The video I was working on yesterday finally exported into the format I needed without any visual corruption, and I was finally able to start uploading it to YouTube.
It’s only 26 minutes long, but the uploaded told me it would take 2 hours to upload. !!! So I went for a nap for 2 hours.
When I got up and checked, it was at under 50% upload, and said it would take another two hours.
Yikes!!!
So I went into town early to run some errands before meeting with the egg lady. I got just a few eggs. 😉
I’m looking to boil a whole bunch and pickle them for snacks or quick breakfasts.
One of my other stops was to the post office. See that white box over there? Guess what was in it?
Popcorn!
😂😂😂
That all went for the birds when I was done.
Cheddar helped me check out the rest of the contents! I love the vintage jars. Especially the milk jar with a handle on it. I’ve never seen one like that before!
I will definitely have to look up that brand of stock cubes. The store these came from had a brand that used to carry all kinds of interesting flavoured stock cubes. Garlic and Basil, and mushroom, like these ones, but also Fines Herbs, fish, seafood, and pork, along with the usual beef, chicken and vegetable. After we moved and we started running out of the ones we brought with us, I found the company’s website, only to discover they carry just the basics now. None of the interesting ones, anymore. This brand is from Italy. I hope they are available online, from a Canadian supplier. Otherwise, shipping costs would be through the roof! Those Polish candies… what a treat! I’ve loved those since I was a child, but they are not easy to find. After moving out here, I found some and was quite thrilled to buy them, only to discover they were… another brand? I don’t know. They looked the same, but they didn’t taste the same, and were rubbery to chew on. Like they were a knock off brand or something.
Yes, I allowed myself to have one, even though I’m cutting sugar. I’m not going to be too extreme about things!
We’re really looking forward to cracking open the sun dried olives. Even before we moved, the ones we used to get – sundried and packed with salt in jars – seemed to have disappeared. Finding them packed in oil is not that difficult, but there’s just something different about the dry packed ones.
And finally, the seeds! I can’t find a country on the packaging, but that could just be my crappy vision. It looks like they’re from Italy, too. I know forget-me-nots can grow here; my mother used to grow them. My younger daughter was quite excited to see those. I’m the food grower. She’s the one that wants to grow flowers! Of course, we’ll have to try the lettuce, too. At some point, after we’re done with the seed starts and transplants, we’ll be setting up a pot to grow some salad greens indoors. Just a few plants in different varieties. Planting them in the garden was just too much for our needs. Plus, even when we didn’t have groundhogs trying to eat them, we still had to protect them from the kittens wanting to roll all over the beds!
Thank you so much, M, for sending us these! What a treat! You’re awesome. 🧡💛🧡💛
Oh! And here’s that video I was finally able to upload!
This afternoon, I headed into town with my mother’s car (the last time I started the van, it started better than it has been lately, but now there’s a strange noise coming from around the alternator), ran a few errands, then met up with the egg lady. I got a couple of flats of eggs for ourselves, and a dozen for my mother. I didn’t have my usual large insulated bag, so I just put our flats in the back of my mother’s car. I then went to my mother’s place to deliver her eggs before heading home.
The highway home has a couple of places marked with signs to warn that they are bumps or dips. One of them – a dip – has been getting much, much worse. For some reason, the highways department just won’t fix it.
I forgot to slow right down when I hit it.
I swear, the car got some air time on that.
When I “landed”, I heard it.
From the back of the car.
A sickening “crunching” noise.
I was really dreading what I would find after I parked the car and opened up the back.
I was most definitely expecting something much worse! I didn’t even notice the bottle of washer fluid when I put the eggs in, since it is kept tucked into a hollow way off to one side, and the eggs were in the middle.
We just lost the one egg. Even the eggs underneath were okay.
I am not alone in wishing the highways department would fix that dip! It’s brutal on vehicles, and many people have complained about it. Someone even went a put a big home made sign in the ditch beside it, painted with the words “fix me!”
I’m just glad the damage wasn’t any worse today! 😁
Well, I did a lot more driving today than usual! Even compared to trips to the city.
With the van back, we were finally able to make a trip to the dump. From there, I headed into town to pick up some prescription refills and printouts for our tax returns. That was certainly an interesting part of the drive. It was bright and sunny, until I started getting closer to town, when I drove into a wall of fog! It got very thick for a while, with very low visibility, as we got closer to the lake. However, once we actually got into town, it started to lighten up, though I could see it was thicker all around town. Once I reached “downtown”, it was bright and sunny again – but with a wall of fog still visible in all directions!
I took advantage of being in town to make a few more stops. By the time I was done my errands, the fog was gone, except for on the lake. Sadly, I was unable to get any photos, as it would have been too dangerous to pull over while I was in the middle of it. Ah, well.
From there, I made my way to a town I haven’t been to since my dad took me to a cattle auction when I was a kid. I remember the auction, but not the town! 😄 I knew it was a fair distance from the main highway. Even after looking it up on the map, it still turned out further than I expected.
I was aiming for a feed store that was recommended to me. Thanks, Wolfsong! I looked it up on the map and had that image in my head, but I still drove right past it! I was looking at the building and vehicles as I drove by, thinking, this should be it, but didn’t see any signs. Of course, I saw them after I turned around and came back. They just weren’t where I was expecting them to be.
Once there, I was very happy to pick up two of these.
These were the largest bags they had, and at $36.30 a bag, they were only slightly more expensive then the 11kg bags I’ve been able to find in certain places. I probably should have got more, but two will do for now. The price is worth the drive to this town, which is nearer than the Walmart I’ve been getting 11kg bags at, and certainly closer than Costco.
I hope the cats like it, because that’s what we’ll be getting!
As a bonus, they also carry supplies we’ll need to get once we’ve got a chicken coop and can finally get chickens! Though I think we can find those closer, if I’m going there to get cat food, anyhow, it makes sense to buy the supplies at the same place.
That done, I’d made arrangements for one more trip.
Yup! I got a couple more flats of eggs. These were about as fresh as fresh can be, too!
I just love all those colours!
When I got there, I had just missed the egg lady, so her husband grabbed the trays – and a few last eggs from the coop! – for me, while I got to pet their adorable goats.
One of whom wanted to climb right into the van and go for a ride!
Goats have the softest, nibblely lips.
Her husband called her while I was there and, since she was at the feed store in the town my mother lives in, he was able to send her a picture of the cat food I’d gotten, to compare prices. It seems they don’t carry this brand, and it was even recommended as being the best price for cat kibble. That was a nice confirmation to get.
A lot of the driving I did today was along roads I’ve never seen before – unless you count the gap in my childhood memory! 😄 It was interesting to go through sections of road, patched but not yet repaired, from last year’s flooding. !! There’s a lot of marshland in this area, plus another lake. Actually, the lake is almost directly West of us, while this town is past it. One of these days, I need to go check out this lake. Somehow, I’ve just never gone that way. The closest has been to a few farms in that direction, but never as far as the lake itself. The satellite maps don’t tell me much about how accessible things are. The roads basically just end or go around it. If I trusted the van more, I’d love to explore the area, just to see what’s there.
I’m glad I was finally able to make the trip to this feed store. Definitely not a “let’s swing by on the way to the city” sort of place!
It has also been the perfect day for it. We’re at -2C/28F right now. The snow is melting off all the roofs, and the paths are all getting soft. The kitties are running around all over, and thoroughly enjoying themselves!
I am so looking forward to the snow being gone, and to be able to get to get work done outside again! We have so much to do, but much of it has to wait for the ground to thaw, at least somewhat. We’re going to have a very tight window to get some of the new, permanent, garden structures done before we need to start sowing and transplanting!
It’s almost 6pm as I start writing this, and not only have we reached our predicted high of -10C/14F (my app says there is a wind chill of -19C/-2F, but I just got back from topping up the outside kibble, with no jacket on, and there was no wind), but it’s supposed to keep getting warmer overnight!
The grey tabby that has suddenly become friendly – it’s the one between the black tabby and the white and grey at the top – managed to sneak into the old kitchen while I was coming out with kibble. He not only let me pet him, but I was able to confirm he is male.
Now why can’t any of the females suddenly become friendly? They still won’t let us anywhere near them! The calicos and torties are pretty much guaranteed to be female. Not sure about the rest of the tabby cattens, besides Judgement and the newly friendly one.
They are just loving the warmer temperatures, and so am I!
I’d made arrangements to get some farm fresh eggs this afternoon. Then I got a message saying they had to make a trip to the city to try and find a part, so that got postponed until they got back. With the warmer temperatures, I’ve been feeling so energetic and antsy, I ended up going into town to pick up a few things, even though we were planning a trip to the city soon. I was home long enough to get a chicken carcass in the slow cooker to make stock when I got the message that they were heading home, so I was back on the road soon after.
Aren’t they beautiful? I love the green ones!
I am always so inspired when I visit this place. This is the same person we’ve been getting our cardboard from, to use while making new garden beds. Today, I got to meet their new additions – a pair of fainting goats, and two emus!
Emus are flippin’ huge!
This is in addition to their alpaca, horses, donkeys, hens, Guinea hens, and probably other birds I don’t know about. Once we have our coop, I’m hoping to be able to buy chicks from them, too.
While I did a small trip today, I’ve decided to do a big city shopping trip tomorrow. We’re expected to have a high from 0C/32F to 2C/36F, depending on which app I look at. I figure I may as well take advantage of the warmth. This time, we’ll be going to a different wholesale place, where I know I can get things like the big buckets of ghee and restaurant size bags of pasta. It’s time to restock pantry supplies we’ve been using when we weren’t able to make our usual big trips. We didn’t have the extreme cold we usually do, other than the past week or so, but with the holidays, December and January are always the worst months for making these trips. I’m actually looking forward to the outing, even though I’m not at all looking forward to the shopping!
My younger daughter has different plans for tomorrow. Getting back to cleaning the basement! The cats have made a mess of the new basement, and she’s using that as an excuse to do a deep clean and organization of the space. That basement, however, isn’t much warmer than outside, even with the extra insulation added around the base of the house in the winter. During our recent deep freeze, it simply got too cold to work down there. It should get much better, and stay better, from now on. She wants to get it to the point that they can paint the basement. White paint on the ceiling (which is the exposed beams of the floor above) and special anti-mold and mildew paint for the walls. I don’t know if they want to do the walls white, too, but definitely a light colour. There are quite a few lights down there, but it’s still really dark.
We have a lot of big projects planned for when things warm up. Too many, really. The girls are focusing more on the inside, and are also talking about getting flooring for the kitchen and dining room, and refinishing the kitchen cupboards. Outside, I want to get that mobile coop built (and if that isn’t possible, we’re supposed to be getting a shed given to us that can be used until we can do the mobile one). Another project that will take probably quite a long time, as we acquire materials, is the outdoor kitchen. First priority is the timber frame roof. Once there’s a roof, we can be more leisurely about what we build inside. One side will have a smoker, clay oven, a “stove” opening to fit a large wok, and a grilling area. Two sides will have moveable work stations, and the fire pit will be added. The eaves of the roof will be longer past the wall of one side, where my daughter wants to have a forge.
Since we aren’t able to build the outdoor bathroom where we want to, until after a number of dead trees are removed, I want to do another, smaller, cordwood practise building. We need a new garden shed, so we can build a smaller shed – about 6’x8′ on the inside – in the maple grove, where a couple of trees had been removed while the power lines were being cleared. That is less of a priority, but since things will need to be built in stages, as we get materials, we might actually be able to get started on it this year.
Of course, there are also the high raised beds that need to be built. The outdoor kitchen actually solves something I was trying to figure out. The dead trees that we need to take down are quite large around. Too large to be practical for the high raised beds. I was considering cutting them in half, length wise, but now I’m thinking they’d be extremely strong upright supports for the outdoor kitchen frame. We can cut the lower, thickest, part of the trunks to the length we want, and then use the rest of the trunk for the high raised beds. It’ll mean more trees need to be cut down, but we need to do that, anyhow. With more than 20 dead trees that need to be removed, that’s more than enough to do both uprights for the outdoor kitchen, and the high raised beds.
Of course, there is the garden that needs to be worked on, including building new, permanent trellis tunnels, and other mobile trellises and supports. Plus trees and berry bushes to plant.
Oh, and on top of all these projects, we still need to dismantle that shed with the collapsed roof. We’ll be salvaging parts of it for building projects, such as the chicken coop I want to build. Plus, if we get that done first, I can use the space to build the outdoor kitchen, leaving more space available for the eventual garden beds we’ll be making nearby, where we get much better sunlight.
Feeling so energetic as the weather warms is kind of dangerous. I’m starting to plan way too many things! In the end, how much we actually end up accomplishing will depend on weather conditions. Last year, the flooding prevented a lot of the work I wanted to do, and the year before that it was the extreme heat. But if all we manage is to dismantle the shed, cut down some dead trees, and start setting aside the logs to use for the timber frame, that would be good.
I am so praying for good weather conditions this year, for the garden and for all the work we need to do outside! The last two years have been so brutal, we could really use the break!
The Re-Farmer 