I waited until things got warmer than -30C/-22F before starting my morning rounds. I guess the deer got tired of waiting for me, because I found them exploring!
I managed to get a picture through the windows of the front doors. They seem very interested in the kibble tray under the shrine! :-D
When I did get outside, my weather app said it was -27C/-17F, with a wind chill of -32C/-26F, and we’re still getting extreme cold warnings, but we were sheltered from wherever the wind was coming from, and it felt much warmer. Warm enough that I got the burn barrel going, then did some shoveling to widen paths enough for my husband’s walker.
The outside cats seemed to be enjoying the sunshine while I worked.
Nosencrantz is such a cutie!!! They were running around so much, I didn’t even try to count how many were at the kibble trays. I cleared their path from the kibble house to under the storage house again, too, and they really seemed to appreciate that! :-D The snow is deep enough to form sheltering walls for them.
It’s much more pleasant today than yesterday. My husband’s prescriptions were delivered yesterday. With all the bundling up needed to get outside after the driver called to let us know he was nearby, he actually reaches our gate before I can! My husband was exchanging his sharps containers this time, and I was going to give the driver the full ones, but he didn’t know anything about them. He normally isn’t allowed to take medications back, but he tried phoning the pharmacy to find out if that applied to sharps containers. He popped into his car to make the call, while I waited at the gate. Which, in retrospect, was not a good idea! Once at the gate, I was right in the wind. He didn’t take long, though, because he couldn’t get a signal.
And that’s why we get him to call us before he reaches our locked gate! :-D
We’ll just have to give the old sharps containers back to the pharmacy another time. The driver did try again once he had a signal and called me back. It turns out my husband hadn’t mentioned the returns when he called for his refills, so they weren’t expecting it. Normally, that means we’d be charged for the new containers, but it looks like they skipped that this time. Interesting. We still have to bring them over for proper disposal, but at least he has fancy new containers to use. They completely changed the design for them since we last had to get new ones.
Today, I only had to make a quick run to the post office to pick up some packages and some distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier. Happily, the van handled the cold fairly well, and all the roads are well plowed.
I’m glad to be inside again, though, that’s for sure!
I delayed heading outside for my (short version!) morning rounds. I figured the critters didn’t want to be outside any more than I did!
This was about half an hour before I got outside; -33C/-27F with a wind chill of -37C/-35F!
I’d topped up their food last night, so I knew there would still be some left by morning. However, when I saw the cats out there, anyhow, I figured there was no point in waiting.
I had to use the ice chipper to get the metal water bowls out. They were frozen to the ground and buried in snow. My daughters shovelled yesterday evening, which the cats – and deer – really appreciated, too. :-D
This is what we were at about an hour later. -31C/-24F, with a wind chill at -38C/-36F
Honestly, I can’t complain. This is warmer than what people have been getting out west! Plus, we’ll be warming up again and and staying just a bit lower than average temperatures for this time of year. For all the “extreme cold warning” we’ve got, we’re not breaking any records in our region.
It does mean my morning rounds are kept close to the house, though! As long as the critters are fed and watered, that’s the main thing, and not even our vandal is going to be out in this weather. :-D
I think this is a good time to catch up on my crochet.
I was going to make a quick run into town this afternoon, when things were supposed to warm up a few degrees.
While doing my morning rounds, however, I decided to head out right away, while the snow was still light and fluffy, and wouldn’t be too much trouble to drive in.
I counted 18 kitties this morning. :-)
Any tracks at the feeding station were filled with snow, but there were clear tracks going into the yard and up the sidewalk! I must have just missed them.
The critters definitely prefer to use our paths to walk in. :-D
I made a quick stop at the post office/general store first. The post office itself was closed, so I couldn’t pick up a package, but I did get a bag of deer feed, and a couple of bottles of wine for New Year’s that I hope are good. :-D
The plows weren’t out yet, and visibility was quite poor for the drive to town. I found myself catching up to a cloud of snow on the road, and only then could I make out part of the car that was kicking it up. It was driving at half the speed limit, and I had no urge to pass at all! It was a bit clearer for the drive back, but not by much. Thankfully, when I reached the gravel road, I found that half of it was plowed. I almost caught up to the plow before I had to turn down the road to our driveway. From what I could see, the highways weren’t plowed yet, so it was a surprised to see the gravel road being done, even if it was the main one that’s almost as wide as the highway. The road crews are going to be busy!
I didn’t have much to pick up at the grocery store, but I wanted to do it now, before things got colder. The snow is supposed to pass after today, but the temperatures are supposed to drop. We are now getting extreme cold warnings. As I write this, we are at -21C/-6F, which is a few degrees colder than had been forecast, so it looks like it would have made no difference if I’d waited to make my run into town. The wind chill is -26C/-15F. Overnight lows are supposed to reach -30C/-22F, with a wind chill of -40C/-40F. By tomorrow morning, it’s supposed to be -31C/-24F with a wind chill of -42C/-44F Looking at the long range forecast, though, that’s the coldest we’re expected to get until past New Year’s. Thank God we don’t need to go anywhere! In fact, all my family is able to hunker down close to home for the next while. Even my older brother isn’t going to work right now, as they are out of province, awaiting the birth of their newest grand child. <3 They made the drive out before the snow hit, so while it is quite a bit colder where they are now, they don’t have to commute in it!
Last night, I was able to treat the outside cats buy adding some warm (onion free) broth to their kibble trays. They were very excited about that! I’m going to see if I can have something warm for them tonight, too. They have plenty of places to shelter from the cold, but warm bellies will certainly help!
While today has warmed up, this morning was a bitterly cold -26C/-15F!
The outside cats still had food in the kibble house, but it was warm water that they were really wanting! Yes, heated bowl ensures they have water to drink, but it isn’t as warm as the water I top it up with.
Agnoos popped outside with me, but was more than happy to join Tuxedo Mask in the sun room again when I went back inside!
Since Tuxedo Mask’s other eye as started to get leaky, both of them got drops this morning.
One of the things I made sure to do this morning was to unlock and open the gate for the FedEx driver with our Starlink equipment. With the current conditions, we can be pretty sure our vandal won’t suddenly show up.
As we waited, I got our tree hung up on the dining room door. At this point, it’s only got the star at the top, because it’s the most awkward thing to put on. I have caught several cats under it, stretching as tall as they can to reach the bottom of the tree, which is wrapped like a gift, complete with bow. They can’t reach it and, so far, none have tried to jump at it. We’ll add the lights next, leave it for a day, then the garlands, leave it for a day, and if the cats seem to be behaving and getting used to it being there, finally finish decorating it.
Still no delivery.
In the afternoon, while it was still light out, our prescription refills got delivered.
I decided to make pierogi – something I haven’t done in many years – and my younger daughter has been helping me prepare the filling. I’ve got my own preferred mix, and it’s pretty loaded with stuff. :-D That has filled most of the afternoon and into the evening.
Still no delivery.
Leaving my daughter finished the filling, I started on the dough. It’s at the resting stage now, and I just helped my daughter move the filling to the old kitchen to cool down faster. I’m taking a break to write this, and then I’ll go shred some cheese.
Still no delivery.
In theory, we could still expect them to show up within the next couple of hours, still, but it’s full dark right now, snowing and blowing. I’m keeping an eye on the garage cam live feed but, at this point, I would be very surprised if the delivery actually happens today. So far, my husband has not received any notifications about it. We shall see. I do hate leaving the gate open like that. Especially after dark. :-(
Well, it’s time to get things ready to continue making the pierogi. I started really late for such a big job, but I’ll be heading to my mother’s tomorrow. Since there is no spice cake left to bring over for her to try, I think I’ll bring some pierogi. :-)
Oh, I am extra glad we don’t need to go anywhere, tomorrow!
The -21C is not too big of a deal.
The wind chill at -35C is a whole different story!!
That’s -6F with a wind chill of -31F, for those of you in the US.
On the plus side, tomorrow’s predicted high is now -17C/1F tomorrow, which is a few degrees warmer than previously forecast. Looks like the cold swept in faster than expected.
By Thursday, we are supposed to warm up to -1C/30F.
When I tried to make my last post using my phone, I hoped to get enough of a data signal to publish a text post.
I never did.
After about an hour of trying, our internet started to come back sporadically, and it finally posted.
Our internet continues to go in and out, but I did manage to upload photos and am daring to make a proper blog post!!
While this year’s kittens have seen some snow a little while ago, this is the first time in their lives that snow has actually accumulated on the ground for any length of time. I’m sure it’s been a bit of a shock to them! It was sunny to see one using my foot prints to get around.
The kibble house was nice and dry, though I had to knock snow out of the tray on the side, and the one under the shrine. Then I had to dig out the water bowls, knock out the slush inside, and refresh them with warm water.
Then I shoveled some snow to make paths from the sun room, around the kibble house, to the shrine, to the bird and deer feeding station (we have yet to see signs of deer coming around to the house) and the sidewalk to the small gate. Later, we will need to shovel a path to the power pole so we can read the meter, and the burn barrel. But not yet. The snow is incredibly wet and heavy, and still coming down.
Then I went to check on the gate and switch out the trail cam memory card.
Not going to get too many files off of this one!!
It’s not going to be easy to clear the driveway. The snow is so wet, and there is water under it. We’re doing to have to do something, though, because I need to be able to get out of our driveway very early on Monday, for my court date in the city. And it’s supposed to continue snowing trough Friday and Saturday!
This sheltered area is going to be such a nice place for a little sanctuary, once we clear out the dead trees and set up some seating.
Butterscotch caught up with me as I was using my walking stick to knock snow off of low hanging branches so they wouldn’t break.
I did find some broken branches, too.
There wasn’t too many of them, but the few there were, were rather large!
This one is more “piece of tree” than branch! I could clean up the others, but this one will likely wait until spring.
This is on the north side of the house, reminding me once again of just how glad I am we were able to get those trees cut away from the roof and power lines!!!
The snow is so wet and sticky, it even stuck to the wire mesh on the squash tunnel!
This was a disappointing find. I’d left the gazebo tent out to cover the picnic table and BBQ, set as low as it could go, but it couldn’t handle this wet, wet, heavy snow and just collapsed. The canopy even tore, too.
I used a garden hoe to clear as much of the snow off as I could, but we will likely leave it here. It is still serving as a cover for the BBQ (the cover it came with was torn to shreds by the wind, already), the picnic table, and any critters to take shelter under them.
Before heading in, I took the snow off the roof of the cat’s house, since we will need to lift it to replace the smoke detector in the near future. Then, since I was shoveling around it for access, anyhow, I went ahead and shoveled the cat path to the storage house, too.
Right now, we continue to have wet snow falling. It’s only 0C/32F with a wind chill of -7C/20F. It’s not snowing especially heavily, but it is constant. Looking at the live feed on the security camera, I can’t see the road past our gate. My brother’s field across the road is just a while blur. A lot more branches than usual are in view, hanging down from the weight of the snow. By Sunday, the snow is expected to stop and we will have our coldest day, at -5C/23F, but amazingly, we’re not predicted to reach 1C/34F by Tuesday!
For today, we will be staying indoors, except for topping out the kibble and water for the outside cats later on. While I had my baking day yesterday, my younger daughter wants to do her own baking today, too. A day of quiet domesticity is going to be much enjoyed!
Posting might be sparse for a while. Our internet went down last night, and has not come back, yet. Likely due to Blizzard conditions to the south of us.
We are in pretty good condition here. Maybe 5 or 6 inches of very wet snow. A few branches fallen from the weight. Our gazebo tent collapsed under the weight. But we are fine, and so are the outside cats. :-)
I am getting just enough data signal on my phone, that I can make a text post. Hopefully. If you are reading this, it worked.
It was a lovely morning, as I did my rounds, with nothing at all to suggest we were going to be hit by a storm, later today!
As is now usual, I had a whole crowd of kitties waiting outside the door for breakfast. :-D
I counted 19, but it’s possible I missed one of the ‘icouses. They were milling about so much! I did get to pet a few furry butts, including several of the kittens that normally would have run off already, plus our newcomer.
Creamsicle Baby was battling it out with Agnoos for special attention. :-D
Butterscotch followed me while I was doing my rounds. She really likes that I now go to the corner of the property to check if the new sign has been vandalized yet, and switch out the memory card on the camera. She has taken advantage of the set up and uses the various posts to climb up and jump onto me, making it very hard to switch out the memory card!
While going through the yard, I spotted a few summer yard tools we missed putting things away, and brought a couple of our snow shovels closer to the sun room door. They are normally kept by the main entry, but we are avoiding using that door until we can get the door and frame replace; something we’d hoped to get done before this winter, but the budget for it just didn’t happen. I wasn’t even able to get the estimate done; I was going to call the same company that did the windows here, before we moved in, but I can’t find them! I do hope they haven’t gone out of business, like so many others have done in the past year and a half. :-(
When I was ready to come inside, I found this handsome fella waiting for me.
He even let me pet him and scritch his ears!
I think this one is Chadicous, but I’m not sure.
I love that pink little nose!
The general store the post office is in closes at noon on Wednesdays, so I headed out shortly after they opened. I wanted to get the battery we needed for the cat’s house smoke detector that I forgot to pick up yesterday. While there, I picked up another bag of flour, just in case.
I had a few general things planned for baking today. One of them was muffins, but I hadn’t settled on any recipes. After doing some searching, I found a couple of savory recipes I wanted to try.
The whole day of baking was about timing! The first thing I did was cook a package of bacon in the oven, until dry and crumbly, for one of the muffin recipes. Once that was cool and crumbled, I started a double batch of bread. I didn’t use our dough baby, because I forgot to set it to soak overnight. Instead, I used our basic bread recipe, which gets modified with whatever we have on hand. This time, it included oatmeal and chia seeds, with molasses for the sweetener.
While that was sitting for its first rise, I had time to make a double batch of apple bacon muffins.
Half of them were for the freezer, and half to have on hand. This recipe as a surprising amount of cinnamon in it, which accounts for the darker colour.
There is an entire package of bacon and two Granny Smiths in that double batch! The recipe sounded amazing, but it didn’t live up to expectations. Don’t get me wrong; they were quite tasty. However, I really expected to at least taste all that bacon! The predominant flavour was the apple. I’d definitely make them again, even if they didn’t life up to their hype. ;-)
When the muffins where done and cooling, the girls quickly took over the kitchen to make lunch for everyone. That gave me a chance to take a break – and see that the snow had finally arrived!
It has just changed from rain to snow when I took this photo. They’re hard to see, but there is at least one chickadee going for the sunflowers as they disappeared under the snow!
By the time we finished lunch, the bread was ready to be shaped into loaves and left for a second rising, which gave me time to make another double batch of muffins.
This time, they were cheddar cheese muffins. They were supposed to be smoked cheddar, but what we had on hand was sharp cheddar. The recipe included cornmeal and cayenne pepper. For a double batch, it would have been 1/2 to 1 tsp of cayenne, but there was no way I could use that much. I enjoy the flavour of spice, but have no tolerance for the heat. Still, I did add some. These turned out very nice. Better than the apple bacon, I’d say. Another keeper. Especially for the next time we get smoked cheddar. :-)
Once these were done, the bread loaves were ready to go into the oven. While they were baking, I started another double batch of bread. This one had oatmeal in it, too, (more specifically, rolled oats, softened in boiling water for a few minutes) and some hemp hearts I had left.
Also, I’m glad I got that extra bag of flour. We had just started a new bag, and I’ve already gone through half of it!
These are the oatmeal, molasses and chia seed loaves. I’m rather pleased with how they turned out! I’m a terrible one for using too much flour, and taking them out of the oven too soon, but I’ve gotten better. ;-)
Then, while the second batch of bread was rising, I made a batch of double chocolate cookies. Double as in, it has two kinds of chocolate (cocoa and chocolate chips), not a double recipe. A single recipe was enough to fill four baking trays. For so many, I had to get a daughter to tend the oven, as they baked very quickly, while I had to start shaping the bread for their second rising. This time, I made them into large buns instead of loaves. The timing turned out perfect. By the time the last cookies were coming out of the oven, the buns had risen enough to go into the oven.
I didn’t bother taking photos of the second batch of bread, nor the cookies. The cookie batter was the kind you drop onto an ungreased pan by spoonfuls, then they spread flat while in the oven. I ended up having to increase the cooking time, and they also turned out to be very fragile. Which is okay. Broken cookies taste just as good as not broken one! They just don’t look pretty. ;-) As for the buns, even with the oatmeal and hemp hearts, they just look like white bread. :-D Those were the ones we started on tonight. While two of the loaves of the first batch went to the freezer, along with half the muffins, I decided not to bother freezing any of the buns. Those are going to disappear very quickly!
In the middle of all this baking, I got a call from my mother. She was wanting to know if we had snow, too. By this time, it was coming down pretty heavily. She sounded so excited, and started going on about what a good thing it was we got her shopping done when we did. I agreed, mentioning that unfortunately, we didn’t get all the things we wanted to get done finished. She was completely oblivious. Instead, she started saying that, as long as the septic was covered, it was fine. She had seen the insulated tarp we had ready to cover it, the day she came out here, so she started giving me instructions on making sure it was weighted down so it wouldn’t blow away. I told her it was pegged to the ground. Apparently, she didn’t know that tarps have grommets on them, than can be used to fasten them down. She kept on going, telling me about how important it was to cover the septic tank. I ended up asking her, how long have we been living here? She thought three years. I said four, and we’ve been covering the septic every year we’ve been here. I know my mother thinks I’m stupid, but you’d think she would have noticed that the winterizing has been getting done, every year.
What I find strange, though, it that she was also talking about covering the well. In fact, she was talking about the septic tank and the well interchangeably, and then saying that if the well freezes, we’d have no water, and how terrible that would be. This was something she brought up last year. She insisted that the well cap had been covered with straw, every year, just like the septic tank. Which has never been done. Not only was it never covered with straw, but I know that even the accumulated snow was removed, likely with the Bobcat our vandal stole, as evidenced by the chips in the concrete, and one of the handles on the cover being broken right off, while the remaining one has been bent flat. Hidden by snow, it’s been hit and run over. Plus, the well cap is at least 12 feet down. It’s never been a problem in the almost 50 years since it’s been dug. She also had nothing to do with any of this sort of maintenance, so I don’t know where she is coming from on this.
It was a short phone call. I mentioned I was in the middle of baking, and she happily let me go. She just wanted to talk to me about the snow. It felt so weird. She’d been so nasty to me when she was here two days ago, and she has no awareness at all about it. I’d talked to my brother last night. My mother had just called him. I had filled my siblings in on how things went when she came out here, so he was in the loop. When my mother started talking about coming to see the sign, she was going on and on about how great it looked, how great everything looked here at the farm, and what a great visit it was. To which he said, no it wasn’t! He spent time time trying to encourage her to be kind and build people up instead of always tearing them down, to which she replied, “I’m not going to lie.” Apparently, the opposite of being cruel is to lie? She had said something about not saying that everything looked beautiful. Which isn’t what anyone is expecting and has nothing to do with simply treating people nicely. I’m grateful my brother stuck up for me, but we are both left rather perplexed by her inability to understand what it means to treat people kindly.
We may not have caught up completely, yesterday, but we did get the essentials necessary for winter, at least. This is our first real snowfall of the year, and while we will continue to be relatively mild, this is a snowfall that will stay. It is still coming down, and now the forecast says the snow will continue to fall through to Saturday, too. Our temperatures remain above freezing, so sleet is a major concern on the highways right now. We’re expected to get 10-15 cm of snow today (4-6 inches), with another 10-15 cm tomorrow, though the weather alerts say that our area might actually get more, due to the lake effect. It’s past 9pm as I write this, and we haven’t reached anywhere near the predicted levels, so who knows what will actually happen.
The forecasts do still say that today’s storm will become tomorrow’s blizzard. I was just looking at our weather history, and the record high for today was 13C/55F, in 2016, while our record low was -20C/4F, in 1991 – but our average high is 0C/32F and average low is -7C/19F, so the temperatures we’re having right now are not at all unusual. It just feels like it! Funny how that works.
Either way, it turned out to be the perfect day to stay inside and do a whole bunch of baking!
Once again, the real world made liars out of the forecasters. 😄
We were not supposed to break 30C today.
I’ve been watching the weather radar as rain supposedly passed right over us. Out my window, it was bright and sunny.
I headed out earlier with the animal repellent spray and used it around the garden beds. Hopefully, that will mean no more critter damage. We shall see!
With the expected heat today, I headed out earlier to do my rounds, and stayed out to do extra watering with the hose fertilizer attachment.
When I first went outside, at about 7:30am it was almost chilly. An hour later, the heat was already hitting. The above photo was taken between 8:30 and 9am. The thermometer read 25C/77F but my weather app listed only 17C/63F! Still, in the time I was out there, the temperature rose almost 10 degrees in under 1 1/2 hours.
Later on, after I’ve gone over the instructions, I’ll be going back out to use the Critter Ridder. I didn’t see any new damage in the cord and sunflower beds, but I think the big carrot bed is still being chewed on. Even the carrot greens in the old kitchen garden showed signs of being nibbled on, though nowhere near as bad as the others.
One of the things I found yesterday was another solar powered spotlight with motion detector. This one will be set up on the side of the house, over the old kitchen garden. I want to position it so that smaller creatures eating our vegetables will trigger the light. Hopefully, that will startle them away. We won’t be able to set the light up facing south, as instructed, but that area gets lots of light right up until sunset. Not even shade from the ornamental apple trees reach it, so I think it should be able to charge up just fine.
The girls set up their new box fan in their window and had it running while my older daughter could finally work on some commissions, all night. This morning, before heading to bed, she told me that having the van made the upstairs the most comfortable part of the house last night! Which is a HUGE difference.
The forecasts have changed for today. We were expected to hit 28C/82F as a high, but now they’re saying we will get a high of 31C/88F, with the humidex at 34C/93F. Tomorrow, we’re now supposed to hit a high of 36C/97F, and the day after, 37C/99F. On Sunday, we’re supposed to reach “only” 31C/88F with a chance of thundershowers. I don’t expect any thundershowers to actually reach us, but it would be nice! Until then, we’re just going to have to be diligent with that watering! The girls have been waiting until after 8:30pm to do the evening water while it’s cooling down, so as not to shock the plants with cold hose water. I’ll have to keep heading out early to water again, before the heat really starts to hit. As disappointed with the loss of our carrots and lettuces, and the one beat bed, I’m very happy with how the beans, tomatoes, onions, corn, sunflowers, squash and melons are doing! The peas aren’t very big, but they are blooming, including more of the purple peas. The cucamelons are also quite small, still, but more of them are big enough to start training up the chain link fence.
It’s worth heading out early to beat the heat and tend to them. Even for someone who really, really dislikes mornings! :-D
The Re-Farmer 