When I headed out to do my evening rounds, I saw the renter’s cows near the barn, so I started over to take a look.
In the process, I startled a heifer that was grazing among my brother’s tractors and farm equipment!
From where I was, I couldn’t see where it had gotten through the fence, but then it showed me. While I was messaging the renter about it, the heifer just ducked under the chain across the gate, then under the electric fence wire at the same time, and pushed on through!
Then it came back again.
Then out again…
All while I was still messaging the owner!
I headed around to check their solar panel and battery set up, and everything looked undisturbed.
Just in case, I started closing up the gates to the inner yard, after messaging my family, too. It was the gate by the fire pit that was a problem, though. It’s been open for so long, the posts on the barbed wire gate were rotting and coming apart. I was able to get it out and trying to get it closed when my older daughter came over to let me know we had company. Human company, at the main gate! She took over fighting with the gate by the fire pit while I caught up with my other daughter and the renter. The heifer and gone through to our side again, and they saw go back under the chain again as they walked towards it.
While my daughter went to help her sister with the gate (they ended up having to get a bungee cord to fasten it upright), I walked with the owner to the solar panel and battery set up. She confirmed that everything was working fine. Yet the heifer had no problem going under that wire!
She said she would come back in the morning to check it again. They plan to rotate their cows to the other quarter soon. The gates to the road are kept closed, and we don’t have to worry about any cows getting into the inner yard, so I’m not too worried about it. If it can graze in places we can’t mow, I’m good with that! I’ll take a few more. 😄
When I headed out this morning to do my rounds, guess who I spotted again?
I’ve been hearing them for at least a week, probably two, but the renter’s cows didn’t come close to the barn area until yesterday evening. I got this shot, this morning.
I’ve had some sleepless nights, so the girls were kind enough to do my morning stuff for me and let me sleep in. I headed out in the afternoon to go to the mail, then into town to refill a couple of our big water jugs, and ended up picking up a lasagna for supper.
When I got home and went to open the gate, I was pleasantly surprised to see we have cows again!
The renter has rotated his cows to our quarter section one last time before they bring them in for the winter.
Seeing his cows makes me smile, every time!
I drove into the yard to unload the water jugs, then took the time to try and figure out how to open up the cover over the truck’s box. I’d looked up online, but found instructions for a specific brand, and it turns out ours unlocks differently! It took using the flash on my phone to finally see the loop under one corner that released the cover. I rolled it up then climbed in with a broom.
That was NOT fun. I could get onto the tailgate easy enough, but my knees are so shot, it was a real struggle to get up again. I would get one knee up, which would cause massive pain on the other knee. I’m going to take a page from my brother’s book and get some high density foam pieces that can be slid onto the tail gate and make it less painful. We’ve already been talking about keeping a folding step stool to make getting into the back easier, too. We wanted a taller vehicle for important reasons, but … well, I’m short!
Tomorrow we will be making our first stock up shopping trip to the city, and I’m planning to hit Costco on this trip. I will be able to load an entire month’s worth of cat kibble in the back! I might actually run out of room on the flat cart in the store, and should still have space in the truck! With temperatures the way they are right now, we can even skip the ice packs and load the insulated bags in the back with the kibble bags, while things that don’t need to stay cold can be loaded into the cab.
If all goes to plan, I’ll only have to do the one Costco trip, then do a second trip a few days to a different areas of the city, where there are several stores all along one street that we go to. I might even go check out the liquidation place we found but rarely go to.
That should be all the necessary trips to the city after that – two trips instead of 3 or 4. I’m quite looking forward to seeing how it goes!
Oh, I was just reminded as I wrote about the kibble; with how much we get every month, I did some searches to see if I could buy the kibble from a wholesale supplier, instead of at retail. I did find some Canadian “wholesale” outlets, but the prices were often more expensive than what we’re paying at Costco! Which makes these the retail store for wholesale outlets.
I should try that livestock supply store again. Their huge bags of cat food were cheaper, but the cats didn’t like it, but they did have other brands and higher quality cat food. If they have better prices than Costco, for kibble that cats will actually eat, that would be awesome. They don’t have any products listed online, though.
We shall see.
Anyhow.
Aside from the trip to town, we got a bit more progress done outside. The last of the garden hoses are put away, the septic tank covered, and a few more garden supports and stakes bundled and stored. Over the next few days, it will be getting cold enough to do the winter mulching before the ground freezes. We’re still expected to get temperatures hovering around the freezing mark for most of November, so it’ll be a while before more than the surface freezes.
It is amusing to start the truck and get a warning on the display saying “ice possible, drive with care”. 😃 We’ve only been getting a light dusting of snow that’s mostly gone by the afternoon, but the south end of our province has been getting a mix of snow and rain, so there are plenty of warnings about road conditions going out.
It’s going to be a long day tomorrow, so I hope to finally get a good night’s sleep, tonight!
We’re having another lovely, mild day with sunny skies. A perfect day to get more done outside!
My main goal for the day was to finally build the third low raised bed box and set it up.
The ground is starting to freeze, though, so I couldn’t make quite as deep a “foundation” as with the other beds. It should be all right, though.
This is as much as going to be done with it, for now. Things are supposed to get warmer of the weekend, so I might get a chance to bury stuff from the compost pile down the middle, then top it up for the winter.
While I was building the bed, my younger daughter started working on beds in the old kitchen garden.
Beds that were more shaded than other areas.
Beds that were more frozen than not!
Alas, it was too much for our garden fork; one of the few useable tools we found that hadn’t been “disappeared” while the place was empty. It had a tendency to bend in that spot, and when my daughter tried to straighten it, it broke! The poor thing felt so bad.
The old kitchen garden got left for warmer days, and my daughter moved on to clean up the remaining bed at the chain link fence. The chicken wire protecting the cucamelons and gourds had to be removed, the plants pulled, and the soil moved to prepare for the block planters.
The cucamelons did not to well in our drought. The plants grew, there were many, many flowers, with teeny little fruit, but very few of them ever matured. Very likely, they just didn’t get polinated.
As my daughter dug the area up, however, she discovered they did much better below the soil!
Cucamelons produce tubers. I’d read that, in colder climates like ours, they can be dug up, put in a pot of soil and overwintered indoors, then transplanted in the spring. I tried that last year, but the tubers just disappeared in the soil. They, however, were nowhere near as big and thick as these ones!
My daughter set aside the biggest ones, and we will try overwintering them. Maybe at this size, they will have a better chance of surviving to be transplanted.
When my daughter was done cleaning out the bed, she headed inside and I continued working on it.
We had four of these chimney blocks waiting. My daughter had already moved the soil, and I just needed to level it for the blocks.
I found more cucamelon tubers in the process!
I ended up moving the blocks a little bit further away from the fence, so that when we bring up the remaining blocks and lay them down, the fence post won’t be in the way. I put leaf litter in the bottoms of the blocks before filling with the soil, since there is so much of it handy.
It was around this time that I could hear the sound of a utility vehicle nearby, so I headed over. The wife of the couple renting the property had come over to check the electric fence. I have spoken and messaged with her quite a few times, but this is the first time I met her in person! She brought their little daughter along, too, and she was a great help with holding the wire for Mom. It did take quite a while to find one of the ends; it must have gotten caught on a cow’s leg when it got spooked. Not only was it well away from the fence, but a couple of the support poles were pulled right out of the ground!
There was just enough slack that she could twist the wires back together, then we went around to another section where she said she had found a cow had gotten through, in a very unusual spot. She agreed with me, that something must have spooked the cows into going through areas they normally don’t.
While we were walking around, the cows were intensely curious about us humans – and looking for another grain treat!
Just look at those adorable faces!!
Unfortunately, they were a bit TOO interested in Tiny Human, who was starting to get scared. With just cause. Cows may look docile, but they can be aggressive and dangerous to an adult, never mind a wee one. Tiny Human was much more comfortable being carried by Mom!
I took the opportunity to tell her about where we are looking to put a fence through the old hay yard, so we can plant trees for a wind break against the south winds. She let me know that they will likely take out the old fences completely, and put in new, because of the cows getting through so often. We also talked about redoing the fencing around the septic field, so we can still access it from our side, rather than filling in those gaps the cows got through this time. She said she would pass on the things I brought up, and hopefully her husband will soon be able to find the time to come over and we can do a more thorough walk about and discuss it in more detail. They are such good renters. With all our long term plans, I don’t want to be doing anything to make it more difficult for them. That’s part of why I wanted to make sure they knew about where I want to add the fence and plant a windbreak, since it takes away some of the land the cows graze in.
So, all in all, it turned out to be a very productive day, on several levels. :-)
The only down side, is we how have to replace a garden fork. :-D
Last night, while I happened to be near the live feed to our garage security camera, I was distracted by movement. I looked over just in time to see…
… this cow, making her way back up the driveway!
She managed to get through the fence into the outer yard, but was foiled by the gate.
No road access for you, Lady!
I went outside to check and saw several cows in the outer yard, but they got spooked and ran off. I didn’t want to take a chance of them getting hurt in the dark, so I just closed up the gates to the inner yard. I then sent a message to the renter, rather than phoning, because it really isn’t an urgent thing. I’m glad I did it that way, because their small children were in bed already.
So when I did my morning rounds, I checked out the outer yard fence line. Usually, they break through the gate opening near the barn. I currently have a chain across it – the chain we used across the driveway until we could repair and return the gate our vandal damaged – that has reflective rope wrapped around. I could see hoof prints in the frost on our side of the fence, but not on the other side. The renter’s electric fence wire, however, was loose and clearly broken somewhere.
There was one other obvious place to check.
Sure enough, this is where they came through, as you can see by the trampled grass and tracks in the frost.
There is no barbed wire in this section of the fence, nor the one to the right. The wire starts up again at a post that is off frame. This is clearly by design, as the wire is wrapped securely around the post it ends at (you can sort of see it on the post on the left).
The white pipe coming out of the ground near the tree is where our septic tank’s grey water is expelled. It’s unfortunate that willow was planted so close to it. We will have to keep a close eye on the area, because the roots could mess up the buried pipes. The remains of a fence surrounds this entire low area, and my guess is that this section of fence was left open to access the septic field.
Which was a great idea, but no one maintained or repaired the fence around the septic field.
So now, the only thing keeping the cows out is the renter’s electric fence. You can just see the orange colour at the top of one of the supports for the wire, next to the fence post on the right. I couldn’t see the wire at all, so it would be somewhere in the grass.
The rent will come by to fix the electric fence when they can; I made sure to tell them there is no hurry. I don’t mind the cows grazing down the overgrown areas in the outer yard! I didn’t see them this morning, though I could hear them. They have not been back here for long. The herd is being rotated a lot faster than usual, as the renters are trying to keep them on grass for as long as possible, while the weather holds, but there just isn’t a whole lot of it. The grass certainly recovered well when the rains finally came, but nothing like what there would have been had we not gone through such extreme heat and dryness this past summer. Part of the deal with the renter is that they maintain the fences. It’s such a mess here, though, just to access it. The cows don’t even usually go here at all, so it was very unusual for them to break through here, and they only would have done that if the electric fence stopped working. Which happens every now and then.
I look forward to when we can finally clean up in this area. This is mostly a “hire burly, able bodied people with equipment” sort of job, though, and other things are higher on the priority list.
We got more rain yesterday evening and during the night, so I wanted to check out the old gravel pit, to see how the water levels were.
I don’t know that the water level had gotten any higher, but the renter’s cows are using it! Which s really awesome. I didn’t want to spook the cows away, so I made my way through the trees to check on it.
I’m even noticing, as I walked around, that the crunchy grass is starting to show new green growth. Just barely, but enough to see.
I did check out the old pond, to see if there was any water there, too. There was no standing water, but from the new, muddy holes at the bottom, the cows have been walking through it. It’s got pretty much the only green grass around in there.
In an average year, that pond would be full enough to use the small boat we found the remains of nearby, and even more in the gravel pit. In the photo, you can see the lower area that’s greener. That area would also have had water in it, and there would be at least mud in a marshy area that stretches from the gravel pit to towards the pond. For now, I’m just excited over the big puddle!
The skies have been teasing us with the possibility of rain, all day today! The weather app says we’re at 26C/79F, with the humidex at 30C/86F, but we’ve been getting some wonderful breezes that are making it feel cooler.
It was while we were outside, enjoying the breeze, that I noticed we were being watched.
The renter rotated his cows to the home quarter today! I am so happy to see them. :-)
While we were out, we even got a few spatters of rain and could hear thunder in the distance. I really hope we get a decent rainfall! Particularly since we’ve decided not to water the garden beds this evening.
While heading over to the furthest beds, we ended up chasing a woodchuck out of one of the corn blocks. He seemed to be just passing through, and wasn’t eating anything. In looking at the developing head on this Mongolian Giant sunflower, I can see something has been eating it. This would be the grasshoppers. Thankfully, those seem to be fewer, though compared to the clouds of them we had not long ago, that might not be saying much.
The sweet corn in the middle block seems to be developing the fastest. It’s interesting to see how a few stalks just shot up (relatively speaking!) while the others are staying small.
I don’t know how much corn we’ll actually get from these, given this year’s conditions, but it does look like we’ll at least have some for fresh eating, if not for freezing or canning.
Dang. Looking out my window, it seems the clouds have moved on. I think I’ll pop outside and enjoy the breeze a bit longer, while there is still light. :-)
As I catch up with things I wasn’t able to post while our internet was down, I figured I’d start with some fun stuff!
(Also, whatever technical problems killed off our secondary account is also affecting our primary account – but at least that one still gets a signal! We will get a call in a day or two about when someone can come by to check the hardware.)
This first photo shows some impressive progress.
That’s Keith, reaching out to touch a napping Leyendecker.
Keith.
Keith, the ball of stress and anxiety that would hiss and run away anytime a kitten came near him.
Now, he will actually curl up with Leyendecker for a nap.
He still doesn’t do much with the kittens overall, but at least he isn’t freaking out anymore.
Which leaves Fenrir as the remaining problem cat. She is more aggressive than Keith was, and will hiss and bat at them. But then, she’ll hiss and bat at some of the adult cats, too.
Then there’s Cheddar. This is him in his usual state.
He has managed to take up half of my king sized bed, with his stretching and splaying!
When he came indoors, almost a year ago, I never imagined he would grow into this big beast!
He used to be so tiny! :-D I’m so glad we were able to get his eyes all healed up.
And now some bonus critter pictures!
Much, much bigger critters.
Our renter’s cows came by the barn for a visit. :-D
In the middle foreground, walking away, is the bull. What a massive, meaty beast he is!
It won’t take long for them to eat up all that grass, and it’ll be shorter than our lawn, after being freshly mowed!
I just love hearing the cows when they’re nearby. We’re not in a position to have cows ourselves, so I get to enjoy them vicariously through the renter! :-D
We’ve had ourselves an afternoon of kittens and cows! :-D
My daughter and I had to head into town this afternoon, but as we left the house, we got distracted by a Doom Guy.
Who is starting to get used to this whole “being held” thing, and enjoying head scritches. Oh, was he purring up a storm!
The girls had gone out to see the kittens this morning, too, and he allowed himself to be picked up. It has been quite chilly, so I think he is appreciating the body heat that comes from being held by a human! :-D
I think this is having an effect on the other kittens, too. They’re starting to come closer, even if they don’t let us come near them. Though they also seem to be begging for treats, too. More on that, later! :-D
When we got back from town and pulled up to the gate, we found cows! Just a few of them in the outer yard, while others were in the old hay yard. There was no surge of the entire herd coming in like last time.
The vehicle and people gates to the yard were open, as was the garage door, when we left. !!
Thankfully, no cows were in the garage. While I closed the vehicle gate to the inner yard, my daughter got her stuff from the van and closed up the garage. Then I went to check the electric wire gate by the barn, because I could see that the insulated wire holders were still upright. I found the wire broken and dragged into the outer yard, so I paused to move it aside, so no cows would get tangled in it. As I did that, one of the cows came walking past me, through the gate.
This immediately concerned me, because she was limping very heavily on a front leg. I followed her a bit and managed to get a picture of her looking back at me on her right. This allowed me to zoom in on the photo and read the number on her ear tag.
I then went in (making sure the people gate was closed up) and phoned up the renter to let him know his cows had come through again. We both think the recent rains (another thunderstorm came through last night) has been causing problems with his electric fence. I let him know the tag number on the injured cow, though with how heavily she was limping, she would be hard to miss.
After I called him, I went to walk around the yard, just in case a cow got in and no one noticed. We do have a couple of gaps in the fence by the old log building that a determined cow could get through, even if the gates were closed.
Walking around was much more challenging than expected! Butterscotch came over and kept winding herself around my legs as I walked. As much as I tried to avoid it, I still ended up kicking her in the head, at least twice. Do you think that stopped her? Not a chance!
Beep Beep and several kittens followed along, too!
They were most definitely begging for treats. :-D
Even the shy kittens were following me along.
Rosencrantz, or Gildenstern, came along, then the bigger orange tabby came running, too. :-D
Even pausing to take the photo was an unexpected challenge. :-D
Butterscotch may not like being picked up, but she was certainly willing to try climbing my leg!
About an hour later, I could hear an engine, letting me know the renter was here, so I went out again. The cows were nice and co-operative about getting back to the barn side of the fence. We stopped to talk for a bit, and it now looks like I’ll be buying a round bale of straw from him. :-D I had made arrangements to get 6 small square straw bales delivered a few days ago from someone else. I only need enough to cover the top of the septic tank, then plan to layer the rest on the smaller garden by the Old Kitchen. Unfortunately, the person never showed up, and hasn’t been answering my messages, so I don’t know what’s going on. I asked if he could recommend someone I could buy from, and after asking what I needed, he said he could sell me one. A round bale will have much more straw than we need, but it won’t go to waste, that’s for sure. When things dry up later, he’ll deliver one into our yard for us. Unlike smaller straw bales, there’s no way we’d be able to get it into the yard ourselves!
I also let him know how much we are enjoying his cows, and made sure to let him know we didn’t mind them getting through the gate. My only concern is that, with all the stuff around, they’ll get hurt. Which I’m hoping is not what happened to the limping cow. It could just be a rock in her hoof, but until he gets a look, there’s no way to know. There was visible sign of an injury other than her limping. We did joke about how curious they are, and get into everything. Do they ever! They are so interested in the cats, too.
A unexpected bonus with the cows breaking through the fence. I’m getting to know the renter more, and he’s a really nice guy. :-)
The Re-Farmer 