get rid of some of these, and encourage the oak, instead. They are planted way too close together to be able to grow well.

Here is the area that had the old toilet, rain barrel, and other debris in it. It will still need more clean up before it’s finished, but it looks SO much better now!

The rest of the rows of trees. There is one willow in there, and the rest are maple and elm. There are still dead branches on them, but they are too high to be able to clear.

I noticed, as I was clearing up against the house, that the willow has a huge root, running right under the building. I guess it’s a good thing it’s just siting on blocks, or it would be causing all sorts of damage to a basement or foundation.

Let’s see if I can find some before pictures to include…

What a difference a few hours of work makes!

The Re-Farmer

Yard work and home care visit

June 4, 2018January 14, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today was very much an outdoors day!

Thanks to the AWESOME riding mower my brother and his wife gave us, I was able to finish mowing the yard yesterday. Which means that one of the goals of the day was to get out the weed trimmer to clear areas the mower can’t get close to.

A loud and messy job, so I waited until after our afternoon appointment with someone from the home care department. This was a follow up on the last visit, with a different person. So while we waited for her to arrive, I started working on cleaning up the flower bed on the west side of the house.

At one end of the flower bed, there is an unusual variety of lilac; it’s bushier, has tiny leaves, and masses of sprays with tiny flower buds right now; it’s blooming period seems quite a bit later than the other lilacs, which are near the end of their blooming period.

One of the problems with it is that there is a maple tree growing out the middle of it.

Plus, lots of dead branches.

So I started cleaning away dead branches and cutting away the many suckers at the base, just to get at the maple. Where I found this.

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This is the trunk of the maple tree (which would have been self-sown), bent around a lilac stem.

I had to cut away more of the lilac before I could take out the maple, which had to be done in sections, due to the size.

It was very awkward work. The lilac stems are surprisingly long and bendy, and many were wrapped around each other. So much so, I found myself wondering if someone hadn’t done it deliberately at some point; perhaps they were overhanging the space between the house and the flower bed or something.

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Once the maple was out, I could see the damage it did to the lilac.

I’d already had to cut away a branch of that stem, and I’m not sure if I’ll have to cut the rest of it away. Without being regularly pruned, the stems are so long that, without the dead and dying branches (and the maple tree) holding them up, they’re just sort of… flopping.

It was while I was working on this, that the woman from home care arrived.

While she was here, she went over her form questions, double checking my husband’s mobility needs and what we’ve got around the house. She even took a look at our bathroom (higher toilet, bath chair, lots of arm bars in the tub/shower, and we made sure to bring the special hand held shower with us when we moved; you can shut the water off at the handle, rather than at the wall, and it has an extra long hose). She asked about how he finds raising his legs over the side of the tub, and brought up that, if he ever needs it, there is a transfer chair available. Which we already have, as my father needed one, and it’s still quite new.

She checked out the hospital bed as well, confirming that my husband is now able to get in and out of bed without losing his balance. He’s really enjoying that thing, and finding it very comfortable to sleep on, too.

She also went through her list, asking about cooking, shopping, laundry, etc. If the girls and I were not around to take care of this stuff, he would be able to get home care to come in to help. As things stand now, it isn’t needed.

Which brought us to the only thing that we are hoping to be able to get; a ramp, to make it easier for my husband to get in and out of the house with his wheeled walker. One of the things we learned is that, if we were to qualify for a ramp, we would need to get a contractor to give us a quote to pass on to them. Qualifying for funding is another issue. I had found out about the program online and read that there is an income cut off that can change, so they said to contact to find out what it is. I’d sent an email and finally got a response.

Based on that, my husband’s disability payments put him at too high of an income to qualify. :-/

She’s still going to see if there are other programs available, but if we can just get someone to assess the location for us, and give us the information we need, then we will have something to go on to get it done ourselves, at some point.

So that meeting went well.

After she left, I headed back out to work on the yard. I just cleaned up the trimmings I’d cut down earlier, then got out the weed trimmer – and the two 100 ft extension cords we’d been using to get power to the garage. With those, I can reach pretty much anywhere in the yard.

While I worked on that, the girls cleared out the large pile of branches I’d cleared away from the maple grove. The dead stuff went to the piles by the fire pit, but most of it was green. The green wood pile by the fire pit is already getting big, so they decided to add to the pile I’d started outside the yard, when I cleared the back of the garage.

I didn’t think to take photos before I started with the weed trimmer in some areas. After going around the house, I went around the east yard, including clearing a path to the Saskatoon bushes. When I started working on the south west yard, I was finally able to go around parts of the “spare” house in the yard (I have no idea what my mother has in mind for that building; I did ask her, but the only answer I got was that it’s for storage. !! It was originally intended to be moved to one of the other quarter sections, for one of my brothers to use as a home), and the south fence line. There had been a single mowed pathway leading to around the back of the other house. There are several curved rows of spindly trees, planted close together. I’d asked my mom about them, and she told me she planted them to be a “living fence.”

Personally, I’d like to get rid of them, as it’s really not a good place for trees. I don’t think she really thought about what they will be like, at full size.

And that doesn’t even include the two rows of fully grown trees immediately behind the other house.

Very little of the area is mowable, and no one has tried to clear in between the trees, at all. So I started clearing parts of it with the weed trimmer. There isn’t much I can do behind the other house, until we clear away the junk and fallen branches, and random cinder blocks. :-/ It’s a big job, and I wasn’t able to finish it today. Weather willing, I’ll continue tomorrow.

Once done the yard work for the day, I decided we needed to have another cookout. This time, though, I did baked potatoes.

I will post about those, separately. :-D

My husband was even able to come out and join us for a little while. Not long enough for the potatoes of finish, unfortunately, but even a little bit is good. :-)

After the fire was no longer needed to cook food, my younger daughter and I took advantage of it and started adding more from the clean up pile. Unfortunately, we seem to be adding to it much faster than we’ll be able to use it for fire pit fuel! :-D

Since we were tending the fire, anyway, we also took turns cutting down some of the logs to fire pit size lengths.

We’re going to be set for wood for a good, long time!

We’ll just have to find lots of reasons to get the fire pit going, I guess. :-D

The Re-Farmer

West Yard; fire pit area clean up

June 1, 2018June 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Another wonderful day of yard clean up today!

And a photo heavy post to show for it. :-D

After all the clearing I did yesterday, we had a lot of wood to breakdown and move out. The rain was holding off, so my younger daughter and I started on the big pile. As I was de-branching and cutting down the dead spruces, I was thinking of where we were moving it all and how we were running out of space. With all the rain we’ve had, we could actually start burning some of it in the fire place.

So that’s what we decided to do. My daughter would get the fire pit going, while I continued to break down the spruces.

Wet as things have been, we still weren’t going to take any chances. My daughter started by getting the hose ready.

So far, we’ve got two hoses going; I found a shorter one we’d been using on the south and a much longer one I’d hooked up to the tap on the north side of the house, to use on the flower garden I’ve cleared up and started to layer.

The long hose got moved to the south side when my daughters cleaned out the eaves troughs, and as long as it is, it wasn’t long enough to reach the fire pit. Adding on the shorter hose still wasn’t enough. Is there more hose? I remembered a long hose in the side of the garage, so she went and got it.

It turned out to have several major holes and breaks in it. She tried patching it with duct tape, but two were so bad, the water just sprayed out from under the tape.

I checked the garden shed. Turns out there were two more hoses there, so I grabbed the heavier duty one.

No holes, but it did leak right at one end, where it was attached to the first hose.

We just put that part of the hose over an area of dry grass, so it could water it. :-D

We’re going to need to buy new hoses. Several of them.

All in good time!

That done, my daughter got a fire going. Then she sprayed all around the fire pit, and the trees by the fence line, and basically anywhere else she felt might be at risk from sparks.

Because we err on the side of caution when it comes to that.

As she started working on burning one of the piles of small stuff. We had one pile of larger wood, then a second pile for little branches. That one got huge, fast, so a second pile had been started of those. Which is why I wanted to start burning it. There’s just soo much of it!

In the photo above, you can see the beginnings of a pile of green wood, waiting to be broken down. My daughter and I had already removed the old awning I’d taken out from under some maple trees, and it’s now on the pile of stuff outside the yard we plan to hire someone to hall away in the fall.

After I finished breaking down the three sections of dead spruce trees – they had so many branches that needed to be cut off before I could cut the trunks shorter – I decided to stop with that pile, and start helping my daughter.

By this time, she’s almost cleared up the smaller pile of little things. As I watched the fire, I couldn’t help but feel my paranoia creeping up.

See those spruce tips in the background?

I am really not happy about how close the fire pit is to the spruce. Spruces are just big resin torches. Plus, there was all the other brush and undergrowth.

I started to break down the pile of green wood and stacking it against the back of the log cabin. These will sit to dry until next year, where they will be used as fire pit fuel. I expect that pile to get rather larger before the summer is done!

Finally, I went under the branches of the spruce tree and started clearing under it. The lowest branches were all dead, so I took them to my daughter to break down and start burning. Then I started cutting more branches for as high as I could reach with the hand saw. The branches were still hanging down to the ground, so I got the pruning saw and kept going.

What a difference just a few minutes of cutting made!

I cleared a bit of underbrush as well, uncovering the remains of an old wagon and another electrical cable spool.

After getting under the spruce tree cleared, I tackled the big dead branch by the old gate. I wasn’t sure how much I could clear of it, because the break was so high. Turns out it’s been dead for so long, I could just pull it away. You can see part if it in the above photo.

Here’s the rest of it. I’d already started to clear away some of the smaller branches when I took this photo. That huge piece of tree was just dangling there, for who knows how long.

Getting it down made us feel MUCH more comfortable with a fire. The wind was blowing towards the fence line, so any sparks would have gone right into that area.

After getting this down, we decided to really give the pruning saw a workout and get the dead branch from the maple tree on the other side of the fire pit. This branch had actually been long enough to reach over the fire pit, but I’d already broken some of it off. Still, it was rather close and low enough at the end to be a concern.

Did I mention the pruning saw is awesome?

Oh, how good it is to have the right tool for the job!

We took turns sawing at it. Because of how high it was at the trunk, and how thick it was, it didn’t take long for our arms to start loosing circulation! :-D

Much to my surprise, this branch did actually have a few living twigs on it, so part of it went to be burned, and part of it onto the greenwood pile.

That done, I just kept on clearing along the fence line.

Here’s how it looked before I got back to it.

After breaking down the big dead branch I’d just pulled down, I moved the wire spool and started clearing more under that area, then just kept working my way towards the gate, separating the living from the dead.

Most of it was dead. Dead for so long, that I was pulling bushes right out of the ground, without having to cut anything. Or even yank hard. My daughter had so much dead wood from what I was pulling out of here, she stopped taking from the main pile completely, until I was done.

Of course, there always has to be at least one surprise! :-D

This picture is from the base of the tree I’d pulled the big dead branch out of.

That is some sort of garbage.

It’s IN the tree.

That piece of garbage has been there for so long, the tree has grown around it.

I also found some old beer cans and even a juice box, but nothing else that was grown INTO a tree!

Though some saplings growing through the fence wire came close.

Here is how it looks now.

One side of the old gate is now CLEAR!! Yay!

I am at a loss, though.

The barb wire gate is still there, just like it was when I was growing up. Then that picket fence got added. I don’t know when. It’s actually attached to the posts of the barb wire gate with more wire.

Why would someone essentially block off an entire gate?

At some point, we’ll need to re-fence the yard, and I’d like to keep a gate here when we do. It’ll be much easier for the septic cleaners to get to the tank from this end, then going around the house from the other side.

Here is the mostly cleared fence line. There are still little things I’ll need to get back to, and I’ll need to decide if it’s worth keeping some of the long, scraggly bushes. (I don’t plan to cut back what’s on the other side of the fence this year.) They’re living, and some are even blooming, but now that the dead stems that were holding them up are gone, I really don’t know how well they’ll stay up on their own. It wouldn’t take much to break them.

While clearing stuff away, I found a big metal ring that would actually work well as a fire pit, if we ever needed to set up another one. It’s slightly smaller than the metal ring that makes up our fire pit now. I didn’t try to move the remains of the wagon, yet. There is more dead wood back there to clear away. The spool, I’ve just left there for now, making sure not to block access to the side of the log cabin, as there is more dead wood to clear away in that area, too. There’s also a mostly dead maple tree, but that will need a chain saw.

And here we have the green wood pile, after my clearing away of the fence line.

There really wasn’t a lot of green wood from there to add to the pile.

Though more clean up will be needed, especially of all the dried leaves on the ground, the entire area is now much less of a fire hazard then it had been!

Once we finished breaking down and burning the deadwood I’d cleared out of there, my daughter and I continued to break down and burn more from the big pile. You know; the one we’d originally started the fire to start getting rid of! :-D

It was awesome. My daughter even brought a couple of chairs and made a carafe of lemonade for us to enjoy while we kept feeding the fire.

Our first fire of the year.

By the time we wound down for the day, there was a huge new pile of ashes in there. Since we are only burning wood in here, it will be a great addition to the layers I am building up on the flower garden, when it comes time to clear it away.

I am so loving this kind of work. I missed it so much!

The Re-farmer

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