Power

May 7, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today I had a talk with the electric company.

Within the next two weeks, they’re going to send someone out to check out our power lines and the trees, to assess what equipment they will need to safely cut the trees away from the power lines. That is such a relief! And, it will be done at no cost to us.

With that in mind, I did a once-around the yard, before my daughters went out to start working on the wood pile in the garden, and do some yard clean up.

This is what the pile looked like, before they started on it today. Much, much smaller than it was.

Right now, it’s down to mostly leaves and dirt, which makes cleaning it up harder. They took a break from it to start raking some leaves up from a pile in the yard that got snowed on before it was cleared away, plus starting on some of the flower gardens. The leaves and, later in the year, grass clippings, will be methodically added to the garden area to begin the process of building up the soil.

The main thing I wanted to check out was this power pole in the garden area.

The main power pole is on the opposite side of the house, outside the yard. That is the one that has the power line to the house itself.

This pole?

I didn’t know anything about it. I just found out more.

The power lines attached to it run across the road to a power pole on the neighbour’s side of the ditch. In the other direction, the lines run to our own main power pole. These are the lines that supply power to the main pole, which then has lines running to the house, pump shack, the garage (up until the movers ran into it), and in the past, the barn as well, which will be set up again when we replace the broken power pole at the garage and get the electricity hooked back up, there.

We’re talking more than 4000 volts running to that post.

Then through the maple grove.

Straight through some of the branches.

Can you see the lines?

Trust me. They are there. Barely visible.

I had been concerned about the more visible line running to the house. These ones, however, are at far more risk!

I suspect there is going to be quite a lot of tree trimming, once the assessment is made.

We’ll have some of our own clean up to do through there, too. It seems someone did already start to, at some point.

A few dead trees had been cut, then the pieces cut up a bit.

Then just left there.

I don’t know when this was done, but it can’t have been more than a couple of years, if that. I used to be able to mow the lawn in between these trees. It used to be very park-like, clear and open.

I hope to return it to that state.

It will make a big difference, to have the electric company coming in to take care of the trees that are endangering the power lines. Also on the list of things to happen soon, the septic service company will be out at the end of the week to empty the tank. I think we’ll all be feeling much better once that’s done; there has been this sort of dread in the back of my mind for some time, despite assurances by the septic service company, that the tank is too full and might back up into our basement. That would be quite the disaster. My oldest brother has already had to deal with that happening, when it broke down and he had to hire an excavator to dig around the tank so it could be fixed on this inside, as well as the mechanisms in the basement.

My brother had come out on Friday to put the battery back in my mother’s car for her and, while out and about with other things, noticed a single on the Old Kitchen had lifted up. At first, it looked like a single had been lost, but on closer examination, it seems to have basically folded itself up. A trip into town today included picking up some roof tar, which can be applied with a caulking gun, so we can gently fold them back and stick them in place. The problem will be getting to it. It’s right under the peak of the roof, and about as far to the outer edge of the roof as can be. Getting to it is not going to be easy, nor very safe.

I also picked up a tube caulking that can be painted, to seal the screw holes from the satellite dishes that had been attached to the side of the house before we upgraded to the ones now mounted on the sun room roof. I want to see if those need to be sealed with roofing tar, too.

I really don’t want any more leaks happening!

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. I will be going to to help my brother take my mother to a medical appointment in the city, so I can start getting informed and, in time, take over from him in taking my mother to these appointments. Meanwhile, just before I have to leave, my husband’s hospital bed is going to be delivered. I will have to leave it to the girls to set up a second bed for me, once the hospital bed is installed.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

I’m going to be so happy when all of these are finished!

The Re-Farmer

Checking things out

May 3, 2018May 3, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

This afternoon, I took advantage of pleasant temperatures to walk around the yard and the spruce and maple groves. There was snow on the ground the last time I went into these areas, so I was able to get to areas I couldn’t before.

Walking through the spruce grove, it continues to strike me, just how many dead and dying trees there are. Quite a few have already fallen, but many have not. It’s slowly being taken over by broad leaf trees, but a lot of them are dead and dying, too.

This is from one of the spruce trees.

You can certainly see why it fell. This is caused by carpenter ants. They nest in wood and can cause all kinds of damage and, in this case, weakened the trunk enough for it to fall, probably in high winds. When I was a kid, splitting logs in the basement for the furnace in the winter, I would sometimes split a log with a hibernating nest of ants in it. They’d fall out into a sluggish mass on the concrete.

Then they’d go into the fire.

You don’t mess with these guys.

Thankfully, we’ve never seen signs of them nesting in the house itself.

Walking through the row of apple trees, which are just barely starting to show leaf buds in a few places, I discovered why the mystery box jammed into one of them hasn’t blown away.

It has a mystery bucket inside.

I’m sure someone had a reason to put it there. I just can’t think of what it might be!

I started going into the maple grove next. It used to border the garden, but at some point, a couple of rows of spruce trees were planted into what used to be garden. The garden area was slowly made smaller and smaller over the years, with tree plantings.

So many are dead or dying. What you see on the bottom left is where there is a water tap. That used to be at the the very outer edge of the garden border.

This row of trees was planted some time after I left the farm. Like so many others, they were planted way too close together. Most seem to be dead or half dead.

I don’t think there’s much left to salvage of this old willow, but we’ll see better when it’s in full leaf. I remember it being huge and healthy, when I was a child, as was a second one behind it. That, too, has many dead branches on it, but it’s not as broken as this one.

I eventually made my way to the fence side of the house in our yard. I was noticing some wasp nests, and remains of wasp nests, under the eaves when I suddenly realized I was looking at something that didn’t make sense.

That’s an electrical cable running from a hole into the “basement”, up to the roof.

When I was a kid, I spent many summer nights sleeping in this building, and even had sleepovers with my friends – back when it was still is decent shape. There was no power hooked up to it. We used candles and kerosene lamps for light.

Now that I think of it, I do remember one time when there was electricity being used in there. My brothers also used the house, for parties. I recall there was a stag held there one, and the next morning, I’d joined them to watch a movie on the TV that was brought in. I also remember lights and music playing. I had completely forgotten about that until now. I wonder if this wire was the source of the electricity?

So where does the line go?

Straight through the branches…

Over this dead tree on the other side of the fence…

Then it disappeared into the grass.

So I went around the fence and pulled it out of the grass to see what I would find.

There was far more length then I expected, before I pulled up the insulator – then there was even more wire before I found the plug.

From what I can tell by the electrical tape at the insulator, the wire is spliced.

And that plug… well. You can see the inner wires are exposed.

I am guessing the insulator was attached to the pump shack, then the cable continued into the pump shack to one of the outlets inside.

It’s basically a giant extension cord.

I’m starting to wonder how no one ever caused any electrical fires and burned this place down, over the years!

Speaking of burning, as I was walking around, I could smell smoke. I couldn’t see smoke anywhere, and have heard nothing about any new fires, but then, I didn’t see smoke or hear anything about the last two fires out here, for some time.

Meanwhile, my wonderful, awesome daughters got 4 van loads into the shed today, while I brought over my mother’s dressers from the bedroom, taking out the drawers and removing the mirror off one of them. Even without the drawers, they were surprisingly heavy. The mirror alone weighed more than any of the others we hauled out. This bedroom set of my mother’s is of amazing quality! It’s a shame she left them behind when she moved out, though I suppose they would have been too big for her current apartment.

By the time they were done unloading the last of the stuff into the shed, their bodies let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they were still sick. I am so grateful that they got it done. While they did that, my husband and I decided on how we’d arrange things for when the hospital bed is delivered, and I switched some things around. We are at the point now that, once we get the call that it’s on the way, we need only to take out the bed we’re using now.

Once the box springs we are borrowing are loaded into the shed, we have nothing else that will need to go through the main part of the house into storage. There is just the Old Kitchen and sun room to work on, so things can go straight outside from there.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Hello, Shaggy Friend

May 2, 2018May 2, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

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

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

I like our shaggy friends. :-)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It should be interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

After moving it, I found this…

… in between two of the maples.

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

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

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

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

Old cow poop.

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

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

Also…

That’s not cow. That’s horse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Our Daily Deer

April 13, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I got very few photos today, but we got good progress on the wood pile in the garden.

The deer path goes through not far from some of the new piles we’ve made, so I half expected the deer might be a bit stand-offish about coming over, but nope; Hungry Girl and Barbecue came right on over, soon after we left the garden area.

It is nice to finally be able to get outside and get more stuff done, even if the snow made our footing a big treacherous. I am really looking forward to more manual labor!

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up Progress, the garden area

April 13, 2018April 13, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

So this morning got off to a rough start. I got a phone call from my mother, which is always touch and go. After chastising me for not calling her (we’ve been in contact rather often, lately, so that in itself was weird), she informed me that some of my siblings would be coming over to burn the wood pile in the garden area.

No. They are not.

It went downhill from there.

With the threat of fire hanging over us, my daughters and I went to start on cleaning up the wood pile. We had intended to wait until more of the snow was gone, but it seems we don’t have much of a choice.

Ah, the joys of living in someone else’s house. Even if that someone else in my mother.

Check this out, though…

20180413.deer.path

This is the deer path running through the garden and the apple trees, leading to our feeding station. There is another one running through the garden in the other direction.

We got quite a bit of progress on the wood pile, sorting it into piles of twig, larger pieces that will be cut down after they are moved, and a pile of leafy branches that are still quite green.

After removing about half of the pile, we found…

20180413.wood.pile.insulation

Old fiberglass insulation.

Something else to add to the “why is that there?” list!

Of the piles we’ve been making, this is the one that interests me most.

20180413.wood.pile.leafy

These pieces are very straight, smooth and still quite green. I am hoping to get a good amount of wood slices out of them for various projects I have in mind. The rest will be fuel for the fire pit, once we get that cleaned out and set up. Looking forward to some late night wiener roasts! :-D I’m also looking to build a cinder block cooker, though that might have to wait a year. With all the clean up of deadwood, just in the yard, we’ll have plenty of fuel for that.

Much to my surprise, not long after we came in for the day, I saw Hungry Girl and Barbecue outside our window. With all the activity outside, and the changes in the garden area, I thought they’d stay away for longer. As I was taking photos (I’ll post some this evening), I was greeted by this, in the corner of the living room window.

20180413.asian.lady.beetle.ew

So much ew. Can you tell that I’ve cleaned this window ledge recently? No, I can’t, either.

And that’s just one corner of one window.

Time to break out the vacuum again.

The Re-Farmer

Okay… this is the worst find yet

March 13, 2018March 13, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I thought, after the horror tunnel, desiccated mouse carcasses, and other strange things we’ve found while packing up and cleaning away 4 decades of my parents’ stuff in our new home, I would have been beyond getting surprised by things we find.

I was wrong.

I must admit, it’s not so much the contents, but the circumstances of it.

Though we really don’t have the room for it in the growing pile in the dining room intended for the shed, I am just really not happy with having the litter box in the dining room, even if it is in an out of the way corner. Having cleared everything else away, I decided to move the dresser and the stuff on the wall out of the little nook they’re in, so the litter box can be moved away from where we eat.

After removing the drawers, the first thing I discovered was a scale under the dresser.

Why is there a scale under the dresser? It’s not like it was accidentally pushed under it. It was way in the back corner.

Okay. Fine.

I start moving the now drawerless dresser.

*clatterclatter*

A broken broom handle, with masking tape on the broken end, falls to the floor.

It had been between the dresser and the bit of wall on the bathroom side. I had noticed that something was there, but forgot about it before moving the dresser.

Okay. Fine.

I carefully pull the dresser out, hearing all sorts of crunching, grinding noises from the floor. Oh, dear. I called for a daughter to help carry it, since it sounded like pulling it along the floor would cause damage. However, as I maneuvered it out a bit more so a daughter could grab it from the other end, I found it was really, really light, and not making the noise anymore. So I just moved it myself, down the hall, up the two stairs to the new part of the house, and into the space I’d prepared for it in the dining room. Then I put the drawers back and went to continue cleaning.

This is what I found.

20180313underthedresser1

What on earth?

This is a flash picture; there is no light in this corner, so I really couldn’t see very well, but that plastic container on the floor? My first guess was that the dregs on the bottom was mouse poison. And what was all that on the floor?

I moved the scale and that plaque beside it to the pile of stuff for storage. The plaque?

It was a prayer.

20180313underthedresser2

Okay. Fine. I can see something like that falling between the dresser and the wall and being forgotten about. That black piece of plastic? Probably put there to get it out of the way and forgotten about as well.

I very carefully moved the mirror next. It was just leaning on the wall, on top of that piece of wood. The far side of it is a broken edge.

Then I come back to clean up the rest.

20180313underthedresser3

That plastic bowl? Is a glass bowl. The crud on the floor is ancient cat litter, complete with several desiccated turds.

And a piece of bread.

So, it looks like this area was used for both a cat litter box, and for… cat food? before. I threw the bowl out, but I’m guessing it’s the remains of some sort of cat food on the bottom.

All of this means that someone took out the litter box, but left the mess behind. Left the bowl and the bread and added a bathroom scale.

Then put the dresser on top of it all.

Then used the dresser to store extra towels on the bottom drawers. Above the cat poop and drying food.

Oh, and as I was going back and forth to move things, I found a pile of something that had fallen out from under the dresser as I’d moved it up the two steps. As I swept it up, I took a closer look.

I’m pretty sure it was a very old mouse nest.

Once clear, I mopped the area with disinfectant cleaner, including the walls, then used a scrub brush in the area (including on the other side, where I got the girls to take the stuff leaning there upstairs), then mopped it again. The only thing in that corner that still needs to be moved is one last large mirror, which will require a screwdriver to remove.

I don’t have the energy for that anymore.

I also found a shoe tray that I scrubbed; it will go under our litter box when it gets moved. For now, the entire area is being left to dry. We will move our litter box in tomorrow.

This just blows me away. It’s one thing to be in the practice of keeping things that might be useful, and just shoving them somewhere for storage, as is likely the case for most of the things we’ve found. It’s quite another to deliberately put a dresser on top of cat litter, cat turds and cat food.

And a scale.

I just don’t understand. Who did this? I don’t know how long that dresser has been there, but I don’t think either of my parents were strong enough to move it. Well; maybe my mother, depending no how long ago it was done, but she usually got other people to do that sort of manual labour for her. So I have no idea. And why? Why was it done like this? I can’t imagine any of my siblings doing this.

I’m at a complete loss.

I think I’m going to take a shower now.

The Re-Farmer

Sunday Adventures in Vehicles and Bugs

March 11, 2018March 11, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We are still on the lookout for a church in the next town, so this morning I headed out to visit a new one I’d never been to before. I almost didn’t make it, having been up until 3 am this morning (actually 2am, but then daylight savings time happened), but it worked out.

This time I went to an evangelical “free” church. In all my years growing up here, I had no idea it even existed, as it’s in a residential part of town I’d never gone to before. The only reason I knew where it was was because my daughter and I had found it while playing Pokemon Go a month or so ago, and all churches are Pokestops.

I honestly don’t know what to think of it. The church itself has no online presence, but I was able to look up what an evangelical church is, and it’s a solidly grounded non-denominational church. Like most churches in the area, there was a small core of regular congregants. This being a resort town, the population basically doubles in the summer, and all the churches get fuller. People were friendly in welcoming. They have a pastoral couple, rather than just a pastor, which was not something I’ve encountered before, though I was aware of such things. The sermon was good, though there were a few things about the service that I found a bit strange; little throwaway comments that were intended to be humorous, but were inadvertently sexist.

Continue reading →

More Packing Up

March 9, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

After much procrastination, I finally started working on a corner at the end of the hall, between the bathroom and old kitchen doors.

There is a dresser in a little nook there, surrounded by a couple of big mirrors, and with some sort of little memorial shrine or something on top. It ended up being a catchall place for things, both our own and stuff from when we were cleaning the bathroom out.

I finally started to pack it up.

After finding places for our own stuff, I started boxing what was on top of the dresser, then moved out the mirror that was sitting on top of the dresser, leaning against the wall.

That’s when I noticed this.

20180308corner

Has that gap always been there? I have no memory of it, but as a child, it’s not something I would have noticed.

This area is where the add on that the old kitchen is part of is attached to the log portion of the house. So the wall on the left with the opening is log – which is why it’s as wide as it is – while the rest is more modern materials. You can see more of the log portion of the opening in the mirror, up to the wall the stairs are against.

After moving the mirror that is in the photo, I finished packing up the contents of the dresser. It turned out to be an odd mix of things. The top drawer had all kinds of gloves – painters gloves, I think – paint brushes, stir sticks, a couple of wooden crosses that looked like they used to be mounted on the top of something, a Canadian flag, an envelope of flower seeds, a couple of children’s sweaters… ???

The other drawers seemed to be used to store old towels and fabric pieces. The towels in the bottom drawer where hiding a whole bunch of mouse poop.

Which actually reminded me of when this dresser was my own.

When I was a kid, what is now my office was my bedroom. My bed was in the corner my desk is now in, and the dresser was against the bit of wall between the door and the closet. The closet itself had no door back then. I don’t think it even had a curtain, yet.

Above the side of my bed was an outlet, where I had a nightlight with its own switch. I also had vanity with a mirror – which I now have in the master bedroom – against another wall.

One night, I was awakened by the sound of something falling off my vanity. Turning on my nightlight, I looked around, but never did find out what got knocked over.

Going back to bed and turning out the light, I lay awake for a while.

That’s when I started to hear the noises.

By the vanity. The dresser. The closet.

Rustling. Scritching.

I turned on my nightlight.

The noises stopped.

I turned it off and waited.

The noises started.

It was mostly around the dresser. In the dresser.

This time, when I turned the light on, I pulled one of the dresser drawers out a couple of inches.

Then I got back in bed, leaving the night light on, and waited.

After a few minutes, the noises started again. Then I began to see them.

Mice.

They had been climbing somewhere up the back of the dresser, and with the drawer open, I would see a head pop up and look around every now and then. I heard them scurrying between the dresser and the closet, and then I saw a mouse start to climb up my clothes!

I think I saw about 6 mice different mice that night.

The next day, I found one of the friendlier barn cats and brought it into the house for the night.

The cat was okay with it, for the most part.

Then, during the night, I rolled over and my head landed on something soft and furry. The cat had curled up on the pillow beside me. I don’t know which of us was more startled; me, or the cat! I felt so bad for spooking it.

I don’t know how successful the cat was in hunting, but I didn’t see mice in my room again after that. Perhaps the cat caught them, or the cat’s presence scared them away.

Either way, they were gone.

Over the years, that dresser was used by my grandmother when she moved in with my parents – my room became hers – before passing away, and then by my father, as he started using my old bedroom because it was so much warmer (and closer to the bathroom. :-D ). I don’t know when or why it was moved out to where it is now, replaced by a different dresser. Maybe my dad was starting to have troubles opening and closing the drawers.

Once we get the dresser out of that corner, along with the other large mirror, which is just leaning between the wall and the dresser on top of a piece of wood, and the framed copy of the Mona Lisa, that corner will be the permanent spot for the cat litter box.

I was really hoping to have had that done by now, but the dresser is too big to add to the rest of the items stacked in the dining room, waiting to go into the shed for storage.

I’m not looking forward to dealing with the cobwebs. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Horror Movie Set!

February 24, 2018February 24, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Oh, my poor, brave, brave daughter!

I got a response from my brother, after I told him about the drip in the bathroom ceiling. Among the things he told me was to check in the crawl space above the bathroom.

This picture is from when the girls had started cleaning the upstairs in preparation for painting. Look at the top left.

See that triangular bit that’s brown?

That’s where the access panel is.

The wall is at an angle under the roof, and there’s a section about 2-3 feet high that’s walled off to hide the ducts and pipes and wires.

I honestly thought it was closed off, but it turns out that panel just pops right off.

That’s where the pipes and ducts for the bathroom are.

My younger daughter is the only one who could possibly fit in there, and still be able to move around.

At least, in theory.

Because it was painted, the panel needed to be pried off.

There’s stuff in there.

Not right at the front. No. Further in, and all the way to the back, past the pipes and ducting.

Also, lots of old mouse droppings.

I had grabbed a hook I’d found when cleaning my mother’s old bedroom, made from a straightened wire hanger, and my daughter poked around a bit.

Which is when she found a live spider.

She is arachnophobic.

That was it. She was willing to crawl into the horror movie death hole with dusty books and jars, cobwebs and mouse droppings, right up until live spiders came into play.

The poor thing managed to hold it together, but she just couldn’t do it.

So I figured I’d give it a try.

Why is that stuff there? How is that stuff there?

My knees are shot, so I borrowed my other daughter’s knee pads (she has a bum knee, too), and set up the vacuum cleaner. I vacuumed the mouse droppings and dust from the front, used the hook to drag some stuff out, vacuumed again, hooked out some more stuff, vacuumed again, hooked out some more stuff, vacuumed again…

And that was as far as I could reach.

The photo is from after I’d vacuumed and taken out the stuff closest to the opening. You can see all the crud that got dragged with it, that I needed to vacuum again. I’m not sure if you can tell, but there is what appears to be fabric – an old coat? sweater? – way in the back, past the duct and pipes.

After clearing things out as much as I could, it was time to try and crawl in.

I couldn’t even get into the opening.

To get in, you have to bend around a corner. My shoulders got jammed between the slanted portion of the wall and the edge of the opening.

Theoretically, I could have squirmed down on my belly and squirmed my way forward. Maybe. Not likely. But even if i could, once I reached the stuff I couldn’t clear out, that would have been it.

At this point, my brave, brave daughter was willing to try again.

She donned the knee pads, gloves and mask, grabbed the flashlight, and started to squirm her way in.

She couldn’t get all the way in the opening.

Because of the angle, the only way she could have fit would have been to combat crawl her way along the bottom. And while she does not share my generous proportions, it was still too tight to move much as at all. Then she would have reached the stuff I couldn’t put out, which would have blocked her way, and would have had to somehow pass it back to me, then continue on. Because of where the drip was happening, she would have had to go at least as far as those pipes.

It wasn’t going to happen.

She could, however, see more from her vantage point.

There are obvious signs of old moisture damage, but nothing looks recent.

Wherever the water was getting in from, it doesn’t look like it was coming through this space.

But without going all the way in, we really can’t say that for sure.

I’d responded to my brother, mentioning that I hadn’t thought the crawl space was accessible, and he’d written back. Oh, yes, he tells me. It’s quite accessible. Then he described having to go in there to put in the wiring for the new electric furnace, dragging himself along a few inches as a time, while pulling the wire.

Now, my brother is a thin man, but he’s not tiny. With the angle of the roof on one side, it would have been like a giant sausage casing.

This is like a scene straight out of a horror movie.

Speaking of which…

20180224stuff.from.horror.tunnel

This is the stuff I was able to get out of the horror tunnel.

First aid books. An old Polish prayer book. A jug from pickling vinegar. An empty binder. A book on car repair. Maps. And… other things.

I didn’t want to look too closely.

Why did the stuff get put in there? HOW did the stuff get put in there? When? I mean, if my brother crawled around in there, was it already there and he just crawled over it all? If it got put in after, how did stuff get so far to the back? Or has it been there since the area got walled off, after we got running water and the bathroom was installed?

I’m just… amazed.

Just think. If we hadn’t had that drip, we wouldn’t have had a reason to open the space up and wouldn’t have known there was stuff in there.

I could have lived without that knowledge.

The Re-Farmer

Old and New

February 2, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

One of the areas I had on my list to tackle today was my desk.

Yes, the desk I’ve been using for a while now.

I’d emptied the drawers and packed away the contents that used to belong to my dad, but that was as far as it got. Today, I was going to clean them out, so that I could start unpacking some things into them.

Oh, dear. Continue reading →

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