just talkin’

July garden tour video up, and another sad find

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Well, I finally got my mid July garden tour video done and uploaded. I actually finished it yesterday, but waited to go over it one last time today before deciding it was done. It’s just a plain narration video with very little editing. I hope the video quality is okay.

I’m happy to say that, since this was taken, we do have a couple of white scallop squash growing, though not in the pot and, so far, they are still surviving!

In other things…

We had another loss this morning, but it was a new one. When I went into the sun room to start feeding the cats, I saw something through the window in the old kitchen garden. A little ball of black and white fur. *sigh* Several adults paused to sniff at it, and one or two seemed to try and move it.

Once the kibble was dispersed, I went to look, and it was a very young kitten. Maybe a few weeks old, so not one we’ve seen before. I am thinking it didn’t survive the mother trying to move it. No visible evidence of why it died, though.

I was able to bury it under a rose bush.

It looked like we got a light rainfall some time in the night. Just enough to make things damp, but that’s about it. (I wonder if the rain was a contributing factor re: the kitten…) So I went ahead and watered the garden before the heat of the day hit. As I write this, it is almost 3:30pm, and we’re at 27C/81F. The humidex has us at 31C/88F, and we’re still supposed to get warmer. Even while I was out early with the watering, we broke 20C/86F, having never really cooled down during the night. Yesterday, it was so hot upstairs, my older daughter gave up trying to sleep and went into the living room to be in the AC and ended up passing out on the couch. Today, her sister is crashing on the couch. It isn’t much better on the second floor during the night, when they are up and about, for all their fans and ice packs. Granted, the ice packs are more for their computers than for themselves! For all that the AC helps on the ground floor, it really doesn’t do much for their “apartment” upstairs. Especially with the high humidity.

Well, we do the best we can. Among the things the girls have been doing is the bulk of the dishes and the cooking at night, so it doesn’t have to be done during the hottest part of the day, which I greatly appreciate!

They were still doing some cooking when I finished the watering this morning, then grabbed a bowl to pick some raspberries and a bunch of the small strawberries. We don’t have a lot of raspberries, relatively speaking – most of the bushes are first year canes – but they ripen so quickly, they can be picked twice a day. I am thinking it would be good to prepare a place to transplant some of them, in the fall. Right now they are basically a big wild mass of plants covering the old compost pile. We were never able to use that compost, after I moved the ring out. When I started digging into it, I found it was filled with tree branches and someone had been using it for garbage. I got the garbage out and just left it to continue to decompose, and the raspberries are taking full advantage of that! We should be able to transplant out a very decent sized raspberry patch, when the time comes. It will be much easier to harvest them in rows than from one giant mass! There are others that are easier to reach, but not being in the old compost pile and getting too much shade from the chokecherry tree, they are much smaller. I’m really not sure why my mother decided to transplant the raspberries from a sunny location into a shady one. This was a flower bed. After we move the raspberries out, I want to convert it back into a flower bed and select shade loving flowers for it. There’s a black currant bush right under the chokecherry tree I want to move out. It bloomed a lot this spring, but I see almost zero berries forming. Currants need at lot more sunshine, but the two large bushes that were here when we moved in were both planted right under trees! Actually, one of them may have been seeded by birds.

While at the farmer’s market yesterday, talking to my cousin, I saw he had red currants for sale and talked to him about it. He told me currants can be propagated by just cutting a branch off and sticking it in the ground. Like a willow, they will take root, just like that! Which is good to know. They need regular pruning, too, which we’ve never done, and I know my mother never did. My sister gave her the currant that’s under the chokecherry, but my mother told me she never ate the berries. She was unfamiliar with them and afraid they were poisonous – as if my sister would give her a poisonous berry bush! I guess my mother thought it was just decorative. Meanwhile, she potted up and grew a cutting from a bush near her place and gave it to me to transplant. She told me she didn’t know what it was, but people in her building were eating berries from the bush, so she took a piece for the farm. I’ve planted it in the south yard, near the chain link fence, finding a spot not shaded by the elm trees or lilacs, and it’s doing really, really well this year. I don’t think it’ll have berries for another year or two, but the plant sure is looking strong and healthy. I had to ask my mother a lot of questions before I got enough information to conclude it was a black currant, too.

Ugh. I’m procrastinating right now. I’ve got stuff to do, but it’s so hot and sticky, I just don’t want to move.

From the state of my bed, neither do the cats. Cat puddles, all over the place!

I will need to make a trip into town, but I want to connect with the Cat Lady, so I’m waiting to hear back from her before I do. It might be a while. I believe she and her family have gone sailing today!

It must be pretty crowded at the beach right now! We should try and remember it exists, and make a trip out during the week, when it’s quieter, and take a dip in the water. Gotta make sure to have water socks, though. Zebra mussels can be very painful to step on.

But I digress.

Come on, Re-Farmer. Get your butt out of the chair and do something productive…

😄😄😉

The Re-Farmer

A day of rest… and a quick storm

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It’s a good thing I’m working to get back into keeping Sunday as my day of rest. Last night, for some reason, I just didn’t sleep. I finally started to doze after 4am or so. After a couple of hours of that, I fed the outside cats, then went back to bed, skipping the rest of my morning rounds.

But I did find these, yesterday.

The Albion Everbearing strawberries are starting to ripen, little by little. For a patch with only 8 plants, there are quite a lot of berries on each of them! The deer seem to be leaving this patch alone, too. The ones with the asparagus keep getting their leave eaten, even though I have stakes around them. I have some mesh netting around part of the patch, but need to set up more flexible netting around the rest.

But not today.

This afternoon, I made a quick run into town to get distilled water for my husband’s CPAP. Just one gallon, though. They cost almost twice as much locally as they do in the city, so I’ll get more the next time we need to hit a Walmart or something. Of course, while in town, I picked up a few other things as well.

Just a little while ago, I headed out to do my evening rounds, checking all the garden beds. I’m quite impressed with how much some of the winter squash is getting. Our first Madga squash seedling appeared in one of the pots, but the stem was already broken by a cat lying on it, in spite of the stakes I have around the pot to keep them out. In the main garden area, though, I spotted our first G-star patty pan squash. So we should have at least some summer squash this year – as long as the slugs don’t get to them! We’re down to 1 Zucca melon because they got into the kiddie pool planter.

While I was outside, it suddenly started to thunder and a storm blew in before I finished my rounds. We’re supposed to continue getting these blowing over us for the next few hours. It’s so hot and humid out there, the wind and rain is welcome. It’s not a lot of rain, either; the moats around the garage and the storage house are not coming back. The power flickers, I could do without. I settled down at my computer to start this, and discovered my machine was shut down! I’m not complaining, though. Other places are being hit much harder than we are.

A reminder of why it’s a good idea to “prep”, and have at least three days of shelf stable food, drinking water and other necessities on hand.

My daughter just popped by to chat, so this post was put on hold for a while. As we were talking, another quick storm rolled through. The upstairs has been really hot and muggy, so my daughter did not get much sleep. We’ve been able to keep the downstairs cooler. The portable AC in the living room has been running almost constantly, and we have a fan blowing the cooler air to the dining room. Which means that, in a complete switch, the new part of the house is cooler than the old (log) part of the house, where the bedrooms are. With the septic issues we were having, we moved out the makeshift hardware cloth door, which is kept in place with hook and eye closures, so we could go up and down the stairs more easily. It meant having to close the door to keep the cats out of the basement, though. Now that the source of the septic issues was tracked down and the pump is working as it should, we don’t need access quite as often. So today, I moved one of the blower fans to the bottom of the stairs, facing up, then set the hardware cloth door back. We now have cool basement air being blown up the stairs and, my goodness, what a difference it has made! The only downside is, the distinct smell of wet basement. 😄

I just got some messages from the Cat Lady. The system that hit us is now hitting them. The Wolfman has been freaking out with every peel of thunder, the poor thing! They’re getting the power fluctuations, too. After this, though, things are clearing up, so we should be good for the next while. In fact, if the long range forecast is anything to go by, we won’t get rain again for about 2 weeks.

We might actually dry up enough that we can bring the truck into the yard and pull that tree off the outhouse!

Wouldn’t that be nice?

The Re-Farmer

I’m feeling totally wasted!

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It has been a looooong day!

Of mowing.

My hands are shot, so I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to write, and I’ll probably have typos all over the place. This would normally be a post loaded with photos, but I don’t feel like embedding Instagram photos.

So… this was my day.

Doing my morning rounds I, as always, checked all the garden beds after feeding the cats…

… and the kittens. Much kittens. Adam and her kittens have been in and out of the sun room all day, and I’ve seeing the four behind the garage playing around all day, too. Those ones, it turns out, are Slick’s! (aka: Octomom). I thought they were Brussel’s, but nope. I saw Slick mothering them.

I’m glad she had only 4 kittens this time, and not 8!

Also, it turns out the dark grey kitten with the white eyeliner is NOT the sunroom kitten. We have two of them!

I was quite happy to see the first scapes appearing in our garlic. We are so looking forwards to eating scapes again!

All the strawberries – the older ones with the asparagus, the ones in the wattle weaves we started from seed last year, and the everbearing ones we got as bare roots this spring – are developing berries. Now, if we can just keep the birds and deer from eating them first, we might have a decent amount to enjoy this year!

Quite a few of the first bed of winter squash we transplanted are blooming now. All male flowers for now. I even saw a few tiny flowers on some melons!

Quite a few of onions that overwintered and got transplanted into the first trellis bed are developing seed tops. I look forward to being able to collect our own onions seeds for next year!

The Crespo squash is also blooming quite a bit. There’s some sort of small weed that’s showing up in almost all our beds, but there’s a rather surprising amount around the Crespo squash . Since I was able to do some mowing yesterday, I gathered up grass clippings to mulch around the Crespo squash, leaving space where the beans were plants. There’s still just 3 or 4 beans growing on one side, and I plan to reseed them, though it’s getting pretty late for pole beans right now. The grass clipping mulch should help take care of those weeds and, with more rain on its way, get the squash vines off the wet soil.

Then, since I was gathering grass clippings nearby, anyhow, I mulched around the strawberry and asparagus bed. That one is almost impossible to weed properly. I made it to fit the spacing the asparagus needed, but that left it too wide for me to reach without stepping right inside the bed.

I did some weeding in the spinach, snap pea and carrot bed. I ended up pulling some of the larger spinach. Even the tiniest ones are bolting, but a few had leaves large enough to actually use. I’ve been using them in sandwiches all day today.

Soon after I was done my rounds, I went to town with the 20L jerry can to get premium gas for the mowers. At the last minute, I decided to hit another store and pick up a bunch of artificial flowers. Then I went to a hardware store and found small engine oil for our push mower, before finally getting the fuel for the lawnmowers. On the way home, I swung by the cemetery and left flowers by the stones for my father, my father’s uncle, my brother, my grandmother, a cousin and her baby. I’ll have to come by another time with some soap and water and give the stones a wash. Birds are no respecter of persons! Later, I want to grab the cross with a solar powered light in it, that I got for my MIL’s grave, and set it out with flowers. I’ve never actually seen her grave. When my daughter and I went to tend to is, and my FIL’s request, since he can no longer make the trip out, we couldn’t find it. We did find a sign saying a number of markers have been removed due to flooding, and would be repaired and returned. I would hope it’s been replaced by now!

Once I got home and fueled up the push mower, it was time to start mowing! We’re expecting rain starting tonight, and all day tomorrow, so I wanted to get as much done as I could. I didn’t even try using the riding mower. I tried using it yesterday, but it just can’t handle the tall, wet grass very well.

For the first while, I worked on the south yards. These were the worst, even though we’d actually been able to mow parts, previously. Unfortunately, these yards are also where all the kittens are! The area behind the garage was just brutal to work on. There is no longer standing water, but the ground still squelches when I walk on it. I scared off the garage kittens quite a few times, but after a while, they did start to get used to me and the noise, and would come out and play more often, ducking to hide only when I got close again.

The south west yard is where the kibble and water bowl houses are. That corner needs to be done with the weed trimmed, but I got as close around the cat shelters as I could.

The cats and kittens were not happy.

I even had time to do the west yard, around the fire pit area, though I didn’t even try to go behind the storage house, where there is an open area between rows of trees. It got so full of water there, so it’s bound to be really wet. However, it gets very little light, so the grass there is so sparse, being overground there isn’t really much of an issue.

At that point, I finally stopped to have lunch. It was past 3pm by then, and today the dump is open from 2-6pm Once I finished lunch, I brought the truck into the yard and my older daughter helped me load the garbage and recycling.

I had quite a nice surprise when I got to the dump. My cousin-in-law was there! He was with the attendant dealing with electronics garbage and didn’t seem me, so I just got rid of our recycling, then drove to the pit. I was just finishing up when he drove to the pit, too, and we finally got to say hello. It’s been a long time since we chatted.

After we said our goodbyes and I was getting ready to leave, I spotted something very strange on the ground beside the truck I hadn’t noticed when I first got out. It was so strange, I had to call my cousin over to see!

I found a foot.

It had just enough flesh on it to hold the bones together, but it was most definitely a foot.

Then I found another one, a few feet away.

Then I found a “hand”.

The “hand” did not have an opposable thumb.

My guess is, they were from a bear. A hunter probably processed one, tossed the unused bits and pieces in the pit, then some animal dragged them out.

Not something I ever expected to see in my life, that’s for sure!

The dump run done, as soon as I got home, it was back to mowing.

I was able to finished off the north and east yards, much to the discomfort of Caramel, who dove under the tarp covered pile of boards she has her two kittens in. I saw no sign of Broccoli’s two, around the old garden shed, though I did see them this morning.

When I got those done, I kept pushing the mowing further into the area between the spruce grove and the garden beds. This is an area we’re going to be dragging trees through, and part of it is where the trellis beds will be built, so I wanted to get as least some of it done, in the more level areas.

I also finally mowed a path through the maple grove. Just enough that we can walk through from near the old kitchen garden, around to where the main garden area is. This took me near where the old tap and its part and pieces are lying on the ground, waiting for when we can set it up again. That will happen after we get the pipes we want to run the hose through, to protect it, before burying it in a trench.

All this means we have FINALLY been able to mow the entire inner yard. Not between the trees, but at least the higher traffic areas!

Yay!!!

My next area to do was in the outer yard. I’d already cleared part of it in front of the chain link fence, between the vehicle gate and the people gate, so we could actually access the people gate again. Today, I cleared a path to access the burn barrel to the electricity meter, then back to the people gate. Once that triangle of paths was made, I worked on clearing the grass inside the triangle.

Not only had this area not been mowed yet this year, but it’s one of those areas that’s really dense and had different, tougher, grasses in it. Which means, for most of this area, even with the mower on its highest setting, I had to go forward with the wheels up first, drop the mower and back up over the same area, then go forward again normally. Basically going over the same sections, three times. I had to do this in the inner yard, too, but not as much as this one section. It was almost as difficult as going over the wet area behind the garage.

I had just a small triangle left when I ran out of gas again. It was actually worth refilling the mower to get that little triangle. 😄

And that was it. I was done. The temperatures are really nice right now, there’s still light out, and I probably could have kept going, but I was DONE. I’m going to need someone to put the bath chair in the tub for me later on, so I can shower.

I was working on that last bit when my daughters came out. The ground is finally solid enough that they can set up the ladder against the house, and it won’t sink into the ground. They were finally able to clear the eavestroughs. My older daughter just came in and updated me. Since her sister was up on the roof, anyhow, she cleared away some of the elm branches from the tree in front of the kitchen window that were overhanging the roof, while my older daughter hauled the branches away to the burn pile. That would have been quite a big job, and rather precarious in places.

I’m going to be so much more comfortable when we can get rid of that tree!

I’ve also been informed, we need to get more bug spray. The mosquitoes are insane, and we’re running out. At least it isn’t horseflies anymore. When I was moving the back hose over so I could mow, I heard buzzing like there was another wasp next back there. There wasn’t. It was hundreds of horseflies, all in that corner of the house!

I’m heading into the city tomorrow for our second shop, so I’ll make sure to add that to the list!

I definitely will need to pain killer up tonight. I’m going to be paying for all that mowing. It was worth it, though. Everything looks so much better and, now that it’s done, it’ll be so much easier to keep up. We’ll even be able to use the riding mower on it!

Plus, we now have lots of grass clippings to use as mulch in the garden!

The Re-Farmer

Beating the heat… a bit

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Today was forecast to be a hot one, before things cool down a little bit for the next while. We surpassed our predicted high and reached 30C/86F.

Tomorrow’s predicted high is supposed to be either 18C/64F or 20C/68F, depending on which app I look at. Also depending on which app I look at, we are now supposed to get rain starting tomorrow evening until about midnight – or it’s supposed to rain both day and night!

*sigh*

This afternoon, my older daughter and I finally messed around with the portable AC unit. It would start, then immediately shut itself down again. So we wrestled it out of the living room (that 70’s shag carpet is not helpful for the wheels! 😄), fighting cats away from the divider door into the living room, then to the steps between the new and old parts of the house. I had a bucket ready and we set it to drain.

It didn’t sound like there was any water in it, though I could hear some minor splashing as we were moving it, and nothing but a few drops of water came out.

So… the water reservoir being full was not the issue.

We had this happen to use last year, and we never found out why it kept stopping then, either. However, after we went through the process of draining it, it started working again. Would that happen now?

Yes.

Once we got the AC back in the living room and set up, it turned on and stayed on.

It did stop cooling faster than expected, but the louvers were still open. When I checked it, I lowered the temperature setting and it turned on again. It seems the default setting for the AC to stop cooling is 23C/73F, which is ridiculously warm for indoors. I dropped it to 16C. It’s been running pretty much ever since.

We already have an oscillating fan set up on the piano, aimed to blow cool air from the living room into the dining room, so that helps a lot.

My daughter and I then set up the hardware cloth “door” to the old basement – though we went down and swept water into the floor drain or sump pump reservoir, first. With the most recent rain, there’s quite a lot of water down there again, even with two blower fans, and and oscillating fan in the old basement, a box fan set up in the old basement window, and another oscillating fan running in the new basement. That floor is starting to show more damp seeping through the concrete. Not a good sign for the weeping tile! I might wet up the old blower fan in there, but with so many fans already running, I really don’t want to set up another one. The amount of electricity we’re using right now must be insane. I’ve got a box fan in my office/bedroom, my husband has two box fans in his bedroom, and my daughters have several fans upstairs, which is the worst area for overheating. With the humidity, it’s just brutal on my daughter’s computer. She actually sets up ice packs wrapped in towels near her computer while she’s working.

With how hot things are, the last thing we wanted to do was heat up the house with cooking, and my daughter offered to order in. We ended up going to a pizza place in town and getting a jumbo (18″) size pizza for each of us, to feed us for the next couple of days!

The pizza place didn’t open until 4, so I had some time to wait and checked to see if we had any parcels in. I wasn’t actually expecting any. There were two.

Once of them was the drain auger my husband ordered! It wasn’t supposed to come in for another four days!

What I was really looking for was our 4 pound bucket of lysine. This time, in the orders list, it said “your order may be lost”. I checked the tracking and that was unchanged – it said it was picked up by the delivery company and that’s it.

There was a “contact seller” option, so I started that process.

Which is when I discovered the seller had cancelled the order, and that the refund would be processed in 3-5 business days.

The seller cancelled the order on May 31st.

No explanation was given.

We still need lysine. We’re almost completely out.

I mentioned it to my husband, so he could check his Amazon credit card and see if the refund went through. I guess it did, because he ordered it again. We now have a delivery date of July 2-4.

Interestingly, the cost was lower than the first time we tried to order it.

When 4:00 rolled around, we called in our pizza order, making sure to tell them where we were driving in from. It takes us a bit longer to get there than for them to make the pizzas. With a stop at the post office having to be done along the way, since it was closing at 5, I have gave them a rough idea of how long it would take us to get there.

It ended up taking a bit longer than usual for me to just get out the door! When I got to the store the post office is in, I saw a box next to a counter by the door. The owner saw me and just said, that’s the one! 😄

I even made sure to back the truck up to the door, because I knew it would be larger and heavier. I got the other package and loaded that first, then tried to figure out how to get the auger loaded. The box wasn’t particularly big, but it was pretty beat up looking. The delivery folks clearly had problems with it. I finally just picked it up was as good a grip as I could – which wasn’t very good. I’m so glad I backed the truck up to the door, because having that slip out of my hands while trying to go further would have really sucked! The owner was a sweetheart and already holding the door open for me. It was definitely heavier than I expected. Later on, I looked up the specs and the actual weight. It’s 36.2kg – just ounces under 80 pounds. That’s just the auger. Not the other stuff shipped with it (bits, hoses, etc.) or the packaging.

From there I started for town to pick up our order, only to realize it was almost the time I told them I’d be there, so I pulled over and gave them a call. I didn’t want them to think it was a bogus order.

When I got home, I pulled into the yard so I could back up to the house. I tried to be careful about it and avoid the area I usually turn around in, since it is still basically a pond.

I got stuck.

I could go forward a bit, but when I tried to reverse again, the tires just spun. I had to set the truck to 4 wheel drive to be able back out without completely tearing apart the grass. We’ll have a bit of repair to do once things dry out a bit – if they get a chance to try out a bit! – but not too much.

Getting through our own door, with the arm bar in the door jab, was going to be awkward, so my daughters were already waiting for me to get the door open (and keep cats away) and angle the box through the doorway.

So it’s in – and it’s still in its box! It’ll be easier, once it’s unpacked, since it’s on wheels and had a handle, but I am not looking forward to getting that thing down the old basement stairs. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think we should take it down the new basement stairs, then rolls it through to the old basement, where it will be used the most.

We’ll figure it out.

Needless to say, I didn’t get any more work done in the garden, with this heat. Tomorrow should be better for that sort of work, and I should be able to get it done before the rain reaches us.

So much for the 5 day break in the rain that was forecast yesterday. Even the rain expected on Friday has changed to being all day, instead of just the evening.

So we’ve been catching up on inside stuff, like doing laundry.

Extra laundry, thanks to cat messes. 🙄

I’ve also been keeping an eye on the critter cam, which has been a delight.

Junk Pile showed up regularly and would nurse her babies on the floor mat in the middle of the room. At one point, she got up and left behind a fan of kittens that fell asleep as they nursed! I’m really glad to see her going in there to take care of her kittens, rather than her kittens having to leave the sun room.

I’m not so glad to see the skunks show up, though only because they eat the cat’s food.

I’m super not glad to see the racoon show up.

It does seem to be leaving the bigger kittens alone, probably because they can run away and hide under the counter shelf. Eating kibble is less effort, but that doesn’t mean it won’t try something, now that it’s done it once.

The image I was able to get of the kittens was a screen cap of the critter cam on my phone, cropped down to just the kittens. The image quality really sucks. We’re starting to look at possibly betting an indoor monitor – the kind sold as baby or pet monitors. They can pan and zoom, which is something this camera can’t do. The biggest selling point for me is that we wouldn’t have to buy an Amazon subscription to be able to have the live feed running continuously. We’d also have the option of using a micro SD to record things. So we’re looking at different versions, some of which come with their own display device, so we wouldn’t be having to use our phones. Some come with multiple cameras, which has me thinking… it would save me some anxiety to have one set up in the basement to monitor the septic pump!

We shall see. Not a thing we can get soon, but they can be surprisingly inexpensive.

Aww… I’m watching the critter cam right now. Syndol, who still has a limp, is eating in the sun room, and there’s a kitten rolling around on the floor beside him.

Anyhow. Time to get to bed! I want to get working in the garden early tomorrow morning, and take advantage of the cool!

The Re-Farmer

Still there!

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Broccoli was eating at the kibble house, so I took a quick check.

She has not moved her babies! 

The old garden shed is a good place for them, other than the fact that we actually still use it. 

In other things, the rain started yesterday, off and on, and will continue throught today.  No downpours or anything like that.  Just intermittent light rain.  Enough to make the ground too wet to work in the garden beds or process the felled spruced.

If my husband is up to it, there will be a trip into town for some blood work. 

I don’t think he’s up to it.

One of my older daughters, however, has offered to treat us to some Chinese food today, so a trip to town is still a possibility!

That would be a nice treat on a wet and chilly day. 🩷

The Re-Farmer

We have water, and future plans

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My younger daughter and I started talking about what we wanted to do over the next while, both shorter and longer term. We got so into it, we ended up walking around the outer yard to talk about it more!

One of the stops we made was in the pump shack, where we tested out the old hand pump.

Much to my surprise, we soon had water flowing! I took video while my daughter started pumping. This confirms to me that all we need are new leathers for it to work properly. It shouldn’t take that long for water to start flowing again, once it had already started. It should stay primed and water should start flowing almost immediately.

Yes, the whole pump moves as the handle is pumped. It spins in place. I asked my brother about this, and he tells me this is because it is designed to basically float, allowing for the rise and fall of the water table. A neighbour of ours had the same system, but when they dug a new well and got indoor running water, they closed off the old well – I can’t remember how exactly that was done, but in the spring, when all the snow was melting and the water table rose, their pump ended up going through the roof of their pump shack!

After we ran water for a while, I even gave it a taste, and it tastes better than our household tap water. We really need to get our house well water tested, but we would need to do the full testing to find out what’s going on with it, which is out of our budget. Plus, once the samples are collected (full testing needs 2 samples in different sizes), we’d have to get it to a lab in the city within 24 hours. The sterile containers to collect the samples are, I believe, available in one of the larger towns in our municipality, but I’d have to confirm that. A fair amount of logistics is required for us to get the water tested, simply because of where we live. The full test, however, would include coliform, E. coli, HPC, Nitrogen-Nitrates and Nitrogen-Nitrites, total dissolved solids, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, manganese, zinc, iron, Chloride sulfate, pH, hardness, conductivity, arsenic, boron, barium, fluoride, uranium, lead and copper – and the cost for all that has almost doubled since I first looked into it, 5 or so years ago. The basic test for just coliform and E. coli is just $30, but there are 7 different levels of testing available, including the total testing for everything.

Anyhow…

The important thing, though, is knowing we do have back up water, if something ever happens to our household water.

My daughter and I went through most of the old shacks and outbuildings, and into the barn, looking at the various materials strewn about. There are SO many old doors and windows, it’s mind boggling.

What started this all was my daughter asking what we needed before we could get some sheep or goats, and where we would set them up. We also talked about the trees that need harvesting, and the old shed with the collapsed roof that still needs to be dismantled. My daughter, it turns out, really dislikes working in the garden, doesn’t feel she’s good at it, and would much rather do other stuff. So for the next while, she’ll focus on harvesting and processing the dead trees and dismantling the old shed. The lumber from there can be used to build an animal shelter. The lumber used to frame it is still good, and the old cladding, which is very weathered and rotting, covers wider boards, protecting them enough that those should be useable, too.

I had originally thought we’d build our outdoor kitchen where the shed with the collapsed roof is, or right in front of it, but we now know that area is lower, collects water and the ground gets really soft. The other area I considered was next to the pump shack, facing the “driveway”. The old fuel tanks are still there, and we have no reason to move them. The outdoor kitchen is going to be 20’x20′, and those tanks would be in the way. There is, however, enough space behind the pump shack, between it and the old chicken coop. We just have to get it cleaned up of old tires and appliances still sitting there.

We also looked at the old chicken coop. This is a log building that still has its roof, though that is damaged. The original roof is wood shingled, and it had been covered with … tin? … corrugated sheets. I don’t think corrugated is the right word, but I don’t know what it’s actually called. Unfortunately, as with so many other areas, trees were allowed to grow right against the building. One had branches that scraped across the roof in the wind, which eventually tore off several of these metal sheets, destroying them and damaging the roof beneath, which now has holes in it, and the weather gets into the “attic” portion. We have other metal roof sheets like this that we can salvage from another collapsed shed by the barn, but have no way to safely get up there. We would need scaffolding, but the scaffolding my brother remembers being here is gone.

Still, we want to salvage this building. The log walls are still pretty solid. This building had been used as a summer kitchen, before my parents bought the property converted it to a chicken coop. It had electricity wired to it for lights, and heat lamps for the chicks. When my parents stopped having chickens, no one cleaned out the coop, so it’s quite a mess in there, and there are some things that were tossed in for storage, too.

We could potentially clean it up and fix it up. The whole building is slowly sinking. Instead of being on a concrete or rock foundation, it’s on giant wooden beams, and those are both sinking and rotting away, but they are also why the building is sinking evenly, and not twisting. The roof, however, is also dropping, to the point that the door had to be taken off entirely for us to be able to get in.

So that’s a project my daughter will work on as well; clearing up around the old chicken coop, first, then working inwards. Mostly, though, we have to cut back the trees some more – I’d already done some of that a few years back, but these are maples, so they’re growing back.

We’ll have to do the same around the pump shack, but one old stump has been sending out useable suckers. It’s basically been accidentally coppiced. We can maintain that. More material for wattle weaving! 😁 We also talked about what we can do to fix up the old pump shack. The exterior cladding it starting to rot and pieces are falling off – and on this building, there is no inner layer of boards the cladding is covering. It’s directly attached to the open wall joists, as you can see in the Instagram video. The concrete floor is cracking, but the bones of the structure are still sound, so we’ve got ideas on how to fix and maintain it.

We also went around the warehouse, which used to be my late brother’s workshop. We could seriously use that building for a workshop ourselves, but it’s completely full of my parent’s stuff. There’s basically two short paths among the stuff, and we can’t get to the back of it at all. My mother is still obsessed with her stuff in there, and is so worried someone will steal it. At the very least, though, we need to get the old mattresses to the dump, as well as the bags and bags of old clothing. She had suggested we have a garage sale, which I will not do, but she did approve of my suggestion that we could try selling things online, instead. That would be one way to help pay for the things that need to be done around here! That, however, would require going through all those boxes and seeing what is actually worth selling, and what is just junk.

But I digress!

It was around the warehouse that we decided on a place we could build animal shelters. My daughter is interested in sheep, for their wool (she wants to process and spin yarn). I would like a couple of milk goats, partly for their use in permaculture, partly because my family are lactose intolerant, and they can drink goats milk without getting sick.

We did talk about getting chickens, but both my daughters are hesitant about that. The problem is, they have friends with pet chickens, and their chickens are always getting sick. They think if we get chickens, they’ll get sick all the time, too, and we’re very unlikely to take a chicken to a vet. In a way, I understand this, but I think chickens raised outdoors would be much hardier and healthier than chickens raised as pets. Honestly, I’d be more concerned about sheep, goats or pigs needing vet care.

Yeah, I’d like a couple of pigs, too. Partly, all these animals animals are an important part of regenerative practices, and would go a long way in helping us to reclaim and improve our soil, with each contributing in different ways, and partly, they are a food source. Get a couple of piglets in the spring, send them out for processing in the fall, and have a freezer full of meat! I suppose we could get a steer and do the same thing, but I don’t think we’re up to an animal that big. Mostly, though, we need grazing animals for the outer yard. There’s no way we can mow all of it; it’s too rough in places. The overgrown areas are a fire hazard. A controlled burn would fix that, but with so many outbuildings, that would be very risky. Grazing animals would take care of that problem for us.

So my daughter is going to focus more on harvesting and processing the dead spruces for me to build raised beds, dismantle the shed and salvage materials to build animals shelters, as well as the outdoor kitchen and her smithy that she wants to build. I’ll focus more and gardening and building garden structures, and maintaining the yards. There will be crossover, of course, as we help each other out on the big stuff, but it’s clarified with each other what our areas of focus will be.

All in all, this made for a grand Mother’s Day! Well… except for all the wood ticks. We were picking those off our clothes constantly, and had to shower when we got back inside!

However, the three racks of ribs that have been slow roasting in the oven are now down, so it’s time to start focusing on our Mother’s Day dinner!

Mmmmmm….

The Re-Farmer

Kitten update, and various things

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Well, it seems we blew away the high that was forecast for today. My app says we are at 31C/88F out there, and it sure feels like it!

We kept an eye on the sunroom to see if Broccoli would find her kittens. They slept peacefully the entire time, so she had no reason to go in there, though she did show up briefly at the kibble house.

In this heat, the cats don’t have much appetite! They sure appreciated having the water bowls refilled with nice, cold well water!

After a few hours, though, I decided to give them a light feeding, making sure to make lots of noise when the kibble hit the metal food trays in the kibble house. The kibble house provides some shade, so those trays were empty, while there was still food out in other, more exposed, spots.

Broccoli did show up, but wouldn’t go to the kibble with us there. She ended up running behind the storage house, instead, and just sitting under a tree. Eventually, she came around the front again. We even brought the carrier with the kittens out, and made sure she could see them.

She behaved indifferent to them.

We left the top open on the carrier and put it in the shade by the kibble and water bowl shelters, then watched from the sunroom. She did eventually go for the tray under the water bowl house and eat for a while. While other cats were curious about the cat carrier and peaked inside, she did not, and eventually left for the back of the house, where the old garden shed is.

We tried moving the carrier into a shady spot there but, again, she ignored it. She then disappeared behind the garden shed, where I know the hole in the wall is, hidden by junk that needs to be hauled away.

In the end, we finally decided to put the kittens back, though we did lay out the self warming mat, first, so they couldn’t roll in between the grow bags and tarp that she had made a nest onto. I’ve got a timer on, and we’ll check them later. If they are still there, but look like they have not been tended to, we’ll probably bring them inside, get some kitten formula and start bottle feeding them. Unfortunately, at this point “good news” would be to find them gone. That would mean she has taken them to a new nest somewhere, and it caring for them. If she’s not there and they’re just peacefully sleeping, that hopefully means she nursed them and left them after they fell asleep.

*sigh*

It was worth a try, I guess. Broccoli is one of the cats that does sometimes let us pet her, while she is eating. We hoped that would make her easier to lure with her babies to where we can fully socialize her and care for her and her babies.

We shall see how it turns out.

In other things, we had ourselves a strange mystery that was solved late last night. A mystery that had us worried about plumbing issues again!

My daughter went into the kitchen, and discovered a large puddle of water on the floor between the sink and the fridge. Our floors are not level, so that is where any spilled liquid pools. We had no idea where it came from, and thought maybe a pot that was soaking in the sink, but was not on the side counter, had been knocked over. My husband was the last person in the kitchen. He had emptied the pot and set it aside so he had room to use the tap, but there had been no water on the floor. This was maybe 20 minutes before my daughter found the puddle.

We cleaned it up with a towel and my daughter checked under the sink, but it was all dry.

Not long after, I went into the kitchen, and there was another puddle. So I cleaned that up, too.

While going to the washing machine with the wet towel, however, I walked past our big bottle of drinking water. It has one of those syphon pumps to get at the water. When we took the old dishwasher out of the kitchen, we set it in front of the counter that is a divider between the kitchen and the dining room, intending to add it to the junk pile. We put shelves under the counter on the dining room side, and the dishwasher covered the one that had storage cubes filled with winter hats, scarves, gloves, etc. The cats were determined to tear the cubes apart and dig into them, and the old dishwasher blocked it almost perfectly. Some more determined cats still managed to claw in behind it, but for the most part, it does the job. This dishwasher it the kind that you attach to a kitchen tap when in use, then unhook and store to the side when not in use, so it has a fake butcher block top. That turned out to be perfect to hold our jug of drinking water.

As I walked past it, I found a big splash of water on the floor, under the spout. It was as if someone – or something – had pushed down on the pump, with nothing under the spout. We try to make it inaccessible, but it’s possible a cat had decided to get onto the counter and then jumped on it? Another mystery!

So I cleaned that mess up, too.

Some time later, I went into the kitchen again, and sure enough, another puddle was forming. This time, however, I could see that the water was leaking out from under the counter. This counter, like the ones on either side of the oven, can be moved – at least it could be moved, if it didn’t have a sink and water pipes running through the bottom, and a drain pipe that goes to one side, before going down to the basement.

I checked the pipes in the basement.

Everything there was dry. If there were a leak in the pipes between the bottom of the cupboards and the floor, there would be water dripping through at the pipes. There was nothing.

So where was the water coming from?

The only way to know for sure would be to look under the floor of the cupboard. The only way we could think of was to cut a hole through the floor of the cupboard, and we sure didn’t want to do that.

I cleaned up the new mess and this time, left a towel on the floor.

With there being a solar storm and the expectation of incredible Northern Lights, I decided to take a couple of hours nap, then get up around 11 or so to go out and see the lights. By the time I got up, my younger daughter had gone to bed, but her sister was just gearing up for a night of working on commissions. She wanted to go out with me to see the Northern Lights, first.

As we were getting ready to go out is when we discovered a cat had gotten onto the dining table and knocked my bowl of pea seeds over. We found as many as we could and those got tucked away. My daughter checked on the wet area in the kitchen floor. The towel I’d left was quite wet, but it kept another puddle from forming.

I was getting a tripod ready at the dining table when I happened to look towards the entry…

… and spotted another big splash of water on the floor.

I told my daughter that I’d already cleaned a similar mess up earlier, and couldn’t figure out how the water was splashing like that.

She asked if it was possible this was where the water in the kitchen was from.

There was nowhere near enough water on the floor for that.

What if we move the dishwasher?

As I was fussing around the water bottle to see, I checked the mat under it. We have it resting on one of those microfiber absorbent dish drying mats.

It was soaking wet!

We moved the dishwasher and, sure enough, there was water under it.

The water jug had a leak. I’m guessing a split in the seam from the mold that formed it, but we couldn’t actually see a hole. I guess once the mat was saturated, it started dripping onto the floor, creating the splash I was finding. Then, because the floors on this old house are so uneven, the water drained under the counter until it pooled in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Which was honestly the best possible reason for the water we were finding! Not a plumbing issue at all.

There was an empty water jug set aside to dry, so my daughter and I emptied the leaking jug into it and cleaned things up.

We also put another towel behind the dishwasher and pushed it back in place. We can’t not have it there, without finding some way to protect the things in the shelve it’s covering. I’m seriously considering getting storage bins for the stuff, then leaving the shelf empty for the cats to climb in!

Once that was all taken care of, my daughter and I finally went out to see the Northern Lights.

We didn’t even try to bring out the old DSLR, and just used my phone, on “pro”, and played around with the settings. To the naked eye, the Northern Lights basically just looked like whitish light to us. My daughter could see hints of pinks and green. The camera, with different ISOs, shutter speed, etc., could pick up the colours we couldn’t see – all sorts of greens and purples and pinks. It was very dramatic! I’m glad we did it. The last time we had a major light show like this, I slept through it.

I’m glad I was out to see them, but it meant for a very short night, since my younger daughter and I were set to be outside early to get work done. It’s coming up on 6pm as I write this, and I’m trying very hard not to fall asleep at my computer! We’ve cooled down to 29C/84F and could that be thunder I’m hearing out my window? Why yes! Yes it is!

Oh, darn. I just checked the weather radar. There are lots of scattered little storms out there, and they are all missing us.

I’m sure hearing some nice, loud, thunder right now, though!

Meanwhile, as I was working on this, my timer went off and my daughter and I went to check on the kittens. They are still in the garden shed, sprawled all over the blanket we left with them. I spotted Broccoli some distance away, loafed on a pile of logs, watching us. So she does seem to know they are there. I’ve reset my timer, and we will check on them again.

We shall see how it goes.

The Re-Farmer

Good grief, what a day!

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Today, I would normally have done our second stock up trip to the city. I did the Costco trip last week, so this week would have been our non-Costco run through several stores all along one route.

With all the running around into town I had to do, however, I was able to take advantage of some excellent sales at the local grocery store. The only things left to pick up are more cat food and litter pellets, and we don’t actually need to do that immediately. Those can also be done in the smaller, nearer city, instead of dealing with the big city traffic. I was thinking of leaving the trip until later in the month.

Then yesterday’s flood happened.

We need to replace that old, metal blower fan in the basement with something safer and more efficient.

I had looked at one in Costco last week for $80 and almost bought it, but decided it could wait another month.

After talking about it with my husband, he decided to try buying it online. He found the same fan on Amazon, but it was over $100, so he went to the Costco website. They had two versions – white and not white. The not-white is what I saw in the store. They were otherwise identical, but the white one was cheaper. Still more expensive than what I saw in the store – about $85 for the white one, almost $90 for the not-white one. So my husband was going to order two of them. The only option was for delivery, though, not in store pick up. Slower, but saving us the gas to drive in.

He couldn’t order it. They don’t ship to postal boxes, and there was no alternative to the mail to have it shipped.

Okay, then, I would just head into the city and buy them direct.

Then I got a phone call.

From my mother.

Of course, she acted as those what happened the last I saw her, didn’t happen at all.

She started off asking how I was doing, but in a tone I recognize to mean “can you do something for me”. I also recognized her “I’m dying” voice.

Sure enough, when I asked how she was doing, she said she was terrible. She started to say how she couldn’t sleep for the past few days – then launched into an attack on my brother. She had called him first, but there was no answer, so she was saying that he blocked her number, or he was ignoring her calls, or he cancelled his number… It was well into the conversation before she finally mentioned that she got a “the customer is not available” automated message.

I had to cut her off and really press to get her to tell me what she was feeling, and what she wanted me to do about it. I finally got her to describe some of her symptoms. Basically, the same ones she’s been complaining about for a while now, but she says it’s worse. She can’t sleep more than an hour.

Aside from talking in circles about a dozen barely related things, she also brought up about wanting to move into the nursing home. She really wants to move into the nursing home, now! My brother told her about her needing to get a doctor to say that’s what she needed, and she mentioned that, vaguely, but she still didn’t quite understand the whole process. I started to get the impression that she thought that if she saw the doctor today, and the doctor authorized it, she’d move in right away. I told her, if she does get the doctor’s authorization, that just puts her on a waiting list. After that, it’s basically waiting until someone died and frees up a bed – and then they work their way through the waiting list.

I think she understood that, but didn’t agree with it, or something. I couldn’t quite get the gist of her thoughts.

Given the time she was calling me, I asked if she wanted me to take her to the emergency, reminding her that if we did, we’d likely be there all night, or to take her to the clinic as a walk-in, tomorrow. She really didn’t want to make the decision, but it eventually came around to, she would try to sleep in her recliner chair tonight, then call me in the morning to let me know how she as feeling.

So much for my trip to the city to get the new blowers.

At least the fans and the old blower we have now has made a big difference. By the time I checked before heading to bed, most of the floor was dry. Dry enough that I could plug in the box fan and not be standing in a puddle! I aimed that one partly towards the root cellar’s open door. The floor there has some odd low pockets that held puddles, but it was mostly dry all around them. I was able to move one of the pedestal fans and aim it right at the low spot of the floor under the counter shelves. Those are slightly elevated, so at least there’s a bit of air circulation under them.

This morning, expecting to get a call from my mother, I didn’t even do my morning rounds. I just fed the outside cats, and stayed close to the phone.

When she didn’t call by about 9 or 9:30, I called her.

She did actually sound a bit better, but she was still wanting to go to the clinic. She was getting ready. We talked a bit more about how she felt. She didn’t sleep in the recliner; she couldn’t get it to recline more than a tiny bit, and it was too uncomfortable, so she stacked up pillows to sleep more upright. It helped. The more she talked about how she felt, the more it seemed to me that she was having really bad indigestion. With the stuff going on in her building, that could easily be a stress response, too. Since she was clearly doing better, I suggested trying Pepto before bed and giving it another night. She didn’t have any and wasn’t sure what I was talking about, but she wanted to go to the clinic. She was even packing a bag, in case she was admitted to the hospital.

I told her that I could call the clinic ahead of time, so they’d know to expect her, before we left her place. After I got off the phone, though, I went ahead and called the clinic sooner.

It’s a good thing I did.

My mother’s doctor doesn’t work this clinic on Tuesdays, but the clinic, which is in the hospital building, was down to only one doctor today, and she was all booked up. They couldn’t do walk ins. There wasn’t even a doctor in the ER. The clinic and the hospital were down to this one doctor!!! There would be a doctor available tomorrow, though.

My mother wasn’t going to the clinic today.

When I asked about alternatives, the receptionist mentioned a quick care clinic in the nearer city. I wasn’t sure my mother would be up to that, so I called her before looking it up.

She was surprised that there were no doctors at the hospital and just one in the clinic, and I had to explain to her, there just aren’t enough doctors.

In the end, she decided she was willing to wait until tomorrow, though I will phone the clinic again, before I head to her place.

This meant, however, that I could go to the city, after all.

So I offered to swing by, pick up some Pepto, and bring it to her to try. Just in case. At worst, it won’t do anything at all. When she found out I was going to be going to the city anywhere, and wouldn’t be making a special trip, she agreed.

When I got there, even though she knew I was on the way to somewhere else, and said I would stay long enough to explain the directions to her, she still expected me to sit and stay. I told her, I was going to be doing plenty of sitting in the drive to the city! We went over the instructions, and she even took some right away, as she was planning to rest.

She was actually looking and sounding much better. Even between the two earlier phone calls, she sounded better.

Oh, there was one other thing, though… After all the phone calls I made, I got another one – this time from the person with senior’s support that had visited my mother for an evaluation not long ago. She had promised to follow up with me, after she filed her report.

In a nut shell: there are two question-tests she does in these visits. One is for the “big stuff”. This is where they determine if someone might start doing things like forgetting the stove on, wander off, or start forgetting who the people are around them. There was pretty much no change at all in that area, which I was sort of expecting. The other is for the “little stuff” – and for these, there was a substantial decrease. This is the area where we were noticing issues. So we talked about that for a while, and there are medications for cognitive improvement that can be prescribed (the report was sent to my mother’s doctor as well as the doctor they work with), but my mother is already messing with her pills now, because she’s taking soooo many pills (she isn’t), and would likely refuse to take any new medication. I mentioned about her now wanting to move to the nursing home, and we talked about that for awhile. It can definitely be a help for her. Especially when it comes to making sure she takes her medications.

So the cognitive issues of concern I’ve been noticing have been confirmed, and we are already taking what would have been the next steps, anyhow.

Anyhow.

After dropping by my mother’s, I made the trip to Costco to get the blower fans – with turned out to be cheaper than I remember from last week! They were $75 each.

I am so happy with them!

They’ve got 10′ cords (the old blower fan’s cord is barely a foot long), and can be plugged into each other in a series, if desired – or something else can be plugged into them. They have four positions they can be set at, and three power settings for the fan. They automatically shut off if they start to overheat, and have a reset button.

Both of them are now aimed at the stairs, and maximum settings. One mostly at the bottom steps, which are the wettest, while the other is blowing into the corner under the steps; the first area water was pooling at, and still one of the wettest areas.

The old blower fan is now unplugged. I left it otherwise untouched so the motor can cool down, before I try picking it up to set it aside, into retirement!

What a day it’s been!

I’ve got no idea how things will turn out tomorrow, with my mother. I’m really hoping she’s feeling better because, honestly, I don’t think any doctor’s visit or hospital stay can help her. She has too hard of a time explaining her symptoms, skips things, conflates things and, if I have to be honest, I strongly suspect she’s more interested in the attention than anything else! She’s cried wolf too many times in the last few years. It’s not that I think she’s faking her symptoms, but more that she doesn’t understand them and is making assumptions based on what she wants the problem to be, and wants other people to do something about it. No idea what. Just “something”. We’re all supposed to be able to magically know exactly what her problem is and fix it, and she sometimes gets quite angry when we aren’t also mind readers, knowing exactly what she means to say, even when she doesn’t say it. Very frustrating!

Meanwhile, it’s the time of year when we have the most work to do outside, that we need to get done when the weather is good. My brother, for example, didn’t get her call because he and his wife were outside doing yard work. He did eventually get through to her after she spoke to me, but that didn’t make her any happier. These days, he can’t do anything right by her, and it’s really starting to get to him. *sigh*

Ah, well. It is what it is. We do what we have to do, and that’s all there is to it.

I just wish it wasn’t so frustrating at times!

The Re-Farmer

Baking Day

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Today has been a productive day – finally!

While my daughter continued her deep cleaning into the kitchen, I got the truck loaded up for a much delayed trip to the dump. Each day the dump was open, I found myself at my mother’s place with the truck, so it had to wait.

After that lovely rain we had, the gravel roads were a mess and so were the grounds near the pit. I don’t like driving up to the pit. Not only am I always paranoid about backing up too close to the edge, on days like today, the edge is full of garbage people didn’t make the effort to throw further in, which means there’s all sorts of stuff where tires would go. Like the big shard of glass I found as I went around to open the tailgate!

Garbage and recycling properly disposed off, it was too to town and the pharmacy. My husband’s new painkillers at his new dose were already waiting, and I got my own prescription refilled, since I was there.

Then it was a quick trip to the grocery store for a couple of things – plus I was able to take advantage of a couple of good sales – then home. I pulled the truck into the yard and got a daughter to grab the stuff and put them away, while I took a hose to the truck to take off the caked on clay and mud! The main road to our place is really bad in patches, after all that rain. This road is designed for heavier and more traffic than a lot of the other gravel roads, many of which are in even worse condition. I know of at least one person in our municipality’s FB group that is hesitant to take her car through, for fear of getting stuck – and she’s got an infant! Unfortunately, no one in the group could give her any idea of when her road will be worked on. We’ve had a new council since the last election (I forgot it was election day, so we missed the chance to vote), and things have been crazy. Several municipal staff quit, the By Law Officer quit, then just a little while ago, most of the council members also quit. There are no longer enough council members for quorum, so no decisions can be made. The province has had to step in and take over until another election can be arranged, but they haven’t sent anyone over, yet.

As bad as the road we use has gotten, we’ve actually got it pretty good. I don’t even try to take the roads in other directions, knowing they’d be much worse. I’d rather go the long way around – and am thankful I have that option! Having to hose off the truck is a small problem, in comparison.

My daughter, sweetheart that she is, was just finishing cleaning the oven when I was done. Just in time for me to do some baking!

I wanted to do baking, but hadn’t decided what I wanted to bake, so I went through some of my old cookbooks for really basic recipes. I was going through the one we all got given to us in Home Ec class – still one of my favourites – and spotted a recipe for cream puffs, which I haven’t made since I was a teenager, so I decided to go for it.

The cooked part of the cream puff batter, which whips up incredibly quickly, has to cool before the eggs can be added, so while it was cooling, I tried an oatmeal cookie recipe from the same cookbook that I hadn’t baked in years. I couldn’t remember liking them or not, but I’d highlighted there title at some point, so I figured that meant they were good! 😄

The recipe said it would yield 5 dozen cookies. !! I think that was a typo. I got 2 dozen, plus one giant cooking I baked in a small cast iron pan. They spread out really flat. Not the best oatmeal cookies I’ve ever had, but certainly tasty. They were probably meant to be made with quick oats, not the thicksome ones I was using. 😉

Once they were done, I increased the heat for the cream puffs while I beat the eggs into the batter. They bake at 450F for 15 minutes, then at 325F for another 25 minutes.

I had made them smaller before, but the recipe said it yielded 8 large puffs, so today, I made 8 large puffs! Later on, we’ll make some whipped cream to go in them.

Once those were out of the oven, my daughter and I took a late lunch break. Later, I plan to make some basic cupcakes. Last of all, I plan to mix up an overnight no-knead bread dough and set that to rise in the safety of the oven, where the cats can’t get at it. I might make another batch in the bread machine at the same time and leave that to rise overnight, too.

Things outside will probably need another day for the mud to become less of an issue, and I’ll be getting back at working on the garden beds. It’s been a long time since I’ve done baking – my younger daughter is usually the one that does the baking – so I’m taking advantage of the break from outside stuff.

The Re-Farmer

I’m done.

/ Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

Just done.

Things started going down last night, with Little Miss Leaky Butt making a mess on my bed.  I changed my bedding and got the first load of laundry started before going to bed.

This morning, I woke to find another mess at the foot of my bed.  A small one, but wet enough to soak through to the mattress cover.

So I take the sheets off, but leave the cover for later, since I was out of clean bedding.  With the price of king size sheets, I don’t have extra spares.  There was just one small damp spot, anyhow.

Then Peanut Butter Cup jumped onto the bed next to me while I was taking my supplements, and aimed her butt at me like a shotgun.

I shooed her away, but she still managed to leave a drip behind!

Meanwhile, my younger daughter had already gone through the dining room on her way to the kitchen, where she discovered Ginger had peed on the dining table.

Unfortunately, the dining table being a flat surface, it had stuff on it.  Some of which had to be thrown away.

So for the next while, we were starting more laundry and more clean up.  I did the litters, and after I left, my daughter continued doing a deep clean.

I left early so I could pick up our order of lysine for the cats, then continued to town.  I picked up a couple of cheap vinyl table cloths, then got a few things at the grocery store.  Including tweezers to dig out the sliver I got yesterday, but didn’t discover until this morning, and antihistamines.  I don’t normally have allergic reactions to anything, but I am definitely allergic to something outside.  Likely tree pollen.

Budget?  What’s that?

*sigh*

I made sure to grab a food for lunch to eat in the truck, then called my mother to let her know I would be early.  She was just starting her own lunch, so that was going to work out.

When I got there, I found she had already started on her apartment, and even pulled some furniture from the wall.  As we were talking, she mentioned that she might stay at a motel for tomorrow night, because my sister suggested it.

Of course, both my brother and I had also suggested it, but my mother does love trying to play us against each other.

Which is how things started going downhill.

First, she started attacking my brother, making all sorts of accusations about how he is after her money (as if she has any worth fighting for!). Then she started defending our vandal, who really is after the millions he believes she has squirreled away.  Then she started playing us against each other, while saying how she just wanted us to all get along.

Of course, I defended my brother, while also pointing out how some of the things she was complaining about were the consequences of her own actions.  She still doesn’t understand how badly she screwed herself up when she stabbed my brother in the back, months ago.

I’m not going to say more about the things she said, but she started getting increasingly vile.

Then she brought my daughters into it. 

My daughters, who were doing a deep clean at home, so I could be at my mother’s to take care of her place, due to the consequences of her own actions.

At which point, I told her, that’s it. I’m done.

Then I left.

So I never got in further than her dining table, just a few feet from her door.

On the way out, I pulled over to email my siblings about the situation, then let my family know I was on my way home, and why.

When I got home, my poor daughter was totally wiped out.  She’d had to scrub on her hands and knees in places, and she wasn’t feeling well in the first place.

Oh, and the power was out.

It just came back as I was writing this.  It was out for about an hour.

What a mess of a day.

I’m done. 

I keep saying I’m done with my mother, too.  I don’t need to put up with her abuse.  Who am I kidding, though?  I’ll still help her out.  Not so much for her, but for my brother.  After what she did to him, he tried to cut her out, but he is too good of a man.  He will always do the right thing, even when it breaks his heart.

I think that, more than anything else, bothers me the most about my mother.  She can’t hurt me anymore, but she sure hurts the ones I love.

The Re-Farmer