harvest

Small harvest, doctor update, and this is the last thing we need!

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Let’s start from the beginning of the day, which started off well!

I picked a tiny harvest this morning.

I decided to pick the one cob of purple corn that was the first to develop. I knew it wouldn’t be ready yet, but I wanted to see how it was. In particular the pollination. There was a fair chunk of it that had not been pollinated at all, so the kernels did not develop, but overall, it was pretty well filled.

One of my daughter’s doesn’t like corn, so my other daughter boiled the cob and we split it between us for a taste test. Of course, not being fully ripe, it would not have reached peak sweetness, but this is not a sweet corn to begin with. It was almost meaty in taste and texture. It actually reminded me of the corn I grew up with, that my mother saved seed from, year after year. I didn’t even know sweet corn was a thing until I was in my early teens, and my mother came back from a trip to visit family in the US, with corn seeds they’ve given her. She planted them in the spring, and I remember being astonished by the flavour of sweet corn. I still liked our old corn, though, and this was very much like that. We both enjoyed our taste test.

Later on, my husband and I left early for our medical appointment. Very early. My daughter sent us some cash to treat us to lunch. My husband hasn’t gone out since his last in-person medical appointment, and that was at least 2 years ago. We stopped in the town my mother lives in to pick up gas, then went to a restaurant for lunch.

Which is when I got a message from the cat lady, asking if she could call me. Talk about perfect timing! If we had left when I originally planned, I would have been driving when she messaged me and would not have seen it for some time later.

She wanted to talk to me about possible placements for 4 female outside cats! She was contacted by someone on a farm near my mother’s town. Their yard cats of 14 and 15 years had all passed away, and they needed mousers. They have an ideal set up, including an insulated and heated barn. Basically, they would be inside cats that are allowed outside. They gave their cats quality food, regular vet visits, and – as amply demonstrated by having cats that lived more than a decade – have been able to protect them from predators. There was even a vet lined up to check on the new cats.

There are rescues out there that would happily have given them 4 or 6 female cats right now, but they wanted to go through the Cat Lady, instead. They figure to start with maybe 2 cats and keep them in the barn for a couple of weeks before allowing them outside, then getting a couple more and repeating the process.

When I mentioned that our female cats are all nursing babies right now, including the ones with older babies (they just nurse any kittens that wants to nurse!), and it turned out the vet had brought up that concern as well.

In the end, she asked me to talk to the family about it. If we go with it, she will bring a trap for us on Saturday, when she comes to pick up the sick kitty.

I’ll get back to that later…

From there, we continued to the clinic. We got there early, and were shown into an examination room right away, but the doctor was in emergency at the time (this clinic is in a hospital building), so we were among several patients waiting. By the time she finally was able to see us, it was about 20 minutes past our actual appointment. Not too bad, except my husband was really struggling with pain levels.

She ended up spending a lot of time going over his medications list. Unfortunately, he forgot to bring his meds along, but he does keep a current list in his phone. There was some confusion about doses, because what he was actually getting didn’t match what the official descriptions said were available. I think in his case, because he’s on such high doses of some things, there are exceptions being made.

One problem that was unexpected is that she could not prescribe opioids. Apparently, the College is telling doctors not to prescribe them anymore.

Opioids are the only thing that have even remotely been able to bring his pain levels down.

He didn’t need those renewed yet, though, so we should have time for him to get a new doctor, when they arrive at this clinic in the fall. This doctor added that she couldn’t take him as a new patient, but we already knew that. This is just interim. Going over his medications list, she commented that he was going to have a hard time finding a new doctor.

*sigh*

Funny how it’s easy to find a doctor, if you don’t really need one, but if you do need one, and especially with a complex file like my husband’s, it’s harder to find a doctor.

She also focused a lot on his diabetes. One of his meds actually causes weight gain. It’s an anti-depressant and he’s been on is since before we moved out here. What I remember is that it prevented weight loss, but she says is actually causes weight gain. She said it’s also for sleep. As someone who has Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea, he certainly wasn’t taking it to make him sleep! He’s off that now, and he’s happier for it. As we were leaving, he vented his frustrations. He has so many problems, but doctors keep focusing on the diabetes. The way he put it, he’s got a heart condition that has a life expectancy of 4-6 years, from time of diagnosis. Which means 2-4 years from right now. He is in constant pain, and when I brought that up, she dismissed it. He had been told, early on, that until he gets his pain under control, he won’t be able to get his blood sugars under control. Apparently, that’s not a thing anymore. She did put in a referral to a diabetic nurse. Then she brought up “it’s the diet. It’s all the diet.” And the weight, of course. He won’t get his sugars under control unless he loses weight. I’d already mentioned, he barely eats, because of his pain levels. With all the other stuff, his blood sugars are far from a priority for him right now. She also brought up that he’s on cholesterol medication, but he’s never had high cholesterol. He was put on that by the first doctor we had when we moved out here, because that doctor puts all his diabetic patients over a certain age and girth on statins. Never mind that the actual research shows statins do nothing, and actually cause more harm than good. The doctors don’t seem to be on top of the most recent data.

<<< pause for interruptions >>>

Okay, more has happened, but I’ll get back to that later!

After my husband was done, including getting a requisition for blood work, it was my turn. I only needed one prescription renewal. Should have been fast and easy. She still had to “see” me as a patient, though, so she took my blood pressure. Which, of course, was high. It isn’t high when I test it at home. She was ready to prescribe me blood pressure medication, but I said I wanted to wait on that, because it doesn’t match at home. Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve tested myself, since my husband has the machine in his room now. So she asked me to test my BP morning and evening, three times a week, for three months, then follow up with our new doctor. It’s also been ages since I had my blood work done, so I left with a requisition for that, too.

I had also made an appointment with this doctor for my mother, but I really don’t think my mother would like her. She’s female, black and has a strong accent. When I called my mother about it, we talked it over. The only reason for her to see a doctor right now is for the same reason as my husband and I; for an interim doctor to renew prescriptions. Not the dozen other things my mother thinks a doctor should be able to fix for her. My mother has no idea about the status of her prescriptions, and once I realized she didn’t understand what she needed to ask the pharmacy well enough, I told her I would call them tomorrow, while I’m in town. If her prescription renewals are good for a couple more months, I’ll cancel the appointment. If she needs a prescription renewal within the next month or two, we’ll keep the appointment.

So that’s done.

As soon as I could, after we got home, I headed outside to do my rounds early, walk around and get some fresh air. It was starting to rain, but that was okay. I also fed the yard cats a bit earlier than usual.

Which is when I saw Not Junk Pile on the cat house roof.

With a dangling foot.

It looks like her foot is broken at the “wrist”.

Crap.

I’m bringing my mother’s car in for an oil change tomorrow. I’ve also asked to get that check engine light looked at, plus a check on the wheel alignment. I’m feeling a shudder in the front driver’s side tire that concerns me. We’ve got a budget for this.

We don’t have a vet budget right now. That’s going to have to come out of money meant for a vehicle down payment.

*sigh*

I called the emergency vet, anyhow. She said that, if we could bring her in tonight, they’d treat her. So my daugher and I got the cat carrier and went looking for her.

By then, it was raining harder, and there was no sign of her.

We went looking again later, but still nothing.

We did see her kittens, though, and figured out where their new “nest” is. It’s no longer in the tarp covered board pile (formerly known as the junk pile). They’ve found a way to get into the space under the concrete stairs outside the dining room door. A perfect spot for a mama and her kittens. Impossible for us to get at.

I’ve also been in contact with the Cat Lady. This is one of the mamas we were thinking would go to the farm she was telling us about. She’s going to work on arranging more spays for us, and will be dropping a trap off for us, too. Between adopting out 4 female yard cats, plus getting spays done, we should be able to reduce the number of kittens next year.

Of course, that will also depend on how many of this year’s kittens are female, too! Hopefully, we’ll be able to get some of them done, early next year, before they go into their first heat. This year, they started having babies before the snow was gone. 😥

While I was working on this, we’d gone out to try and catch Not Junk Pile. When it became clear we were not going to get her tonight, I sent an email to the vet clinic, letting them know the situation an dthat we’d be trying to bring her in in the morning. I then called the emergency vet back and updated her as well. That means we’ll have to be out and feeding the cats quite early, and try to get her into the carrier. My daughter and I will work to get her to the vet when they open at 8am, then drop the car off for 9am. My daughter can stay at the clinic while I take care of the car stuff. I’m also going to have to swing by the pharmacy to pick up prescription refills. My husband has been without insulin for several days now.

Why is this happening all at the same time???

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: morning harvest and how things are looking

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

I didn’t pick any bush beans for a couple of days, so there was plenty to pick this morning!

I also grabbed a few Gold Ball turnips, Uzbek Golden carrots – a first harvest of those – and snagged a yellow zucchini. There’s some green ones starting to grow, and one that is almost ready to harvest, but not quite!

I uploaded other photos onto Instagram. As you go through these, can you please let me know if any of them look like the files got corrupted somehow? I am having problems with viewing batches of photos like this. They look fine as I go through the process, but after they’ve been published and I view them, there are usually visual changes to some of them. Some are so bad, I can barely see the image, so I delete the whole thing and start over. I had to do that with this batch, and I still see problems. The images are at least identifiable, though!

Please let me know if you see it to, or if it’s just my computer messing up!

The first image is of the North Georgia Candy Roaster squash that is getting SO big, so fast! It seems to be getting noticeably bigger, every day! There were also a lot of new female flowers among the candy roasters and the Pink Bananas.

There is a little patch of allium flowers that come up every year through a crack between sidewalk blocks and the laundry platform steps. They are in full bloom right now, and the bees loves them. I tried taking photos and just happened to catch the bee as it flew off to another flower head!

The earliest Sweet Chocolate bell peppers are turning colour quite nicely right now.

The next photo, of the chamomile flowers, looks like it has a block of purple over all but the top of the photo. Do you see that too?

The chamomile are blooming quite enthusiastically right now.

The very first luffa flower has opened – and is being pollinated!

Last of all is the first flower on the Classic Eggplant. Check out those spikes on it!

On another topic entirely, I brought one of the yard kittens in, so my daughter and I could wash its eyes out. They were completely stuck shut. As soon as the dried gunk was softened enough that the lids started to open, they started oozing more gunk! It’s nose was all gummed up, too, and somehow a tiny piece of flexible plastic was stuck to it! My guess is it was from the strips of plastic that covered the adhesive on the new roof tiles. We’re still finding them blowing around.

We got the kitten cleaned up as best we could, then set it outside again, but not before my daughter got a picture of it. The Cat Lady is going to be coming for Ghosty soon. I hated to asked, but I sent her the picture and asked if they would be able to take a second sick kitten.

She had to check with her husband, who was monitoring their cat that just came out of surgery not long ago. Their cat seems to be doing all right, so she will take the sick kitten. With its eyes gumming up so much, it tends to stay by the house a lot, so we should be able to find it and catch it, once we know she’s on the way.

The down side is, the rescue’s budget for August already done, having gone towards spays. Which means they’ll be taking on these two, out of pocket! They’ve already spent thousands on just two cats in the past, but they’re still willing to take on these two. The other downside is, once they’re all healthy, it’s been difficult to adopt cats out. Partly because she wants to keep them! 😄 I do expect Ghosty will get adopted out easily. She is a rather unique looking kitten. A bit freaky at times, too! She’s got blue eyes, and when the light hits them just right, her pupils glow red. We think she might have partial albinism. Her eyes are still sticky, too, but she has gotten much better since coming inside.

The Cat Lady commented that the strain causing these problems is particularly bad this year. Not just with so many sick cats, but so many kittens dying this year, too. So it’s not just at our place! We’ve found so many dead kittens this year, plus losing Question, even after bringing her inside. We’re still tossing the outside cats’ kibble with lysine to help their immune systems, but it’s the little ones that are suffering. The adults seem just fine, but with the littles, it seems that as soon as they start getting weaned, it’s just not enough.

Well, we do what we can! I feel bad asking the Cat Lady for help, though, but after Leyendecker, we just don’t have the budget to take another cat to the vet. The Cat Lady’s rescue runs on donations, but they do a lot out of pocket, too. Her husband, thankfully, makes good money, but it’s still a lot to cover out of pocket!

Ah, well. I’m just glad she’ll be able to take Ghosty and this other kitten. She is so awesome!

The Re-Farmer

This is why I stay flexible

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

When it comes to overall plans for the day, I tend to be very loosey goosey. Mostly it’s because I hate making solid plans, then having something else come up and disrupt them. Which happens.

A lot.

This morning, I was able to get out while it was still cool to do my morning rounds, sex up some squash flowers, prune the tomatoes and harvest a few carrots.

I only picked a few to add to a chili type dish I plan to make. I intend to leave the rest in the ground for as long as I can, to get bigger. These are the Naval carrots that we made seed tape with. There’s a bit of damage on a couple of them because I had to use a digging tool to loosen the soil enough to pull them out without breaking them. For all the amending and mulching we’ve been doing, compaction remains a huge problem.

It was getting quite hot and muggy by the time I came in. I ended up having my breakfast… er… lunch… in the living room. Partly to enjoy the cool of the AC, but also because I usually eat while working at my computer, but the kittens have started to try and get at my food when I do that! We have a Roku set up on our TV, so I got to enjoy my lunch while watching The French Chef on Tubi.

I was just finished up and planning to head outside again when the phone rang.

It was my mother, wondering if I could come over and help her with shopping.

😄

When we spoke on the phone a few days ago, I specifically asked about when she would need to go shopping next. She told me she was done, well stocked up, etc. She then spent the next while listing off what my sister had brought her from her garden, and that she had going to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things for her, and she had this, and that, and this other thing…

My response was, so… why don’t we plan on it for Friday?

Nope. She didn’t want to set a date, because she’s well stocked…

Today is Friday.

She almost sounded sheepish when she asked if I could come over!

So I changed out of my grubbies and headed over to her place. We had a bit of a visit, first. Of course, she found ways to criticize and insult me within minutes, because she’s like that. Apparently, it’s a complete shock that I was wearing socks. It’s summer. Why am I wearing socks? There was also something about hose. As if she thought I was wearing panty hose, until I lifted my pant leg to figure out what she was talking about.

We ended up talking about the new steel toe shoes I was wearing, instead of the boots I usually do, which lead to me telling her (again) that I’d injured my feet long ago, by being over active so that’s why I have to wear really good shoes all the time. My mother, of course, just had to make a dig about how it (my foot injuries) was because I was fat. She is utterly obsessed with my being fat, and always finds ways to point out how this is some sort of moral and personal failing, the cause of all my problems, and that if I just did what she told me, I’d be skinny. Or something. I reminded her that I injured my feet before I got fat, and it’s why I started getting fat. Well, that and childbirth. All the woman in my mother’s side of the family got fat after having babies. They also all lived to hale and hearty old age, while all my skinny ancestors died young, but that’s a conversation beyond her ability to understand. Yes, my mother is fat. She’s been fat for as long as I can remember and, for all her hypochondria, astonishingly healthy at 92 years old. Anyhow, I called her on her behaviour, and her habit of finding sly ways to point out how disgusting she finds me. She, of course, tried to gaslight me, going on about how I shouldn’t be so upset (pointing out her behaviour is always translated as being angry or upset, or otherwise out of control; typical of gaslighting), or that I was the one attacking her, and when that failed, she started talking to the picture of Jesus on the wall.

It didn’t work.

Eventually, my pointing out that it was her own behaviour that was the cause of the problem, not my inability to accept her verbal abuse, got her to a point where she couldn’t find a way to twist it around and make it my fault anymore.

At which point, I went back to says, yes, I wear socks with my work shoes in the summer.

After that, the visit went really well! 😄

I helped her run her errands, going to various places. She is really struggling to get in and out of the car these days. She would have just given me a list to do her shopping for her, but there were things she wanted to look at and choose herself. What I used to do at the grocery store was bring a cart for her to use as a walker, but now I insist she use the walker while I push the cart, so she has something to sit down on if her knees start to give out on her. And she’s taken advantage of that!

What was funny is that after everything was put away and we were sitting for a brief rest and visit, she actually “kicked me out”, saying she wanted to take a nap. Usually, when I try to leave, she tries to guilt me into staying longer, and how this is my “holiday”, and the girls can take care of things at the farm, and she’s not going to be around forever, so I should spent more time with her! Nope. Now, she’s tired. Time for me to go!

I’m quite okay with that. I was tired, too!

Not too tired, though. When I went to get some gas, I saw the farmer’s market was open, and my cousin’s truck was there. It’s been ages since I got honey from him! Last year, the weather destroyed most of his hives. Usually, we would get a 5kg bucket of honey from him, but not this year. I was able to get one of his large 1.5kg jars, though.

I also picked up some fresh baked sourdough bread and strawberry rhubarb pie!

I would never pay those prices at a grocery store – the pie cost more than the honey! That size jar – the largest he had available – was only $13. I also checked out, but skipped, a booth with fresh vegetables that looked really good. Just not vegetables we typically eat, or stuff we have our own of. Lots of people thought they looked good, to. There was an actual line up of people waiting to pay for their selections.

Small farmer’s markets like this are hard for me to go to. I want to support all of the vendors! Even if I’m not entirely sure what it is they’re selling. 😄

One of the other things I did while at my mother’s was to clean up her answering machine, saving the calls from our vandal that she’ still getting. I recorded them and sent them to my brother. We are very perplexed by some of the things our vandal has been saying. My vandal has been leaving me alone, but he recently called and left messages with my brother, and also called my mother, saying some very strange things about me. One text message he sent to my brother was so bizarre and disjointed, I honestly wondered if he had a stroke or something.

It did give me a chance to talk to my brother, though. Normally, I hate talking on the phone, but not with him! I think we spoke for about an hour or more!

Then I forgot about this post in progress. Oops.

Well, at least I sexed up some more squash flowers, watered the garden, added more supports to the melon trellis (we have baby melons!), got the slow cooker going, started laundry and had my supper in the living room with Marlee, to give her a break from the kittens!

By the end of the weekend, though, we will be down a kitten. The Cat Lady and her family are in the area, and she will swing by to pick up Ghosty, whose eyes are starting to get all sticky again, when they are on their way back to the city.

Soon, we’ll have to get some good photos of the other kittens and Decimus to send to her, so she can pass them on to her contacts and hopefully get them adopted out when they are weaned.

The kittens are sweet and adorable, but I’m going to be happy when they’re gone!

Not as happy as Marlee, though.

The Re-Farmer

Morning (and evening) in the garden.

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

I’ve been working on another raised bed cover, with difficulty. I had to give up on plan A and switch to plan B, which involved stealing the hoops from the high raised bed. I left that for this morning, though. The beans still need to be protected from deer, though, so the raised bed cover I’d put over the carrots got moved over. With a daughter’s help, I was able to put it in place without damaging the beans, then drape the mesh over the fence wire.

That mesh catches on EVERYTHING!!!

I got a bit of a surprise, though. That bed is supposed to be 9′ x 4′ on the outside, to match the low raised beds, so the covers can be interchangeable. The low raised beds are 9′ x 3′, but with the log walls, the growing space is closer to 3′ than 4′, so that’s okay.

What I didn’t expect was for the cover to be almost 6 inches longer than the bed!

It works, though. Plus, the fence wire is open enough that I can just lift the mesh to reach in to weed and harvest, without taking the whole cover off. I also can use the ground staples to secure the mesh to the fence wire, which was not yet done when I took the above picture.

I did get a decent harvest this morning, though!

The green beans are really starting to recover from being eating by deer – they got hit a lot worse than the yellow beans. I finally picked that first yellow zucchini, and a G-Star patty pan. There is still a larger one that I’m leaving on the plant.

Last night, while doing my evening rounds, I discovered that the Black Beauty tomatoes needed help! The storm we had yesterday morning probably added to the problem. The tomatoes are getting so heavy, the entire support structure was starting to lean over with the weight, as well as more tomato laden branched hanging down. I’ve been tying them off regularly, but some still manage to escape. I’d already had to add a second support stake at the end, and last night I had to add three bamboo stakes, diagonally, to push back and hold the vertical supports.

The other photos in the slide show are from this morning. There are Spoon tomatoes starting to turn red! The earliest Sweet Chocolate peppers are starting to turn brown. (Most of the other short season varieties I started indoors later aren’t even blooming yet.) Some of the grapes are starting to turn colour, too!

I didn’t take photos, but there are more winter squash showing up, and I hand pollinated what I could. There is a single green zucchini that burst into bloom this morning – a female flower, with no male flowers blooming at all! I ended up hand pollinating it with a winter squash flower because none of the summer squash had male flowers available. Hopefully, that will be sufficient.

I salvaged some welded wire hardware cloth from the old squash tunnel this morning. Once I’m done with the raised bed cover I’m currently working on, there is one more frame left. I think I can use the salvaged mesh for that one. I’ll see if it will need hoops to support it, too. I hope not, because I’m out of useable hoops for that! There are still 2 more sections of hardware cloth on the old squash tunnel to salvage, which should be enough to wrap around the box cover over the popcorn bed. The cobs are developing nicely, which means the deer and racoons will be after it, soon!

High winds had started to knock down some of the purple corn, so they ended up getting stakes to support them. Their cobs are developing, too, but I don’t really have anything to protect that bed. I could use the fence wire for that, but it would be really difficult to manipulate and support that around the bed – and once it was up, we wouldn’t have access to tend it. Plus, the racoons would be able to climb over or squeeze through it, anyhow.

We’re looking at a high of 30C/86F today, and no rain, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some painting done today. The humidity is at 76%, though, and that certainly won’t help. Still, it needs to get done, and it’s one of the few things I can do in the heat. We’re not that hot yet, though, so I want to head back out right away and get as much done as I can before it gets unbearable!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: morning harvest, and the squash patch

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I got a harvest this morning!

Just a wee one, but big enough that I didn’t have room in my pocket for the patty pan. I’m going to have to start bringing out my harvest colander, just in case!

Also, it is SO much more comfortable to harvest bush beans in a high raised bed. Even in the low raised bed we grew some in last year, while much better than harvesting at ground level, it was still painful. The high raised bed is just awesome!

Not a bad first bean harvest, considering the plants got eaten by a deer. Especially the green beans. They’ve still got a lot more recovery, but I’m seeing so many developing pods in the process! I did pick some beans a couple of days ago; just a tiny handful, and not enough to call a “harvest”, really. Plus there have been a few early Romas ripening every few days or so. I picked one of the two larger G Star patty pans, leaving the other to get larger, while still more are developing.

While checking the garden, I found more blooming female squash flowers to hand pollinate. It looks like we’ve got a few squash that have pollinated successfully. Here are some of them.

In order of the photo slideshow above, we have:

Goldy yellow zucchini. I’m happy to see that large one developing, as there were no male flowers on the plant. I hand pollinated from a hulless pumpkin that was blooming, and it seems to have taken!

G Star patty pan. These are easily the most successful plants we have. I picked one of the larger squash, choosing the slightly misshapen on, leaving the other to get bigger. There are many more developing.

Georgia Candy Roaster. Another one that got hand pollinated from another variety.

Sunburst patty pans. The one surviving plant is looking strong and healthy now, and starting to bloom.

Pink Banana. The first, tiny female flower! I’ll have to keep an eye on it, to make sure it gets pollinated as soon as it opens.

Honeyboat Delicata. There’s still just the one, even though we have the most plants of these. It seems to be doing all right.

Red Kuri. We have a couple of these, one on each plant. Previously, we grew these on trellises. It should be interesting to see how they do, without climbing.

Endeavor zucchini. One sad green zucchini plant is finally looking stronger and healthier, and starting to produce female flowers.

There are others, but I didn’t take pictures of everything. The entire squash patch looks SO much better than last year. The slugs may have done a number on the summer squash, but now they seem to be leaving them alone.

July is almost gone, though. We’re really going to need a long, mild fall for the winter squash to reach full maturity.

I’ll have to remember to take photos, but I’m wondering if I’ve miss labelled the little patch with the African Drum gourds and Zucca melons. While transplanting, there were three labelled Drum gourd, three labelled Zucca melon, and three where I could no longer reach the label, so it could be one or the other. These got planted and replanted when starting the seeds.

Right now, we are seeing female flowers in the drum gourd row that I’ve been hand pollinating. As they get bigger and start dropping down, I’m seeing that they are developing a sort of hourglass shape.

Kinda like this shape, except tiny, and fuzzy.

That is an image of mature zucca melon, from the Baker Creek website.

This is the Baker Creek image for the African drum gourd. The developing gourds we have do not look like that.

If I accidentally mislabelled things, does that mean the other plants, which have no female flowers yet, are the drum gourds? Or are they all zucca, and no drums? The flowers and leaves for all the gourds we’ve grown look very similar. Even compared to the attempted apple and canteen gourds from last year. The plants on the chain link fence were the surviving first seed starts; one of each, and I know those were labelled correctly. They are blooming, but the vines are so long and skinny, and there are only male flowers, so there isn’t much to help identify there.

Curious!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: progress, and first harvest

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

I got to see some nice progress in the garden this morning.

First, the tomatoes.

The first Roma VF tomatoes that showed up are now starting to change colour from green to yellowish and now kinda orange.

I still am not sure how we’ll be able to tell when the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue Chocolates are ready to pick. They practically started out at the colours they’re supposed to be, when ripe. I guess it’ll come down to how soft they feel, and how easily they come off the vine. The very first Black Beauty tomato that showed up is getting quite large, so that’s another thing to use as a guide, I guess.

We also have squash and gourds developing – I hope!

The G-Star patty pan squash are looking big and healthy – the slugs don’t seem to like them! Here, the first flower buds are forming, with both male and females forming at the same time! With everything else, we’ve just been seeing male flowers. There is one exception. We have one yellow zucchini plant that the slugs seem to just love, but it’s surviving. There is a single female flower bud, with a bright yellow baby squash under the flower, but the male flower buds are just barely emerging. It’s unlikely the female flower will have any male flowers to pollinate it when it finally opens.

The second photo is of our very first female African Drum gourd flower bud!

I was not expecting it to be fuzzy.

A few other winter squash are also starting to show female flower buds, including the Crespo squash. Hopefully, the buds will actually reach the blooming stage. With the Crespo squash in particular, the only ones that showed up before now, dried up and fell off long before they got big enough to start blooming. They sure have a lot of male flowers, though! More than any other squash that has started blooming.

It was thundering and threatening rain while I was checking the garden beds, but I went ahead and made a first harvest, before heading in.

I dug around and gathered our first Irish Cobbler potatoes. These are from under 2 plants. There were still tiny potatoes among the roots, so I left the plants in the ground to hopefully keep growing.

I just picked enough for one meal. We’ll leave the rest to fully mature before we pick them again; there just aren’t that many plants, so the longer we leave them be, hopefully the better the harvest in the fall. We’ll likely try the Red Thumb potatoes too, but with the Purple Peruvian growing in feed bags, we’ll probably not bother with those. We’ve grown them before, anyhow, so we know what they taste like.

We had quite a lot of rain last night. Enough to refill the barrel by the sunroom to overflowing! With all the thunder I was hearing while checking the garden, I didn’t start any outdoor jobs. Instead, a daughter and I went into town to refill some water jugs and pick up a few things, including kitten kibble. I ran out of that last night. The storm I was hearing passed us by, though, so we should be able to get at least one of those frames done this evening.

For all that our garden ended up much smaller than intended for this year, I’m happy with how things have been turning out.

The Re-Farmer

Unbelievable!

/ Re-Farmer / 9 Comments

First, in an alarming way, then in a good way.

First, a photo of something pleasant.

When I finally got outside to do my evening stuff, I was able to pick a bunch of peas and raspberries.

It seems quite a lot of our peas have been “topped” by deer, but they seem to like the leaves, and not the pods.

I wanted to have that photo first, so no one squeamish sees the next photo in the post previews. You are warned!

The first time I started to go outside, I spotted the kitten with the messed up eye. After putting the food out, I was able to snag it and bring it inside for an eye washing.

That eye was looking worse than ever. The swelling was massive, and it looked like the eye was not going to make it.

We decided to call the vet. After talking to them for a bit, they had me come in as an emergency visit. This is how the kitten looked after we got it in the carrier.

That is not good. Not good at all. You can’t actually see in the photo, just how bad the swelling is. Just a great big ball over his cheek bone and partly towards his ear. While we washed the eye, I move the lids around and could see gunk was accumulating under the eyelids, too – not something we had any way to wash out.

By the time I got to the vet, it actually looked better, though all the pink tissue was blood red. The eyeball itself no longer looked cloudy, like in the photo.

I was taken to an examination room immediately. Just before leaving, I messaged the Cat Lady with the above photo, and we chatted for a bit while I waited for the vet. She has seen this before and told me about some medications that worked wonders for her, in just a couple of days. I was feeling better about that, by the time the doctor came in.

Not so much for the Cat Lady, though.

Her cat that is blocked is back in surgery, and he’s either going to make it, or be euthanized, depending on how things go. They’ve already spent thousands of dollars on this cat. I’m assuming they are doing the last ditch surgery of creating a “female” urethra. I honestly would never go that far. There can be so many problems after the surgery, and a severe reduction in quality of life. I don’t know for sure, though. Unfortunately, not only are they dealing with this, but family from out of country are in and they have to put a smile on their faces attend a family gathering. She’s a total mess – and yet she still was able to encourage me about the kitten!

When the vet came in, we talked for awhile and I explained the background on the kitten. This is only the second time I’ve been able to catch him (when I mentioned I hadn’t even had a chance to see if it was male or female, she did check and was mostly sure it’s male). She said the eye was likely related to herpes, and I told her how we’ve been giving the outside cats lysine to help with that. The adults are fine now, but once the kittens start getting weaned and eating solid food (including the mice and birds the mamas bring them), their eyes start getting gummy.

She used a light to look into his eye and confirmed that it’s gone. It’s full of blood and apparently starting to rot inside. All that swelling you can see in the photo? That’s all eyeball. *shudder* We’d be treating it for a while, and then having it removed later. So many of them have red, leaky and stuck eyes, but we can only catch a couple of them, once in a while.

The only way we could treat the kitten would be to bring it inside, of course, but that meant we would be able to control the lysine dose. They weighed him and worked out that he would be getting half a scoop – the scoop that comes with the lysine, not the size I’m using for the outside cats! – mixed into his food, twice a day. For an adult cat, it would have been 1 scoop twice a day. We would have gotten eye drops, too.

Note that I’m speaking in the past tense now.

The vet then took him out to wash his eye with saline solution, cover the eye with gel to keep it from drying out, and give him a slow release antibiotic injection.

Then she came back with him and a handful of medications to take home with him, started to talk to me about it, then asked, “unless you want to adopt him out…?”

???

I wasn’t quite sure if she was serious, but I said yes, of course. That would be a huge help. We already have too many cats in the house (the last I saw this vet, we had 16, but now Decimus and the 6 babies are inside, too).

Then she asked if I wanted to take him home first, or adopt him out now?

It seems one of the techs wanted to take him home. Now? Or Monday?

I was a bit confused, things were coming at me so jumbled. At first I was going to bring him home to treat him over the weekend, then bring him back on Monday, but then she told me to wait and went to talk to the tech again.

The tech was happy to bring him home with her right away.

So that was settled!

I was stunned, but happy.

Then I went to settle the bill. I figured it would be more than I got for the van, just this morning, and had already been checking my bank account to see what I could transfer over out of savings, if necessary. I’d mentioned to the vet that I’d been chatting with the Cat Lady, so when I was at the counter, she asked me if the rescue was covering the bill or was I? I told her the rescue was not involved with this kitten. Then I saw some semi-verbal communication between the vet and the tech that was out of view.

Suddenly I was being told it was okay. It was covered. The tech that adopted the kitten would take care of it, and I was basically – cheerfully! – kicked out. 😂😂

So… yeah.

By the time I left, I was in a bit of a daze. It all happened so quickly! I went in with a messed up kitty, worried about how we were going to pay for vet care and sure the baby was going to loose an eye. I left with the kitten in the best of hands. Who better than someone that works at a vet clinic to take care of it? The only way things could be better is if, by some miracle, the eye recovers. Unlikely, but possible.

It’s just so unbelievable.

The Re-Farmer