Clean Up

Catch up time, and garden progress

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I am finally able to settle in to start this – though I’m also waiting for a phone call and might be making a trip into town, still, so we’ll see if things get interrupted!

My plan had originally been to drop the truck off this morning, then use the courtesy vehicle to do the stock up shopping in the city. CPP Disability came in yesterday, though, so I figured I may as well do that right away, and not have to worry about driving a strange vehicle in the city. I’ll do another post about the stocking up.

Once home and everything was put away, I grabbed a quick supper, then headed outside. I really wanted to get that bed cleaned up and finished.

Of course, it took longer than expected.

I started working my way down the unfinished side from the North end, closer to the trees. Almost immediately, I could feel I was hitting something not rock with the garden fork. I kept working my way down and around it, but it was a while before I could actually uncover it and start moving it around with my hands.

Yeah, it was a big ol’ tree root.

In the first photo, I’d worked maybe 8 ft down the side before I could uncover it and not have the soil immediately fall and cover it again. The further down I went, the more I could get under it and loosen things up around it.

In the next two photos in the slide show, I’d finally reached a point where the root veered off to the side and out of the bed.

Yes, Sir Robin was helping me the entire time. He was really, really interested in where I was digging!

One I cleared a bit more of the root into the path, I went and got the loppers to cut it. With all the digging I’d already done, it was pretty easy to pull the rest up. It didn’t all some out, though. About a foot or so from the end, it broke free. I think this was actually a piece that branched off an even bigger root, further down!

Before we planted potatoes in this bed, I trenched it. That root was not there in the spring!

Given how far I got before it veered into the path, I can certainly see why I was finding so many tree capillary roots at the south end of the bed.

I got the bed done, though – with another bumper crop of rocks – and used the landscape rake to level the soil and make it all niche and even, as much as I could.

I then hosed it down before I got my second package of painters plastic drop sheet. It’s 10′ wide and 25′ long. It was really calm at the time, so I was able to open it up, then fold it in half, lengthwise, so it was only 5′ wide. Then I covered the bed and made sure to get everything as tight and snug as possible, with the excess length folded over at the south end. I took boards that were around the carrot bed to weight down the ends, rolling the boards in the excess plastic and pulling it tight again, before using the remaining boards I had to weight down the sides. The plastic has good contact with the soil surface, which means it should solarize properly, unlike when I’ve tried to do it over less level beds, or over areas with grass stubble on it. Well. Maybe not “properly, but at least better!

As you can see in the next picture, taken with flash, it was dark by the time I was done.

I stayed out longer to cover the winter squash, summer squash, peppers and remaining eggplants. The overnight low they were predicting had changed again, and we were to expect 5C/41F.

I am so glad I covered all the beds.

We dropped to 3C/37F last night.

The last picture in the series was taken this morning, while I was doing my rounds. It was still too cold to uncover them, though, so it got left until later.

I then headed out to town to drop the truck off at the autobody place for the insurance repairs. Before taking the courtesy vehicle – a 2020 Caravan – we did the necessary paperwork, and I signed an insurance waiver. If I were to get into some sort of accident or damage the vehicle, I’d be responsible for a $750 deductible. Or, I can sign the waiver and pay a little under $8 a day to cover that.

I’ve got the van for four days, or one day. Looking at the time as I write this, I’d say, four days. There was the possibility that they’d get the frame repaired and painted today, to a point that I could bring the truck home while it cured. I would then bring it back on Monday and they’d install the new cover. I would get a phone call before they’re done for the day to find out. I’m pretty sure they close at 5, and it’s past 5 as I write this, but maybe they close at 6. I can’t remember.

I was warned about some unusual things on the van. The first, I misunderstood. She was telling me where the shifter was, and I thought she meant it was behind the steering wheel on the column, like our truck, instead of in the front of the console between the seats, like my mother’s car.

It was neither. It’s behind the steering wheel, on the dash.

It also has a “square” key, which I’d never heard of before. Instead of a metal key, it has a plastic square that gets inserted, just like an ordinary key. The disorienting part of that isn’t just the shape of it. On one side of the square is the bright red panic button!

After spending a bit of time figuring out where things were and adjusting my seat, I headed off to the town to the north of us to pick up more 40 pound bags of kibble. I had just parked when I got a call from the autobody place.

The tech working on my truck, on seeing the condition of the rails that would be painted (only the rails, not the sides and fenders, as that would not be covered by insurance because of the rust), he wanted to know if I preferred to have it done with flatbed paint, instead. There would be no extra cost, and he felt it would give more protection to the rails. After talking about it for a bit, I agreed. It should be interesting to see how it turns out!

I then went into the feed store and paid for four 40 pound bags of kibble. The woman who processed my sale then came and helped me grab the bags. I’d mentioned it was the first time I’d driven this vehicle and, as we came out with the first two bags, I realized I didn’t even know how to open the back of the van. Was there a handle, or would I have to use the key fob, which I would not be able to reach without putting down the bag of kibble?

There was a handle. 😄

Once the bags were loaded, I tried to close it manually, but it didn’t want to close until it got past a certain point. I looked around later, and could see no buttons or anything to make that easier.

When I parked in the garage and took the key out of the ignition, though, I accidentally opened the back of the van! I did figure out how to close it using the fob, at least.

I couldn’t bring the bags in right away, though. It’s been a while since we had to store that many bags of kibble, so I had to organize and make space in the old kitchen, first. Which I did, after finally having breakfast.

Much of what I had to deal with was cardboard. Some was meant for the garden. Others had glossy coatings on them, so they needed to be sorted out. Normally, they would have gone to the burn pile, but we haven’t been able to do a burn in over a year. Between things like the weather, or fire bans, I already had quite a mess to clean up recently. I plan to take it all to the dump, but I won’t be doing a dump run until we get the truck back.

After sorting that out, it was back to doing clean up in the yard and garden. The garden beds got uncovered, though high winds made that a challenge! Then I started working on things like taking down the wire that was used to trellis the peas, and to protect the Arikara squash from critters.

For now, I’ve been putting all the garden stakes, poles, ties, netting, etc. in one spot, before they get a final organizing and bundling and putting away for the winter. I’d put the bent up wire supports that failed to hold up netting under the weight of playing kittens. One of the things I’d done as we emptied the sun room was hose down a cat cave that kept collapsing. I ended up rolling down the sides to try and make it into a sort of nest, but it keeps getting bend out of shape. The “cave” itself is basically around, thick bag with a drawstring cord to close up the top.

Those bent up wires might not be useful for holding up the netting, but I decided to try something with several of them. It’s a heavy gauge wire, but still flexible enough to bend into shape, and keep the shape.

I ended up using three of them to make a wire support for inside the cat cave. Two were formed into rings, with the top ring slightly smaller than the bottom, and a third was wound and bent and wound some more, to hole the top and bottom rinds apart. Then I stuffed it into the cat cave and closed up the drawstring top.

With the top ring where it is, the to can’t close completely anymore, but that’s okay. The sides are now being held up.

The ultimate test will be what happens when the kittens decide to climb all over it. So far, it’s holding!

I’d used three of the wire supports to make that, but had brought four, just in case.

I found a use for that one, too.

Yesterday, I’d picked up replacement sump pump hoses to replace our broken one.

The hose runs along the base of the house to drain into the old kitchen garden. That bend to go to the side instead of straight out (which is how it used to be, before I replaced the old one) was enough to finally break the hose.

Taking off the broken bit and replacing it was easy and fast enough, but I wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again. If only I had something strong, yet flexible, to brace the hose at the bed…

Enter that fourth wire support, some wire cutters and electric tape.

In the last picture, you can see that I set two lengths of the wire on either side of the hose. I taped it to the piece coming out of the wall, first, just to secure it while I worked. The lengths of wire were give a gentle bend, then got taped into place. Only then did I give the hose, which was already stretched along the base of the house, I final straightening out and setting it in place. The new hose is slightly longer than the old hose (which I’d bought from a different company). Which will come in handy in the spring, if it’s wet enough to trigger the sump pump. It reached the rectangular garden bed in the old kitchen better. I’ll want to make a larger, longer, opening under the logs at the end of the bed, and it can then be set right into the opening to drain under the bed, instead of running down the paths, and water whatever gets planted in there from below.

Aside from that, there was just a lot of small things that got done around the yard. It was so incredibly windy, it limited some of the things I could work on. Thankfully, the winds seem to have died down a bit since then.

My daughter, meanwhile, has been going all out on cleaning the sun room – way more than I would have done, I’ll be honest! She even got a household step ladder and a small hand brush to get into less accessible areas. When it comes time to bring things back in, she plans to scrub, then oil, anything with wood. Since we can’t take the cat cage out without dismantling it, she floor can only be washed one side at a time. With the cat cage going on top of interlocking mats, to protect from the cold concrete floor, it has to be thoroughly dry before things can be moved over and the other side can be done.

While she was working on that, I took the hose to pressure was the larger plastic shelves that supported the platform above the cat cage. The bottom shelves, in particular needed a thorough cleaning.

We need to figure out some way to keep critters from using the corners of the room. There’s no room for litter pans there.

Oh, I just got the phone call I was waiting for – and it came after they closed!

We’ve got the van for the weekend.

I also got a final tally on what it will cost. There’s the $500 deductible, of course, but the “betterment” will cost $193.92 after taxes. Add in the waiver I signed, as extra insurance should I get into an accident with the van, there’s another roughly $35 on top.

That’s a solid Costco shopping trip right there. 🫤

It will be so good to have that fixed and a cover on the truck box again. I hate having things in there without a cover, when driving at highway seeds – even though I know that there’s nothing I put back there that might blow away! It’s more that things can be seen and walked off with. Granted, it would take some effort for someone to walk off with a 40 pound bag of litter pellets, but not so much for a 9kg bag of kibble.

So there’s all that caught up with!

Next, we’ll take a look and what my stock up shopping trip looked like for the money.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: last of the potatoes, prepping beds and a bumper crop

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I’m happy to say I was able to get some progress in the garden yesterday evening, and again today.

I did not continue cleaning the sun room today. My daughter will finish that, but she will restart tomorrow. It turned out that, after trying to keep up with me yesterday, she hurt her back! I keep forgetting, I’m the most able bodied person in the household right now. The kittens, meanwhile, have been piling into the cat cage. It got a bit chilly last night – cold enough that I covered the winter squash, but not cold enough to cover the summer squash, peppers or eggplant – and they was a whole crowd of littles in the cat cage’s cat bed. Most of the other cat beds they could access are outside right now. Only one of the smaller kittens has figured out there are cat beds on the platform, and is able to climb up the shelf to get to them. With the floor now dry, I did put one of the cat beds and the self heating mat on the floor for them to use.

This is what I was able to get done yesterday, before it got too dark.

This is the bed that had three types of tomatoes, bush beans and self seeded carrots in it. I pulled the remaining stems and roots of the tomatoes an the bush beans and set them aside. They will get buried in the bed later on. In the second picture, you can see the finished bed. Most of what I pulled out of there can’t go into the compost, as their roots will spread. In the last picture, you can see the bonus Uzbek Golden carrots that were large enough to keep. The greens will also be buried in the bed. I’ll be doing some amending later one. I’ll be using this bed for winter sowing, but have not yet decided what I will put in it.

This afternoon was pretty hot, so I chose to harvest the last of the potatoes, then work on that bed. At this time of the year, and at that time of the day, most of the bed was shaded by trees, so it was a lot more comfortable to work on.

This is how many potatoes I found in the remaining two or three feet of the bed.

I was really surprised by how many tree roots I was finding while I dug them up. That’s quite the distance! I thought that maybe they were from the other direction, but the nearest tree on the south side is the chokecherry tree. They spread through their roots, but the suckers all come up close to the main trunk. As I worked on the bed, though, it was clear what direction the roots were coming from.

I ended up making a short video when I was done.

I cleaned up only one long side of the bed before I had to stop for hydration and sustenance. I’ll probably work on the rest tomorrow. At the end, you can see all the rocks I “harvested”. !!! Keep in mind that this bed had been amended several times, the soil sifted several times, most recently when all the beds were sifted over into their permanent positions. Not only that but this bed was winter sown with summer squash, which did not take, so it was trenched and cleaned up before we planted the potatoes.

All those rocks were what we “grew” since the potatoes were planted in the spring. Just the bigger ones that were easier to pick up, and I know there were plenty that got missed because they kept getting buried in the soil while I loosened it and pulled as many weeds and roots as I could.

Before I headed in for a break, I just had to check out the blooming asters.

Sir Robin was already checking them out.

Still no Cosmos, but there do seem to be a few more flower buds trying to develop.

Tonight is supposed to be a bit warmer, so I don’t plan to cover the winter squash again, unless that changes. The next couple of nights are looking chilly enough that I might cover the other beds, too. Unless I decide to harvest the Turkish Orange eggplants, first. The peppers can stay for a while longer, as long as the weather holds.

I have decided the bed I’m working on now will be where I plant the garlic in a few weeks. This time, I’m thinking of making sure to mark exactly where they are planted, and then interplanting with something else before the ground freezes. Maybe spinach and/or some other greens. In theory, the garlic should protect any greens growing with them from the deer, same as onions can. The greens would be finished before the garlic is ready to harvest, and could be succession sowed with something else that’s quick growing. Bush beans, perhaps. We shall see.

It’s not a lot of progress. As usual, it was a bigger job than expected. Particularly as I got closer to the north end of the bed, where both the tree roots and rocks were so much denser. Still, a little progress is better than none at all!

The Re-Farmer

Starry night, and the start of a huge job

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I went for a walk last night. Yesterday was the solstice, so it’s already getting dark a lot earlier. The sky was clear, so I tried some of the “pro” settings on my phone to try and get some pictures.

I didn’t have any sort of tripod set up, so I lay my phone on a surface and used voice commands to take the pictures – turning off my flashlight before I did, of course. Which worked for the most part, except the cats were very curious. Especially when I used the wall of a raised bed to set my phone on. Photobombing a camera while taking night results in some rather unusual glowy fuzzy shapes. 😄

Today, meanwhile, my younger daughter and I got started on the sun room. It needs to be cleaned out and prepared for winter.

The first part of the job was just… aweful. I did not take “before” pictures. Too gross! One side of the sun room was supposed to be for storing some of the yard and garden tools, folding camp chairs, a large garbage can and spare litter pans. Of course, the cats knocked things all over the place and, despite having a litter box available to use, they would go into the tiniest corners to do their business. The skunks and raccoons sometimes did, too. It should have had a spring cleaning, but that didn’t pan out, so basically it was a year’s worth of critters getting into things, knocking things about, and making biological messes.

Thank God it’s just a concrete floor in there!

We started off filling some garbage bags first, until I could get at some of the storage bins and whatnot and started moving them under the canopy tent. I’m going to have to go through the bins themselves to organize and probably throw away some things. Yeah, they even found a way to make messes in some of the storage bins!

We also took out all the kibble trays to hose them off and set them soaking, along with various buckets, the extra litter pans. The broom I keep in the sun room has very stiff bristles so, once we got the floor clear enough, I hosed it down a bit and used it as a scrub brush.

The problem with hosing the floor down, though, is that the sun room’s floor is no longer level. I’m guessing the rain barrel was allowed to overflow too many times, and the corner is undermined. Mostly, the concrete sidewalk block the rain barrel rests on is sinking at one end, but when I was cleaning up the old kitchen garden after we moved here, I found that the corner of the sun room floor next to it was losing the rocks and gravel from under it. This is why we had such a hard time replacing the outer sun room door. The door frame is no longer straight.

Anyhow, as I was scrubbing the floor on one side of the room, the water started draining towards the sinking corner. Which meant it was going under the cat cage. The cat cage is sitting on top of interlocking foam mats for insulation, so at least it wasn’t getting anything inside the cat cage wet.

The first picture was taken after sweeping, but before scrubbing. The table saw still needs to be taken out, and that counter shelf will need to be moved out so we can clean under it. The cats have knocked all sorts of things under there, and both kittens and skunks like to hide under there. The skunk has gotten so big, it can barely fit anymore, but it still squeezes its way under!

The second picture is after the initial scrubbing. The floor was still wet and the interlocking foam pieces were outside, getting cleaned in stages, so I grabbed some of the rigid foam insulation that used to be used between the main entry doors to try and keep the frost from building up inside. Now that the inner door is removed, since it can no longer be closed, we’d set the insulation sheet up against the storm door when we had a few really cold nights a while back. The cats, however, LOVE this insulation for scratching, which they would do when no one was around to chase them off. They scratched their way through until it broke. So I used the pieces to put on the still wet floor and moved the cage cage over it.

A couple of kittens got a ride in the process!

When Brussel had her litter in the cat cage so early in the season, I’d put the windshield sun shade around the back of the cat cage – the window side – to try and keep the chill out. It eventually got knocked out of reach, but once the cat cage was out, I could get at it. I decided to set it on top of the cat cage. Cats like to hang out on there, squeezed under the platform, and there’s carboard to make a floor over the wire panels, but one corner wasn’t covered. I decided to put the sun shade on to, making sure the open corner was covered. I think the cats will like sitting or lying on it.

Once the cat cage was out, I could clear under the platform. Huge mess around where the cat cage was, including from the water that had just drained under there while I was scrubbing the floor on the other side. Of course, there was also stuff that got knocked about. Under one of the heat lamps was a cat bed that needed to be hosed down. In the next picture, you can see the initial cleaning. Tomorrow, we’ll need to dismantle the platform and take it, and the shelves, out completely, so we can give the area a good cleaning. Kittens and other critters would hide in the corners and left “presents” for us to clean up.

Just barely visible behind the inner door is a metal garbage can. That’s used to store things with long handles – hoes, rakes, spades, etc. I made sure it was resting on scrap pieces of rigid insulation, not directly on the floor, and I’m really glad I did that!

When it was time to stop for the day, and brought the cleaned food trays in and set them near the cat cage. Then I did an early cat feeding. I am still giving some cat soup for Frank’s babies, inside the cat cage, so I hope they’ll accept it and be okay with the new location. I put the littles inside the cage with the cat soup, but they left right away. They seem to prefer dry kibble more! Hopefully, Frank will also be good with the new location. While I was cleaning under the platform, she kept running in and out, looking pretty alarmed about the while thing.

Good grief. It feels like the day should be almost over, but I’m looking at the time and just realizing it’s not even 5pm yet!

I am not at all up to working on the sun room more, but there’s plenty of time to do some clean up in the garden. A much more pleasant job!!

The Re-Farmer

I fought a tree, and won

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I’m still having a hard time after yesterday’s assassination, so my posts might seem a bit out of sorts for the next while.

This is what I meant to write about, yesterday. I fought a tree and – eventually! – won.

This is what came down, about a week ago.

I originally thought both pieces were from the same tree, but I was wrong. The piece that fell on the hawthorn was actually from the tree that was holding up the other piece!

The first order of business was to get the piece on the hawthorn clear. I didn’t stop to take pictures, mostly because I was more focused on not getting stabbed. At one point, while cutting sections of the dead branch clear, I felt something on my chest. Looking town, I found a twig of hawthorn had come loose and a single 2-3 inch long thorn was stabbing me, right in the sternum! Also, thank goodness I always wear a hat!

Thankfully, that living fence my mother planted years ago isn’t just hawthorn, but also caragana. Those were much easier to work around! Still, it was very careful going before I cut enough free that I could move the rest of the log off. A few broken hawthorn branches had to be cut off. Those ended up on the branch pile just past the fence by the fire pit. No way those were going onto the branch pile meant for the fire pit!

In the process I realized the piece that was hung up on the branch above was so long, its end was actually entangled with the one I cut up and got free! After the shorter section was down, I decided to go ahead and try to get the other one down. It was too high up for me to use my baby chainsaw (electric pruning saw with a 4″ blade) to cut into smaller sections first, so I got the extended pole pruning saw. There was no way to actually cut anything with it – it all just swung and bounced around – but I was able to use the hook at the end of the saw and simply yank on it.

Which left me with this.

Still hung up at the top, and held in place by two branches.

The extended pole pruning saw was at maximum length; the knobs to loosen or tighten the clamp so the length could be adjusted broke off long before we moved here. While using it to pull at the branches, it would shift and spin, with the weight resting on first one branch, then the other, before the two sections of the extended pole finally separated. I didn’t feel like getting pliers to deal with that, plus it was obviously going to take more than yanking on it with the hook to get the whole thing down. Time to shift gears.

What I needed was rope, and a fairly long one. With how much the whole thing was spinning, its fall would be completely unpredictable, and I needed to keep my distance.

I found some rope in the old garden shed. I tied it on the smaller branch that was holding the entire weight and was able to shift it a bit, but it wasn’t enough. In the end, I made a stop cut in the branch a few feet above ground, then shifted the rope near the cut. That way, when I next pulled on the rope (with my end of the rope wrapped around a stick to make a handle), the smaller branch would break and the whole thing could drop. Which is exactly what it did.

Right on top of the other side of the Y branch.

Okay. I’ll just tie the rope to the end, near the ground, and pull it up. There was hardly any contact with the big tree branch that it was leaning against at the top, so it should have been fairly easy.

It wasn’t.

Every time I shifted the branch, the end would dig deeper into the soil rather than lifting up.

I even used a nearby tree to wrap the rope around, then used the stick I was using as a handle around the rope on the other side of my handy tree to get extra torque.

It still just dug deeper.

I had to find a different solution.

After ensuring it was safe to do so, I made a pair of stop cuts on opposite sides of the branch, a few feet above ground, and with a couple of inches of space between them. Then I set the rope in between the stop cuts and went back to my tree.

It worked.

The branch broke at the stop cuts and the whole thing came down, falling in the opposite direction that I was pulling from. It didn’t even land on the hawthorn, but on the ground beside it!

As for the section of branch below the stop cuts, it was still sticking up from the ground. After pulling it up and seeing just how far it had been driven into the soil, it was no wonder pulling from the bottom couldn’t work!

Next was clean up time for both sections.

I broke down all the smaller pieces and made two piles; one for fire wood, the other for kindling. The pieces that were too big for my baby chainsaw would have to wait. I’ll break those down with the chain saw or, if I’m not up to dragging an extension cord across the yard, with a buck saw. For now, they’ve just been moved aside. These have been dead for quite a long time and are completely dry, so they weren’t particularly heavy – at least not like it was while the entire weight was balanced on a couple of inches!

In the last picture of the slide show above, I have arrows pointing to where the branches had broken off from. The tree on the left lost its other section a few years back, in the winter, landing on top of the canopy tent we had near the fire pit for winter cookouts. With this other section broken off, that dead tree can now be safely cut down without any risk of it getting hung up on anything as it comes down.

The other tree on the right still has a section that is alive, but there’s another large section that’s dead. That one has grown off into the row of elm trees behind the storage house. We don’t have the equipment needed to safely take it down in sections.

There’s a third tree on the far left of the photo that is also got dead sections. That tree is the largest of the three and one of the dead branches is massive. It also stretches out over the open yard, so that part at least will not require any special equipment to get it down. I do want to leave part of it up. It’s almost horizontal from the trunk, which makes a great place for the cats to hang out. The fact that it’s so thick, my chainsaw would not be able to cut through it at the trunk without getting creative has a bit to do with it, too!

Before working on this, I’d already gotten quite a few other things done in garden clean up. My daughter helped me with the awkward stuff, like straightening and untangling the netting and getting that rolled up for storage. We also got the catio moved closer to the house, and I got a whole bunch of other little things done. By the time I got the pieces of tree down and cleaned up, I’ve been working outside for several house, so I was done.

While I tried to be pre-emptive before going to bed, the exertion did catch up with me and I started to get hit with a Charlie horse during the night. A mild one, thankfully, and some Voltaren took care of it rather quickly.

Still, I decided today would be a good day to avoid more physical exertion. It has turned out to be a dreary day, anyhow. Which has suited the mood, really. I’ve been fighting tears for most of the day. I’ve never been affected by the death of someone I don’t know personally like this before. It’s more than just Charlie Kirk, who was such an amazing person, nor the circumstances of his assassination. It’s the culmination of something that I’ve been watching build up for years. It’s not just grief, but anger, too. Being in Canada is no barrier, either. While leftists have been celebrating the assassination, there are already people saying that Premier Danielle Smith of Alberta should be “next”. If anything, leftists here in Canada are worse, as they hold more institutional power.

I have no illusions about the evil we’re dealing with. I’ve seen it far too often, and I’ve been threatened myself. I’m long past the stage where I can be intimidated and, my goodness, do these leftists loose their s**t when someone stands up to them rather than bend the knee.

In the end, though, they are cowards. It takes a special kind of coward to do what was done to Charlie Kirk.

The Re-Farmer

Foggy morning, parasitic weeds, cuteness, garden update and doctor visits.

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The garden clean up has officially started!

Not until rather late in the day for that sort of thing, but it’s started!

This morning was surprisingly foggy, and actually seemed to get denser as I did my rounds.

While going around the row of crab apple trees, I noticed some pretty little flowers in the grass. Just a little patch.

Thankfully, just a little patch!

I pulled all that I could find. We have these all along the shoulders of our gravel roads. In one of the nasty voice mail messages our vandal left on my brother’s cell phone, he said that there was red bartsia in the second quarter section our renter is taking care of. That quarter is just used for pasture now, though it also has trees, a pond and marshland. Our vandal still thinks the property should be his, so he was having a screaming fit on the message about how I should get my [insert vile and disgusting insult] daughters out there with lawn mowers to get rid of it.

If you follow the link about the weed, you’ll note it specifically says, “Mowing is not reccomended.”

With the arrangement made with the rent, they’ll be the ones dealing with it. This stuff is parasitic with grasses, and can do real damage to pastures. Cows can’t eat it.

We can’t do much about the roadways, but we can keep it out of the areas we are responsible for, at least! It’s bad enough that we’re dealing with creeping bellflower and creeping Charlie.

While uncovering the garden beds this morning, I was happy to finally see some colour among the peppers.

That was this morning. This evening, I went looking and did find another with some colour showing at the very tip. Also red. No sign of yellow or orange in any of this mix of peppers.

I didn’t start any projects outside this morning, as my daughter and I had consecutive appointments with our doctor early this afternoon. We got some Dairy Queen coupons in the mail, so we left early enough to have lunch in town before continuing on to larger town our doctor is in (I just double checked; it’s not large enough to be considered a city, yet). They weren’t very busy, and my daughter got called in for her appointment right on time. Mine was half an hour later, and I got called in on time, too.

All I was there for was to go over my X-rays. With my hand/wrist, it was confirmed that I did NOT break anything in my fall. It just still hurts at times. More my shoulder than where I landed on my palm, even after all this time. Not that anything could have been done about it, if there had been a break. It’s been quite a while since my fall!

It was my hip that I really wanted to see about. According to the lab report, there is actually very little change since the last time I got X-rays done, some five years ago! The arthritis and bone spurs aren’t any worse.

I told her about the issues I’ve been having. I told her, with the anti-inflammatories making everything else so much better, when it comes to things like my hip, the pain is more acute, now that there isn’t so many other aches and pains muffling it. She was nodding her head as was saying this. It’s very typical! I described the issues I was having with my hip, using last night as an example. As soon as I lie down, it starts to hurt. Eventually, I had to get up and take some pain killers, which didn’t really do much. I got up again and used some of the Voltaren lotion, and that finally did the trick. Only then could I sleep. It’s been getting more painful, though at least I can now put weight on that leg when taking the stairs again. When I mentioned that, she suggested it was due to increased activity. I told her that was very likely, since I’m outside working and winterizing while the weather is good. She just laughed and said, “making hay while the sun shines!” Yup. She gets it!

She said that it sounded like tendonitis, so she has referred me to a sports injury physician. This would be in a clinic in the city, but one that is straightforward for us to get to. It would be decided by the specialist, but she felt that getting a steroid injection to the hip might be helpful.

She was writing up the referral as I was leaving. I was done my appointment a whole 6 minutes after it was scheduled! My daughter had already booked her own follow up appointment a couple of months from now and was waiting for me in the truck. No extra trips to the pharmacy or anything, but we did make a quick stop at a grocery store and a gas station before heading home. I was looking to get a flat of 30 eggs, but chokes at the $15 price tag. It was actually cheaper to buy two 18’s, instead. Weird.

After we got home, I was soon outside, starting with the evening feeding of the yard cats. I’ve actually reduced the amount of food I put out, because there are so few adult cats around these days!

Must share the adorableness, of course.

Frank is such a good mama, and her kittens are adorable. When I checked on them this morning, one kitten had one eye stuck shut, which was easy to address. Another had both eyes stuck shut and I ended up bringing that one into the bathroom for an eye washing. This afternoon, that kitten’s eyes were both stuck shut again, so we’ll have to keep close watch on it.

Speaking of good mamas…

Adam is so patient!

After I took the video that’s after the still shot, that tuxedo pushed its way under the smaller kittens, hunting for nip! Only then did Adam move, pushing him away with a back leg so he’s stop messing with a kitten that was still attached.

As I was scrubbing out and refilling water bowls, I spotted some kittens in the portable greenhouse. Now that they’ve discovered it, they really enjoy staying in there – even when the thermometer in there was reading 50C/122F!!!

I’m not sure if the little tabby in the first picture is part of Slick’s litter or not. They usually stick close to junk pile, shrine feeding station and isolation shelter, but there’s one little tabby that comes to the house and even into the sun room. I think it’s actually from another litter, but I really can’t tell.

That black and white with the blue eyes in the next photo is a stunner.

After tending to the yard cats, I started watering the garden. There was just enough water in the rain barrel to do the old kitchen garden beds. The Turkish Orange eggplants were drooping! Everything else was looking better, but those Turkish Orange eggplant seem to be really sensitive to all sorts of things. They can’t handle cooler temperatures well, and they seem to not handle heat very well, either! Or at least the dryness that comes with the heat. They’re watered just as much as the peppers, which haven’t shown any drooping at all. We reached a high of 23C/73F, but our low is supposed to be 9C/48F, so I’ll be covering them for one more night. According to the 10 day forecast, the overnight temperatures are expected to be warm enough to not cover them anymore, and I could even be leaving the winter squash uncovered for the night, too.

Once the watering was done, it was time to start.

It’s clean up time!

For now, I’m working on infrastructure.

The woven bamboo stake trellis I made for the Spoon tomatoes is now dismantled. The tomato cage wall I set up to keep the deer from eating the Super Sugar Snap peas I was leaving to go to seed is down. The soaker hose that was around the Spoon tomatoes and melons was removed, but I’m leaving the one around the winter squash for now. Hoops and stakes and fasteners collected. Most of the stakes with deer distracting pinwheels on them were already set aside. Some of the water bottle noise makers were collected. Not pictured is the post I’ve started using to hold the plastic collars that were around the Spoon tomatoes. I haven’t taken the ones off the melons, yet.

Remarkably, I’m seeing new flowers on the pumpkin vines I thought were killed off. There’s even some melons, still green and trying to bloom. I think the plastic collars actually helped them survive the frosts! My big surprise this morning, though, as finding more bush beans to pick. Only a small handful, but I expect to continue to get little handfuls of beans for at least another couple of weeks, if the weather holds, and I keep watering!

I’ve got a lot more stakes and ties to collect, but I will need to snag possibly both daughters to help me remove the protective netting that is currently pulled up and over the tops of the beds. It needs to be stretched out and straightened before we can fold it up into more manageable sizes, then roll it up for storage, and this particular netting is surprisingly difficult to handle. It snags on EVERYTHING!

As I clean up all the structural stuff, it’s all being brought to the bench by the garden shed for sorting and organizing.

This was the stuff I could do with the time I had this evening. With no outings scheduled, for the next few days I hope to work on more time consuming projects.

I’ve been thinking about that inner wall on the garden bed in the old kitchen garden I’ve been working on. I was going to take out the wattles I’ve got so far, add another stake in between each of the current ones, and find more material to weave a wall. The problem is, even with extra stakes to weave around, I just don’t think I have suitable material for weaving.

So I think I’m going to skip the weaving entirely.

Instead, I’ll do a version of what I think is called a dead hedge, though a very short, narrow version. I’ll be adding vertical stakes to make two rows, a few inches apart, and just lay the horizontals in between them to form the wall. No trying to bend anything. As long as it’s dense enough to hold the soil in, I’ll be happy!

That narrow little bed is taking a ridiculously long time to work on. Lots of experimenting in the process.

That’s just one job I want to work on. Unfortunately, there are so many larger jobs to get done before it starts getting too cold, it gets hard to prioritize which ones need to be started first! Looking at the long range forecast, I’ve got maybe 9 or 10 days before the temperatures start to drop. There’s even a mix of rain and snow in the long range forecast, a little over two weeks from today.

Well, however it works out. As long as I have garden beds ready in October, for planting garlic first, and then doing our winter sowing before the ground freezes.

Lots of work to do!

The Re-Farmer

Little by little…

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… it’s getting done.

I headed out this afternoon to continue working on cleaning up the main garden area. I started off by doing some weed trimming first, as I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to do it after mowing the overgrown area. I wanted to get around the log framed raised beds, as they will be getting wood chips added to their paths soon. I also trimmed around the newest food forest additions.

Our corded weed trimmer died on us earlier this year, so my brother dug his battery operated weed trimmer out of storage for me to use. Thankfully, he has many batteries! I drained two of them and was working on a third before I finished. Along with the main garden area, I made sure to trim around the east yard garden beds, as well as some stumps, rocks and roots, so that they where no longer hidden. Hitting those with a lawn mower is not fun!

The trimming done, my focus was the overgrown area, starting with opening up the higher traffic area towards the fruit trees, where I run a hose through to the old leaky rain barrel. This meant setting the mower as high as it could go for a first run.

Here is how it was yesterday afternoon, before any mowing started.

I took that one before starting to mow around where new trellis tunnel beds will be built, without trying for the overgrown area yet. I got an in progress photo last night, and then again today, when I had to stop.

In the first photo, you can see I cleared away the logs and solarization plastic. The cardboard was left for now. It will be laid over where the next trellis bed will be built and, if there is enough, over some of the paths before the wood chips are laid down.

The next photo is almost depressing. It really doesn’t look like much was done! That is partly because the remaining tall grass hides what was mowed around the sliver buffalo berry area. It really is a huge space, too.

The gas can is next to the stump that was under the pile of logs, where a diseased crab apple tree had died and was removed. There’s another off frame to the left, but it’s almost low enough to mow over.

I didn’t even need to refill the gas tank before I had to stop. It was simply too hot and humid, and I was starting to feel like I was about to pass out. Definitely time to get in out of the sun and hydrate!

Once that last section of tall grass, poplar saplings, alfalfa, clover, stink weed and various other things gets cleared with the push mower, it will need to be done again at a lower setting – but at that point, we could use the riding mower. Carefully. I don’t want to break my brother’s riding mower in there!

Over time, this area will get at least five more low raised beds that will be paired off with trellis tunnels, for a total of six, including the current one we’re already using. We might go with one more pair after that, but we may not need to. We won’t be going all the way in that direction with garden beds, though, as we will be planting more food forest items out there, and I want to have a wider lane between the two areas, in case we need to drive through with a vehicle.

In the other direction, the existing beds will be framed with logs, plus the area that used to be our squash patch, which is also overgrown and needs to be mowed, will be worked on. Instead of more 18′ beds, though, sections of it will be made into perennial gardens, like the asparagus bed we started this year. We might also make wider blocks for planting things like corn, potatoes or even wheat, instead of the long and narrow beds we’ve got going right now. The area we first grew what we thought was kulli corn but was actually Montana Morado has some really good soil, compared to everywhere else in that area, so I would really like to reclaim it again.

In the longer term, after we get rid of that killer row of elms and maples along the north side of our garden beds, we will probably make more raised beds, right on top of where the trees are now. Partly to make sure there is no chance that they will grow back, partly to reclaim more garden space. When I was a kid, where those trees are now was part of my mother’s garden, and they are taking up a LOT of square footage that used to grow food!

A lot of clean up will be required before we can build anything there. For now, we’ve been tossing a lot of the rocks we’ve been picking out of the garden beds into where the trees are. Some of them are large enough that we’ll likely use them to weigh down row covers or the like. With how many rocks we grow every spring, we could probably collect enough to make some gabion structures. Along with the rocks, there’s also lots of Virginian Creeper and Creeping Charlie, among other things, that will need to be dealt with, too.

All in good time.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

A huge job!

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Before I get into the progress we got done while my brother and his wife were here, I must share the cuteness!

The kittens had all been asleep, curled up around each other, but my trying to take a photo woke up the little black and white kitten. Who looks huge compared to his adopted sister!

I love that little black chin.

While my daughter and I were heading to the city, my brother and his wife were heading her to the farm! Along with stuff they had to do in their stored areas, my brother checked on the septic ejector. We’d had to use electric tape to fix the heat tape to the portion that is above ground, and my brother had to take it off before he could open up the cap and check inside the stand pipe. Using the copper pipe we kept nearby, he later told me that he was hitting ice about 4 feet down. No chance of being able to switch over from the emergency diverter right now! He had looked for the de-icer we used before, but it just isn’t available this time of year. He found something else meant for RVs and poured that into the stand pipe. Hopefully, that will get things thawed out faster. He wrapped the heat tape back around the stand pipe lower down, so that we can still access and open the cap if we need to. It turns itself on and off depending on the temperature, so he wants to leave it for now.

I had some concerns about how loose the soil around the new ejector is – plus, a portion of the old ejector’s stand pipe was still sticking out of the ground, about 10 feet away. Once the renter’s cows are rotated to this quarter, they could easily sink into the soil/clay/gravel around the excavated area and injure themselves, or even break the new ejector, as it’s so much shorter than the old one was. My brother cut away the piece of the old stand pipe that was sticking out and filled the buried portion with soil. He also went into some of his supplies that they brought from their sold property to here, putting in some fence posts, then using some of their rolls of snow fencing around the entire ejector area, including the metal sheet we have to direct the flow towards the low area, away from the barn. He secured it as best he could for now, but I will need to go back there with more twine to secure it more thoroughly. Plus, there is a gap that cows could easily get through. I need to find something I can put across there that can be easily opened like a gate. It will be some time before we have cows out here, so there’s no hurry on that, but I’d rather get it done sooner rather than later.

That was not the big job, though.

The big job was working on that dead tree that fell on the outhouse.

My brother had also been thinking about how to get that off, without destroying the outhouse. It does still get used, even with the tree sitting on it!

Part of the problem is that the top of the tree fell on top of another tree, and is stuck. That’s the only thing holding it up and keeping it from crushing the outhouse! So it’s a good thing, even though it makes it so much more difficult to get the tree off.

One of the first things my brother wanted to do was cut off the top of the fallen tree, on the far side of the tree that’s holding it up, to get some of the weight off. He set up a ladder against the tree holding the fallen tree up and, after trying several other things first, ended up using my little electric chain saw. He cut through only until we could hear it starting to crack. It was too dangerous to try and cut all the way through while on a ladder. Once he got that far, he climbed back up the ladder with a rope to toss it over the top of the tree, using a hammer as a weight, on the far side of the cut.

The next while was spent trying to get the top of the tree down with the rope. At one point, my brother and his wife were pulling the ends of the rope together from the same side, which caused the entire tree trunk to sort of roll, rocking the outhouse in the process! The rocking even caused the door to pop open. In the end, they went one on each side of the fallen tree, trying to pull it down. The problem was that the tip of the tree was on yet another tree, eventually getting caught between a branch and the trunk. This other tree, however, was also quite dead. When the top of the fallen tree finally gave out at where my brother had cut it with the chain saw, the heavy end dropped straight down, and the tree it was hung up on fell and broke in several places, hitting the ground in pieces. The top of the tree on the outhouse, however, ended up standing on its end, up against yet another tree – and it’s still standing there now!

The next thing to do was to start cutting away branches. Some, my brother could cut away using his extended pole chainsaw/pruner, but with others, it was back up the ladder with our electric chain saw. He got as much as he could, while my SIL and I grabbed and hauled away the branches.

There was only so much they could get done tonight, though.

In the first image above, you can see where the branches above the outhouse roof were cut away. He even took a chain saw to the sticky-outy-parts of the roots at the base of the tree.

My SIL noticed something interesting, though, as he was up there.

If you look at the next couple of photos in the slide show above, you can just see that the tree is no longer in contact with the outhouse roof! There was more damage done to the corner of the roof when the tree was being rocked while the top was being pulled down. While my brother was on the ladder, cutting, my SIL could see that the trunk was rolling slightly, back and forth, with each cut.

That tree it landed on is holding it up off the outhouse roof completely, now!

With the top and most of the branches removed, a lot of weight has been taken off of the fallen tree. We now have to figure out how to keep that weight off the outhouse while trying to get it down. They’re thinking of using rachet straps and another tree.

It will have to wait, though, until the next time they’re able to come out here and work on it.

Today has been a VERY windy day, and the entire time we were out there, we could hear squeaky noises from other dead trees in the spruce grove, rubbing against each other. There is one dead tree close to the house that died after we moved out here. It needs to be taken down as soon as possible, as this one could potentially fall onto the house. At least with the direction of today’s winds, if it did fall, it would have been away from the house. The problem with all these dead trees that need to be cut down is that we’re often far too windy to do so safely!

I am so grateful that they were able to come out today and get so much progress on this tree. It’s still possible that, in the process of trying to get that tree down, it could end up destroying the outhouse, but at least now there is some hope of saving it. We’d fixed up the inside of the outhouse already, and had plans to fix up the roof and replace the moss covered shingles with some of the metal roof pieces we still have lying about. More repairs will need to be done now, of course, but that’s okay. If we can salvage it, we can get a few more years out of it. Hopefully, we’ll have the outdoor bathroom with composting toilet we are planning to build done well before this outhouse is no longer useable! The location I have in mind for it needs to be kept open for a while longer, though, as we’ll be dragging dead trees through there for some time, as we harvest them. They will mostly be used to build more raised garden beds.

Lots of work to do, that’s for sure! It’s going to be a lot easier, now that my brother’s equipment it out here, though. My goodness. We’re probably going to be able get more done whenever my brother is able to come out on the weekends, than we’ve been able to do in the 7 years we’ve been living here, just because his tools and equipment will be available.

What a concept.

The Re-Farmer

Taking a break from good progress

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Today, I started on cleaning and organizing the basement.

Again.

A few years back, we were able to clear out all sorts of things from the “new” basement – the part that’s under the addition added in the 70’s. Lots of stuff went into the barn for storage until we could figure out what to do with them. Lots went to the dump. Eventually, we got it to the point that we could scrub and sanitize the concrete floor, and set it up into a useable space. We were even able to turn a table down there into a work station that I was able to use for wood carving and other general small building projects.

Then we used it as a maternity ward when Butterscotch and Beep Beep were both pregnant at the same time again.

Then we blocked off access to the old part basement so we could let the case into the new part basement. It became where we kept most of the litter boxes and and food bowls.

The cats, being cats, ended up using pretty much the entire space, as litter boxes. Sadly, that included my work station, causing damage to some of my tools, including some of my carving tools.

Then we had some wet springs and discovered the weeping tile was no longer doing its job. As water seeped through and fans needed to be set up, we had to start moving things wherever we could find the space, to get them out of the water, even though they were already on top of things like floor tiles that we found, to keep them from having direct contact with the concrete.

Eventually, we had to stop allowing the cats in the basement at all, and it’s been quite a disaster ever since.

Which meant we could move the barrier between the basements (there is no door; just a vaguely door shaped hole in the old basement wall), so we no longer have to go upstairs and around to the other door to go from one basement to the other.

It also means we have a large, cat free space.

Right now, my goal is to set up a space where I can start seeds in the last week of March. My original thought was to reclaim the work station and use that.

Well, that didn’t quite work out.

Because of how disorganized things have become, I need to work in stages, and that table was the first stage.

The table itself is a bit rickety, and has a larger sheet of not-plywood on top. After clearing the surface, I decided to take it off completely to see why the the table was so unstable.

It turned out that the surface was two wide boards nailed to the frame. The frame itself has extra cross pieces that allow for long items to be stored underneath – something I’ve found quite handy. There were still a few things under there, so that got taken out, too.

In moving the table around, I found the corners of one board were lifting, so I decided to secure both boards with screws. I used the old nails as guides on where to drill the pilot holes, since the frame they were on hid the supports they were nailed to. On one side, while drilling the pilot holes, I discovered gaps and had to drill new ones about an inch over. Then I had to add a couple more screws at each corner to secure it to the outer part of the frame as well as the supports I couldn’t actually see, underneath.

Securing it with screws did improve the ricketiness, but one corner still seemed to be lifting somehow. I finally tipped it on its side to see what was under there.

Which is when I could see just where these boards came from and, to be honest, it broke my heart a little.

Years ago, my parents bought some property as an investment. The building used to be a general store in the front, with living quarters in the back. The general store itself closed some time in the 60’s. There was a semi-detached storage building (which is now here at the farm), and I remember finding old inventory lists from 1963.

Most of the wall shelves were removed. I have a large section of one against the wall in my bedroom right now. Smaller sections were turned into dividers between the living and dining rooms. Other parts and pieces of them have been turning up in various places around the property.

The wood that was used to make these shelves is really excellent – and very distinctive in their size and colour.

The underside of the table had that distinctive colour. I couldn’t see it on the top, because it had been so scoured and damaged.

Even the larger board I moved looks like it came from this old store. Once I saw the underside of it, there were “shadows” showing it was part of something else. I even remember what it was. There was a multi-tiered display shelf in the old store, and this was the top of it.

Which also explains the cut off corners.

There is another sheet of this same wood that’s even larger that we found while cleaning the basement, and I now realize it would have been a lower level of this display shelf.

It’s such a shame that someone took apart these shelves and used this excellent wood to basically make a scrap material work table, and the surface got so damaged.

I never did find why it still seemed rickety, though. In fact, it handled being moved around quite well.

Once I had it upright again, I realized the narrower size of the table was much easier to reach around, and I considered not putting the sheet of not-plywood back on. However, my husband had picked up a huge self healing cutting mat for the work station, and it was finally going to be used – and it was wider than the table!

So, the top sheet went back on, and it turned out to be just a fraction wider than the cutting mat.

Then I put stuff back on the table, and I now have a work station again.

Yes, that’s a re-purposed gun rack.

There is an outlet on a pillar opposite this wall and I’ve got a power bar running from there, across a floor joist in the ceiling, and a number of hooks to hold power cords up and out of the way. This allowed me to use my Dremel and wood burning tool, and now the charger for my drill and driver batteries. The power bar has USB ports, so I can set up a charger cable for my phone, too.

That top board is not attached in any way, so when it was time to put the vice back, I didn’t want it over the cutting mat. It is now on one end and holding the top piece to the table surface together. The top piece is almost exactly the same length as the table.

Before I’d put the table back and starting returning things, I made sure to clean the floor underneath as best I could without actually mopping it. I could see that the bottoms of the table legs had water damage. After looking around for something to protect them, I found my stash of old sour cream containers. I’ve been cutting those up to make plant markers, and had a bunch of them waiting to be used for that. It turns out the table legs fit in them, so we now have protection from water, if we get another wet spring.

Once that was done, I was happy to have a work station again.

However, I still don’t have a place to start seeds!

So I started working on the next section of the basement, at one end, clearing it out and mopping it. We have a low-to-the-ground twin size bed frame one of my nephews made that we painted and have been using for all sorts of things, inside and out. Once the end was mopped, I set it up under the counter was what was supposed to be a bar my late brother started building when he was in his teens and never quite finished. It has an outlet on the “outside” of the counter that we have found quite handy.

The bed frame is now set up under the counter, on bricks to keep it out of any water should we have issues again. I will be storing larger stuff on it, but made sure to plug an extension cord for us to use, as we won’t be able to access that outlet once the things are moved onto the bed frame.

The bed frame’s platform needed to be mopped, too.

After that was done, I set up a blower fan facing that end of the basement and am taking a break while it dries.

Oh! Break time is over! My brother is now here and in the old basement, figuring out how to set up the bypass valve so we can switch between the ejector and the emergency septic bypass. as needed – and not have to remove and switch pipes every time!

My brother is the best!

The Re-Farmer

Clearing the lane

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Yes!

Finally!

I was able to get out with the chainsaw and work on that dead spruce tree.

It was still damp out, but more because it’s not warm enough for things to dry than because of any rain. We’re under a weather watch right now, as a large system is being blown almost straight North from the US, so the southern and eastern parts of our province are expected to get a storm. Locally, we’re expected to start getting rain at about 7am tomorrow morning. It’s then expected to continue to rain, off and on, through to the next morning, when it is supposed to become a mix of rain and snow.

Based on the current forecasts, today was pretty much my last day to get this done.

Here is my Instagram slideshow of how it went.

The first two pictures were taken before I got started. That’s basically how it has been since my daughter was last able to work on trimming away branches.

Which was the first part of what I had to do. I had my baby chainsaw (electric pruner) for most of that job. This part took the longest, because I took the time to break down the branches to fit into the wagon, then dumped them on the big branch pile in the outer yard. A lot of these were branches from the diseased crab apple tree, so they need to be burned. Previously, we were able to get the branch pile chipped, but this year we’ve been piling up diseased branches as well as things like squash plants that had powdery mildew on them.

While cleaning up the branches, I found the remains of an old bird’s nest.

When I finally got things clear enough to start using the chain saw on the crab apple tree, Syndol decided that would be a good time to climb the tree! I even cut away a broken section while he was up there, hoping the noise would have him jump down, but nope! In the end, I dumped another load of branches and came back before he finally made his way down.

Then it was more cutting and clearing and cutting and clearing. Crab apple tree branches are so bent and twisted, they took a remarkably long time to deal with. The wood is so much heavier, too. The difference is quite noticeable when I had pieces of apple tree cut quite short to load into the wagon and haul away, then tossing them on top of the pile, then started working on the spruce tree. I cut sections that were much longer than the apple tree trunk pieces, and the spruce tree’s trunk was at least twice as think at the top section of the tree, yet were so much lighter!

In the end, I had to stop because it was getting too dark. I left a section of the crab apple trunk alone, so that we could easily see it when we can finish cleaning it up later – likely in the spring. I was able to load three sections of the spruce tree’s trunk into the wagon to haul away (my apologies for the very fuzzy picture!) – that will NOT be going onto the burn pile, but will be stacked near the old garden shed – while a couple of larger pieces were left for later. The main thing is that there is now a cleared land that we can walk through – or drive through, if necessary.

Once the cut pieces of trunk are cleared away, the rest of the tree can be left for the spring. It’s going to take a lot more effort to clear that out, since it is in between other trees and in underbrush in the spruce grove.

In the end, I messaged a daughter to come out and help me put things away, because I was losing the light so fast, so the remaining logs have been left where they are until tomorrow. Hopefully, it won’t be raining too hard, and we can haul them away and stack them. We may be able to use these pieces for when we make a new garden shed as our cordwood practice building. We’ll need a lot more, but the walls for the practice building will probably be only about 8 inches wide, instead of the 12 – 16 inches more typical of cordwood building. I still want to use the method for when we build an outdoor bathroom (NOT an outhouse over a pit), but we need to clear some very large dead trees before we can work in the area I want to build it in.

We still have lots to do to collect and prepare before we can start building, but these logs could at least be a start, if the wood is in good enough condition.

All in good time.

For now, I’m just glad I was able to get that tree cleaned up and cut up enough to get that lane open again.

Little by little, things are getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Makin hay, while the sun shines!

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Or, in my case today, raking leaves and planting wildflowers!

This afternoon, we reached our expected a high of 8C/46F, with some lovely sunshine and NO high winds!

What a difference that makes.

We did get some rain this morning, but by the time I headed out after lunch, you couldn’t tell we’d had any.

My first job of the day was to rake up some leaves to mulch the wattle weave bed.

Not all of it. Just where the wild strawberries and herbs are growing.

This was the first time I used the pair of hand rakes my brother and his wife gave me. Now that they’ve sold their property, they are living in a townhouse, and have no need for gardening tools anymore. I don’t think these were ever used before!

They work really, really well! The only complaint I could have about them is the straps for the hands are on the small side. At least for broad simian hands like mine! 😄

Oh, gosh. I just realized what I caught a kitten doing in the other mulched bed in that first photo.

*sigh*

The next photo is the packaging for the hand rakes, though Instagram cut part of it off, even though I have it set to “original size” on the slideshow. The website says uncleweiner.com (not an affiliate link). A rather unfortunate name, but a good product!

Oh… gosh. They are located in Prince Albert. That’s… double unfortunate! 😂😂😂

In the last photo, you can see I had a helper when it came to mulching the Albion Everbearing strawberries in the main garden area. I put the chicken wire back over it to keep the leaves from being blown away but, as you can see, it doesn’t lie flat on the strawberry bed. Little Magda quite enjoyed going under there!

That done, I got another wagon load of leaves and started on the patch that’s been covered by the insulated tarp all summer.

After removing the old T posts and a board I’d put around the edges, to keep it from blowing away, I peeled off the tarp. That was unexpectedly difficult. All along the edges, Creeping Charlie had started growing on top of it. It turns out that some of them set their roots into, or even through, the tarp!

So the first thing I did was drag the tarp out to the front yard, where I have one hose still set up. The tarp was spread out to its full size. After hosing it down for a while, I went over it with a stiff bristle broom to get rid of the bigger debris, then used the hose to pressure wash it as best I could. It then got another scrubbing with the broom and a rinse.

For now, I’ve left it out where it is, to dry off as much as possible. Unfortunately, there are some holes in it. Some are tears from winds that happened a couple of years ago. Others were caused by weed roots pushing their way through and into the insulation layer! So parts of it now have water on the inside of the tarp. Not much I can do about that. I don’t have tarp tape, but I do have clear Gorilla tape, so I hope to at least patch up the bigger holes – if they are dry enough! Eventually, the other side will need to be cleaned, too.

That done as much as could be for now, it was back to the patch of soil it covered. In the second picture, you can see how it looked after the tarp was removed. Most of it does look dead but, along the edges, you can see white lines of roots extending into the what will be the growing area.

The soil needed to be loosened for the seeds, so I used the landscaping rake for that – and promptly found a roll of wire, buried in the soil! When we first moved here, this is where most of the chimney blocks and all the ceramic flues had been stacked, along with bricks and other odd things, and even garbage. We cleaned it up, but clearly missed this piece of wire!

The entire area got raked from the inside out, so as to pull the living roots out of the growing area, while also loosening the soil for the seeds.

As you can see in the next photo in the slideshow, the cats were very interested in what I was doing!

After the soil was loosened, I took the container of seeds shaken up in some seed starting mix, and scattered it evenly – I hope – over the area. Then I drew the back of the rake back and forth over the area to cover the seeds a bit.

While chasing away cats that figured this was a big new litter box, just for them!

Last of all, I scattered a wagon load of leaves over the entire area. This layer of leaf mulch is not as thick as on the garden beds. I was trying to more or less emulate how it would be, if leaves had fallen naturally on the ground. They will not be removed in the spring.


These seeds are a Western wildflower mix, so they should be able to handle the winter temperatures just fine. Any that succeed in germinating should have little problem growing through the light mulch.

The seed mix description doesn’t tell everything that’s in this mix. It just says “This mix includes Lupins, Poppy, Coreopsis, Flax, Blanket flowers and much more.” It should be interesting to see what comes up next year!

Image belongs to Veseys

One packet of seeds is supposed to be enough for 1000 sq ft. I used two packets. Technically, this means this area should be very densely sown. I’m not going to assume they’ll all germinate. We’ve tried to plant these plus an alternative lawn mix in areas nearby, and only some of them took – a year after they were sown! – and in only one area.

Still, if all goes well, enough of them will germinate that they will choke out any weeds that might otherwise spread into the area, and the wildflowers will spread their own seed further into the maple grove.

By the time that was done, it was starting to get close to sunset, to I moved on to things to go in the front yard. One of those was to clean up the flower bed the haskap bushes are planted in.

The first two photos in the above slide show are before and after shots. The dead flower stalks were clipped with loppers for a chop and drop. The old mulch I’d pulled off the garden bed at the fence was then raked on top along one side, and leaves along the other edges were raked up and added to the other sides. I don’t mind if the mulch reduces the number of flowers here. They get so tall, they cover the haskaps! Now, they are a mulch for the haskaps, and the lilac at one end.

I also snagged a couple of bricks and broken pieces of sidewalk blocks from the pile in the foreground. I keep thinking the catio is going to blow away, now that it’s wrapped in plastic for the winter. A corner of the plastic did tear off in yesterday’s winds, so that got tacked back into place, and there is now a weight on each corner of the roof.

I finally got around to laying out the hoses, to get the kinks and twists out. Once they moved, I was able to get to the old basement window to clean it up, then switch the summer window for the winter one. There was more to clean up than usual this year. The kittens have been using the area in front of it as a little box. 🫤 The window is now clear, though, and has a cover leaning over it. Eventually, we will pick up a window well and cover for around this window. The window wells are pretty affordable. The covers can sure get expensive, though!

That cleaned up and done, it was time to roll up and tie off the hoses. I ended up using a garbage can, laying it on its side over a hose, then rolling it with the hose around it. Doing it that way prevents the hose from twisting and kinking, though in these cooler temperatures, any kinks that were in the hoses when I laid them out were still pretty bent up when they were rolled up. Those are now ready to set aside for the winter.

Aside from finishing cleaning the insulated tarp, this is it for winterizing on the south side of the house. Tomorrow, I’ve got some things I want to get done in the main garden area. Our high is expected to be only 4C/39F tomorrow, but the day after is now expected to hit 9C/48F. I might wait for the warmer day before breaking out the chain saw to clean up the dead spruce tree that fell on the crab apple tree.

How much I get done tomorrow, though, may be up for debate. I felt really good while working outside, but once inside and sitting for a while, all my joints are stiffening up. Including my hands. I’m having a heck of a time typing right now. I forgot to take painkillers before I started this post.

Hopefully, I will finally get a good night’s sleep, and that will help. What I’d really love is have a hot soak in the tub, but it’s not worth the risk of injury, trying to get in and out. Sitting on the bath chair in the shower just isn’t the same, though!

Ah, well. It is what it is!

Whatever happens tomorrow, it felt great to be working outside, and I’m quite happy with the progress I was able to do while I had the chance!

The Re-Farmer