No, I’m not crazy

March 3, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

It’s a good thing I have such a good relationship with our garage, or they would think I AM crazy!

But first, the cuteness.

This morning, my daughters told me I needed to very quietly go over to my husband’s room and check out his hospital bed.

I found Big Rig, in her natural habitat.

Burrowed under his covers and using a neck pillow for her chin.

A couple of hours later, my husband sent this photo. Cheddar and…

…

He said the paw disappeared right after he took the photo. 😄😄

On to the weirdness of the day.

Today, I had an afternoon appointment to get the truck looked at again. When I headed out – very early – I found the console display was still working, but the warning dings from the door still weren’t happening. I didn’t even try to test it out on 4 wheel drive, though. I was already stressed out. Whether the shuddering was happening or not happening, it wasn’t going to alleviate that stress.

When I got to the garage and dropped off the key, I spent time some time talking to the owner. I told him what was working and still not working, and that I hadn’t tested the 4 wheel drive (he understood why not!). We talked about the battery, and the possibility of there being something draining the battery while it’s parked. The battery is only 2 years old. He said some batteries only last that long. We got it from him, though. It wasn’t the highest end battery, but it’s far from the lowest end, either. We also talked about the cold potentially affecting it, and I remembered to tell him when we first had an issue with the battery, early in the winter.

Then I was off.

I walked across town (all 5 or 6 blocks) and had lunch, then walked the last couple of blocks to the beach. The ice fishing village is still there.

There was also heavy equipment clearing the snow to make roads and open areas on the ice. I seem to recall seeing fliers for some sort of ice event coming up.

Clearly, the ice on the lake is still incredibly thick!

Then I started walking back, stopping at a few places long the way. I even remembered to stop at the pharmacy and get our printouts to do our taxes. My husband finally got his second T4A, so we can do that now. My daughter will be able to claim prescriptions on her taxes for the first time. I couldn’t get her pharmacy records without her permission (I have a signed document so I can get my husband’s, every year), but I was able to arrange for it to be included with her prescription delivery later in the week. This will be the first year for both my daughter and I that we can claim the Disability Tax Credit.

By the time I got back to the garage, it was about 45 minutes past my appointment time. The truck was still in the garage and the mechanic was about to take it out for a test drive to see if it was still doing that shuddering thing while in 4 wheel drive. I suggested he try it in the grocery store parking lot, rather than the highway, since it seems to be triggered in slippery conditions.

The mechanic asked me about the door chime. I told him it still wasn’t working when I drove over.

It’s working now.

???!!!

They didn’t do anything. It was simply working when he drove it into the garage.

When talking to the owner, he said he could even hear it from his office when the truck was driven in, and the mechanic got out, leaving the keys in the ignition.

I told him, when I parked in their lot, it still wasn’t working.

Like I said, it’s a good thing we have a good relationship. If I say it wasn’t working, he doesn’t doubt me. It’s just so very strange!!!

He told me he tested the battery himself.

It’s fine. No sign of any problems.

We talked about that for a bit, and he told me of a possibility that had occurred to me when I was first driving the truck home and realized the console display wasn’t working. It is likely that when the battery got low enough, it started shutting off anything unnecessary that was using power. With some vehicles, once the battery drops below a certain threshold, you can’t even start them until it’s been charged again. Once I recharged the battery on Sunday, that would have allowed the console display to start working again. Why the door chime didn’t start working again until today, we don’t know, but it’s likely related.

Around then, the mechanic came back with the truck, parking it just outside the bay doors. Watching the cameras, we saw him step out, look at the camera, raise both hands and just shrug.

It was working fine.

I told him about needing to drive into the city, and various other things I need to drive to, and he said it should be fine. Driving is good. Sitting parked is not. I do know that, but I try to avoid driving in winter in particular.

I did remember to ask for a price on the light on the back of the cab that I idiotically broke because the garage door wasn’t open far enough. He started to look it up and then said, get it from Amazon. I will get a better price there. Then, once I have it, I can bring the truck back and he’ll install it for me. I asked if he had a part number and he said just to look up, third brake light.

I even got to talk to the mechanic a bit as I was going to the truck. He also assured me that it should be fine for all the driving I need to do.

From there, I drove across to the grocery store, then updated my family. There were just a few things I wanted to pick up for today because, tomorrow, my daughter and I will be finally doing the Costco run! I plan to go to the older location we’ve been going to for years, instead of the new location on the other side of the city, as the old location is right next to a Canadian Tire.

Just in case something goes wrong. Because I’m still absolutely paranoid about the truck! 😄

Right now, though, not only has all the recent weird stuff gone away on its own, but so has the tire warning stuff that’s been there for so very long.

Which means that truck is actually better now than it was before, with no one having actually done anything but do lots of testing and checking.

For that, all I can say is, Thank you, God.

When I got home, I texted the garage about the tire warnings that have been there for so long, now being gone. He said, it must be a ghost! 😄😄 They’d had trouble getting readings off the sensors the last time I brought the truck in for the front tires to be worked on. They checked all four sensors because of those warnings. I remember watching four guys going from tire to tire, looking perplexed at their device’s screen. We had originally thought it was because the batteries might have died or something, but clearly, that cannot be the case! The main thing was that the tires themselves were fine.

So that’s where we are at now. The truck is home, and we’ve got a lot of driving to get caught up on things that should have been done a while ago.

Since we are finally going to be going to the city tomorrow, I’ve contacted the person from the rescue that picked up Kohl from us, taking the carrier with her. The sun room cats have knocked one of the carriers off its shelf a few times too many and it can’t be clocked shut anymore, so we need to get the carrier back. The carrier is now with someone else, and we’ve just arranged to meet along the way tomorrow morning, before she gets to work. We’ll be leaving quite a bit earlier than usual, but that’s okay.

Now it’s stock up shopping, doctor’s appointments, dump runs, runs to the feed store and, of course, finally getting to visit my mother! Once again, we are now the closest to where she is.

Oh, and our vandal and his wife have already visited her twice since she’s been transferred to the current TCU. The staff there have been warned about him, and yet… today, my brother told me that a check just went through my mother’s account. A check for a substantial amount of money, made out to our vandal and written out by our vandal’s wife for my mother to sign (my mother can no longer write checks out herself), dated just a few days ago. This is one of the reasons why we didn’t want our vandal to be able to have access to my mother without supervision. The problem is, they can’t have a staff member just hang out in the room with them. So, they managed to somehow guilt my mother into throwing money at our vandal again. The crazy thing is, while she has been able to help out with paying for things at the farm, even things she offered to pay for in advance, she does things like try to back out, or tries to use it as a way to control us, or guilt us, and makes a big deal over the fact that she “helped”. Which she has never done, when it comes to our vandal. And there’s nothing we can do about it, as long as her cognitive decline is as relatively mild as it is now. She isn’t at the state where my brother, as PoA, becomes wholly responsible to act on her behalf in that regard. At least we were able to get the doctor at the hospital to agree, officially in her file, that my mother cannot sign legal documents, and that if she is convinced to do so, it would not be legally binding. I don’t think that quite applies to writing checks.

Meanwhile, my mother says she wants me to bring her some of her cash stash she asked me to hang on to for her. Most of which got deposited into her account, which my brother explained to her when going over her finances recently, but she still thinks I have all of. She has no need for money where she is, and we don’t know where the money she had before went to. Sure, she sometimes insisted I take some cash for gas, but almost never enough to actually cover the cost of gas. A few bucks here and there. We did learn she tried to give money to staff at the hospital to basically bribe them to pay more attention to her, but never managed to actually give them any (that probably would have gotten them fired). I guess now we know where the rest of her cash went to.

We also know why our vandal and his wife have been finding ways to visit her so often, even though he’s supposedly at death’s door right now.

*sigh*

It is so hard to protect my mother, when she works so hard to sabotage our efforts.

Anyhow.

Visiting my mother is on the list of things I need to do, now that I’ve been assured the truck has been checked and rechecked and everything is running just fine.

Time to get things done.

The Re-Farmer

A cute accident, and some updates

February 25, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We had some more snow last night. Checking the security cameras, I saw that the road was plowed. We’re going to have to dig out the end of the driveway.

I also started getting a lot of motion detection notifications from the garage cam. I never saw what was triggering it, though.

What I did see was this.

A pair of matching hearts in the snow.

Who made these?

So I started going through the history, checking both stills and video clips. They weren’t there on Sunday, but as I watched myself walking towards the gate to meet my SIL on Monday, there they were, slightly less snow covered, but also less visible in the diffused light at the time.

It took a bit of going over the files more, then remembering that the motion sensor is triggered by people (and the occasional cat or deer), but not vehicles. We haven’t been able to figure out why (this is one of my brother’s new security cameras, not one we got).

My brother and nephew were here on Sunday. I saw them getting into their care to leave, but the camera wasn’t triggered by the care as they backed up towards the driveway then turned to the gate.

These are tire tracks. After the snowfall and in the morning light, they just happen to now look like hearts.

Adorable.

Almost as adorable as these guys.

There’s at least three more cats in there that are not visible in the photo.

Somehow, they got one corner of the hammock off its hook. I haven’t been able to put it back as it can only be reached through the ramp door, which has the box sheltering it. A box that’s currently stuck in place with packed snow and ice.

I took this when I did the second feeding. My darling daughter did the morning feeding for me. It was -27C/-16F at the time. I don’t know what the wind chill was, but when I checked later and we had warmed up to -20C/-4F, the wind chill was -34C/-29F Thankfully, by the time I did the second feeding, there was hardly any wind, so it was just really cold, instead of brutally cold. 😄

In other things, my mother was successfully transferred to the temporary long term care unit in the town she had her apartment in, last night. My brother called them this morning and talked to the nursing staff before talking to my mother. She got there shortly after 7pm in a taxi handivan – and no, we are not going to be charged for that. However, a bag that contained, among other things, my mother’s Pepto got forgotten in the van, and the staff were trying to track it down. The other TCU always uses the same taxi driver for these transfers, as he’s so good with the seniors, so it would be easy to track it down.

As for my mother, once he started talking to her, she started railing about how things were even worse here than where she had just left. It took a while to get to what she was saying, and it seems she was still just rattled from the transfer. She does have a room mate, but she did say that this person was better (by which we understand she means, this is not a person with dementia trying to tell my mother to go away while claiming my mother’s bed was hers).

My brother gave me the proper numbers to call this TCU, though he didn’t have the room number. I tried calling as soon as I could. It went to voice mail so I left a message, but no one got back to me. I texted the contact info to my sister, though. After several hours, I tried again and got through.

I talked to the nurse, first, and asked how things were going. She seemed a bit hesitant in answering, as if she was trying to find the right words. My mother wasn’t quite happy and something my mother told her had her thinking she had been in a single room before. I told her that she had been in a single room while at the hospital, but at the first TCU, she had a room mate. I explained about the roommate having some level of dementia and her behaviour. The nurse was surprised because, while they do have single rooms, those are usually reserved (if possible) for people with dementia that shouldn’t be sharing a room because they might do things like that. She would have expected this other TCU not to place someone with dementia with a room mate. I told her, I didn’t think they had any single rooms!

I remembered to ask about the missing bag.

It turns out my mother thought it was missing because it didn’t go to her room. It contained her medications, which they never keep in patients’ rooms, and was at the desk (they would have a secure lock up for meds). She was even able to tell me some of the items that were in it.

After talking with the nurse, I asked to talk to my mother and got transferred to their cordless phone.

It was a… strange call.

My mother seemed out of sorts, but she was happy to tell me that my sister had come to visit. She was extra happy, because my sister had brought her “cabbage” (sauerkraut) and pickle juice. My mother has been craving something “sharp” to counter what she described as all the sweet she’s been getting. I have no idea what she meant by that. Some of her meals might have a dessert, but that would be something along the lines of canned fruit. Whatever. She’s happy with her “sharp” snacks!

She asked me about the truck at one point and I explained to her that they weren’t able to look at it yesterday, but were hoping to do it today (I’ve still had no word about it, and they are closing soon). That set her off. She started saying how I should “explain to them” that we need the truck. I told her, they know our situation. Oh, but if I just explain to them. I told her, they have appointments. They have to fit the truck in, in between appointments, and need at least a couple of hours to look at where they think the problem is. I then started getting lectures about how other people’s appointments didn’t matter, they should take care of me. Then she started saying how my brother and I need to get together to find a “good mechanic”. Because mechanic always cheat women. When she started to invent accusatory things about how they were cheating me, I had to put an abrupt stop to it and pointed out she had no idea what she was talking about (in regards to the problems we’ve had with our truck), and she shouldn’t start going on like that. We should talk about something else.

After that, I had dead silence. Apparently, if she couldn’t complain about things, she had nothing else to say.

I remembered about the bag that she thought was missing, so I told her that it wasn’t missing. That it had medications in it, so it when to the nursing station, not her room, explaining that they have to lock up the medications.

She didn’t believe me.

She then gave me this description of her the transfer last night, looking into the bag and what she saw in it, how the bag was on the seat of the van and didn’t come in with her. It was still in the van. I told her, the nurse said she had it. Her medications were in the bag, so it had to go to the nursing station, not her room.

My mother didn’t believe they had her medications, either.

…

She would have gotten at least her bed time meds, and her morning meds, by the time I’d called her.

No matter what I said, she refused to believe me that the bag was not forgotten in the van, nor that they had her meds. She finally said she would go to the nursing station and ask them, herself.

There really wasn’t much else to talk about after that. She did say she was glad for the phone calls from me and my brother today. She calls the calls and visits her “second medicine.”

She may still be out of sorts, but where she is now is definitely better than where she was. She did complain a bit about the small size of the rooms (I don’t think she gets just how fortunate she was to have the big room in the hospital, all to herself!) and that she didn’t know the place yet. I brought up that she had told me she’d been there before, to visit people, so I thought she would be familiar with it.

No, she’s never been here before, she insisted.

…

She told this to me not long ago. Even made out like I was stupid, or that I thought she was stupid, to think she didn’t know about this place being in the town’s hospital. Told me how she knew people there and had visited them. Now she’s telling me the opposite?

When I said, she had told me she’d been there before, not that long ago, she just said, well, it’s a big place. So maybe she visited someone in a different ward? I dunno!

The good thing, though, is that she will start getting communion on Sundays from the church she used to go to, and they will likely be done by the same guy that had brought it to her after services at her apartment across the street.

So that’s where we are at with my mother’s transfer. Hopefully, she will settle in and be happier there. She did confirm that her transfer to the personal care home wasn’t cancelled. I said for sure it wasn’t; where she is now is all temporary. If all goes well, she will not be moved again until is to the specific nursing home she wants to be in.

How long that will be is anybody’s guess!

The Re-Farmer

The good the bad and the ugly!

June 11, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Or should I say sickly?

I was able to get a bunch of photos of the kittens this evening. As we have discovered is typical, the older kittens start to get eye infections once they start eating mostly solid food and aren’t nursing as often. It’s a strain of herpes that we’ve since learned is particularly difficult in our area.

So… just fair warning that some of the kittens in the slideshow below look a hot mess, after getting their eyes washed.

I started with Poirot’s cuties first, though.

A rare image of some of Inspector Japp’s white belly and chest spots!

It looks like Captain Hastings (next photo) is related to Ghosty. She has those shadows of colour on her head. When Ghosty was that size, she had those hints of pattern in her fur, but was otherwise almost completely a cream colour. Those shadows kept getting darker as she got older, and now they are very brown. Which is why we think she might be an albino tabby. That and her eyes that glow red when the light hits them. Hastings has a dark tail and dark ear tips, and such pale eyes!

Miss Lemon is the biggest of the three and very assertive! 😄

I’ve contacted a local large animal rescue that had reached out to me last year about possibly taking a more feral pregnant cat to socialize and integrate into plans for opening their rescue to the public for events and tours, but we didn’t have one at the time. They ended up not being able to open last year, largely due to weather. They’ll be having a grand opening later this month, though. If they could take in Poirot and her babies, that would be amazing.

The next image is Sir Robin the Brave. He was all curled up in the grass, napping, and did not appreciate being interrupted! His eye is actually looking much better right now. I didn’t see his sister, Kale, this evening. She was looking pretty sick. We’ve been bringing her into the house for eye washing in the mornings lately. I do hope she’s okay, and was just napping somewhere.

The next image is of Havarti and Little Rig, both of whom are looking much, much better now! I’ve been able to catch Havarti every now and then, but he really doesn’t like it and keeps his distance.

Then Grommet came by. His eyes are looking better, too, but he still got an eye wash after I got that picture. He’s slightly more socialized than his brother, Zipper. Zipper looks just terrible after his eye wash! The only reason I was able to catch him to wash his eyes is because they were both stuck completely shut! Normally, he would fight me off, but he’s so sick, he actually let me wash his eyes, while I had him on the roof of the cat house. Then he just stayed up on the roof, in the warm sunshine, making snorking noises.

The next image is Eyelet and Wormy snuggled for a nap. Wormy has one slightly sticky eye, but nothing of concern anymore. Eyelet’s eyes are… well… check out that last photo!

That blue is so pale, his eyes look almost white!

I also suspect he’s deaf.

~~~back from a quick run outside to switch soaker hoses in the garden~~~

Well, I found Kale! She’s sleeping in a kitten pile in the cat house. 😁

Adorable kittens aside…

Today, my younger daughter and I headed out for some errands. One of the things I needed was to get myself a pair of non-work shoes. Finding shoes for my messed up feet is never easy, so my daughter suggested we go into the bigger city, rather than the nearest Walmart in the smaller, nearer city. We had just started driving when my cell phone started ringing.

It was home care.

They weren’t going to have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist.

Which is supposed to happen between 7 and 9am.

It was about 9:20 or so when we got the call.

*sigh*

On the plus side, my mother’s place is along the way, so we were already part way there. I called my mom to let her know about home care, and that I was on my way. The hands free unit my brother gave me sure came in handy!

My mother wasn’t happy. When I got there, she started talking about hiring someone, though the home care office, to do med assists for her. Just one person doing her assists, all the time, and always at the same time (she says they keep coming later and later). I had to explain to her, they can’t do that – and she can’t just hire some random local person to do her med assists, either. There are laws about that.

She doesn’t accept that.

I couldn’t stay long, though, and was soon on my way. My sister was going to be showing up after lunch and taking her to the cemetery to visit our family gravesites. While it will be easier for my mother to get in and out of my sister’s car, I knew it would still take a lot out of her!

That done, my daughter and I continued on our way. Neither of us had had breakfast yet, so lunch was the first order of business.

Then my daughter, sweetheart that she is, busted her butt, trying to find me shoes. She knows me too well! I’m terrible when it comes to buying things for myself. Especially things I need. Add in how difficult it is to find shoes that fit, I would have given up after the first couple of pairs where I couldn’t even get my foot in. I used to be able to wear men’s size 9’s, triple wide. That’s the size of my work boots. That’s the size of my inside shoes I was wearing at the time, that are wearing out and falling apart. In the end, the only shoes I could get my feet into where men’s size 11’s, wide, and even then, some styles still didn’t work.

In the end, we found a pair that fit, but were absolutely tacky. The grey was okay, but the bright neon yellowish green accents were a bit much. Being the only ones I could find that fit the bill, I was willing to get them, until my daughter spotted another display shelf.

I got the same shoe, in bright red. It matches my new dress. 😄 They look like runners, but the “laces” are fake and stretchy, so they’re actually slip ons, not lace ups. I think they’ll work out just fine and, thanks to my daughter, I wasn’t going insane by the time we found them!

From there, we had our shopping lists to get. We were both pretty tired – my daughter actually fell asleep during the drive in! – so we took our time about it. Which worked out, since my husband remembered a few things he messaged us about, too.

We didn’t refill our water jugs in the city, though. We were going to do that locally, so I could get my “buy 10, get one free” freebie. During the drive from the city, though, I did end up pulling over so my daughter could take over driving while I tried closing my eyes for a bit. The energy drink I got for the ride accomplished nothing!

By the time we got to town, though, I was feeling much better, and was able to drive home after we finished in town.

I’d better get to bed early tonight and, hopefully, get some real sleep, because my daughter and I have an early start tomorrow! My brother and his wife got her a blacksmithing beginners workshop for her birthday this month, and we have to be there before 9am tomorrow. The drive will be almost an hour, as the forge is just past the smaller city. The workshop is all day, with a 1 hour break for lunch. I’ll probably pick something up in the city nearby, so we can have a picnic on the grounds (something they say is available) during break. It’s going to be a long day!

With that in mind, I’d better start winding down for the day, kick most of the cats out of my room, and try and get some sleep!

The Re-Farmer

The little buggers!

June 2, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The outside cats do like to get into – or onto – things they aren’t supposed to!

In the first image, Fluffy has parked her fluffy self on the newly transplanted and covered Arikara squash. Thankfully, she’s not actually squishing a plant – the collars would prevent that! – but there’s hardly any slack on that netting. Still, she managed to make a bed of it!

Then there’s the second image in the above slideshow. Little Grommet in our clothes pin bucket! There’s half a brick inside, so it doesn’t blow away or get knocked over by the kitties. The little bugger is looking all sweet and innocent, but there’s supposed to be more clothes pins around the edge of that bucket.

It’s a good thing they’re so cute!

The Re-Farmer

Sweet Kale!

May 25, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I didn’t intend to plant Kale in the garden…

She planted herself! 😄

She also fits perfectly in the “hammock” created by the netting over the fence wire.

The remaining netting, that is! The overlapped sheet had slid off. Sadly, I had to get her off her comfy spot so I could fix it. I think it’s secured enough to no longer be an issue, so she can enjoy her hammock again.

Making this raised bed cover using the fence wire was such a pain, I swore never to use it again. The stiffness of the wire, and the thickness where the cross strands are wrapped made it so difficult to work with, and the wood had to be doubled up to hold it. But this cover has turned out to be the best one. It’s the strongest, and being able to reach through the openings is very handy. Laying plastic or netting over it can be a challenge, since they catch on the wire twists, but it still holds better than other frames we’ve made. The heave gauge wire even makes it easier to carry with just one person, since the wire is easier to grip, and so much stronger.

We still have a fairly large roll of the fence wire left, so I do see more like this one in the future. Hardware cloth or similar finer mesh will be used more often – with hoops to support them – as those won’t need to have netting placed over them to keep critters out, but pollinators can still get in and out.

I did not expect the covers to make such excellent beds for the kitties, though. Bonus, I suppose! They have their comfy spots, and it keeps them off the plants!

Like our little floating Kale.

The Re-Farmer

Productive

May 19, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It was a perfect day to work outside! We reached our expected high of 15C/59F, there was a bit of a breeze, and a lovely mix of sun and clouds. Not too hot, not too cold… It was juuuuust right!

Most of it involved clean up.

I headed out to open the gate for my brother, only to find he was at the gate and opening it for himself. 😄 We said our hellos, then he set out to get their push mower out of storage (there was a lot of other stuff in front of it) and get it going. My first task was to get the wagon out and start going through the yard, picking up all the fallen branches and sticks I could find. We hauled away any large branches that fell right away, but there’s always tonnes of smaller ones that we leave until a day like today.

I worked my way around most of the yard before stopping near the septic tank to switch jobs. The tank was still covered with an insulated tarp, folded in half, and the pipes and hose for the emergency bypass was still set up over it. A few things needed to be moved so I could get the tarp off. That got dragged to the south yard and stretched out to full size, so I could hose it down, then flip it over and hose it down again. Then I went ahead and got the sun room broom and used that to scrub the entire surface before hosing it down again, then leaving it out in the sun. Then it was back to the septic tank area.

It’s remarkable how much survived being under that insulated tarp. In fact, some things had even started growing into the fibres!

The rigid pipe is being left where it is for now. I don’t have any way to store it properly right now (I’m wanting to find a way to store all the parts and pieces right near the tank), and the pipe that sticked out through the wall still needs a cap. I don’t want any dirt – or small critters! – getting into there.

I brought the back hose over and used that to spray down the inside of the flexible hose. It’s quite long, to it took a while to get enough water flowing through it. A number of bricks, rocks, boards and pieces of Styrofoam insulation were used to create a slope for the fluid to drain away, though some low spots were still inevitable. I gathers all those up to store against the house for now, the rinsed the inside of the flexible hose some more before finally dragging it all in, making sure water continued to drain away. Then that got curled up into a pile near where the boards were sticks. Then, since my next job was going to be weed trimming around the house, I pulled in the garden hose, too.

By this time, I could hear my brother’s lawnmower, so I went over to see how things were going. He showed me the particulars of how to start and run the mower (it has a choke that shuts itself off!) and his own modifications to it. He was mowing a lane to the barn, and around his stored equipment beside it. He had other stuff he needed to do, so I took over with the push mower and ended up finishing off most of the area in front of the barn. It was all being cut at the highest level, so I’ll be going over it again, likely with the riding mower, soon, to get it cut lower, little by little. The area is so dense with dried thatch mixed in with the tall grass, it would easily be too much if the mower were at the height I would want to cut it to.

I’m going to have a lot of grass to use as mulch, soon!

Once that section was done, it was time to get back to the inner yard.

Which was shaded quite a bit by these.

No, those are not leaves. At least, mostly not leaves. Click through to the next picture, and you can see that these are seeds. The Chinese Elm are absolutely thick with seeds right now, and they’re blowing everywhere. Pretty soon, they’ll dry up and drop like a storm.

I’m not looking forward to that. We’ve got so many of these trees in the south yards alone!

I then spent the next hour or more with the weed trimmer. Aside from doing the edges and areas too small or awkward to use a mower in, I went hunting for the rocks and roots in the lawn that stick up high enough that, if I’m cutting to the height I want to, would get hit by the mower blade. I’ve run over these by accident in the past. Bad enough when using our own equipment, but I do NOT want to damage my brother’s equipment!

In the end, I was able to get the south east yards done before I had to head inside, pausing only to find my brother and touch base with him. He was up on the roof of their trailer! 😄

While I was outside, my daughters were busy inside, and I came in just as one of them was making dinner. I actually needed help getting my boots off, before I could change out of my grass covered clothes, take some pain killers, and rest for a bit.

I had company.

A bowl full of Ginger on my bed!

I also had Butterscotch all over me. She has started to become aggressively affectionate when I sit or lie on my bed.

After having a lovely supper my daughter made, I realized I was hearing a mower running outside. By then it was time to feed the outside cats, so I started doing that. My brother, I discovered, had taken out the riding mower and was mowing around their trailers and RV, and in front of the storage shed. Something to be very careful off, as that area has some really rough spots! Leveling things off around there is something they have plans to do, once they can get some of their equipment going.

Unfortunately, he was done and gone before I was finished feeding the cats!

I wasn’t going to be doing more weed trimming today, but I did get a chance to weed the retaining wall blocks.

I was joined by a little Sir Robin the Brave.

He joined me while I took a quick break on the bench, too!

What an adorable face.

The last thing I got done was to flip the insulated tarp, hose, scrub and hose it down again.

Unfortunately, it has worn out holes in it, so water gets inside the tarp. I’m not sure how to address that, Ideally, I’d hang or drape it somewhere, but it’s quite large and surprisingly heavy. Especially with any water inside it! For now, it’s just going to say on the grass for the night. Hopefully, we don’t get any high winds to blow it away!

Tomorrow, the tarp will need to be moved away, and then it’s back to weed trimming. Particularly around the cat shelters and the portable greenhouse.

The kittens are not going to be happy with all that noise!

Once that’s done, though, I’ll be able to use the riding mower. With the amount of mowing I did today with the push mower, plus all the trimming, I’m in quite a lot of pain, even with taking painkillers. There’s no way I’d be able to do push mowing two days in a row.

While the overnight temperatures are still too low to set out the transplants, there are some things that can be direct sown. I’ve decided to take advantage of the boards protecting the sugar snap pea bed, and plant more carrots. I do see carrots coming up in the winter sown beds, but I’d like to have more! There are a few other things that can be sown now, too, once I get the beds prepared for them. We’ll see how it goes. The rest of this week will have some good daytime temperatures for that sort of work. Next weekend, things will start getting hot again.

The forecast for freezing overnight temperatures, with rain and snow, that I was seeing for the end of May, beginning of June, this morning is gone. Now the forecast is calling for overnight lows of almost 10C/50F! What a difference!

Of course, by tomorrow morning, it’ll probably be completely different again.

As for me, I’m heading to bed as soon as I’m done posting this. Well… after I take more painkillers, that is. Today is a day to max out the prescription dose, that’s for sure!

We shall see what tomorrow brings!

The Re-Farmer

So adorable!

October 1, 2024October 1, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I just had to share a couple of photos of absolute cuteness.

First, there’s this kitten.

If I fits, I sits!

That’s my sun room tissue box he (she?) has made into a bed!

I want to snuggle this kitten so badly! Can’t get near it, though.

Then there is this picture of domestic bliss.

Judgement has always been great with the kittens, so it was no surprise to find him snuggled up with a couple.

The black and white is another one we can’t get close to. I think the other one is Magda. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, with so many similar kittens!

So many adorables out there!

The outside cats got their version of cat soup this evening. I adjusted the ingredients, using more dry kibble and letting it soak longer in hot water before blitzing it with the immersion blender. There was also a couple of cans of wet cat food, lysine and powdered pumpkin seed.

They absolutely loved it, and licked the food trays clean. The skunks and racoons will have nothing to steal tonight!

The Re-Farmer

Kittens, kittens, kittens!

September 20, 2022 / Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

Last night, I discovered that the new water bowl house, which is awaiting a paint job before we start using it for its designed purpose, works well for something else entirely. The floor is high enough for me to sit on without hurting my knees to much, and have a roof to keep me out of the bit of rain we started to get!

Which meant, I got to play with kitties.

Some sisal cord tied to a stick made an excellent lure, and I was actually able to pet this brown tabby! I’ve been able to touch him before, but usually he’d run off as soon as he realized what I was doing. This time, I was able to start skritching his ears. Between the toy and the ear skritching, he was torn between obviously wanting to run away, and loving the attention! 😄

Today, I was able to confirm he is male.

This little guy much prefers to just be on a human and go for naps. He is very insistent about it, too!

While I was playing with the kitten, Caramel came by, followed by one of her babies. One with the very distinctive Beep Beep orange splotch on its forehead! You can tell who Grandma is, that’s for sure! It would come any closer, but it was good to see she is bringing her babies to the kibble house.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen Rosencrantz’s litter today, nor did I see Junk Pile’s babies come out of the pump shack after I left food there, even though she came over to eat. I read they both moved their babies further from the house. Right when they need access to more solid food, now they are going to be getting only whatever the mamas manage to hunt for them. 😟 The further from the house the kittens are, the more in danger they are from predators, too. Wherever the mamas took them, I hope they will be okay. I do realize having fewer yard cats is actually a good thing, but I can’t help rooting for them to make it!

The Re-Farmer