groundhog

Surgery went well!

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

We didn’t need to leave until 11, so the morning was our normal routine. As usual, I started off feeding the yard cats, and got to see these two again.

Colby looks like a real scrapper! That white and grey is so big, I’m starting to mistake it for one of the three from last year that are really small!

Yesterday, I happened to be in the right place to see Sprout lying in the grass in the outer yard, nursing these two, plus the tortie. The calico is definitely the shiest of the four. The orange one, Colby, is the bravest. Last night, I saw him at the top of the ramp into the isolation shelter. Just a little while ago, while gathering bowls for the evening kitten soup feeding, I spotted the tortie inside the cat cage, inside the big no-longer heated water bowl that’s been repurposed as a food bowl in there. I didn’t see it when I brought out the kitten soup bowl, though Colby, was back again.

Last night, after I mused about how far behind parts of our garden is this year, I did go and look at last year’s photos. Wow, are we ever behind this year! At least with the winter squash and melons. At this time last year, the winter squash in particular were getting huge, and by the middle of the month, I was taking pictures of the developing squash with my hand for a size reference. I get a strong feeling we won’t have any winter squash or melons this year! The transplant shock, plus those bugs on the winter squash, followed by that one unpredicted cold night, has really done damage. The eggplants were set back, too; last year, they were in full bloom by now. The peppers are going okay, though, compared to last year, at least.

I’ve also definitely lost at least two of the summer squash that got transplanted out, including one of the White Scallop squash. Last year was a bad year for summer squash, but I think this one might be even worse!

I was done my rounds early enough that I took a quick nap before we left. I knew that if I didn’t, I’d be falling sleep while waiting for my daughter to come out of surgery!

We ended up on the road shortly before 11. My poor daughter was fasting, and was so very hungry! The surgery was booked for 12:30, and we got there shortly before 12. We went to the outpatient clinic first, where she registered and got her paperwork. Then we went to the day surgery section on the second floor. The staff found that, while she was on their list, for some reason her chart wasn’t printed out yet, so we sat down in the waiting room while they took care of that. Which took no time at all, and she was soon passing my her glasses and phone, etc. as they took her in to be prepped for surgery.

She told me afterwards that everything went very smoothly. She was even complimented for not being at all nervous about it, as they strapped her down to the “crucifix” operating table. The staff and the surgeon were all really nice, too. She REALLY appreciated the pre-warmed blankets and towels they used on her, too!

While that was happening, I made a quick trip to the nearby Walmart to get a few things. It started to rain while I was inside. I always bag my purchases at the truck, so I was standing in the rain, filling an insulated bag, when my phone started ringing.

My first thought was that it was the hospital, and why would they be calling me so soon? Did something go wrong???

Nope.

It was the home care office. Not the usual coordinator, but someone who was covering for her at the moment.

She told me that this morning’s home care aid got to my mother’s place 10 minutes late. When she got there, my mother told her she’s already taken her pills. The aid opened up the lock box and this morning’s beds were still in their bubble, of course. I told the coordinator, my mother has a secret stash of her pills somewhere. The coordinator told me something like that had been reported. As for my mother taking them herself after the aid was only 10 minutes late (which means she arrived at the time she was scheduled to leave, rather than the time she was scheduled to arrive), she would have decided the aid wasn’t going to show up at all. I told the coordinator that my mother believes that the aids don’t show up sometimes, because they want her to die. That’s something I’d already told the regular coordinator before, so it’s probably somewhere in the file. This is why she snuck out and hid one of her bubble packs.

I asked if my mother treated the home care aid all right, and was told nothing was reported about any such behaviour. After clarifying with me about the medications, she said she would make notes for the file, then follow up with the aid.

Meanwhile, I got a message from my older daughter. The land line had rung, but she never got to it in time, and she was worried it was the hospital. So I quickly told her it was home care, then finished bagging things up and got out of the rain so I could explain further.

That done, I quickly updated my siblings on our group chat, then went back to the hospital. I still had about 2 hours to wait, and I just stayed in the waiting room.

Where I dozed off again!

Why am I always so sleepy during the day, but can easily stay up all night?? It’s not like I’m in my 20’s anymore!

After about an hour or more – my daughter would have been out of surgery and in the recovery room by then – I started hearing a strange noise from the bag of my daughter’s stuff beside me. Her phone was ringing! So I answered it, using my hotel receptionist voice. 😄 Even though I identified the phone as my daughter’s, and that I wasn’t my daughter, the person on the other end launched into their reason for calling. I don’t think she caught on that I wasn’t my daughter!

It turned out to be a clinic in the city. My daughter has been referred to an endocrinologist about her PCOS, and they were calling about an appointment they have for her. I was in no position to take anything down, and explained that I was in the hospital, and my daughter was coming out of surgery just then. We eventually worked out that they will send my daughter a letter with the information, plus they will call back to follow up tomorrow. The appointment is in October some time, so there’s no rush on that.

Not long after, my phone rang. It was the surgery staff, letting me know my daughter would be ready to leave withing half an hour. When she found out I was already in the waiting room, she asked me to go to the main entry, where they have wheelchairs available for patient transport to the vehicle. Standard procedure, and I already knew where the wheelchairs were kept, so off I went.

Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of options. There was the extra wide bariatric wheelchair. I wasn’t going to use that, because they only have one. There was another wheelchair that was so low, it had to be for a child. Then there was another, but it was so narrow, it was probably also for a child, but at least her feet wouldn’t be dragging on the ground. So that was the one I took.

When I got there, the person behind the desk immediately asked who is was for, and I told her. She then went to take it, to go get my daughter. When she saw it, she commented that she didn’t think my daughter would fit! I told her, I wasn’t sure, either, but I didn’t have much choice.

When they brought my daughter out, she was in a completely different wheelchair. 😄 She had her discharge papers in hand, and a package with a couple of cookies in it. She inhaled those as soon as she got into the truck!

As I was pushing her out of the hospital, she showed me her incision site. I couldn’t believe how tiny it was! She said she was also feeling really good, but for safety reasons, she wasn’t allowed to walk out on her own. She had to be careful not to use the hand or arm, because it wasn’t hurting at all, and her mobility was really good.

Once at ground level, we made a side trip so she could use the washroom. As I was looking out the windows, I spotted something moving around.

Something very familiar looking!

They had a grog in their flower garden!

Interestingly, it was only eating the thistles, not the flowers. We had one summer where we had about 5 or 6 groundhogs in our yard, then they basically disappeared. It was really nice to see one again. I did pause at the reception desk on the way out to let the staff know they had a groundhog in there, just in case they didn’t already know. They buggers are adorable, but they can do major damage!

I brought the truck around for my daughter and, once she was settled in, checked to see how she was feeling. Was she up to eating? I knew she would be hungry, but straight out of anesthesia is not always a good time to eat. She said she was famished, so we headed over to a nearby Subway I knew the location of. Just a few bites into her food, and she told me she was feeling SO much better. Post op, they had told her a number of things to watch out for and, if she had any of those symptoms, to get to a doctor right away. This included feeling light headed or nauseous. Which she was feeling, but she was pretty sure it was because she was hungry. It was. Once she started eating, it all went away!

From there, it was straight to home. As we were driving, I updated her on the calls I got on both my phone and hers. As we talked about her referral to endocrinology, I remembered to asked about her referral for a reduction mammoplasty; I knew she had a call about that, and that is why she has an appointment with our regular doctor on the same day that I do, next week. Since I had my own done in this province, I was curious to know how much things have changed. It turned out there are only two doctors in this province that does them. One has his own clinic, while the other is new to our province, and is in one of the city hospitals.

The one with the cardiac clinic that wouldn’t accommodate my husband’s disability, then ghosted him on the phone appointments.

So… I’m thinking going to the doctor with his own clinic would be worth the extra time on the waiting list.

Which could be a year or two!

When I had the ball rolling for mine, the clinic told me they wouldn’t even book appointments past 6 months, and anything before 6 months was booked solid. I was looking at a long wait for surgery, but I was also put on the cancellation list, and my doctor at the time flagged my file as urgent, because of how much pain I was in. I ended up getting in due to a cancellation, within a couple of months. Hopefully, they will be able to do the same for her, but I don’t know that they’re allowed to flag files like that anymore.

It’s good that my daughter is finally getting all this stuff done. Now, if I could just talk her sister into starting to see a doctor, too!

My daughter may have been feeling good after her surgery, but it still took a lot out of her, and she dozed off on the ride home. When we got to the gate, she started undoing her seat belt to open it. I just looked at her, asking, are you up to that?

Nope. She wasn’t. But she was in the passenger seat, so it was automatic! 😄

Now that we’re all inside and settled in, she decided a nap on the couch would be a good idea!

I’m so glad everything went smoothly. She’ll probably start feeling pain more as things wear off, but for now, she’s mostly just feeling drained. I’m still wildly impressed by how small the incision is. Squidly has been evicted! Once it all heals up, it’s going to make a huge difference for her, to be able to use that hand without pain.

Meanwhile, it has still be raining, off and on today. It isn’t a lot, but enough that I don’t need to water the garden this evening. The yard cats got fed as soon as everything was settled in. I’d picked up more pumpkin seed, so I’ve been able to add powdered pumpkin seed to the kitten soup lately, though the adult cats are certainly getting their share. Hopefully, that will help get rid of any worms they might have. I suspect that’s why some of the really small cats and kittens are as small as they are.

Eyelet is so much like Button was in that respect. I have been putting the 4 friendly kittens inside the old kitchen to get a chance to eat the kitten soup before the adult push them away. Only Eyelet and Sir Robin like to stay and eat. Havarti and Grommet will eat a little, then they want out. Eyelet has discovered the plastic couch that’s in there, so when he’s done, that’s where I’ve been finding him. When I picked him up today, his pupils were so dilated, it concerned me. That’s what Button’s eyes started to do, to the point his irises are almost completely hidden. So I used the flashlight on my phone to test, and was happy to see his pupils slowly undilate, before he started blinking and trying to look away. That was a relief.

So that’s where were are at now. It looks like the rain has stopped for now, and it’s been blessedly cooler. It’s supposed to get really hot again in a few days, but I should have at least one cooler day to get some manual labour done outside! Thankfully, I don’t have any scheduled outings for the next while. Unless I get called to do my mother’s med assist, I should be able to get some decent progress in.

We shall see.

I’m so happy my daughter was able to get this surgery done so quickly! It’s going to make a big difference, once everything is healed up.

I’d say it’s been a very good day.

The Re-Farmer

Morning flowers, random skulls, and grogs

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I made arrangements to pick up some more cardboard this morning, so I was out doing my rounds a bit earlier today. I was quite happy to see some new flowers showing up.

The grape hyacinths are finally pushing up their flower spikes!

Also, does anyone know what those broad-leafed plants all around it are? This stuff is absolutely everywhere, very invasive, and very hard to get rid of!

The very fist of my daughter’s daffodils is starting for form flower buds! Her flowers did so poorly in their first year, she’s thrilled that the managed to survive at all. The irises are still incredibly sparse and thin, but at least they’re there and still growing. Perhaps next year, we’ll finally see flowers from those. With the tulip area fenced off, even the eaten ones are recovering, while the survivors have flower buds that look ready to bloom any time now.

After my morning rounds, I headed out to pick up the cardboard, stopping for gas along the way, where I found something unexpected.

A random skull, just sitting on the concrete next to the gas pump! It looks like some sort of large rodent.

What a fascinating and unexpected find! I can just imagine someone leaving it there and giggling at the thought of how people might react to seeing it. It looks like something someone found half buried in a ditch somewhere. There’s even moss growing on it.

Hmmm… I wonder… Could it be from one of these?

When the grogs go into one of these chimney liners, I’m able to get quite close to them and get a photo. This little guy was chittering and hissing at me, so I made sure to stay out of its view, and just stuck my phone around to take the picture, then left it alone.

You know. The more I think about it, the most I think that might indeed be a groundhog skull!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: hardening off and first sowing

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You know that surreal feeling, when you feel like it’s one time of the day, but then you look at a clock and realize it’s a completely different time of day?

I just finished my “morning rounds”, so it should be morning, right?

Never mind that I spent several hours working on things that aren’t part of my usual morning routine. :-D

While heading around to put bird feed out, I spotted our new “tenant” under the stairs.

It backed into the space under the stairs, but still hung around to watch me!

Knowing that the main road was fixed, as soon as I finished my usual morning routine, I headed to town, passing a grader on the way. Very happy to see it. There’s only so much a grader an do with the current road conditions, but at least it helps. The area that was washed out was beautifully fixed up. Not even the grader could fix that torn up part closer to our intersection, though.

I picked up just a few of the fresh things we were running low on at the grocery store, then hit the post office on the way home to pick up the mail and a new bag of bird seed. Once everything was put away, I decided to take advantage of the weather, while I could. We’re supposed to get rain later, but for now it’s overcast and decently warm. What we needed to do was start hardening off our transplants.

The girls and I had spent some time trying to figure out what to use to hold the transplants when hardening them off, that will keep the outside cats and other critters away, while also being big enough to hold all the bins and trays. What we used last year is just too small for all the plants we have this year. Then we remembered that we still have the home made, twin sized bed frame that was here when we moved in, sitting in the basement. So I got that out this morning. We also found a pair of folding table legs when we cleaned out the basement, so I figured we could add those to the underside of the frame. It has 8 short legs on the support frame and is topped with plywood. The frame supporting the plywood was too narrow for the plates on the table legs, so I was going to attach it directly to the underside of the plywood, until I realized the shortest screws I have are 3/4″, and it’s 1/2″ plywood.

Ah, well. It would have been a good idea.

That meant using the frame from my daughters canopy tent that she got for when she used to do the art markets. Part of the frame broke in high winds, but we’re still finding ways to use it. Two long pieces of the frame that had been attached to each other with a pivot had snapped. The metal pieces are hollow, so I found a way to rejoin them using a long nail wrapped with enough duct tape to make a snug fit, tucked inside the pieces, then taping them together on the outside. They still wiggle and it certainly won’t hold much, but at least we no longer have pieces flopping around when we move the frame.

The bed platform went on top of the tent frame, with the frame opened wide enough to fit against the inside of the bed’s support pieces snuggly. The ground isn’t level, though, but nothing a couple of bricks under 2 legs couldn’t solve. Then, because the wood is unfinished, I opened the 3 pack of sturdy tarps I picked up at Costco a few months back, and covered the whole set up. Using the cords salvaged from the canopy tent I’d recently disassembled, I was able to peg the corners to the ground, then use the excess cord to lace up the ends. The long sides were still flapping in the wind a bit, so those were tied together, under the platform.

Once everything was secure, it was time to bring the plants out!

It turned out to be the exact size needed for all the bins and trays!

Not quite all the plants fit, though.

The Wonderberry and a couple of trays of onions fit onto the shelf outside the sunroom.

Look at all those Wonderberry flowers!

Since this is the first day the transplants were being hardened off, I set a time for an hour, then started working in the old kitchen garden. We had beds that were ready for planting, but I decided to use the stirrup hoe to run through the bed framed with logs and get rid of any weeds.

I’m glad I did. After a while, I gave up on the hoe and brought out the new garden fork. There were a LOT more roots than I thought.

There were SO many big, healthy worms in the soil!

When we planted here last year, we had a couple of mystery plants show up in the middle of the bed, where we’d planted kohlrabi. Once we were sure they weren’t kohlrabi, we had no idea what they were – but I found their root clusters! That’s the pile you can see at the middle, left. I hope I got all the roots out. Those things got quite large, and I wouldn’t want them choking out whatever we plant here this year.

Broken pieces from the disassembled canopy tent frame are now set up to support any row cover we use. The holes are all facing the same way, so they can be threaded with cord to keep the netting from sagging in between.

We’re still not 100% decided on what to plant here, but we do know what’s going next to it.

The poppies we planted last year really struggled in the drought and heat waves, but we were still able to harvest some dried pods for their seeds. I’d just put them into a Solo cup and left them in the sun room all winter. This morning, I broke open the pods, and these are all the seeds that were in them. Not a lot, but enough to sow. Watching the seeds as they came out of the different pods, I’ve no doubt that some of the seeds were immature and are probably not going to germinate, but there are some that look good. It should be interesting to see how they do!

This is where we’d sowed the poppies last year. Seeds had fallen and scattered there last year, but I couldn’t tell if anything was germinating. Just in case, I didn’t try to dig up the crab grass or do any weeding. I loosened the surface soil up with a rake, scattered all the seeds evenly, then used the rake again to cover them. I didn’t bother watering them, since we’re expecting rain. We did buy a different variety of bread poppy seeds for this year, which will be planted well away from this area, to avoid cross pollination.

Our very first direct sown seeds of the year! Not what I’d intended, but I’ll take it!

The timing was perfect for finishing this and putting things away, as that’s when my timer went off. All the transplants went back inside. Taking them out gave me a chance to re-arrange things, too. The seed trays that are just starting to germinate are now closest to the west window. The bins with the shortest plants all went into the plant shelf in the south window, and the mini-greenhouse frame by the other west window. As bins were being returned to the platform with the seed trays, they were arranged with the shortest plants by the seed trays, working up to the tallest at the opposite end. This way, the bin that has supports for the Canteen gourds to climb is now no longer behind the shop light!

There was one down side to all this outdoor work, though.

As I was putting the bins and trays back into the sun room, I saw Junk Pile cat going through the old kitchen garden, carrying a kitten. She was taking them away from the cats’ house, heading somewhere to the north side of the house.

When I went out for the next trays, I saw… Junk Pile cat… coming from the south. Which meant the cat I thought was Junk Pile was actually the other mamma using the cats’ house. Not long after, I saw Junk Pile carrying a kitten and taking it to the big branch pile in the outer yard. I was afraid of this. With all the traffic and commotion so close to the cats’ house, the kittens got moved to someplace quieter. *sigh* That’s going to make it much harder to socialize them! It’s too bad the mamas are separate now. They were always snuggled together with their babies in there. Ah, well. It is what it is.

Now that we’ve got the set up done, the transplants will go outside every day – weather willing – for about an hour longer, each time. By the time we pass our last frost date on June 2, they will be good and ready to be outside permanently.

Until then, we can keep working on getting the cool climate seeds direct sown.

It feels so good to finally be getting seeds in the ground!

The Re-Farmer

What the heck?

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Now, this was a strange thing to see outside or living room window!

Broccoli and Caramel weren’t just chillin’ with the grog. They were eating, too. I think they may actually have been eating the sunflower seeds! The only other things there are grass and leaves, and I know they weren’t eating those.

So very strange!

The Re-Farmer

Grog determination

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We have been rather entertained by our resident groundhogs under the junk pile of late.

The grog actually managed to drag some of the tarp down into the den entrance!

This tarp is one of several that I found when cleaning the junk off this pile of wood. They had clearly been used to cover and protect the wood, but had been blown aside and torn apart by the elements, along with all sorts of things being tossed into the area. Torn up as they were, I was still able to use them to cover the wood pile a bit, but the groundhogs are taking advantage of the deteriorated state. They are trying to gather it into their den for nesting material.

Last night, I cleaned it up a bit and tucked the tarp under some boards.

This is how I found it this morning.

I was able to see the groundhog in action through the living room window.

That little bugger is really working at it! :-D

I put together the videos I took from the window, too. :-)

These next photos were taken after the video was made.

It got quite a lot of that tarp down and into the den entrance!

In taking this photo, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

There is now a third entrance to the den in the back of the pile!

I cleaned up and tucked things away again. It should be interesting to see how long this lasts.

While I was working in a nearby beet bed (which will be in my next post), I could hear the grog trying to drag a corner of the orange trap around the back, too.

The gravel you see at the bottom of the photo is from the second entrance to the den.

I don’t think you can see it in the photo above, but there is the nose of a grog in their main entrance. It was watching me.

You’ll notice the gravel is different in this photo. I took advantage of their hard work and used it. I’ll be posting about that after I’ve processed the photos I took.

We seem to have made a truce with the groundhogs. I’m relieved, because we were getting to the point of taking some rather permanent steps. Something I won’t even consider right now, as they are nesting, and I don’t want to end up depriving babies of their mother. The cayenne pepper and covers are working, overall (more on that in my next post), and they seem content with eating the bird seed, grazing on whatever they’re finding in the grass, and leaving our garden beds alone now. From what I’ve been able to find about them, they don’t actually like to have overlapping territory, so if there are any babies, they will not stick around once they are big enough to live on their own.

For all the predictions of rain we’ve been getting, I don’t think we’ll actually get anything of substance, so I will be applying more cayenne pepper this evening. If it rains, well, I’ll just have to do it again.

The Re-Farmer

We have rain!!! Lots of rain!

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As I write this, we’ve had several rainfalls, and even a couple of downpours. We’ve had more rain today than we have had all year until now! It is so exciting!

We actually got our first bit of rain this morning, while I was quickly doing my rounds. In fact, it was a bit of a problem at the time. While changing the micro disc cards on the driveway cam, the card I took out of the camera slipped through my fingers and fell to the ground.

I never found it.

I had a fresh card to put in and came back several times today, and nothing. I have extras, but I’d really hate to have lost it completely!

When checking the garden beds, I found a couple more sunflowers got nibbled on.

Almost every one of the transplanted Mongolian Giant sunflowers in this row have had their head bitten off. :-(

The culprit was caught on the garden cam!

Anyhow.

This morning, I made a trip to the smaller city to do the Walmart part of our monthly shopping, then swung by town on the way home to pick up my husband’s prescription refills. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized mine weren’t in there. I’ll have to remember to call them and get mine delivered. I only have one prescription, compared to my husband’s bubble packs and injections.

I wanted to make sure I got all the errands done early, because we were going to have visitors this evening. My brother and his wife were going to swing by, on their way to somewhere else. I’ve been sharing photos of the garden progress with them, and they wanted to see it in person.

It was while they were on the way over that the first thunderstorm hit. It stopped and started a couple of times, then stopped before they arrived. Meanwhile, during their drive, they saw no rain at all! It wasn’t until they got close that they finally saw wet highway. When they got here, we did the tour, including my showing them where the groundhogs have been hiding out.

I saw one crossing by the spruce grove just before they arrived, heading under the junk pile. When I took a look, there it was, watching me!!!

The cheeky little bugger.

While checking out around the junk pile, I was disappointed to see this.

These are Saskatoon bushes. We have a couple of them here, and they are in terrible shape. Not only do they show signs of fungal disease, but their leaves are riddled with insect damage, and little growths where insect eggs are. There is even a sudden grown of lichen on the trunks and branches! Lichen is supposed to be slow growing, yet these bushes, and even the dead branches on nearby spruce trees, have suddenly turned bright green and thick. Or perhaps it’s just the rain waking up what was already there? That sounds more likely.

There are a few places where we will have to clear out the diseased trees and bushes, then not plant anything nearby for a few years.

We were just finishing off our tour of the garden beds with my brother and his wife when it started to rain heavily again. We still have the gazebo tent set up, where we had painted the kibble house. The kibble house it back where it goes, so we had plenty of room to be sheltered from the rain, while still enjoying the lovely cool wind and freshness. They were really hoping some of the rain would make it their way; they’ve been pretty much as dry as we have, and while they have had a bit more rain than we have this year, it’s been more like a tease than anything else.

When the rain let up a little big, we made a dash to the pump shack. I had asked my brother if he remembered when the pump got changed, and he wanted to see what I was talking about.

He had no idea.

He remembers better than I do, what the set up was like before, when there was a motor to operate the pump with electricity. When I pointed out that the current pump was not attached to anything, but just sitting on the pipes, loose enough to move while I was pumping, he mentioned something interesting. It seems the pipes into the well are “floating”, and the pump itself will actually move up and down with the water table. !! He also described the piston system at the bottom of the well. The fact that I could get water but couldn’t keep it going suggest to him that the O rings are giving out.

We are still left with the mystery of what happened to the motor and the frame that supported it.

Later this evening, my mother phoned and I remember to ask her about it. Not only does she not remember, but as far as she knew, there was never electricity to that pump. She insisted it was only ever manual. This tells me that it was my dad that had it set up, after they moved out here. As far as I remember, there was always the electric system, which suggests that it was installed in the 5 or so years before I was born, but my mother no longer remembers this at all. I find that a rather strange thing to forget!

Which leaves us with the mystery of what happened to the old pump system. I suppose it’s possible my late brother had it removed, perhaps with plans to get the old well repaired? I can’t think of any other reason someone would have removed it. If he had, however, the parts and pieces would still be around, and they aren’t. So what happened to it?

It seems that there is no longer anyone alive that could tell us.

By the time we were done looking at the pump, it was starting to pour again, and my brother and his wife still had other places to do, so they had to quickly head out. I’m really happy they were able to stop by, and we could show them how things have been going. Including with the woodchucks. My brother brought up a possible solution, and it’s one I’d already taken steps towards. Hopefully, it’ll work and I’ll be able to post about being free of woodchucks! We shall see. Until the problem is solved, however, I’m not even going to try to plant the fall spinach and lettuces I was planning on. I’m not going to go through the effort, only to have it eaten!

I think I may have come up with a way to keep the grasshoppers off, too. They are decimating our poor radish and kale seedlings as thoroughly as the groundhogs have been wiping out our carrot beds!

At least our garden beds have finally had a thorough soaking. No amount of watering with the house can match a good, solid rainfall!

Here’s hoping the rain helped with the wildfires to the north of us, too!

The Re-Farmer

Well, that sucks

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

When we first saw the mystery critters that turned out to be woodchucks, running around in the distance, we saw them going under my late father’s car, or under a shed near the barn. When we first saw them this year, there was a pair of them that seemed to have made their home in the branches pile in the outer yard.

It wasn’t until we discovered a den in the middle of the old garden area that we had something that needed to be gotten rid of. Then there was the den under the concrete steps, right at the house. We’ve got four of them that seemed to have moved right into our yard. One really big one, a pair a smaller ones, and one really small one that we’ve seen coming in and out of the spruce grove.

We know at least one of them, possibly two, seems to have made its home under the old garden shed. There isn’t much we can do about them living there, but I didn’t like having to seal off the concrete stairs. That has been a safe place for yard cats to have their kittens, and now they no longer have access to it. The cats also used the space under the garden shed, too.

With seeing the little one running in and out of the spruce grove near the junk pile, I noticed that Butterscotch and her kittens have not been there as often. They still come to the food and water bowls, and they play around the house and under the bird bath, but we’ve seen Butterscotch and her kittens going through the lilac hedge a lot. Which means she’s been taking them to them empty farm yard across the road. We aren’t happy with that, as that is a busy road they cross to get there, and we see a lot of people speeding on that road.

This afternoon, I happened to look out our living room window and saw a couple of woodchucks, next to the kittens’ food bowl.

The littlest woodchuck was getting it on with the biggest one. Which was interesting, considering she is at least twice his size.

*sigh*

So I headed outside to inflict a bit of coitus interruptus. They were gone before I came around the house, but I decided to take a closer look at the junk pile. There’s an old pallet leaning against one side, that the kittens loved to climb and play on, that I moved aside.

Well, crud.

It looks like the littlest woodchuck has made his den under the junk pile. I made my way through the thistles on the other side, and could see a hole leading under the pile on that side, too.

Then the junk pile screamed at me.

I guess that explains why the kittens don’t seem to be around there as much anymore.

The woodchucks are now responsible for the yard cats losing three safe places they had for their kittens, including one that was being actively used.

I am not impressed. The yard cats, at least, earn their keep by keeping us rodent free.

Well. Except for the rodents that are bigger than they are, and eat our garden.

I am not impressed.

The Re-Farmer

In the garden, and critters not in the garden

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Well, we seem to be back to having all the rain systems passing us by again. We are a bit cooler – as I write this, we are at “only” 26C/79F – but our humidex puts us at 33C/91F. Which I suppose helps, as we didn’t need to water the garden at all, yesterday. I probably could have left them be for another day, but I used a water soluble fertilizer on most of it, this morning.

This is the biggest of the Pixie melons that I checked on this morning. I just love how perfectly round they are! :-D

We had a whole bunch of poppies blooming this morning, including this tiny one. So far, it’s the only one with petals that are almost the pink they are supposed to be.

Unfortunately, the potatoes are getting more grasshopper damage these days.

They seem to prefer to eat the flowers! There is a fair bit of leaf damage, though the potatoes are doing so well, they can handle it pretty well right now. Though this seemed odd.

The Purple Peruvian fingerling potatoes have virtually no damage at all! I think I found only two leaves that had been chewed on. That’s it. All the other varieties, meanwhile, have quite a lot of chewed up leaves. Apparently, these potato leaves taste bad to grasshoppers! :-D

I don’t know what it is about today, but the entire household seems to be having a hard time. Perhaps it’s the humidity? I’m actually feeling an oppressive weight in my upper chest and throat that gets worse when I lie down, making it hard to sleep, and my chronic cough has been an issue, even though the rain we did get cleared the smoke out of the air. I don’t know, but we’re all barely able to drag our butts around to get anything done, and we all feel like falling asleep where we stand. Even the cats are sprawled all over the house in furry puddles, sleeping.

Speaking of furry puddles…

The big woodchuck was under the bird feeder earlier today – along with a chipmunk! You can’t really see it in the photo, but the woodchuck’s back hips are just sort of flattened to the ground, like a puddle.

It came back again later, then got some company.

The little one wandered over and started munching. They look peaceable in the photo, but when the littler one got too close to the big one, the big one attacked it! Had it flipped over on its back, teeth at its throat, in a heartbeat!

Then it let the little one go. This was clearly a dominance thing, not an attempt to do real damage. The little one didn’t fight back, but submitted to the big one. Given the size – and likely age – difference, that was probably a wise decision on the little one’s part!

With today being a day where manual labour seems to be out of the question (and there is much of it that needs to be done, but couldn’t be, because of the heat we’ve been having), I decided it was a good time to write out some plans and lists, and make some diagrams, for next year’s garden. I’ve got our catalogues out and started some wish lists, as well as working out what we want to do for next year. The girls and I will go over things and hash out details, using what we learned with this year’s gardening. Having this worked out early will be useful as we clean things up at the end of this growing season. The main thing I’m trying to figure out is what to use to build the first permanent, high raised beds, which will be where we currently have the low raised beds bordered with logs. Buying lumber is out of the question for our budget, but the barn and sheds got picked over by our vandal over the years before we moved here, quite thoroughly. The barn used to be full of salvaged lumber. I have a few ideas in mind, but it looks like it’ll be a while before we can see if they’re even possible. Ah, well. We’ll figure something out.

The Re-Farmer

Not a happy critter!

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While heading back and forth between garden and house today, passing by the hanging bird feeder, I kept disturbing woodchucks, eating the sunflower seeds on the ground. I saw all four of them today, including the little one the girls had told me about. A few times, there were two of them at the bird seed at once.

Usually, they’d run off into the spruces, or under the garden shed. Then one of them decided to run along the back of the house, where we still have a row of various things used to hold the insulation we put around the based of the house in the winter. We just kept forgetting to move them. :-/ The little bugger decided to hide in the ceramic chimney inserts, running from one to the other, then back again. I didn’t want him using the house as a place to hide, so I tried to get him to go elsewhere, but he just wouldn’t leave the inserts.

I got close enough that I could have touched that angry looking face (not that I would have!), and he still wouldn’t run off! I finally had to get a long stick and basically shepherd him along before he finally ran to the garden shed.

Of the various woodchucks we’ve seen, there’s just the one that tends to freeze in a sort of panic mode, rather than run off like the others. He was especially unhappy that Nutmeg was with me. Nutmeg completely ignored him and kept trying to rub against me to pet him, even when the woodchuck tried running his way, saw him, froze and started to… growl? I’m not sure how to describe the noise it made!

Among the things I’ve read to use to keep woodchucks from eating the garden is to scatter cat hair around the plants, because cats are their natural predators. Which I find hilarious. The woodchucks are bigger than any of our yard cats! They also seem to get along just fine. I even saw a woodchuck drinking from the water bowl we have by the junk pile for Butterscotch and her kittens.

Cheeky little buggers.

Also… just look at that hand in the photo!!! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Smoked out

/ Re-Farmer / 11 Comments

Today, we finally have cooler temperatures! According to the hourly forecasts, we should be at about 23C/73F right now, but we’re still at only 18C/64F, which is awesome. There are still predictions of rain, all of which have been passing south of us. We desperately need rain. I’ve been reading about how it’s affecting some of our farmers. Those growing things like oats have had their crops gone crispy. Cherry producers (I didn’t even know we had a cherry industry in our province!) have had their cherries bake, right on the trees.

On top of all that is the smoke. I had to make a trip into town this morning, and it’s even worse there. There are fires on the other side of the lake, which is likely why. There are no fires near us but, today, the smoke is heavy enough to affect visibility quite a bit. I was talking to my mother on the phone a little while ago, and the smoke coming into the house was so bad, I had to excuse myself for a couple of coughing fits while talking. I’ve been able to reduce my mystery coughing fits pretty well over the last few years, but with this smoke, I’ve had more in one day than I’ve had in the last 4 years since we’ve moved here. I’ve actually reversed the fan in my window to blow the smoke out, even though I would normally be drawing the cooler air in while we’ve got it.

This adorable monster was eating our bird seed this morning. I saw one of the smaller ones out my window, heading to the bird feeder, just a little while ago. I should probably chase them away, but as long as they’re eating the seeds, they’re not eating my garden, so… I’m letting them be for now.

I’ve got the garden cam set up to try and see what has been eating our peas. The only things that got caught were a skunk and Butterscotch going by. Skunks are omnivores, so it could potentially be a skunk, but the one I saw was just passing through.

When doing the watering last night, I uncovered the beds with radishes, chard, kale and kohlrabi. This morning, I left them uncovered. We’re overcast, so they don’t need the shade, and if we do get rain, I want them to get some!

While talking to my mother about the current drought conditions, I mentioned that there are people whose wells have gone dry. I told her I thought my brother had said our well is 80 feet deep. It’s a number that’s been bothering me, but I couldn’t remember him saying anything different for this well. The old well in the pump shack (which predates my family owning this property), I remember him saying is about 110 feet. My mother, however, corrected me. She didn’t know about the old well, but she did remember that the well by the house is a little over 150 feet deep.

I suddenly feel much, much better. There is no way my brother would have been wrong about that, since he was heavily involved when all the work was being done, so I don’t know where I got that 80 feet from. Especially since I know we have a deep well pump. “Deep” is a relative statement, depending on the geography and elevation, but I know that in our area, even 80 ft would be considered pretty deep. However, if we’re loosing pressure while using two hoses at the same time (granted, one of those hoses had been running a sprinkler for an hour) at 150 ft in current conditions, at 80 ft, our well would probably be dry right now. Which is a rather alarming thought.

And so we pray for rain, for respite for our farmers and firefighters, and to clear some of that smoke out of the air!

The Re-Farmer