figuring things out

Our 2025 Garden: where the sprouts are!

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It was a very calm morning, with almost no wind, so this was a good time to water the plastic covered winter sown beds.

The first image is under the cover of the low raised bed in the East yard. This one has a root vegetable mix of seeds, plus 1 type of lettuce and onion seeds. There are a lot of sprouts in there! I’m guessing mostly radish and beets. I’m not seeing signs of carrots or onions sprouting, but it’s really hard to tell at this point.

This bed was getting the most difficult to tend to with the high winds, so when I took the cover off to water it, I spent a lot of time securing the plastic after the cover was put back on. The plastic on all the beds is meant to be there only until the plants establish themselves and don’t need as much warmth or protection. It will likely be replaced with netting later in the season. So securing the plastic involves a lot of rolling and carefully tucking under the frame. With this one, that also meant completely redoing how it was weighted down on top. Hopefully, it will hold. We’re expecting high winds again, in a few days.

There wasn’t much to see in the high raised bed or the ground level bed with mixed flowers in it. There are sprouts, but not very many. The main thing is, they are no longer being dried out by the wind, nor dug into by the cats!

The next picture is of the old kitchen bed. There is quite a bit of spinach coming up in there, and I can even see tiny onion sprouts. The cluster of larger leaves visible came up very early and I thought it had to be a missed onion from last year, but now I can see that these are most definitely garlic. We had garlic planted in here, two years ago! I did try to pull things that were most obviously weeds – crab grass and dandelions – but only if I could do so without disturbing any seedlings, so there wasn’t a lot I could pull.

The other winter sown beds got watered as well. I think the summer squash bed, and the end of the garlic bed, are lost causes. The only things coming up in the summer squash bed is clearly not summer squash, and the few feet of the garlic bed shows nothing at all. I don’t think they made it!

There are more sprouts coming up in the mesh covered bed at the chain link fence, though still just the one pea shoot. This is the bed that has Dalvay shelling peas, a few King Tut purple, Royal Burgundy bush beans, Hopi Black Dye and Mongolian Giant sunflowers, a few black Montano Morado corn seeds, plus onion seeds. So there should be more pea seeds showing, as peas prefer to germinate in cooler soil. That suggests to me, most of the peas did not survive the winter. As for the sprouts I am seeing, about all I can say right now is that none of them are corn.

Unfortunately, while covering the bed with netting will protect it from the Chinese Elm seeds that are forming right now, the net only partially protects from the cats. There are a few smaller cats that are absolutely determined to get under the netting. Then, when I go to get them out, instead of leaving through the open space next to them that they got in on (the netting slides on the wire hoops), they run down the length of the bed, bashing themselves against the netting every now and then, in a panic. Or, like this morning, they simply climb on top of the netting and play on it! This set up wasn’t designed to actually hold that kind of weight, so quite a few of the wire hoops are now bent out of shape. It is really frustrating.

This bed is still made with temporary materials. Along the path side and ends is loose bricks. The chain link fence there are old boards to keep the soil from spilling through. When we finally have the materials to make it more permanent, we will need to keep protection in mind. It’s not enough to just cover it with netting to keep the elm seeds from smothering the bed, stop the cats from using it as a litter box, or keep the deer from eating whatever is grown there. We need the cover set up to be able to hold the weight of cats – we just can’t keep them from going right on top of any of the covers!

The cover that we have over the old kitchen garden bed is the one that was made using fence wire. When it was done, I swore I never wanted to work with that again! It’s so thick, I had to double up the frame on the sides to secure it in between, then double up the ends, just to keep it from falling apart. However, while it was on the high raised bed, I found it worked out really well, in that I could reach through the wire to tend to the bed, without having to remove it. The openings are not all the same size, though. It’s meant to be installed with the narrower openings at ground level to keep small critters out, while the larger openings at the top are all that’s needed to keep mid sized critters out. Which means there are spaces where I cannot fit my hands through, but I can still reach around from other openings.

The wire is also strong enough that no support hoops were needed. Not only can it hold itself up, but when the plastic was placed over it and the cats started jumping on it, it held their weight, too!

The cover that’s on the winter sown bed in the East yard is almost there. The hoops are strong enough to hold weight; especially now that I’ve secured them permanently, and they no longer slide through the pieces of metal strapping I used to hold them in place. I originally thought it would be useful to be able to remove the hoops at some point, but that potential convenience caused more problems than solved any. They do, however, still bend inwards, slightly. Particularly the ones at the ends.

The hoops are supporting a plastic mesh that is stiffer than netting, but more flexible and easier to work with than hardware cloth. As you can see in that first photo, it’s wide enough that it creates more shade, so this is a cover that would be idea to use for things like lettuces, which like more shade. The plastic mesh does sag when the cats jump on it. My plan is to add horizontal supports in between the hoops. These would keep the hoops at the ends from being pulled inwards, plus keep the plastic mesh from sagging downwards. I am hoping it will only need horizontal supports across the very top, but it might need more halfway up each side, too.

Once the plastic sheet is no longer needed, I will have to put something across the open ends, to keep the cats out. I have some black plastic mesh that should work out well, once I figure out how to secure it!

I don’t want to be spending too much time or effort on these covers, though. These were my first experimental raised bed covers. Now that I know how these have been working out, I plan to build new ones using better and stronger materials, taking into account what we have found works, or doesn’t work, with these ones. These ones still have a few years in them, though, and we will keep building more raised beds, so we will need more covers as time goes by.

Meanwhile, as I was watering the bed at the chain link fence, I took a good look at the haskap bushes.

*sigh*

I have one “Mr. Haskap” and two “Mrs. Haskap” bushes – cross pollinating varieties. With haskap, you need two varieties for cross pollination. The “Mrs. Haskap” is the Borealis variety. I can’t remember what the “Mr. Haskap” is, but that one still has its label, so I can check later.

Here is now they looked this morning.

The first image is the “male” haskap. It’s leafing out beautifully and, in the second picture, you can see it even has flower buds forming!

The next two photos are the “female” haskaps.

The larger one was bought at the same time as the Mr. Haskap and, at one point, I was sure that one had died. It has barely any leaves opening on it. The smaller one is still really small, even though it’s only one year behind the other two. At least it has more leaves, but still, they are way behind their pollinator variety! This is why, after all these years, we’ve never had more than a small handful of berries. They simply aren’t blooming at the same time long enough for proper pollination.

The varieties I have coming later in the month are Aurora (the pollinator) and Boreal Blizzard. These will be planted out in the food forest area, near where the apple and gooseberry just got planted. The Opal plum should be shipped at the same time as the haskap, and it will be planted in that area, too.

Hopefully, this will work out better than what we’ve got now, and we’ll finally have berries to eat! Two bushes should be enough to meet our needs; they are supposed to be quite productive. We’ve got three, and have barely had enough to taste.

At least we know we like them!

So that is how things were in the garden this morning. With today being a calm day, I hope to get back out there soon, and get some work done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: potting up, and protective covering

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Okay, we got some useful garden things done!

First up, the transplants.

In the first image, you can see the seedlings that need potting up. They all should be much bigger than this, but it’s just not warm enough, even with using the heater and the heating pad, in the basement.

With concerns about the outside cats potentially knocking the transplants over when we moved them out, I decided to use some storage bins to hold the Red Solo cups I was going to re-use to pot up into. They’ve been stored in the sun room all winter, so they had to get a cleaning of cob webs and whatever other debris managed to get on them. Thankfully, the old basement is where the laundry used to be, so we still have the old laundry sink that I could soak them all in, then scrub the ones with drainage holes in the bottom to transplant into. I also pre-soaked the seed starting mix with hot water, so it still be at least not cold, by the time the cups were filled and the seedlings transplanted.

These bins hold only 9 cups in them, so that basically became my default for the maximum number of transplants to pot up into. Which worked out really well. With the Black Beauty tomatoes, there were only 4 large and strong enough to pot up. With the Chocolate Cherry, there was only 5 to pot up, so they got to share a bin. The Spoon tomatoes and the Sub Arctic Plenty both filled one bin each. The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and the Turkish Orange eggplant both got one bin each, too, with almost zero “extras” that didn’t get transplanted.

In the second photo, you can see them after they were all potted up, before I topped them with vermiculite. The potted up seedlings are small enough that I could use the lids on the bins, but I had only 2 of them handy at the time. The next photo is after the vermiculite was added. Then I got more lids for the bins from the sun room and my daughter helped me get them out of the basement. Which was actually quite dangerous. We started with me taking them through the old basement and up the stairs to where my daughter was waiting at the door, one bin at a time. She would grab the bin at the door (keeping the cats from dashing downstairs) and take it to the old kitchen, while I went to get the next bin.

The old basement stairs are narrow; each step is about half the width of a typical step. It is also steep than most stairs are, and there is very little space at the door. Which means I could only go to the third step from the top before I ran out of space. Even going sideways and carrying the bin on one arm, I couldn’t reach the door knob, so having my daughter open the door was an essential. Once she had the bin, I could go higher and close the door, but just going up and down these stairs is simply not good. I go down them backwards, like on board ship or using a ladder.

After a few bins, my daughter kicked me out of the basement and we traded places. Apparently, I sounded like I was in a lot of pain. Which I was, but I wasn’t going to say anything, since I know it’s not any better for her!

In the last picture, you can see all the bins and trays now set up on the freezer in the old kitchen. I was so tempted to put them into the portable greenhouse. The thermostat in there was reading more than 40C/104F! Pretty impressive, considering we never got above 4 or 5C today (39 or 41F). And that wind!! Yikes! The problem is that we’d just have to take them back inside after a couple of hours, and I didn’t want to do that today. We’re still forecast to have -6C/21F tonight, though we’re not expected to reach those temperatures until 6am tomorrow, and I know it will drop below freezing inside the greenhouse, even with the heat sink. They will go into the greenhouse tomorrow, after I get back from running around.

Once that was done, I grabbed a late lunch, then headed to the post office to pick up a parcel. On the way back, my cell phone started ringing. I don’t have hands free, so I couldn’t answer it. When I got home, I found a message from the home care coordinator asking about something strange my mother had told the morning home care aid about her puffer, and having already taken it in the hospital.

???

I called back and left a message telling her as much as I knew, then called my mother. I hadn’t gotten through to her this morning about her telephone doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning, so I told her about that, first. She wasn’t impressed that it was in the morning, but it’s at about the time she gets her morning meds, so she’ll be up, anyhow – and I intend to be there, too. I then asked her about the puffer. She told me a completely different thing from what the apparently told the home care aid. She also seems confused about the type of puffer they used with her while she was in the hospital, and the original type she was using before then – which she has started using now. She had an unopened refill from before she went to the hospital, and the other type was done, so she started taking it on her own. I have no idea where she had it stashed away. Then I found out she’d already taken it three times today. I told her, she’s only supposed to take it once in the morning, then again before bed. Not several times throughout the day. Plus, we already talked to her doctor about it. This was an experiment to see if it would help with her breathing at night. It didn’t, and she turned out to be developing pulmonary edema, which she no longer has after being in the hospital for a couple of weeks.

Things were still confused, but we agreed we would talk about it when I’m there tomorrow, and she could show me what she had. I then called the home care coordinator back and got her right away. We talked for a while and confirmed my mother told different things to them than what she told me. I then found out they were giving her two puffs in the morning, but not in the evening (with the disc type of puffer, a dose is one puff, while the other puffer, a dose is two puffs, which is why the pharmacist and I decided to fill the prescription for the disc type). So there’s a mix up right there, too. Not that the puffer has been helping her in any way, but a neighbour of hers has asthma, so she decided she needed a puffer, too, and the doctor was willing to test it out with her rather than go through the years it would take to refer her to a specialist and get all the respiratory testing done.

Hopefully, we will get that straightened out tomorrow.

After I was done on the phone, it was time to get out and see what I could do to protect the winter sown raised bed.

I have a cover for the bed, but it needed some maintenance work first, so I brought it closer to the garage, where my tools where. One of the things that needed to be done was secure two sections of the mesh. The jute twine it had been tied together with before had degraded and broken apart. I’d already had to replace the twin in the other join and used paracord for that, so I did the same thing again.

The hoops supporting the mesh are sections of pipe that turned out to be rather too strong. They are held in place with strips of metal strapping, but would get pushed downwards – usually because of a cat jumping on it! So I wanted to get those nice and snug, then screw them into place.

I had helpers.

Syndol and Judgement decided the mesh was a night place to sit!

After the hoops were secured, I brought the cover over to the raised bed, but had to get a daughter to help with the rest, because of the wind. We got the cover on the bed, then opened one of the 8’x12′ plastic I’d picked up to cover it.

It was a lot thinner than I expected. Definitely not 7mm, which is what the guy looking up the information for me said it was. I suspect he didn’t quite understand what I was asking for.

Still, it will work for now.

We made sure to water the bed before putting the cover on (and I had to fix yet another hole dug into it). I noticed there are more sprouts coming up, so getting it covered to protect it from tonight’s cold will be a good thing!

After unfolding the plastic, we rolled and tucked the excess under the frame as best we could, but that wind was still threatening to blow it off. After looking around, I found a couple of sticked I’d joined with twine threaded through sections of a hula hoop to create a support for ground cherries flattened by the wind, a couple of years ago. That did well to drape across the top of the cover. We also found some lighter old boards to set on top as well; you can see the end result in the last photo above. Hopefully, it will be enough, but with how strong the winds are, I’m not entirely sure!

If it does hold out, it will protect the sprouts from tonight’s cold – and I plan to leave it on to also protect the bed from the cats! When it’s less windy, I’ll see if I can find a better way to secure the plastic, too. It’s meant to be temporary, though, so we’ll see. When the plastic is no longer needed, I have to find a way to close up the ends of the cover, so it can still be used to keep the cats out.

Since the coldest time of the night will be around the time I’ll be feeding the outside cats before heading to my mother’s, and then I’ll have to hit our own pharmacy in a different town when I’m done there, I’ll have to get my daughters to keep an eye on things and, when it starts warming up, move the transplants into the portable greenhouse. We’ll probably need to leave the door tied at least partly open so it doesn’t get too hot in there. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 9C/48F, but if it could get as hot as it did in there at our current temperatures, it’ll get even warmer tomorrow. By the weekend, we’re expected to get highs above 20C/68F. Hopefully, before then, we’ll be able to get more progress on the trellis build. We’ll also have our Costco stock up trip in a couple of days.

Things are going to be busy over the next while!

The Re-Farmer

Testing out a heat sink

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For a while now, I’ve been talking about our issues with the new portable greenhouse. It gets nice and warm during the day, which would be ideal for our seedling trays, but the temperatures drop right down during the night. Yesterday, for example, the outside temperature reached 17C/63F, and the thermometer in the greenhouse, which “only” goes to 50C/155F, was off the scale. Likely warmer than 60C/140F (my thermometer that is marked up to 60C is currently being used to monitor the covered bed in the old kitchen garden).

Last night, we dropped to 0C/32F. While I was doing my morning rounds, it was about 1C/34F. By the time I got to tending the greenhouse, that’s what thermometer was reading in there. The basement may be cold, but it doesn’t drop below 10C/50F during the night. It doesn’t go above 12C/54F unless we have the heater going, but at least things are not at risk of freezing.

Today, I rummaged around and dug out a black garbage can that was being used to store some odds and sots. I set it up in the greenhouse, got a garden hose hooked up and one of my daughters was kind enough to turn on the shut off valve in the basement for me, so I could fill the garbage can.

Thankfully, the garbage can doesn’t seem to have any cracks or leaks anywhere. It’s been outdoors for many years, even before we moved out here.

There is no lid, so I had to figure out what to use to cover it, just in case a critter got into the greenhouse. At first, I was going to make do with an indoor/outdoor floor mat, but then I spotted a piece of rigid insulation that looked large enough. That worked out much better.

While there is no wind in there to blow it off, I still put a weight on it, just in case. Granted, if a critter does get in and jumps up there, it would probably still knock it off, but it is more likely to be scared away, than fall in.

The water in the black plastic bin will heat up during the day, creating a heat sink that will slowly release that heat during the night. Once we do finally have trays in there, it will serve a dual purpose. There will be warm water that can be used to water the plants.

Going in and out of the greenhouse and standing there while monitoring the water level was enough to increase the temperature by almost 2 degrees before I was done. If that’s all it takes to start warming things up, the heat sink should work quite well.

It should be interesting to see what the thermometer says in the morning. Our overnight low is supposed to be 0C/32F again, but we’re supposed to get a mix of rain and snow in the wee hours. Tomorrow night we’re supposed to drop to -2C/28F, then have lows above freezing until Friday, when we’re supposed to drop to -4C/25F overnight.

Today’s high is supposed to be only 6C/43F with overcast skies. We definitely won’t be hitting 50C/122F or higher in there, today! However, we should still get temperatures of at least 20C/68, which should start getting that water warmed up nicely.

We shall see how the experiment goes!

The Re-Farmer

Rough night

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I tried to go to bed early last night.

The cats had other ideas.

So did my hips.

Ah, well.

This morning, I stayed in my pjs, popped on some rubber boots and did my short rounds. Which is just as well. It was snaining – snow-raining – at the time. You could even hear a continuous almost crackling noise as frozen rain hit. In fact, you can hear it in the video I took this morning.

It was -1C/30F, with a wind chill of -4C/25F at the time. The thermometer in the portable greenhouse was reading 1C/34F. Not a lot of difference.

The holes in the roof probably didn’t help.

Yup, I found a couple of tears in the plastic this morning. Best guess is, a cat tried to jump onto it from the kibble house roof.

Thankfully, there was no other damage. For now, I used clear duct tape to close them up from the inside. Once everything is warm and dry again, I’ll at more to the outside.

I had a lot of hungry cats this morning, including Brussel, but she was nursing her babies and wouldn’t leave the cat cave. She waited for me to deliver her wet cat food breakfast, instead. I’m glad of that, as it is more assurance that she and her kittens won’t simply disappear one morning, to some hidden location.

Last of all, I gave her a squeeze treat. It was harder than usual, as there were other cats around, and they can smell it. They want some, too, but we don’t have enough for all the cats. They’re just for the mama.

Once again, as I moved the tube away so I could squeeze the rest out, she got angry at me. She did wait, though, as I squeezed the last of it onto my finger and put my hand in. There was no hesitation as she licked the last of it off – but when I pulled my hand away, she attacked it, trying to pull it back!

Sorry, Mama. You ate it all up!

Once I was back inside, I headed to bed pretty much right away. This time, the cats let me sleep – as did the pain killers. Somewhat. I got at least a couple of hours of sleep out of it.

Meanwhile, my daughters got the drain from the washing machine set up out the storm door and started laundry day. Later on, I will be opening up the drain pipe in the basement and working to clear it out some more. We’ve done the hot water/detergent flush from the kitchen sink a few times, but I can still hear from the laundry drain, what sounds like water backing up the pipe a bit. Not a problem at all for the kitchen sink, but a potential problem for wash cycle draining, as it drains so much faster than the kitchen sink, and is at least 6 feet closer to that first bottleneck. As good as that drain auger tip is for clearing the pipe, what we really need is a heavy duty bottle brush type pipe cleaner that can really scrape off the inside of the pipe. I’ve been looking and the closest I can find is up to 30 feet long (you can add sections to it) and can be attached to a drill, but it’s designed to clean dryer vents, so the brush is a LOT larger than the inner diameter of the pipe I am trying to clean out. The bristles may be flexible enough to bend and fit, though. I’ve found another version that includes a narrower bottle brush end for the lint trap that looks like it would fit much better, but the rod is only a maximum of 2′ long, and costs almost a much as the 30′ version.

*sigh*

I hate having to shop for this stuff online. I’ve never even seen anything like these at the hardware stores. Perhaps, however, I was just not in the right sections. Something to keep an eye out for.

Meanwhile, we’ll try to clear the pipe out as best we can, with the tools we’ve got.

It’ll be so nice to not have to run a house out the storm door window to do laundry again.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: almost a perfect fit!

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As I was finishing my morning rounds, I decided I had to get that cover off the high raised bed and move it to the old kitchen garden. The snow is still deep in the main garden area, but the bed in the old kitchen garden I want to set it on is already almost snow free.

Getting to the high raised bed was not going to be easy. I had to break a path in – literally! With the thaw/freeze cycles we’ve been having for the past while, the surface of the snow is hard, but not hard enough to hold much weight. I had to stomp my way through, breaking the surface layer, until just before I reached the high raised bed, where the surface was solid enough that it actually held my weight.

There was no way I could carry the raised bed cover while making my way back, though. My balance isn’t that good anymore! Thankfully, that wasn’t really an issue.

I could just slide it across the snow!

That worked out quite well!

Once I was clear of the deep snow, I could carry it normally. This cover, made using fence wire that needed to be sandwiched between two boards to secure it, is probably the strongest of all the covers I made.

If you click through to the next photo, you’ll see that the cover almost perfectly fits over the bed in the old kitchen garden! Which wasn’t at all intentional. When we first planted in this area, the bed was more triangular in shape. It was too wide at one end to reach the middle easily, so when I used logs to make it into a higher raised bed, I made it rectangular, but just worked with the space I had. I don’t think I actually measured anything. The covers are all 3′ wide by 9′ long. At one end, by the rose bush, it fits perfectly between the vertical corner supports at that end. The end closer to the house is slightly wider, but not enough to be an issue.

The challenge is going to be, how to cover it with plastic. Not only does it need to keep the cats out, but it has to be secure enough that the wind won’t blow it away.

There are gaps around the sides and one end of the bed that a cat could potentially squirm through. Which means my original thought of somehow securing the plastic directly to the wood frame itself is not going to be good enough. What I might be able to do is have the plastic go on the outside of the bed and secure it into the path in some way that would allow me to lift the plastic to tend the bed, as needed. How to keep it from being blown loose by the wind is going to be the main issue. I know that simply using ground staples to pin it in place won’t be enough. The wind would tear the plastic free in no time.

We have small logs from when the branch piles were chipped, each about 4′ long, stacked beside the wattle weave bed. I may just use some of those to weigh down the edges of the plastic, all along the outside of the bed. It will take several sheets of the plastic I have, though, and those will need to be taped together with clear tape. I’m definitely going to need to get a daughter to help me out with that, because I know the wind is going to make that job quite difficult!

Before we secure it, though, I’m going to see if I can remove the mulch, then add more snow to the bed before covering it with plastic. The melting snow will help “water” the bed. The mulch might still be too frozen, though. If so, we’ll put the plastic over it for a day or so, which should thaw things out faster, then try again.

If this works out as I hope it will, that will give this bed a head start. This is the bed that has:

– spinach – four different varieties
– Swiss chard – two different varieties
– Shallots and onions – saved seed
– Kohlrabi – both purple and green
– Hedou Tiny bok choi – saved seed

There are a lot of older seeds in this mix, so it’s hard to know just how many would germinate, even if they did survive the winter.

Well, this is an experiment, so whatever happens, happens!

The Re-Farmer

Bypass installed!

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Have I mentioned, my brother is the best?

Today, he worked on our septic plumbing again. This after already spending a couple of hours outside, doing things among their stored items, and being sick, too!

A few days ago, they’d gone out for dinner and he’d ordered a “Canadian burger”. Yeah, one of those virtue signaling things so many places have been doing, suddenly pretending to be patriotic because our government and media have told us to hate the US right now. Just a few years ago, the same people were calling Canadians who flew the flag and displayed patriotism racists and Nazis and white supremacists, just like Americans – or at least the Americans they tell use to hate. People were arrested for flying Canadian flags, banned from businesses, their property vandalized and even physically assaulted. Now, suddenly “American style patriotism” is no longer bad. Funny how easily people can spin on a dime and not see their own double standards.

Ironically, the restaurant was a US franchise.

Anyhow, the burger made him incredibly ill. He thinks the beef wasn’t fully cooked and he was hit with e. coli. He said he was still operating at only about 80%.

His 80% is more than a lot of people’s 100%, though! The guy is amazing. I don’t know how he does it!

I had other things to get done before I went back to working on the basement, so I didn’t get to help or watch while he figured out how to install the new bypass. I cleared another section in the new basement enough to mop it, then joined him after I set the blower up to dry the concrete floor. By that, he was pretty much done and ready to start testing. He was quite happy that it worked out much easier than he expected.

This is what he installed.

The pipe to the ejector now has the T insert in it. Under normal circumstances, effluent would just go straight through this pipe and to the ejector, out by the barn.

In the next photo, you can see the ball valve in the emergency diverter pipe, in the open position.

I was really curious how he would work with that diverter pipe. It had a very strong curve to it, in the wrong direction! What he ended up doing was first, rotating it so that the curve was in the other direction. Then he used his heat gun on a substantial section of it, until he could straighten it out enough that it could be attached to the T. He had to stand there and hold it straight until the pipe cooled enough to hold its new shape.

Of course, he had to cut sections out of both pipes to install the T and the ball valve.

While this was being worked on, the family was concerned about using the water. The septic pump was turned off while he worked, of course, but it had gone off not very long before he started, so there wouldn’t have been very much water in the greywater side of the tank. Any time I got a message, asking if it was okay to flush or shower or whatever, I encouraged them to use plenty of water, so we could have something to test with!

Before testing it, my brother went outside to check the diverter at the house end to make sure nothing got knocked askew while he was manipulating the pipe around. Once that was done and he was back inside, he turned the pump on manually – an easy thing to do, thanks to the second switch he installed for that! – and checked for leaks. There was a tiny leak at the elbow before it goes out of the house, so he tightened the screw clamp and added a second one, just to be safe. There was no leak when he turned the pump on again.

So we knew that effluent was flowing through the open ball valve in the diverter. We could see in the filter that water was flowing, and we could hear it, too.

We didn’t test for long, though, as we didn’t want to actually empty the tank.

The next test was with the valve closed. We were both watching that filter closely and, while there was movement, it didn’t look like it was flowing. The only way to know for sure, though, was for one of us to go to the ejector, while the other turned the pump back on.

My brother went to the ejector, then video called me on Facebook messenger, so we could see and show each other what was going on. Once he gave the go ahead, I closed the ball valve again and turned the pump on.

Nothing happened.

No flow out the ejector.

We waited a while to be sure, before I shut off the pump, then opened the ball valve again.

Which is just awesome. Without the valve, the only way to test if the ejector is working would require switching pipes – then switching back again when the test failed. Not only is that messy, but every time that is done, there is a risk of breaking something.

What this means is that the emergency diverter is now a permanent set up. Once the ejector is working again, we can close the valve, but can be ready to simply open it again, if we have more problems in the future.

We won’t be able to do anything with the ejector until things warm up a lot more. My brother thinks it’s most likely still frozen at the bottom. I think there’s something blocking the venturi valve. Worst case scenario, the pipe from the house itself is clogged, somewhere. That’s more than 300 feet of pipe, and a clog could be anywhere in there!

Either way, we won’t be able to find out until spring thaw.

Until then, the emergency diverter is our life saver!

Once the bypass valve was installed and tested, my brother headed out for home, with plans to visit our mother along the way – and bring her a hot supper to share. No meals on wheels on the weekend, so I’m sure she would appreciate it. I just hope she treats my brother well this visit. She’s really been on about how he was “keeping secrets” from her because they were so quiet about selling their acreage and moving, even though she knew that was why they brought their equipment here to the farm. I think she even forgot that they’d done that. Ah, well. I’ll find out later tonight!

I am quite pleased with how things have gone today. While I don’t have my seed starting set up in the basement yet – quite a bit more work will need to be done down there, still – I did get good progress down there, and was able to reclaim my work station. My brother got the bypass valve installed and, while we were doing that, my daughter was spring cleaning in the kitchen and dining room. She was able to get all the cat hair off the walls, ceiling, cupboard doors, the ceiling fan, pictures on the walls, curtain rods, etc. That alone was a HUGE job. With so many cats, of course there’s cat fur everywhere, but when it sticks to the walls and anything on them, it doesn’t want to come off! It won’t even vacuum off. She had to get right in there and scrub. She did an amazing job, though by the end of it, she was really needing painkillers!

So was I, by the end of it all. I haven’t gone up and down the stairs so many times in one day since we cleared and cleaned out the basements. Yes, I took my prescription painkillers in the morning, but even those can only deal with so much, and I can’t take more during the day, since I save my second allowable dose before bed. Pain is more of a problem when I’m lying down and trying to sleep than during the day. I can put up with it more when I’m up and about. Once I’m in bed, it keeps me from getting sleep. I did take some acetaminophen, though, to help take the edge off, at least.

I have a few last things to do in the basement before I call it for the day. Tomorrow is Sunday, which I try to keep as a day of rest. This will make sure I don’t over do it and put myself out of commission for days. As long as we get something set up for seed starts within the next week, it should be good. Most, if not all, of the seeds I ordered should be in by then.

From there, it’s the fun part: going through all the seeds and choosing which ones to start and when!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, and diverting the diverter

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We’re a bit cooler this morning, though we were above freezing for most of the night. As I write this, we’ve continued to cool down to -9C/16F, though our high of the day is expected to be -4C/25F. We’re expected to get a bit of snow in the afternoon. Tomorrow is supposed to have a high of -11C/12F, and then we’re supposed to start warming up again.

All in all, some excellent February temperatures, making my morning rounds much more pleasant!

Pleasant for the yard cats, too.

After topping up the heated water bowl, Kohl came over, wanting pets. Once I started petting her, the tabby pushed his way through, then Stinky jumped through the window and pushed them both away!

It’s not easy to pet three cats with one hand, at the same time. 😄

Sadly, I could not get close to this one, for pets.

This little… dude? … was tucked under a chair we keep by the door. I like to leave some food for the shier cats on the landing under our door, where they can be on the mat to eat, rather than the cold concrete.

I want to snuggle that baby.

I didn’t get snuggles, but I did get to pet this lady!

Adam allowed pets!!

Only because she was eating on the cat house roof. I still can’t walk up to her, though once in a rare while, if she’s loafed in one of the platform beds in the sun room, she does let me come close enough to pet her. Very rarely.

As things have warmed up, the excess kibble that was in all the trays is finally being eaten. On the cat house roof, an insane amount of kibble was uncovered as the snow melted. The kibble was softened by the melting snow, then froze solid, so they can’t eat it. It seems strange to be dumping fresh, not-frozen kibble on the cat house roof when there are literally piles of kibble on either side!

Today, I continued something I started yesterday. Before we headed to the city, I started getting the large, flexible hose my brother brought for the emergency diverter. When he’s used the emergency diverter before, this was the hose he used to divert the greywater into the trees. That was in the summer, though.

This winter, he had found a couple of length of 4″ PVC pipe that was set up instead. It works great, but the effluent isn’t being drained very far from the house. The slope of the land has it draining towards a corner of the old kitchen garden’s retaining wall. With the frozen ground, it spreads pretty far, so there’s quite a lot of ice building up under the snow.

The 6″ flexible pipe was already brought out and half buried in the snow. With the sunny warm days we’ve been having the black plastic didn’t take long to get exposed.

Yesterday, I shoveled out a trench in the snow along the pipe, so that I could pull the whole thing closer to the rigid pipe the diverter is draining through. The flexible pipe would later be laid out in the trench, after it was attached to the end of the rigid pipe, but not quite yet.

The closer I got to the house, the more I had to use the ice chipper to break up the ice that had built up under the snow as best I could. With the melting and thawing we’ve had lately, the snow has a thick, hard crust on top. I used that to build a sort of wall to one side, so that the next time the pump started running, more grey water would go towards the trench and thaw out the ice a bit, before it melted through the wall of snow and drained towards the corner of the garden again. With the snow dug out to ground level for most of the trench, it would also thaw out faster once we got any sunshine.

That is how I left it, so nature could do its thing for me, until this morning.

The main thing about the flexible hose is that water might puddle in parts of it and freeze it closed. It needed to have support where it joined with the rigid pipe, in particular. So this morning, I dragged out a board from the garage. It had been uncovered among the stuff in the barn, while my brother was bringing his own stuff in, and I snagged it to use somehow in the summer.

Well, I have a use for it now.

After using the ice chipper a bit more – yes, the effluent did actually soften and thaw things about a bit, before melting through the snow all, so that actually worked – I set up the board.

Originally, I was going to set it up in front of the end of the rigid pipe and support it with a brick at that end, to form a sort of ramp for the flexible pipe. To put the flexible pipe on, though, I had to push back the insulation I’d wrapped around the end, where it rested atop another brick to keep it off the ground. In the end, I was able to put the board under the brick that was already there, and maintain the slope of the rigid pipe.

In the first picture, you can see how the board is set up now. The flexible pipe fits nicely over the 4″ pipe, and I’ve got a foot or so of the rigid pipe in there. I pushed the flexible pipe up to where I’d pushed back the wrapped insulation, which will cover what little gap there is. I ended up setting the brick i no longer needed against one side, to hold it in place, as the direction changes slightly.

You can see Syndol was quite interested in what I was doing! Out of frame, on the other side, Judgement was also watching… and judging!

The second image shows the pipe running down the trench in the snow.

I will leave it like this for now, to allow the relatively warm water to flow through it a few times, and for any sun we get (no sun likely, today!) to warm up the black plastic. In a day or two, I will work my way along the flexible pipe to straighten it out more, if necessary, and move snow against it to hold it in place. The very end is a bit of a potential problem, as it has a bit of a curl to it that I can’t do anything about. Of course, it curls upwards. There’s no way to shift the pipe around to have it curl down, instead. The pipe is just too stiff with cold and won’t straighten out, and I don’t want to crack it, trying. We’ll just have to keep a close eye on it. With temperatures now warming up as we head towards spring, there is very little concern that it would freeze closed completely. Any ice that does form would likely be melted away by the next flow was water.

The pump hasn’t been triggered since before the flexible hose has been added, so I likely won’t be able to see how it’s working for some time. The handy thing is that I will be able to see the end of the flexible pipe easily from my window.

I don’t foresee any problems and, now that I’ve diverted the diverter, it will be good to have the effluent get drained so much further from the house.

The Re-Farmer

Here we go again, again!… again

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Okay, first things first.

Yes!!! We can use our plumbing again!

But no, the problem has not been fixed. In fact, it hasn’t even been identified.

When my brother got here, the first thing we did was see if the problem was with the pump itself.

I have learned a lot about this pump today!

The back valve was removed, and it was fine. Just a bit of gunk that would not have affected how it worked.

Since it was off anyhow, I gave it a thorough cleaning, along with the length of pipe and elbow that would be reattached to it.

From what we could see inside the back valve’s opening, the disc-type thing that would spin was also clear.

The pump has clean out valves, though. I had no idea what they were and couldn’t even see one of them without having to look around the outflow pipe from the filter. That was the next thing to check. Those have probably never been opened before, but my brother managed it. He took the bottom one out first, which was the drain, which is when we got a real hands on idea of just how much water is in that pump’s cannister section!

Trying to see into those openings was not easy. My brother got me to turn the pump’s switch on and off quickly, just so he could see things turning inside, using his phone as a flashlight. Everything looked fine. He did some cleaning around the thread and even poked around with a wire, but it was not all that gunky, either.

With everything checked and cleared, we tried again.

The pump ran, but no change. No water would flow.

Okay, maybe we just needed to prime the pump.

I had no idea there was a valve for that. As with the cleanout valves, it took a lot to get it open. Once it was, we used the hose I keep hooked up to the old laundry’s cold water tap all the time, because it’s just so handy. Once it was full, he closed it up again (making sure to Teflon tape everything, along the way), and we tested it again.

Nothing. No flow at all. The only change I could tell was that, with everything all nice and clean, the motor was running a bit quieter.

Okay, the pump seemed to be working. Could it be that something was blocking the tank’s outflow pipe?

There was only one thing left to do.

Put the emergency diverter back on.

If it worked after that, then we knew the problem was not at the house end.

Thankfully, when we switched it out before, I told my brother to just leave it aside. I would put it away in the spring, and then reseal the hole in the wall that it runs through. Which meant it was just a matter of switching pipes.

The outflow pipe from the pump to the ejector, however, always has water in it. It’s just a gravity thing. So we got a bucket handy before starting to take it off. As soon as my brother wrestled it loose, I got the bucket under it, so we did manage to catch most of it, but not all!

Yeah. I got splashed.

That out and set aside, the diverter was put back on. After double and triple checking that every thing was tight, we tried again.

Yes!!! It worked! Finally, the septic tank was draining!

My brother and I headed outside to check the other end, while my daughter stayed to monitor the pump. It emptied the tank and shut itself off before my brother and I could get to where it drains into!

Which means that the problem is somewhere from the house to the ejector.

We went to check the ejector.

The heat tape was not warm, but it has a regulator and will shut itself off based on temperature. Today has been a warm day, and is still warming up (as I write this, I see we just reached 0C/32F), so that makes sense. The extension cord’s plug has an indicator light on it, so we could see that it had power. Everything looked fine.

That doesn’t mean it’s not the ejector, though. It just means, we know it’s not frozen.

What it could be is that there is gunk in the venturi valve that finally just blocked the whole thing. The only way to know for sure is to pull it out. Which would require removing the heat tape, unscrewing the elbow at the top, unscrewing the cap, and removing both, then very carefully pulling the venturi pipe out of the stand pipe, so we can see the valve at the bottom.

Which we will NOT do until spring.

Yup. We’re on the emergency diverter for the rest of the winter, at least.

If it’s not the venturi valve being blocked, then it’s the pipe itself. A build up of crud inside the pipe could have come loose or something and blocked it entirely. Based on how well the water flowed out of the ejector after we got it thawed out and hooked up again, the pipe was running pretty clear. The only real hint that there was a problem was that it took longer for the pump to empty the tank than it did before.

There is nothing we can do about it until the ground thaws out.

Once the diverter was set up and working, my brother was prepared for another job.

Installing the power diverter switch.

The pump could be turned on and off using what is basically a light switch on the wall. Under normal circumstances this is in the “on” position at all times. The pump itself is triggered by the float and pill switch, inside the tank.

Sometimes, however, there is a need to check the pump, when the tank is not full enough to trigger it on. With all the septic problems we’ve been having, we needed to be able to turn it on manually, from inside the basement. The alternative would be to open up the septic can and use something long enough to catch the cable and raise the float. That’s something we want to avoid doing even in the summer. Not a chance, in the winter!

My brother set up a couple of wires set up outside the switch box that would allow us to turn it on manually. The pump’s switch would be turned off, the wires outside the box would be attached to each other, the switched turned on again, and the pump would run. When we were done testing it, we’d turn off the switch, undo the wires, cover and tuck them away again, then turn the switch back on so the pump could be triggered by the float again.

Well, not anymore.

This is how it was set up before.

You can see the black covered wires from the pill switch coming up from below and into the box. The two wires sticking out the side from the same opening were the ones that could be joined to turn the pump on manually.

There was no schematic, so my brother had to be particularly careful in figuring out what was what. There were the wires from the breaker box (which was off, of course), the wires from the pill switch, the wires from the motor, the ground wires, and the manual diverter wires that all had to be kept track of!

He installed a new box, got all the wired sort out and attached to new switched, and put it all together, with one special feature, which you can see by clicking through to the next image (which Instagram, once again, messed with, so it’s off to once side instead of centred. *sigh*).

The manual switch has a safety cover on it, so that there is on way it can be turned on by accident!

Then he left the blue protective film on more me, because I commented on how I liked the blue colour. 😄

Of course, once everything was together – and before it was all closed up – the breaker was turned on and it was tested. I even made sure to get video of him explaining the which wires were which, so we can refer to it in the future, if need be.

My brother is so awesome. I don’t know what we would do without him! It even came up in our conversation today; my brother is the last living person who really knows this place. Another reason why I try to document everything, and learn as much as I can from him!!!

Once he was done with all this and his tools were safely put away and to the side, I did the floor pipe maintenance thing with the hose, showing him where I was hitting bottlenecks – except the second bottleneck wasn’t there! Or, at least, the hose passed through the opening just right, because he was there. 😄

Once that was done, I helped him haul all his tool boxes, bins and bags up and to his vehicle while my daughter, sweetheart that she is, took care of washing and disinfecting the floor. Mostly with one arm, since her ganglion is just not going away this time.

My brother may have finished up in the basement, but not with here! After loading up his car again, he went on to do things in their various storage areas for a couple more hours! Hopefully, the roads will be gone. We have just reached our high of the day; 2C/36F and are starting to get a bit of mixed rain and snow. We’re supposed to stay at this temperature through to tomorrow, even overnight.

Meanwhile, one of the first things I did was call dibs on the shower, after having been splashed while switching out that pipe. The honeypot has been put away, and we no longer have to use basins and buckets to keep water from draining into the full septic tank.

It feels so good to be able to shower again!

And use a flushing toilet instead of the honeypot.

Ah, the things we put up with to live here! 😄😄😄

The Re-Farmer

It’s going to be a while…

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Before I update on our whole septic pump situation, I just had to share this.

The cold hasn’t quite let go yet; when I headed out to give the outside cats their kibble and warm water, we were actually still at the coldest part of the “night”.

I was back inside when I got the above screen cap. -27C/-17F with a wind chill of -32C/-26F The south yard is sheltered from today’s wind, though, so it wasn’t feeling that cold.

If you click through to the next picture, you can see what the cold did!

I was putting kibble into the tray under the water bowl shelter, and my puffy park sleeve brushed against the solar powered light under the roof.

Brushed. Barely touched. Something I’ve probably done many a time and never noticed.

The plastic was so cold and brittle, it broke right off.

It still works, though. For now, I just draped the cord around the remains of the holder on the frame, and the light is hanging down. I don’t know how well the motion sensor will pick things up like that, but it should still turn on at least sometimes.

Today we’re looking at a high of -14C/7F, which is going to make things much more pleasant for when my daughter and I have to head out for our medical appointments. The drive is about 45 minutes on the highway, which isn’t too bad, and I’m happy to have gotten that tire check, yesterday. That’s one less worry! Tomorrow, I have errands for my mother, and then we don’t have to drive anywhere until I’m taking the truck to the garage for the engine flush/oil change/sensor replacement BEFORE we start doing our stock up shopping trips to the city. I will be very happy to have the check engine light off and the oil pressure gauge working again.

Not as happy as we will be once we get that septic pump working again.

Which, unfortunately, won’t be for a while.

My brother called last night and we talked about it. Unfortunately, his schedule is so insane, the earliest he can come out is Sunday – and he wasn’t completely sure of that, either. The alternative is to call a plumber but 1) who knows if they’d be able to come any earlier and 2) neither of us are comfortable with that. Our system is not common and, in some ways, unique. I don’t know that I’d trust someone to work on it that has never seen it before. There are just too many things that could be broken, if work isn’t done in the right sequence.

After looking at the video I sent him, my brother is not convinced the problem is the back valve, though that would be the first thing to check. He described how this pump works, and some work he’d done on it in the past. Some pumps use a piston to get the water flowing, which can wear out and break down relatively quickly. This pump has something he describes as a hockey puck. A disk that spins. The disk has texture on it, and that spinning gets the water flowing. This spinning disk system lasts much longer and is less likely to break. However, if the disk isn’t spinning, the pump could be running, but there would be no flow happening.

He has had to work on this before, during the years we lived in other provinces. Something had gotten caught in the disk. He had to take it out, unwrap the stringy whatever it was to clear the disk (remember, ladies: don’t flush tampons!), then put it all back together again. It has been working fine ever since.

Part of why he thinks this might be a problem is a noise he could hear in one of the videos I sent him. That noise actually didn’t start until I restarted the pump again to take the video, but the pump also has an almost grinding sound. Nothing huge, but a sort of sound I might not have noticed, if I didn’t already know how the pump was supposed to sound like. If the pump is running dry because it’s not pulling water from the septic tank, that could be the bearings getting worn out, which would make that sound.

He’s really hoping he doesn’t have to replace the pump. This brand no longer exists, and the only other brand around right now is made in China. That’s it. No one else seems to make these pumps anymore. The type of pump that is more common is a pump that is installed IN the septic tank and is fully immersed. Which is supposed to be much better, but I have a real problem with that. It would require excavating the tank to install one and, if anything goes wrong, the tank would have to be excavated again to repair or replace it. My brother that to get the tank excavated to access the pipes, back when my father was still living here, and it cost him $5000. It would easily cost much more than that, to get that sort of work done, today.

So we are stuck with the system we have.

And stuck with not using our plumbing for at least another 4 days, including today.

Oh, we can still use our water. We just have to avoid draining anything into the septic tank. It is full, but not over full. Right now, the only water going in there is when we very quickly wash our hands in the bathroom, after using the honeypot, which would have negligible effect on the tank’s level. For anything else, we use basins and dump the water outside.

Speaking of honeypots.

I’d found the honeypot seat in a shed, years ago, and I am very thankful for it. It is designed to fit over any 5 gallon bucket, which we also found. This set up is great for a rare use.

We are using this thing a LOT more often than expected.

A 5 gallon bucket is not particularly stable; not when we have a houseful full of gimps. The size and shape of a seat that fits on a bucket is also… not easy to finish up on, shall we say.

So today, I’ve been looking at alternatives. It won’t be of any help for us now, but the way things have been going, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we will need something like this again.

We do actually have a fancy camp commode in the basement that is flushable. We found it while cleaning up the basements a few years ago, with water still in it. The problem is, the base is missing, so it can’t be used. It’s not something that could be put on top of a bucket or something, due to its design.

I started looking at medical commodes, like what home care provided for my mother, but ended up looking more at camp commodes, and even just a seat on a folding stand. A bag could be hung from the stand before the seat is put on but, for our use, it would be set up over the 5 gallon bucket. The thing I really like about that one – aside from the padded seat! – is that it’s taller. Almost as tall as the higher toilet we have, which would be easier on the knees.

That’s the kicker in looking at various designs. We all have various mobility issues; even the girls. These need to be taken into consideration. Plus, we wouldn’t be using this for camping, but to set up in our bathroom for when we have situations like right now, where we can’t use the plumbing. It’s not a particularly large bathroom, though there is more space if we store the bath chair in the tub while the honeypot is set up.

I had to laugh at my brother’s reaction when he found out we line the bucket with a garbage bag. I was telling him how we are using the stove pellets we use as cat litter in the bag to absorb moisture. Then, when the bag is changed out, it’s tied off and set in the old kitchen to freeze until we can go to the dump. He found that rather horrifying. He thought we were just using the bucket, without a liner of any kind, then dumping it in the bushes. Which is what I find rather horrifying! True, that’s what we did before we got running water in the house, when we used a bucket in the basement in the winter, because going to the outhouse just didn’t make sense with so many little ones (like me, at the time). I only vaguely remember the emptying of buckets, since I was too small to have been given the job. My brother, as the oldest of the boys, would have been doing it more often.

The thing is, if we don’t use a garbage bag and instead dump the contents in the bushes behind the outhouse (where we already have a litter compost pile), the bucket would need to be cleaned every time. Which is the part I shudder at. It’s not like we can use a hose to clean it out, like we could in the summer. We’d have to dump the contents, use the bathtub to clean the bucket, go out again to dump out the wash water, then rinse it and go back out again to dump the rinse water.

I’ll just use a garbage bag, thanks!

We might need to invest in biodegradable bin liners, though, given that we have had to use the honeypot so much more often than we ever expected! If we have those, then we could use the litter box compost instead of taking the bags to the dump.

Of all the plumbing problems we have had in this place, septic related ones have been the worst to deal with!

The Re-Farmer

How things are going

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Today is working out to be a rather pleasant day, overall. We’ve got bright sunshine and – as I’m writing this – there doesn’t seem to be much wind.

Unlike this morning!

I got the morning rounds done which, today, included shoveling out the space we back the truck into to load it up for the dump.

We got a fair bit of snow last night, though it was very light and fluffy and easy to shovel – and clear off the solar panels for the kibble and water shelter lights! We’re going to need to break little Spewie out to clear the driveway, but not today. We’ll be getting winds off and on today, while tomorrow is supposed to be much more pleasant. We’re supposed to reach a high of -11C/12F this afternoon, but the -16C/3F low of the day is supposed to happen around 7pm this evening, and then it’s supposed to keep warming up overnight until a high of -4C/25F tomorrow, and a high of 0C/32F on Monday!

I am so looking forward to the warmer temperatures!

Along with some shoveling to make room for the truck by the house, I also checked the ejector. The septic pump didn’t turn on during the night, but by the time I heard it running this morning, it was off before I got into the basement to check it. With my theory that gunk from inside the short lengths of pipe between the filter cannister and the back valve got loose and is now stuck in the back vale, I tried an experiment last night. I’d picked up some Dawn Platinum dish detergent to keep in the basement, for when I put in a clean filter basket and need to wash the spare. When I topped up the filter last night, I squirted in some detergent, first, then topped up the water before closing it up. I figured, with the filter draining like it does, it’ll take the detergent with it, and that would help clean out the pipe lengths and back valve the next time the pump turned on.

When I checked the ejector, I could see that water had splashed out for quite some distance, since the area was no longer covered in snow. Beyond how far the water is ejected, it flows down the metal sheet that diverts the flow towards the low area, and that section is completely covered in snow with a water tunnel under it. The snow and ice gives a good indication of how well the ejector is working.

Once I finished my rounds, I backed the truck up to the house and started loading it with garbage while my daughter checked the house and changed whatever garbage cans looked like they needed it, before helping me get the rest of the garbage and recycling out of the old kitchen.

The good thing about the old kitchen not being heated and not having much insulation: the garbage freezes in the winter, and there is no smell! Very important, since we go to the dump more more infrequently in the winter.

Once the truck was loaded (and clear of cats!), I headed out to the dump. The highway was covered in packed snow, with blowing snow buffeting me, so I was definitely taking my time for the drive! Another wintertime bonus: the area in front of the pit is covered in packed snow, so I’m less concerned about driving over something sharp enough to puncture a tire. 🫤

When I got back, my daughter had a couple of bags for the burn pile waiting outside the door, so I added those to the pile. With the warmer weather coming up, we should be able to finally burn that pile of mostly diseased branches, and do the burnable garbage, too. Our burn barrel has finally fallen apart, and the burn ring is full of ashes, so we can’t use either until we can clean those out in the spring or summer.

Not long after I was back, I got a phone call about my brother to talk about the septic pump. After talking about various possible causes throughout the system, we basically came down to the same conclusion: something is stuck in the back valve again, and the only way that could have happened is if there was something in the pipe between the filter cannister and the back valve that came loose. Especially since it was working so well at first. My brother had checked the back valve thoroughly, and it was in excellent condition. As for the pipe that attaches to it, it’s an elbow that is directly attached to the back valve, and he knew that elbow was clear. There’s about 6 inches of pipe between elbows, then another 8 inches or so from that pipe to the filter cannister’s outflow. Not a lot of distance for gunk to build up, but if that rag managed to take however many years it did, to work its way through that little bit of pipe and get stuck in the valve, it’s hard to say what else could have gotten stuck in there that we couldn’t see in between those elbows.

I told my brother what I’d done with the detergent, and he agreed that this might help. The alternative is to take it all apart again, and he wants to avoid that. The more things get taken apart, the more likely something will break. We’re keeping an eye on it, it’s still working, even if it does need to have the filter primed to get it going sometimes. My daughter was in the shower while were were talking, so I went to the basement to see if the pump would turn on, but it didn’t. The tank had been emptied too recently for one shower to trigger the pill switch again. As we were talking, though, I noticed something about the level of the water in the filter.

It was pretty much exactly level with the top of the pump, which is where the back valve is. The back valve is pretty much level with the inflow opening in the filter cannister – at least it is, now that I have something under the cannister to support its weight – and the water level almost completely covers it. So it looks like the water level is equalizing with the height of the valve.

I do wish I’d known more about the pump before all this started. Particularly about the back valve and where it was. Chances are, I would have made the connection with the back valve having problems, much earlier – and possibly gotten it fixed before the ejector froze solid!

Ah, well. Live and learn!

After I got off the phone with my brother, and my daughter was done her shower, I went back down to tend to the filter. I got my daughter to go with me so I could update her and show her what I was doing with the detergent, and what we hoped it would accomplish.

If the detergent doesn’t seem to be helping, I might want to just add some of the Free Flow powder to the filter before topping it up with warm water, instead of cold. While we still use the Free Flow enzymes and bacteria down the drains regularly, those are great for the plumbing and the septic tank, but doesn’t do much for that little section of pipe between the filter and the pump.

All of this stuff, we are extra careful to be sure it won’t damage the pipes or mess with our septic system. That’s something we just never had to think really about when living in the city!

So that is where were at with the septic issues. Now that we finally got the dump run done, we don’t need to go anywhere for some time. With the weather warming up, that means we can catch up with things in an around the house again!

I am just itching to be able to work outside again!

The Re-Farmer