Hearing what’s going on in Jasper right now is pretty mind blowing. It’s almost surreal to see, and brings back memories of Fort Mac.
The weather app on my computer includes fire maps and, when I zoom out, it’s amazing to see just how many fires there are right now. All along the west coast and the west central US states, there are fires, and the line of fire continues through BC and into Alaska. The fires spread across the north through the territories and the northern areas of the prairie provinces, reducing somewhat across northern Ontario, but increasing again in Quebec.
In other words, the boreal forest that covers much of Canada.
Of course, you’re going to hear an awful lot about why fires happen, as happens every year during fire season. This video looks at the data, and makes some very good points.
In another lifetime, before my husband became permanently disabled, he was an IT guy and part of a team contracted with Alberta’s Sustainable Resources department (I don’t even know if it exists anymore). He worked on the software used in forest management, and got to talk to a number of the scientists involved directly, to know what they needed out of their software.
They were very aware of the need for prescribed burns, and continually recommended them. That they weren’t being done was cause for a great deal of frustration.
As is mentioned in the video, it isn’t a matter of if this would happen, but when.
Unfortunately, a lot of forest management practices are not allowed because of ignorance within the powerful environmentalist lobby. In the end, they cause more problems, more damage, and too often, cost lives. Thankfully, not in Jasper. However, this is going to keep happening until the powers that be get serious about reducing the fuel levels. That is going to mean more prescribed burns, but also allowing more logging. These are incredibly important to maintaining a health forest, but also to reduce the risks of forest fires.
Where we live, we are in a transition zone between boreal forest and open prairie. It’s open though that we are more likely to be threatened by wildfires rather than forest fires, but have just enough pine trees to make forest fires a risk, too. We have a spruce grove right in our yard, and spruces are basically big resin filled torches. Clearing out the dead trees and underbrush around us it not just about aesthetics. It’s a matter of safety. Wanting to have grazing animals for the areas we can’t mow is another part of that. While we have had issues with flooding in the past, and excess rain this spring, drought is the more normal state of things.
Something we keep in mind as we work on clearing up and improving the section of the property we are responsible for.
I got some sad news from the Cat Lady last night. The “problem cat” that they took on from the city shelter is going to have to be put down. For her to make this decision, you know the situation has to be exceptionally bad. She has had vets recommend euthanasia for cats many times, and she’s hung in there and saved so many cats, including several from us that are now living with them permanently. She was even wondering why the city shelter hadn’t already done it, long ago.
In the middle of all this difficulty, she was still thinking about us and her promise to help out.
The original plan had been for both tripods to go to the city shelter and their special needs area, while Ghosty would be going to the shelter that specializes in Siamese cats. However, because our adoptees are going from a loving home where they are well cared for, she feels it would be too stressful for them to go to a shelter, no matter how much they promise that tripods get adopted very quickly. If they were kittens, that would be a different issue, but if she wouldn’t feel right putting one of her own cats in there, she wasn’t comfortable putting any of ours in there, either.
I will trust her on that assessment!
She’s going to give herself some time to decompress from the situation with this other cat, and will then take Ginger from us on the weekend. Ghosty is going to wait until the other shelter has an open space, rather than go to the Cat Lady until they do. Toni is not being bullied like Ginger is, so she is not an urgent adoption. She was even willing to take Leyendecker instead of Ginger, since she’s quite familiar with dealing with cats with urinary issues, but Leyendecker is not the cat being bullied, and the chances of getting Leyendecker adopted out is much lower. His urinary issues are related to stress, and he’s had no issues at all for quite a while – just increasing the amount of wet cat food they all get seems to have helped with that, too.
So we get to keep Ginger a little bit longer. This time, we’ll be meeting in the town nearest us, rather than in the nearer city, half way between our homes.
I had intended to pick up more litter pellets after meeting with the Cat Lady, since I could only fit one bag in the cart along with the kibble. When my daughter wanted to go into town to pick up a few last things for her sister’s birthday, I suggested we go to the nearer city so I could get the litter pellets, too. That worked for her, so we headed out late this morning and ran our errands.
When we got home, I took advantage of our weather to do a job that should have been done awhile ago. We have not been able to do burns often enough, usually due to high winds, so our burnable garbage has been building up. Meanwhile, we’re getting to where my daughter wants to start burning the used litter, rather than adding it to the pile behind the outhouse, to compost. On top of that, we have not been able to cremate the cats we’ve lost over the winter. Today we happened to not only be pleasantly warm, at 2C/36F, but there was virtually no wind at all. It was time to finally get the job done.
The burn barrel is falling apart and needs to be replaced, so we’ve been using a burn ring, instead. That’s getting too full of ashes. So after digging a path through the snow to the burn ring, I also dug out a larger area nearby to basically do a bonfire. We’ve still got all those old rotten pallets we cleaned up from where the wood pile used to be, so I set one of those down on top of the snow where I’d cleared a space, then prepared a space in the middle for our lost ones. Their remains were kept under cover in the burn ring, so I moved then over, then continued to build up a pyre over their remains.
Between our paper garbage and the old pallets, I was able to built quite a fire – and wow, did it get hot! I couldn’t get close to it to tend the fire for more than a few seconds before having to back off to at least 10ft away.
I took advantage of this and cleaned out almost all the old rotten pallets, setting aside the wettest ones where they could dry in the sun, for the next time we need a fire. That junk pile looks so much better now! We’d intended to take the old pallets to the dump, along with all the other oversize garbage in there, but we were never able to hire someone to haul it all away for us. I would have preferred not burning them, since they are so full of nails, but we’ll just have to take extra care in cleaning up the ashes. Right now, I’m glad we didn’t get them hauled away, since they made for an appropriately hot and clean fire to take care of our lost ones.
Not something I ever expected to need to do, when we moved out here!
The good thing about doing something like this, this time of year, is that once things burned down enough, I could leave it to smolder. The fire melted enough snow around it to create quite a puddle under it, and there’s nothing but more snow for a substantial distance in all directions.
So there’s a job that finally got done. Hopefully, not one that will need to be done again for quite some time. This past year had an insane amount of cat and kitten losses, both indoors and out. Something the Cat Lady tells us has been happening all over our province, so it wasn’t just with us.
As for the inside cats, pretty soon we’ll be down one and, hopefully, we’ll be able to keep finding forever homes for more soon. It’s been really all over the place in getting adoptions done, but at least they are happening! I am so thankful we connected with the Cat Lady. She’s been awesome for us!
I had a bit of running around to do after the morning rounds, but nothing that had to get me out earlier, or needing to rush through things. Which is good, because I got more done, too. 😊
It snowed lightly all night, so the cats at a bit more to deal with for their roof kibble by morning!
I counted thirty while putting out the food and water.
The branch pile I burned yesterday smoldered all night. I left my computer on with the live feed for the garage cam aimed at it, so it could be monitored. When the camera switched to infrared, I could see hot spots glowing through the falling snow. This morning, I broke it up a bit to stir the embers around, then raked it into a smaller pile. This will keep smoldering for days, if I keep banking it like this, which is what I want. We still have the other, bigger pile to burn, but there is no hurry on that.
After I finished my usual rounds, I decided to go ahead and do some shovelling. It wasn’t really necessary, but I would rather open up the paths now, while the snow it still light, than be trying to do it after the paths have been walked on and packed down. Aside from around the cat shelters and the paths to and from the main doors, I cleared the cat paths, the fire pit and access to the covered firewood pile, a path around the house, and paths to the compost heap, the back of the garage, and the outhouse. It sounds like a lot, but it was easy and fast to do. If we warm up at all, what snow is left in the paths is more likely to melt away, making it easier to keep them clear later one – as long as it’s just light snow.
When I was done with the shovelling, I spotted Shop Towel visiting the kibble house (making 31). You can really tell he’s the daddy of all those white and grey kittens!
What a barrel chested beast he is!
Once all that was done, it was off to run errands. First was a stop at the post office to pick up a parcel, only it turned out to not be in the mail. Our general store is now a Purolator drop off location. Which is good for us, because we used to have to go to the next town to pick up our Purolator parcels.
After that, it was off to town to the hardware store, and then the pharmacy. The company my husband’s insurance is with had some changes made that didn’t affect his coverage, but did affect how/where things were billed. Everything was supposed to transfer over seamlessly, but for some reason, his slow release insulin was suddenly no longer covered. This stuff costs more than $500 a box without coverage, so he hasn’t been able to get more. Once we found out there was a problem, he checked the insurance company’s app, and it said this was still covered, so he sent them an email explaining what happened. It took until yesterday for them to finally respond and it was basically just a letter saying, yeah, it’s still covered. Your pharmacy can still bill us. If they’ve got a problem, they can contact us.
So I printed off the letter and brought it in, since it had the information they would need. Their system still came up as not covered, so I left the letter with them and asked for his prescription to be delivered tomorrow, if they were able to figure it out by then. Then I went ahead with getting a refill on my own prescription, since I was there, which meant I had to wait a while. That turned out to be a good thing, because they got my husband’s billing issues fixed and I was able to get his insulin, too. It was a bit of a shock when the cashier scanned the tags on the prescriptions and there was an extra almost $150 on it, though! It turns out they already have my husband’s next batch of bubble packs in the system. These are now put together in the city and sent here, so whoever is doing it in the city just does the refills every four weeks and sent the packs out automatically. Meanwhile, we just picked up a month’s worth of bubble packs last week, so he won’t need more until next month, but because it’s in their system already, he got billed for next month’s refills! Once that got cleared up, it was removed, so I just had his insulin to pay for.
It gets confusing at times, that’s for sure!
That done, I was finally able to head home, and soon we will be setting up this.
Would you look at the size of that heated water bowl!!! I put the container in it for perspective. That’s what I use to scoop the kibble and it holds about a gallon.
Thank you, M, for your generous donation. The kitties are going to be so happy!
I snagged an outdoor extension cord from the garage, so we can plug in both working heated water bowls. Unfortunately, the cord for the new bowl doesn’t seem very long at all. The older, smaller bowl we’re using now has a longer cord and it just barely reaches from its corner. What we may end up having to do is moving the kibble house over to where the water bowl shelter is, and putting the water bowl shelter where the kibble house is, for it to reach. I don’t want to buy longer extension cords for this, because the excess will just be in the way. I will have to buy a replacement block heater cord, since I took the extension cord for that, but our temperatures are nowhere near cold enough to need to plug the van in, yet. That can wait until next month.
Anyhow…
Once we’ve got the water bowl situation figured out, we’ll have to make sure to put something beside the new water bowl for the kittens to climb on. It’s so tall, and some of them are so little, they’ll have a hard time reaching the water, otherwise!
Hopefully, with this new bowl, there will be enough liquid water to last until morning. Right now, the smaller heated water bowl is pretty much empty every morning, even though we refill it at least a couple of times during the day. It does make me wonder what creature is coming over during the night and drinking that much water! It’s certainly more than just the cats drinking it. One of these days, when we have a spare trail cam, it would be interesting to set one up facing the cat shelters to see what goes on when we’re not there to see it!
We have been working hard to socialize as many kittens as we can.
There is, however, a downside to that.
The more socialized the kitties, the more likely they are to hang around us, even when we are doing things that are potentially dangerous for them. It goes beyond deciding to run around our feet while we’re walking and accidentally getting themselves clocked in the head. I had a couple of examples, just this morning.
While doing my rounds, there was no wind at all, and the ground was covered in frost. I decided it was a good time to do a burn in the fire ring (the burn barrel is too old and damaged to use anymore). The fire ring is where we put the used stove pellet litter. It has time to dry before we do a burn, along with any paper garbage we have that can’t be composted so we don’t have to drag it to the dump, plus a few branches or whatever wood that’s around to keep the fire going stronger.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to tend a fire while kittens are trying to climb your legs, or even wanting to climb into the fire ring to find out what the noise is?
I managed to keep them safe and away. Here, Baby is sitting on the remains of the burn barrel that was here when we first moved in, staying warm. He, at least, wasn’t really trying to get any closer.
Most of the time.
After the fire was burned down enough that I could cover it and let it smolder (the litter sawdust doesn’t like to flame up, but it will smolder for days while covered), I worked on the cats’ house a bit, as they were done eating and it would no longer scare them away from food.
Here is an old picture of what it looks like while open.
As you can see, there are chains to keep it from opening too far and breaking, and the counterweight both helps open it smoothly, but also makes it less likely to drop unexpectedly. The cinder block alone wasn’t enough, though. We’ve added four more bricks into the openings to make it heavier. Even with that weight, though, that roof is heavy enough that if it started to drop, there wouldn’t be much to even slow it down, never mind stop it. As you can imagine, we’re pretty careful while working around it.
The problem?
While setting up the new cat bed and cleaning the windows, curious friendly kittens would jump up and walk around the top of the walls. Which is what the frame of the roof rests on. If that thing dropped for some reason…
*shudder*
So there I was, working in and around the cat out – and trying to chase away the kittens that are no longer scare of us, or anything we’re doing, anymore!
Today, we will continue working on the sun room. It’s going to be warm enough and dry enough for the next while that just about everything can be taken out, including a couple more shelves and the table saw, so give the concrete floor a more complete cleaning. My daughter has already cleaned up the worst of it, but it could use a good bleaching now!
Something else I’ll have to keep the friendly kittens out of while I’m working!
But before I get into that, we had some activity in the feeding station yesterday evening!
Two pairs of deer came by – but they were NOT together! They kept fighting each other and chasing each other away from the feed. I do try to spread it out, but by the end of the day, there isn’t much left.
I managed to get some video, since I had to use my phone to take the pictures anyhow, and put them together. I’m trying to move away from YouTube, so I’ve uploaded to Rumble. Please let me know how this works for you.
If that doesn’t work for you, please try clicking here.
They were really cool to watch!
Anyhow…
I had considered going to my mother’s church this morning, to have our Easter basket blessed, but the church was needing to have people register and so on, in advance, so we decided to skip it this year. At least they had it this year. Last year, it wasn’t allowed.
So we were to assemble our basket today and just bless it ourselves. I did want to take advantage of things being open to make a run into town. I was going to do it in the afternoon, but I got a phone call from my brother. He and his wife had found a new recliner chair small enough for my mother and wanted to bring it over. I agreed to meet him and help assemble it, in the afternoon.
Which meant I headed into town earlier today, then went straight to my mother’s town to meet my brother before we headed to her place together.
The main thing I wanted to do today was get a second battery for the baby chainsaw. I also brought in the little corded chainsaw we found a while back. It should hopefully just need to have the chain sharpened. Otherwise, it should just need a new chain.
After starting a work order for the chainsaw, the lady tried to find a battery for me. After confirming they had none in stock, she went to the Stihl site to check their inventory.
They had none.
Zero.
Anywhere.
Which I suppose makes sense. Most people buying a battery operated tool will order a second battery so they can set one battery to charge and continue working with the second battery. This little thing has a matching little battery, so a lot of people buying these would not have a matching battery already and be getting a second one at the same time. Since this thing is so popular, they can’t even manufacture them fast enough to keep up with the demand, they would probably be going through more of that type of battery than the cordless pruner itself.
She did place an order for one for me, but has no idea when it could be fulfilled. They will call me when it comes in, though. Until then, I’ll just have to make do with one battery.
Since I was there anyhow, I picked up an extra bottle of oil for the bar, plus an extra chain. These fall into the category of “better to have them and not need them, then need them and not have them!”
Once the little electric chainsaw is in cutting shape again, it will be enough to meet most of our needs. We won’t be taking down any big dead trees with it, but it will go a long way in helping cut up the already fallen ones to make them easier to clear away.
That was taken care of rather quickly, and I had time to visit the beach for a little while.
The ice fishing shacks are long gone, but the ice is still thick enough for people to walk on it, and do a bit of ice fishing without a shack.
Then it was off to my mother’s town. I made a stop at the grocery store there, because I remembered seeing them carry the same type of deer feed and bird seed we usually get.
Not today, it turns out. All sold out! We at least still have some deer feed left, and the birds like that, too, so it can wait a bit. :-D
It did give me a chance to pick up a few things for my mother that I noticed she runs out of very quickly.
Then my brother and I met up, heading to my mother’s and surprised her with a new non-electric reclining chair to replace her old arm chair that she’d been complaining about. Of course, she had nothing nice to say about it, complaining that it was too big (it was the smallest they could find!), or that she didn’t need it, etc. The complaining was less than usual, however, which tells me she was actually very happy with it! :-D I am hoping she will be able to use it to sleep on, every now and then, as she still has breathing issues when she sleeps, and being slightly upright should help her with that.
So that worked out well, and we even stayed for a short visit. Then we loaded all the packing materials, and my mother’s old chair, into my brother’s truck, so my mother had nothing to worry about. Since the chair needs to be further forward, to have room to recline, than her other chair, things needed to be shifted around, and she now actually has slightly more space to walk around than with the smaller chair. :-)
On the way home, my route took me past where the recent fire was.
I am happy to say that the house tucked in the trees I was concerned about untouched by flames. There’s a drainage ditch that cuts through that quarter section, and it acted as a bit of a fire break that kept it from spreading to another house in the same quarter. The only thing that burned was open field. It was “just” a grass fire.
Driving around that quarter, however, showed that a LOT of that field was burned! When controlled burns are done, they tend to focus on specific problem areas, not entire fields. I could see where it had burned out of control, and the tire tracks from the emergency vehicles going in.
It was after I’d turned onto our road that I saw just how far it went. Plus, oddly, there was a burned out car in the middle of the field. ?!? Yes, farms tend to collect old cars, but they don’t leave them in the middle of fields they grow crops in!
As I got closer to the quarter we are on, I saw where the fire had actually jumped the road to our neighbour’s field. It didn’t go much beyond the ditch, thankfully. Another thing to be thankful for; the renter plowed the field he’d grown corn on. It would have acted as a fire break, since there wasn’t enough fuel available.
What I also saw was that the fire had actually burned past the fence, into the quarter section belonging to the younger of my brothers. Not far, thankfully. His quarter is mostly hay, so there was plenty of fuel available for a grass fire!
Which means the fire reached less than half a mile from our place, and my brother’s.
So thankful that no homes were lost!
Meanwhile, while I was away, the girls took care of assembling our Easter basket. Well. Except for the stuff that needs to be kept refrigerated. :-)
Looking forward to celebrating Easter tomorrow!
I hope you are, too. May your Easter be a blessed say of peace and great joy.
Yesterday was a day of running into town a couple of things, but I did manage to get one important – if rather late – job done in the evening.
I burned a fungus.
I really should have done it earlier in the year, but just didn’t have the chance until last night. Mostly because of winds. Yesterday evening was finally calmer. The fungus seemed to be growing anew on the remains of a stump, so I really wanted to get that burned away. Because this was under tree branches, I used the sheet of metal to prevent the flames from getting to high, even though I kept the fire small. It ended up being handy. I found that, by moving it around, I could basically direct the fire to around the stump area more easily, making sure to get all the fungal bits.
I had found the fungus almost a year ago, while taking photos of various mushrooms around the yard. The ones growing on the old apple tree stumps were so pretty and unusual, I looked them up – only to find out they are a deadly disease called Silver Leaf, and likely what is killing our crab apple trees. To get rid of it, at its worst, it is actually recommended to take out the tree, roots and all. I have no way to take out the roots – and this stump is in between two other trees, which are so close together, I wouldn’t be able to do so without damaging the other trees, anyhow.
The larger stump I’d burned earlier shows no signs of growth on it. I still need to burn it the rest of the way down to ground level, just because it’s sticking up so high. I could cut it flush to the ground, but this way, I can also burn the stack of diseased branches we’d pruned away, too.
Reading up on this disease again, I find myself thinking of the fruit and nut trees we intend to plant in the area, in the relatively near future. We might have to get brutal to eliminate the disease, and simply cut down any tree that shows signs of the disease. This includes inedible crab apple trees closer to the house, where several have already died. Even the plums (also an inedible variety, but one that my dad used to make wine out of) show signs of it.
*sigh*
That would be a job for next year. For now, we will just burn away what we can, including the pruned branches.
This morning, I headed over to do a meter reading on our power pole. I’ve stayed away, since it’s got a wasp nest under it, so I haven’t actually looked at the nest for a month.
Hhhmmm.
It… looked pretty quiet in there.
Was that spider webs I was seeing in the opening???
Yup.
There was a dead wasp in the opening, too.
I am guessing this nest, being as exposed as it is, did not survive that frost we got not long ago. The tree by the house is still buzzing, so the wasps inside it are still active, but I can probably remove this nest safely, now.
I don’t want to destroy it, though, so I’ll think about how to take it down with as little damage to the nest as possible. I should be able to peel it away from the box and the post easily enough. That power cable it is built around will require greater care.
There was also a snoozing moth next to it! :-)
In other things…
The reason we had to go into town a couple of times yesterday was because the girls had arranged for a vet visit for Leyendecker. The boy is now snipped!
It still blows me away how expensive it is to get that done – and it costs twice as much for females! Thankfully, the girls are taking care of that, as they are able.
I took advantage of being in town to pick up some scrub brushes, including for just outside stuff. This morning, I finally was able to give the outside cat water bowls a thorough scrubbing. I was even able to scrub the bird bath. I’m amazed we got another year out of that thing! It developed such big cracks in it over the winter, and yet it still holds water!
Oddly, this year I have found a couple of drowned frogs in it. We’ve been seeing a lot of little frogs in the garden plots this year, which is great, but why would we have drowned frogs in the bird bath? I keep a brick in it, so the smaller birds can more easily reach the water. Plus, with all those cracks and not expecting it to hold water very well, I haven’t been keeping it as full as I used to. Any frog should have been able to get out of the water, easily.
I’ll have to keep a closer eye on it, now that I’ve cleaned it and refilled it. So strange!
Yesterday afternoon, we had a constant, light rain.
The perfect time to light a sketchy fire!
Of the several fungus infected tree stumps we need to burn out, I started with the only one that isn’t cut flush to the ground. I figured I should get the bigger one done first; the rest will get done very quickly, in comparison!
The metal ring I rolled over from where I found it by the storage shed was just the right size.
You can see some of the fungus from last year, dried up on the side of the stump facing me. On the other side is the remains of an ants nest. When we cut what was left of the tree down and left the short length of trunk next to the pile of diseased branches we’d pruned earlier this summer, the ants moved with it!
So no killing of ants involved. :-)
Of course, I made sure to have a hose handy, even with the rain. The wood used as fuel is from the stack of diseased branches, which all need to be burned.
I set myself up with a chair and an umbrella, too. :-D
It took a while to build the fire around all of the stump, partly because I needed to keep the fire small. It wasn’t directly under another apple tree, but close enough to potentially damage some of the branches.
I’m not too worried about that particular tree. Of all the apple trees, that one has the smallest, least edible apples on it.
The birds and deer like them, though, so that’s good.
This tree is one of the ones I want most to protect.
It’s at the far end of the row of trees, and next to one of the stumps cut flat to the ground that we found fungal growth on, too. This tree already has tasty apples! It has the wonderful combination of sweetness and tartness that I love. There is one other tree, at the very end, that also has really good apples, though they take quite a bit longer to ripen. The main grafted part of that tree died, and it’s the suckers from the base that are producing such nice apples. Usually, it’s the other way around.
So I’m rather motivated to keep this fungal infection from spreading! We really should have done this in the spring, but the weather was not at all co-operative. Spores for these emerge in the fall, so we have a bit of time, yet.
When I stopped for the day, I scrounged for something to cover the stump with. The fire was out, but might still smolder, so I wanted to make sure it couldn’t flare up or spread.
That top of an oil drum is something I fished out of the edge of the nearby spruce grove when I cleared the north side of it. The metal sheet was just one of those things among the garbage we dug up near the old garden shed.
The fire got quite a bit of it cleared. I don’t know how far into the wood the fungal infection gets, but even if the fire killed that off, I still need to get the stump down to ground level.
For now, I’ve taken an ax to it to break it apart a bit. We’ll start another fire on it later and repeat the process as often as necessary.
The last couple of days have been very windy. I’d hoped to start cleaning up the fallen twigs and branches around the yard by now, but we’re not quite there, yet.
While putting out feed for the birds and deer, I thought I would do one thing, though. There is a bird house on a post outside our dining room window that has a tree growing next to it. The tree has a couple of trunks growing out of its base, one of which is growing against the post, pushing it aside. I figured this would be a good time to try and shift the one trunk to the other side of the post. This way, it might start pushing the post straight again.
That didn’t quite work.
It broke off completely.
As you can see from the stump, this is not the first time it has broken! Though the tree only put out 2 or 3 cherries – the only reason we figured out what the tree was – it was in full leaf and seemed to be strong and healthy, so it was a bit of a surprise to see how dry and half-rotted the base turned out to be. It makes me wonder about the one part that’s still there.
We shall see how it does, this year.
Before heading out to see my husband in the hospital, we had a new visitor.
First, thank you to everyone who has sent kind words and said prayers for us about the fire. It is so much appreciated!
I have since learned that two homes were lost yesterday. Sadly, one of them did not have insurance. I hope to learn more soon, and see if there is someone organizing help for them.
Just another reminded, of house important it is to have insurance! My mother has property insurance, though it is inadequate, so when we take that over at some point, we intend to improve it. Plus, we have our own content insurance. If anything every happened, we are covered.
One thing I found encouraging when we were preparing for the possibility of evacuating. We now know that, if need be, we could probably be out of the house with our bug out bags and the cats in less than 10 minutes. There just isn’t a lot that we would need to take with us. It’s all just stuff. As long as we have our IDs, medications, and some clothing, plus food for that cats, we’re good. Everything else is replaceable. About the only thing we’d add to the list, if we had time, is the computer towers and laptops.
I went into town with my husband for a medical appointment. We got home shortly before noon. I had to wait until after 2 to go and pick up a parcel in the mail, and my younger daughter came to get some driving practice. We were thinking of going to town to play come Pokemon Go after, but when we got to the post office, there was smoke, everywhere. The fire station parking was full of vehicles from the volunteer firefighters still, but the fire trucks were gone. I asked at the post office and was informed that there is another fire to the North of us.
Of course, the winds are coming from the North, today. :-(
It’s further away and doesn’t seem to be a risk to where we are, but we decided not to go into town. We did drive out to see the fire area before coming home, though.
Here, you can see how the roads themselves can act as fire breaks. This is 1 mile north and about 1 1/2 miles south of our home.
You can’t really see it in the above photo, but there is smoke in the distance, still.
In this area, the fire mostly followed the road, but in some places, when further in.
Every now and then, we’d see an opening like this, and smoke in the distance. The fire is out, but still smoldering in places.
One of the burned out homes. I honestly couldn’t see where the house had been.
It’s a good thing this area is rather marshy, and there are still ponds around as well, with how dry this winter has been.
Still smoking in the distance.
The next videos were taken after the above photo, and while we were on our way back home. Probably about 4 -5 miles from our home, as the crow flies.
Now, if only that predicted rain would actually show up!
The Re-Farmer 