outside cats

I got you covered!

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Something very disorienting happened today.

There was a knock at the door.

Which is one of those things that is so unexpected, it takes a moment for my brain to clue in and say, “oh… there’s a person at the door.” :-D

Turns out, it was the guy delivering the straw bale we had ordered. He had to leave the tractor in the driveway, hop the locked gate, and come knocking.

There’s a reason I asked for a call first! :-D The guy delivering the bale was not the guy I bought it from, so he probably didn’t have my number. Not that he could have called us from his tractor, anyhow. ;-)

I was really happy to see him, that’s for sure! It’s been snowing off and on, and the temperatures are dropping, so I really wanted to get that septic tank covered!

This time, I asked him to drop it off in the old garden area. You can see that the bale has been sitting for a year! After unwrapping it, I started trying to pull the straw down near that dark area, and found it half frozen and very wet.

Which is great, because the wet straw that’s already starting to decompose went straight onto the garden area, and some of the compost, right away. I even found a worm in it. LOL

This is where our septic tank is. Our system is very different from what is usual; instead of a gravity based system, ours has a smaller tank and pumps. There are pipes leading from the basement to the left of the tank in this photo. The tank has two chambers. Everything goes into the first chamber, then when it fills with liquid, there is an overflow chamber. When that fills, the liquid is pumped to a field out by the barn. The pipe for the outflow runs under the old kitchen, which is behind the septic lid in the photo.

All of these pipes are buried deep and, theoretically, we could go without covering any of this at all, but it’s not something we want to take a chance with. An extreme winter could freeze the ground far enough that the pipes would freeze, and if that happened, it could get really nasty in our basement! It would also cost many thousands of dollars to get it fixed. So spending $25 on a bale and covering it is really cheap insurance! ;-)

Here is now it looks now! I added extra along the old kitchen foundation, just for a bit of extra insulation.

I’m leaving the tools with the bale for now, as we’ll be using it to insulate the old dog houses, probably in a couple of days.

While working on this, I had several very curious kitties checking things out. I expect the bale will also serve throughout the winter to keep little paws warm, and for burrowed nests, as well. :-) They were already quite keen on getting into it.

When I was done, I got a selfie with Susan.

She was not co-operative. LOL

Another thing off the list of things to get done before winter! :-)

The Re-Farmer

A day of rest

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With the timing of things for my daughter’s Sunday shifts, I haven’t been able to continue our search for a new church to attend, but I do try to take advantage of her short shift to make Sunday a day of rest.

So many kittens! And their uncle/big brother.

Oh, to be a cat, some days!

This was actually taken on Saturday. From left to right, we’ve got Creamsicle, Potato Beetle, Doom Guy, Two-Face, and even Pump Shack and Junk Pile kittens! All packed in like sardines, keeping warm and cozy.

Things were not so warm and cozy at the beach in town, yesterday!

Snowfall over the lake.

I didn’t stay out for long; I hadn’t brought gloves, and it was really quite chilly!

This guys seemed to handle it well.

Geese grazing near the marina.

No rest for them! The geese need to eat as much as possible in between their migratory flights.

I’m finding I really enjoy these few hours in town, once a week. It’s a good time to recharge.

The Re-Farmer

Water

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As the weather has gotten colder, seasonal changes are happening to our morning routine. With the outside taps now closed for the winter, and water starting to freeze, we are back to bringing out a pitcher of warm water to refill the cat bowls outside.

With the bird bath now moved next to the bird feeder (which I was able to give a good scrub down before winter – after knocking the ice out!), adding warm water to there is now part of the routine. Who knows. Even the deer might be able to use it over the winter. It doesn’t hold a lot of water, but we can refill it as needed.

This morning, the cats were wildly curious about what I was doing at the feeding station, and I had cats jumping up into the bird bath before I could finish emptying the pitcher!

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Morning kitties

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Happy Thanksgiving Day!

I had lots of kitties greeting me when I went out to feed them. Much to my amazement, one of the cats that came running, and even let me pet her, was Rosencrantz!!

Then, after I topped up the inside food, I realized that one of the cats eating was Guildendstern!

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Newcomer

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We just got visited by a new cat today, outside our living room window, so of course we went a little overboard with the pictures! :-D

My daughter spotted him and got the first few photos through the lilac bushes.

He was lurking where we leave food for Junk Pile kitten still, even though he now regularly goes to the house, and even into the sun room, for food. Because I usually have 3 or 4 cats following me as I put food out, I spread it out, including on this log I brought over for a seat. I don’t know how much food was left around there, but it looks like our visitor found at least a little to eat!

The number of cats lurking around the house has dropped quite a bit over the last while. Of the visiting toms, only Nicky the Nose has been showing up once in a while, and he quickly leaves. I haven’t seen Slick or Not-Slick in a month or two. Even of our own adult cats, most seem to have moved on; I haven’t seen Guildenstern, Jim, Bob or Rolando Moon in a long time. Rosencrantz comes by, but not often; Beep Beep and Butterscotch both tend to chase her off! Doom Guy is the only adult male still hanging around, and he hasn’t been well. We did get medication for him and he has gotten better, but he still prefers to spend most of his time in the sun room or near the house.

We shall see who starts showing up again in the winter, when food and shelter will be more reliable.

We will be keeping an eye out for our newcomer, too!

The Re-Farmer

More winterizing

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We got one more area done for the winter today.

The old basement window.

We take advantage of the shelter over this window as a place to put the outside cat food containers, out of the rain. It isn’t much shelter, but it at least keeps their food mostly dry.

One of my plans for this summer was to dig up the dirt under the overhang and line it with bricks.

I noticed, however, there was thick plastic at the window, so I took advantage of having a daughter to hold the “roof” up and dug out the dirt to see just how far the plastic extended.

It turns out, there is no need to brick the area.

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The things I’ve been finding

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I’ll start with the things I found today. :-)

The first thing I found this morning was a Pump Shack kitten! After opening up the sun room to let the other kittens out and get some cat kibble, I turned to find him at the door, waiting to see if he could sneak past me for some food!

20190922.morning.cats

He never did come in while I was there, but after I put food out by the junk pile and pump shack, I came back to find him, with Junk Pile kitten and Rosencrantz (his mom), sharing food with Doom Guy and Keith.

We rarely see Rosencrantz these days, and we haven’t seen Guildenstern in ages. Same with Jim, Bobby and Rolando Moon. I hope they are okay, wherever they are.

While checking the yard for any fallen branches or damage, I found…

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One of the tree mushrooms had fallen.

That thing is really big!

I looked around for the others I’d spotted a few days back; they are not only still there, but bigger than ever. All this rain is definitely mushroom weather!

The final find of the day was something my daughter had to point out to me, or I would have missed it entirely.

During the night, I kept hearing the kittens getting onto the dining table, where they are not allowed to be. In coming out to chase them off, they were usually already down, but I could see the cords from our ceiling fan swinging. They were getting on the table to try and play with them!

A friend of mine has had success with using aluminum foil to get her cats from doing where they are not supposed to, so I figured I’d give it a try, leaving sheets of them in front of each chair that they are using to get onto the table.

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As you can see by the paw prints, it didn’t work!

Another find I made was a few days ago, during my rare times to the basement. I needed a washer of a particular size and hoped I could find one among the various drawers and cabinets down there.

I found this.

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The old syringe my dad used to use to treat cattle. I remember it used to be stored in a case, together with needles of various sizes, but there is only the syringe, now. Check out the inner chamber, that would be sterilized and reused, again and again – as did the needles! They certainly don’t make them like this, anymore!

Interestingly, we found these just the next day.

20190919.things.we.find.medicine.bottles

I found them with my feet. These are the sorts of medicine bottles that would have been used with that syringe.

Knowing my brother was coming with some wheels to try on the old trailer frame in the hay yard by the barn, my daughter and I went to pull it out of the grass. It’s really heavy, so we were not going to be able to drag it out of the old hay yard, through the barn, and into the outer yard, as I’d hope we might be able to, but we didn’t want to just leave it in the grass again, either. Leaning against the barn were some old tires, so I dragged several out to put under the frame. While pulling out the first tire, I stepped on something that my foot slipped on, and found an old medicine bottle, half buried in the dirt. I moved it aside but when I came back for the next tire, I stepped on another one!

We took them into the barn. I don’t know what we’ll do with them, but I want to keep these! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Crab apple picking

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Catching up on stuff that I intended to post about yesterday…

I finally got a chance to pick some crab apples.

I had help.

It was starting to get pretty late in the season to pick these. A lot were already on the ground, other had signs of being eaten by birds. There were some I could not safely reach, even with the ladder, but that’s okay. The birds will enjoy them.

The one tree that was giving larger, sweeter apples this year resulted in about 2 1/2 gallon buckets of apples.

There is one other tree that had larger, sweeter apples last year. Though the apples are much smaller this year, there are lots of them. When I do my rounds, I have been tasting them. As the season progressed, the apples on this tree did start to develop that sweet-tart taste crab apples are known for. There are a couple of other trees with lots of apples on them, but they are pretty… unpleasant.

I decided to pick some from the one tree with good apples. Just a bucket full, I figured. So I dragged the ladder over and went to set it up under the most apple laden branches.

There… weren’t any?

These apples have been getting a very deep red as the season progressed, and there had been lots of them, but suddenly, there were hardly any at all.

Of course, my first thought was to check the ground, to see how many had fallen, but the ground was clear of fallen apples.

I finally went to pick some. Most were already too far gone and starting to rot at the stems. This is all I got.

Barely enough to cover the bottom of the bucket!

You can see one with a hole at the stem that I accidentally picked. Most of the remaining apples I saw had much larger holes like that.

I am guessing that the apples were eaten by something. I’m good with feeding critters. What I found interesting, though, is that it was just this one tree. There are trees on either side of this one that are full of apples, and I can see apples on the ground beneath them.

I guess whatever has been eating the apples from this tree found it tastier than the others, too!

Anyhow.

For the larger amount of apples, I am planning to make jelly. For the smaller amount, I’m going to try making apple cider vinegar.

We shall see how they turn out! :-D

The Re-Farmer