Another one I loved singing as a kid.
Holidays
In the Christmas spirit: Angels We Have Heard on High
In the Spirit of Christmas: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
In the Christmas spirit: Carol of the Bells (cello)
This year’s Christmas decorations
Every year, I used to make new decorations for our Christmas tree, and to share with family. We had a multi-year hiatus for a number of reasons, including moving here, but I’ve started the tradition up again.
Each year, I try to do something different, hopefully learn a new skill, and use materials at hand. This year, I started with…
… cans.
Specifically, the cans from Costco’s canned chicken. I liked their size.
My daughter was kind enough to spray paint them gold for me, which took several days and several layers. Paint doesn’t like to cure when it’s cold, and she ended up having to do it in the old basement – forgetting that the furnace is there. :-D The paint didn’t want to adhere to the metal very well, but once it set, it was good.
Those were turned into…
… these.
Most of the materials used were from a dollar store. I tried to find really tiny Christmas trees but ended up getting some floral wire made to look like sprigs. I cut and twisted some together to make little trees, two of which are behind the little church. The ribbon, birds, gifts, bells, glitter paper, wooden stars and fake snow were also from the dollar store. I already had metallic card stock that I used to create platforms, as well as the other wooden pieces. A family member gifted me with a storage box fill of little wooden pieces, years ago, and I finally got to use some!
I did some wood burning on the starts and the church. My daughter painted the church and the books. I just love how the books look!
You can see in the flash picture that she used metallic gold on the books. She also used some metallic paint for details on the church. When I tried to find things small enough for the wreath behind the gifts, she dug around and find some teeny, tiny “gem” shapes she had saved from somewhere. I ended up using several different types of adhesives I happened to have, to hold everything in place. As long as they did the job and dried clear, I wasn’t too fussy!
These are too large to hang on our little Christmas tree, but they will be perfect to add to the lights and garlands we have running across the dining room cabinets at the ceiling.
With having to wait for paint to cure and some adhesives to dry, this took a lot longer than I originally expected. The most difficult part was cutting holes into the metal, then threading cord through for the hangers. I couldn’t be sure where to place the holes until after the insides were done. The church steeple was particularly awkward! Craft tweezers came in very handy! The bells needed their own hole, and I had to figure out how to hang those, and ended up using a piece of the tree-sprig floral wire, then using an extra wide ribbon to edge it, to make sure the part that’s on top was well secured.
I’m quite happy with the finished result!
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
A Crespo surprise
It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving day, but we are having our big dinner today. My mother loves her turkey dinner, so I will be bringing her some tomorrow, while my brother visits with her today. Right now, the turkey is in the oven, as are most of the potatoes that were harvested yesterday, so I can take a break to post about our Thanksgiving garden surprise. :-)
Last night, as we headed outside before the light faded completely, I took my daughters over to see how quickly the Crespo squash is growing. In the process, we discovered a hidden squash!
It had been hidden by leaves until now!
I came back this morning to get a photo, but of course my phone’s camera decided to focus on everything but the squash itself! :-D
This is easily the biggest of all the Crespo squash we have developing. This is the only pumpkin type of squash we’ve got this year, so it seemed appropriate to find this on Thanksgiving weekend.
I didn’t get any photos, but the Ozark Nest Egg gourd is also showing us surprises. There are SO many female flowers showing up, with their little gourds at their bases, and it even looks like quite a lot of them got pollinated! A few have wizened away, but more seem to be making it.
If the weather can just hang in there! I’m now seeing overnight lows of 2C/36F by Friday, with rain at the same time. The squash and gourds seem to actually like these cooler temperatures, and are producing like crazy, but I doubt any of these will survive such lows, even without frost. We shall see. It would be so awesome if they managed to mature! For that, though, I think we’ll need mild temperatures through half of November, too. Which does happen. It’s whether or not we get frost that will make the difference.
That we haven’t had frost yet is something to be thankful for, this Thanksgiving weekend!
Just in case I’m not able to post tomorrow, I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
An awesome Mother’s Day, pancake cat, soil comparisons and pretty things. :-)
I had a rather amusing start to the morning!
While heading out to feed the outside cats, I heard a noise from an unusual direction.
I had startled Nicky the Nose on the sun room roof!
I always get a giggle out of how he pancakes himself like that when he’s startled. As if he can somehow make himself small. :-D
Our cats never go on the sun room roof, that we’ve seen. They’ll go onto the new part roof, where they can look at the girls through the second floor windows, but it’s quite a leap to go onto the rest of the roof from there. It was a surprise to see Nicky there!
My daughters had a Mother’s Day treat planned out for me. In our tiny little hamlet, we have a small hotel with a bar and itty bitty restaurant. Well, with all the restrictions in place, they’ve had to change things up. About a month ago, the separate bar and restaurant was reworked as a single country style pub, and quickly got a good reputation for their excellent food. It’s a small menu for a small town, but we’re just excited to have options at all.
Of course, the government promptly pulled the rug out from under restaurants again, so they’re limited to take out, only. I guess the government isn’t done killing small businesses, yet. So we wanted to give them some support!
I saw them post a photo on their Facebook page for a platter that is not on their menu, so I had to ask about it. They were able to put together an appetizer platter for us, including deep fried mushrooms, which are also not on the menu yet. It was awesome! Even with 4 of us, by the time we were done, I could only manage one slice of the pizza I got for myself. My daughters ordered their cheeseburger platters, and were thoroughly impressed just by the size. There was enough there for two meals! And yes, they tasted really good, too! It’ll be much nicer to be able to order food from just a few miles away, instead of having to go to another town. Unless we want Chinese food. ;-) I’m glad we were able to order there today. Driving by over the past month, I was always seeing vehicles and people out front and, on nice days, people sitting and eating at the tables outside. Today, with the increased restrictions kicking in at midnight, there was nothing. Just two employees, and me, and I only heard the cook, but never saw him. So we’ll be trying to order food from there as often as our budget allows. Hopefully, lots of other people will be doing the same. Considering how few people live here, that still won’t be much, but it might be enough to keep them going.
In other things…
I had hung on to the soil samples from the tests done in them, and today I finally got some photos before getting rid of them. Here are the jars from the first two tests we did.
The first sample was from the soft soil uncovered when the old wood pile was cleaned up. The water is still very distinctly orange! The second sample is from the new garden soil we purchased.
These are from the third and fourth tests we did. The one that’s more orange and still cloudy is from where we’d planted potatoes using the Ruth Stout method, while the other is from the unamended soil that has never had anything planted there before. I find it interesting to see how clear – or not! – the water became, after letting the samples sit undisturbed for so long.
Later this afternoon, my daughters and I went out to do some watering, and to plant onion sets in the last of the beds in the old garden area. The 2 bags of shallots had only a dozen sets each, so they were planted in one row along one side, while the yellow onions were planted in a three row grid on the other. Later next week, kohlrabi will be planted in between the two. Besides that, there’s still half a bed left that will be planted with carrots. Aside from successive sowing the spinach, that will be it for those beds.
There were still maybe a dozen onion sets left over, so I’m thinking of interplanting them with the beets that will be planted near the garlic beds. Hopefully, they will help deter deer from going after the beet greens. If all goes well, that will be completed tomorrow.
Before heading back indoors and out of the high winds we were having, the girls and I checked on the flowers we’d planted in the fall.
We’re finding more and more of the teeny, tiny crocuses blooming! I know these are not large flowers, but I didn’t expect them to be this minuscule! I suspect, after they’ve had a year to establish themselves, they will come up a bit larger, next year.
I then spent some time tending the seed starts in the sun room. The gourd pots got moved to the sun room awhile ago, but there is still nothing of the Ozark Nest Egg, Thai Edible Bottle gourd, and birdhouse gourds. I am hoping it’s just because they take so long to germinate normally. I probably should have started them earlier. It’s the squash and melons that I’m eyeballing more. They haven’t been in the sun room long, but I was hoping the increased warmth would help. I’m happy to say that I did see a couple of seedlings trying to push their way through, but most show no sign of any germination. I keep second guessing myself about what we used to plant them in and all the things we did differently this year, thinking that maybe I’ve gone and killed them off somehow. :-/ It’s still just under a month before we can transplant anything outside, so there’s lots of time yet for them to germinate.
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself!
Oy. Today has been a really bad day for internet connectivity – as happens every time we have high winds. This post took forever to get done! Time to stop trying to do internet things for a while.
Hmm… I still have lots of my Mother’s Day pizza left. Maybe a late snack is in order? :-D
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
Happy Easter!
I hope that your day was full of joy and blessings.
Our favourite tradition is our Easter basket.
The traditional items include bread (I made a challah this year), eggs (half were pickled, half were coloured with beet juice), ham, sausage, cheese (goat cheese with herbs this year), horseradish (we purchased a spread this year, as our ground it still too frozen to dig up fresh roots), butter and salt. In place of the traditional bacon, we twisted prosciutto rosettes. Among the non-traditional items, we have mustard, olive oil, wine vinegar and olives (almond stuffed, this year). Other items that some people like to include are wine, grapes or an apple, a bottle of wine, or a single white candle. Every item has symbolic meaning. It’s not in the photo, but the basket was covered with a hand embroidered linen cloth; a small table cloth, stitched and gifted to me by my godmother, many years ago. I have a small collection of hand embroidered linens that I like to use to cover our baskets. Lots of people cover their baskets with crocheted lace doilies.
Typically, the basket would be taken to church for blessing on Holy Saturday (as my mother was able to do), but we blessed it ourselves again, this year. I’ve seen people with very elaborate baskets, with added decorations on the basket itself, along with sprigs of flowers, greenery or pussy willow branches. I’ve also seen baskets as simple and elegant as a loaf of rye bread in a small basket covered with a cloth napkin.
The basket contents make up our Easter brunch.
It was wonderful.
Happy Easter!
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
New Year Kitty, and looking ahead
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful time last night, kicking out the old year, and bringing in the new. :-)
For us, we don’t normally do a whole lot. Living away from town or city celebrations is quite within our preferences! We had good food, each other’s company, and the entertainment of cats that were very interested in those good food smells! ;-)
This morning, as I went into the sun room, I discovered one of the spice boys in there! He would have been there since yesterday morning. :-( Not a very good New Year’s Eve for him!
Normally, when a cat gets accidentally closed up in there, we hear a ruckus or meowing and know to let them out.
We heard no such ruckus.
I suspect he didn’t actually mind being in there all that much. It’s much warmer than outside, and there are soft things to curl up on. He had to have been pretty hungry and thirsty by morning, though!
I’m not even sure which of the spice boys it was. As soon as the door opened, he ran and hid under the swing bench, then peeked at me. The two of them look so much alike, and move so constantly, it’s really hard to tell which is which unless they are next to each other. Even then, we haven’t decided which one is Nutmeg and which one is Ginger! :-D
That didn’t stop both of them – and four other cats! – from following me around as I finished my rounds!
Just look at that face! :-D What a glare!
Today is going to be a quiet day of rest for us, then tomorrow is going to be a busy one! I will be heading into the city to do our monthly shop, as early in the day that I can. When I get home, we’ll unload the groceries, then load up the garbage and recycling for a much delayed trip to the dump. Earlier in the week, I had my days mixed up and thought we could do it on Thursday night, thinking that New Year’s fell on Saturday, not Friday. Thankfully, Saturday is the one day a week they are open for a full 8 hours – and it’s not a holiday – so we will have time make the trip to the city first. It’s been so long since we’ve gone to the dump, though, we might have to make two trips. We shall see.
Amazingly, it’s going to warm up quite a bit over the next couple of days. For Sunday, the predictions keep going up, and are now at 2C
Yes. Two degrees above freezing. In January! That would be 35.6F Then it’s supposed to stay warmer than -10C/14F for the next two weeks.
I had feared we would have another bitterly cold couple of months, as we had for the previous winters we have been here. I am really going to enjoy a milder winter – and the reduced electricity/heating bills. Even our equal payment plan payments will drop, with temperatures this warm! Before we were able to get on the equal payment plan, we were paying over $600 a month for December, January and February. Last year, we had a month were we would have been paying over $700 for our electricity. On months like that, our equal payment plan adjusted to a little over $300. Usually, it’s about $290, though it’s dropped to as low as $250ish.
This house is not very energy efficient, at all! :-( And the upstairs is freezing cold in the winter, with it’s one heat vent for the entire floor. When I stand at the bottom of the stairs, I can feel cold coming down, like a breeze. The girls put sheets of rigid insulation on the walls by their beds, which they then covered with decorative fabric, which made a big difference. Without out the insulation, they were actually feeling waves of cold, coming off the walls. !! This year, they haven’t even needed to use their little heater, yet. Meanwhile, in the summer, it gets insanely hot up there. :-/
Of course, with snow on the ground, my mind keeps going ahead to garden plans. In fact, I’ve been almost obsessed with garden plans! In a good way. ;-) I’ve been researching on different ways to start seeds indoors – something we had issues with last year. I am constantly reading about how important it is to use grow lights, which is something we just don’t have and can’t afford right now.
Or…
Maybe we do…
Everything I’ve been reading says ordinary lights can be used, so long as they’re bright enough.
We have two aquariums.
The little 20 gallon one I’ve given up on after the last fish finally died, has a light that is part of the lid, so no worries about the cats getting into it. It can hold one of the seed starter trays we have now, and maybe a bit more.
The big tank has two lights. The original that it came with, and one we got later. The glass lids on the big tank eventually broke and couldn’t be used. The original light rested very close to the glass lids, which actually caused problems with algae growth and scale forming on the undersides. When we had to get rid of the glass lids, the light was no longer protected from what little splashing there was from the filter output, so we got one that with risers that set it higher off the frame. It also has a built in timer.
Since a piece of the filter system broke during the move and we have not been able to find a replacement part, the tank has been used to store baskets, hidden by a cover that the cats can sit on. If we can find a way to cover the top of the tank to keep the cats out, while still allowing full light and air flow, that tank would make an excellent greenhouse for a whole several seed trays or lots of pots! We plan to use at least 3″ pots to start squash, this time, and we have a lot of summer and winter squash we want to start this year! :-)
So that is going to be a project for the next while. I’m pretty sure I have enough hardware cloth left cover the top of the big tank. I just have to figure out how to make a frame that can handle the weight of cats that are sure to jump on it, while making sure the stands that hold the light will still sit on the tank edges, where they are supposed to.
That would leave us with one more aquarium light from the big tank. If we can find a way to set that up over trays and keep the cats off at the same time, we could have even more seed trays well lit.
This might actually work.
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
Year End Review: top 10 posts!
Today we come to the close of what has got to be the most bizarre year we’ve had in my 5 decades! I think many of us will be very glad to see the hind end of 2020, even though there’s no sign that 2021 is going to be much different. :-/
[edited for formatting problems. WTH, WordPress??]
Thankfully, one of the side benefits of 1) living in the boonies and 2) living on my husband’s disability income, is that not a whole lot of the crazy affected our everyday life. We were already living on a tight budget, and disability payments are not affected. We were already doing things like stocking up in bulk purchases once a month, so that changed only because suddenly, everyone else was stocking up, too! My “job” is taking care of this place, and only one of my daughters had to stop working outside the home because of the crazy. The other was already working from home, so as long as we’ve got internet, she’s good to go. We got to focus on taking care of the property and each other, moving forward as much as possible on our long term goals, and basically be hermits. Which is kinda how we like it! The only real negative thing affecting us is my husband not getting the medical care he needs, but honestly, I don’t know how much of that can be blamed on the virus response. We’ve been here for 3 years now, and he still hasn’t been able to get the same level of care he had access to when we lived in the city. :-(
For me, one of the things I’ve tried to do is keep up with daily posts here on the blog, even if it’s just posting a photo. I’ve learned long ago that if I don’t get at least some writing in every day, it’s not very good for my mental health, but I also hope that the things talked about here will be enjoyed by, and useful to, others.
Though I am making no efforts at all to promote the blog, somehow, people are still finding it and following along. I don’t know how you all are finding us, but I really appreciate you stopping by and giving it a read, liking and commenting. Thank you so much!
In celebration of the end of the year, here are the top 10 most popular blog posts written in 2020. I skipped over any that were written in previous years, just because I want to focus on 2020. All links should open in new tabs, so you won’t lose your place here. :-)
So here they are, starting with number 10.
Comparisons. As this was our first year gardening, it comes as no surprise that we are starting with a gardening post! This one is from early August.
This year, I did something new, with a series of “Recommended” posts. These ended up getting their own permanent page, with a tab at the top menu. Number 9 is one of these posts. Recommended: Justin Rhodes. There is a massive number of videos on their YouTube channel! If you have any interest in self-sufficient living, do check them out!
This year, I finally started to do some more creative things with all the trees we’ve been cutting down, other than sticking them in huge piles for future chipping, or burning them.
The Wonkiest comes in at Number 8, showing off my first ever carving of a fork… and it truly is the wonkiest!! :-D
This year, we continued our attempts to brew booze, including our first attempt at making hard crab apple cider. Making hard crab apple cider: racking day – what happened? (updated: I found out!) comes in at number 7.
Every now and then, a post becomes popular, and I have no idea why! Like this one, at number 6: Let’s give this a try. It’s just a mix of all sorts of things, but apparently, people found it interesting!
No surprise to see another gardening post on the list! Number 5 is an analysis, First year gardens: what worked, what didn’t
Another Recommended post on the list. Number 4 is Recommended: Kris Harbour Natural Building. This YouTube channel is filled with years of videos, following along as Kris Harbour builds off grid in Wales. Well worth checking out!
Our first post about making hard crab apple cider is on the list, too! Here it is at number 3. Making hard crab apple cider; will it work?
Our crab apples were very popular this year! This time, at number 2, it’s Making Crab apple cider vinegar: airlock or cheese cloth?
And now we reach our number 1, most popular post of 2020.
This one blew away all the other posts, with almost triple (!!) the hits that number 2 got! In fact, it still gets hits almost every day. It’s another from the Recommended series of posts. Recommended: XiaoXi’s Culinary Idyll It’s another YouTube channel, and there are some really awesome videos to check out. Yet, I have no idea what makes this post stand out more than any other, that it should get so many more hits!
If you have discovered this blog through this post, I’d love to hear what brought you here! Please feel free to let me know in the comments. :-)
Well, there you have it! The top 10 must popular blog posts written in 2020.
I look forward to joining you again in the New Year! May 2021 be a year filled with many blessings, growth, healing and above all, normalcy!
God knows, we could all use some plain, boring old “normal” right now!
:-D
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 