outside cats

Stocking up: this is what $282 and $110 looks like

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First, the cuteness!

I only saw about a dozen cats this morning. It was quite lovely out there, with little hint of what was to come!

I knew we were supposed to eventually get rain. The high today is supposed to reach 7C/45F. This morning it was already quite windy, so I made sure to tend the smoldering burn ring so the cover lay flat over it. Normally, I set it so the slight gap faces the wind, to encourage the smolder, but this time I made sure it was facing away.

Turns out I didn’t really need to worry about it.

As I write this, we are at 3C/37F, with the wind chill at -1C/30F, and not only is it raining, but snowing, too!

I’m glad I have those carrots I planted yesterday under plastic! The cooler temperature and snow isn’t the problem. Though I covered the seed tape with soil, the wind would probably still have blown some of it away, and whatever didn’t get blown away would have been bashed about by the rain.

Today, my husband’s CPP Disability came in, so I was planning to go to Costco. By the time I headed out, shortly before 11am, the winds had increased to the point that I was thinking I would be changing plans. When I got to the town my mother lives in and gassed up (168.9 cents per liter, there!!!), Costco was off, but I decided to head to the smaller, closer city for the Walmart and Canadian Tire part of our regular shopping. Honestly, though, I seriously considered just getting a few things where I was and heading home. If the price difference wasn’t so dramatically different, I probably would have. Even while parked next to the gas pump, the car got buffeted by wind gusts, and I was facing into the wind!

The route from my mother’s town to the smaller city takes me on a several east/west stretches of road. The wind was coming almost directly from the south, and I was fighting it the whole way. It was better when I was driving into the wind, though the gas gauge sure was dropping faster! I took it slower at times, and wasn’t even getting passed, which is saying something!

Still, I got there safe and sound, and my first stop was at Canadian Tire.

This is what $110.67 looks like.

There were two things I went there for. The stove pellets for cat litter, which were $7.29 each, and another 4 fire bricks, which where also $7.29 each. The plan is to pick up a few fire bricks each month until we have enough for our outdoor kitchen, when we are ready to build it.

The cast iron frying pan was a serendipitous find. For starters, the 10″ size was 80% off! Cast iron anything has become extremely expensive, so getting this for $19.99 was something I did not want to pass up. Even so, I would not have bought it if it weren’t for one other thing: the bottom of the pan is flat. The cast iron pans we have all have a slightly raised ring around the bottom. Which isn’t an issue with a typical electric stove, but we’ve got a glass top stove now. It actually affects how the pan heats up. This one does still have a ring on the bottom, but it is indented, which solves that problem!

It says it’s pre-seasoned, but… we’ll probably season it a few times ourselves, first!

The other thing is that blue metal bar. There used to be a pencil tip bar like that here on the farm – I even remember it from when I was a kid – but it is among the things that disappeared before we moved here. These don’t tend to be in stock very often and, when they are in stock, they’re usually out of budget. This one is a 60″ chisel tip pry bar, which will meet our needs quite nicely. Best of all, it was 40% off, which brought it in budget!

I then made sure I left very quickly, before I found something else to spend money on!

Hardware stores are a very dangerous place for me to be, which money! 😄

That done, it was off to Walmart. This is what $283.38 looks like.

*sigh*

Part of that total was a donation to the Children’s Hospital, for which I was given a lanyard as a gift, which you can see sitting on the case of wet cat food. That case cost $28.77 The 10kg bags of dry kibble cost $29.97 each. I don’t usually get a 16 pack of facial tissue, but it was on sale at $17.97, instead of something like $23 regular price. There is also a 6pk of double roll paper towels at $18.97; another sale price. One extra, off list, thing that I got was a pair of sweats for myself, at $18. The other was a hanging scratch pad for $4.97. The cats in my room tend to ignore the small scratch post I have for them, in favour of the carpet, so I’m hoping a hanging scratch pad of similar texture will better appeal to them.

For my lactose intolerant daughters, there are two 2L cartons of soy milk at $4.78 each, as well as coffee, at $8.97, though that had a $1 off coupon attached to it. There is a bag of mixed frozen berries at $12.97 and four different cheeses at 2/$10. There’s a 4L jug of 3% milk for $5.88, a large jar of green olives for $8.97, and 4 things of liquid Crystal Light drink mix for my husband, at $3.37 each, which is more than a dollar cheaper than locally. There’s a giant pack of wieners for $5, but there was only one package of hot dog buns left, at $3.37. There’s a 5lb bag of yellow potatoes at $5.97, and a 5lb bag of red potatoes for $4.97. Finally, there are two bottles of distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier, at $1.87 each, and bottle of a Coke Zero for the road at $2.27. Of course, all the bottles and jugs also had their 3 cent enviro fee which, in this province, we don’t get back when we recycle them.

The grand total, before taxes and donation, was actually $256.86 However, I see on the receipt that the quantity sales – the Crystal Light was 2 for $6, and the soy milk was 2 for $8 – got deducted at the end, so that brought the subtotal down to$253.82 before my donation. Taxes totalled $19.56

So this was a smaller – though heavier! – shopping trip than the Costco trip I intended to make. Between the 40 pound bags of pellets and the pry bar that weighed more than one of those 10kg bags of kibble, I wasn’t going to get too much more while using my mother’s car. We’re not using the van until I can get that noise in the engine checked, and we won’t have the budget for that until June.

Still, I was appreciating that weight on the drive home. By the time I finished shopping at Walmart, it had started to rain. Between the extra weight and having the wind at my back, the car was not being buffeted around anywhere near as much. I was still fighting the whole drive home, though, this time with all the rain accumulated on the highways that wasn’t draining off.

I took a different route home. Instead of going back the way I came, I took the highway to the town closer to us, which is a more sheltered route. It also runs through several small towns, so the speed limit is lower for most of it. When I got to town, I topped up the gas tank again – this time at 155.9 cents a litre! – before the final stretch home. I kept the family updated with where I was, every chance I got, and my daughter kept me updated on what the weather radar was showing. The last leg of my trip was driving east, which meant I was getting broadsided by the wind again, as well as the rain. For most of the drive, I was doing 80km in a 100km zone and, once again, no one was passing me! I did my shopping just in time, though. According to the weather radar, after I left the Walmart area they got hit with the brunt of the storm, and I was safely home before the worst of it hit our area.

And in the time it took me to finish writing this, the rain and snow has stopped! From the looks of the trees outside my window, the wind has died down dramatically, too! Even on the live feed from the garage cam, I’m not seeing the trees in the distance moving at all. Not even the tarp on the shed roof near the barn is flapping anymore, and that thing was billowing when I left!

Ah, weather. If you don’t like what you’ve got at the moment, just wait 5 minutes and it’ll change! Especially in April!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: planting carrots! (video)

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Okay, this is a first. Planting something in April!

We had a bed prepared and covered with plastic over hoops for the soil to warm up more, so that is where I started. All of the carrot seed tape we made fit into the bed, with even a bit of room to spare. After that, another bed was finally prepared and covered with more plastic, and in a couple of days, it will get spinach planted in it.

I tried an experiment this time, setting up an old phone to take a time lapse video of both jobs.

Plus some random cat appearances.

The time lapse made for a short video. I hope you enjoy it!

The Re-Farmer

Thank you for breakfast!

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It was delicious!

What a pretty poser!

We are definitely seeing fewer cats at feeding time, as the weather improves. Sometimes, I’ll see a few of the more feral ones sneaking across the yards, waiting until I’m gone, before they come for food.

Then there are the ones like this little guy. They come as much for the pets as for the foods!

Last night, I was chasing that big racoon and a pair of skunks out of the sun room again. Overnight temperatures in the long range forecast look to be staying above freezing, so I think it’s going to be time to start closing the doors for the night. They’ll just have to put up with the beds in their cat shelter instead of the swing bench to sleep on. 😉

As I haven’t been able to do a burn during the day because of wind, the girls were kind enough to get it going last night, when things were calmer. They got hoses hooked up and I turned the water on from the basement for them, but there were issues! One hose just would not properly attach to the tap. Now that it’s daylight, I’ll take a look to see if there was any damage, because even when we hooked up a different hose, it wouldn’t attach to the end of that one, either. Thankfully, there was a third hose that worked well. Not that I would mind doing a controlled burn out there. Just not in the middle of the night! Now that the burn is finally done, I can clean out the ashes.

We’ve got some lovely weather predicted over the next while. Time to get outside and get to work! Woo Hoo!!

The Re-Farmer

Spring walkabout, and who is who?

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It’s mostly dry enough now that this evening, I decided to check out the gravel pit and our seasonal “creek”.

The gravel pit is very full! I’m standing at the westernmost end of the marshy area that is still sort of part of the gravel pit.

Gooby followed me around until I finally picked him up, tucked him into my jacket, and walked around with him tucked in like a baby. Which would have been a lot more pleasant, if he didn’t keep trying to eat my chin!

I went over to where the road had washed out last year. There is a sort of lane over a culvert on our side of the fence that is in pretty bad shape still, from last year’s flooding, plus deep divots from cows walking through it while it was still wet. The water wasn’t quite high enough to overflow the lane, but higher than the culvert, creating a whirlpool of foamy water. Still muddier than I was willing to cross over, so I headed back around to check another pond, which is also very full, and the drainage into the field. We have a rather fast flowing little creek going under the fence there right now.

I wonder if the renter will try growing corn there again this year? Last year, it was a complete write off.

I also went through the car graveyard and went looking for this.

This is the roughly 90 – 100 yr old wagon that I’m hoping to salvage. The wooden sides have broken and fallen more since I last checked it. The wheels are deep in the ground, which is still too frozen to try and pry out. It looks like I’ll have to remove the rotted wood here – after removing the sheet metal someone put in it – before we can try prying it out of the ground. I really hope the metal parts are still solid enough to use. It would be great to salvage it for the mobile chicken coop I want to build.

Once I was back in the yard and looking around for the garlic and crocuses my daughters spotted, I saw a rare visitor. This is one of Broccoli’s two calico babies (her third kitten is a grey tabby). The long haired one is Brussel, which would make this one Sprout.

I have not been able to get a good picture of her face, though, so when I saw that black “mask” over her eye, I thought maybe this was the cat the girls referred to as The Phantom.

However, there is also Rosencrantz’s tortie.

Who also has a “mask”. She is the one that has been hanging out in the sun room a lot, and I’m actually able to pet every now and then. In fact, earlier this evening, I came into the sun room and saw her sleeping on the swing bench alone. Her back was to me as I went over and began to pet her. She started moving around and pushing against my hand and accepting ear skritches… right up until she turned, saw me, freaked out and jumped away! Clearly, she liked being pet, but didn’t realize who the pets were coming from.

I sent these pictures to the girls, asking them which is which. They confirmed that the tortie is The Phantom – but they didn’t recognize the other one! They described Sprout as being similar in colouration, but with a clearer face, and hangs around more often.

I have no idea what cat they are talking about. The only other calico, besides Broccoli, is Brussel, and Brussel is a long haired cat.

Maybe Broccoli is who they are talking about? I do see her more often.

With so many yard cats, it gets hard to keep track!

Well, I’m going to make the executive decision. The calico with the black over her eye, and the black spot under one side of her nose, is now officially Sprout.

I just wish she would stay close to the house more, so we could have a better chance of socializing her! But even Broccoli and Brussel, who do hang out closer, won’t let us near them.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Wounded boy

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We’ve got a lovely day outside, and I was hoping to be able to do a burn. While setting up the burn ring, I noticed The Distinguished Guest was lurking about in the outer yard. He wouldn’t come near me, but I could still see that something was wrong.

I had to zoom in quite a bit to get this shot. That is a new wound on his leg. I sent the picture to the cat rescue lady, but since we can’t actually catch him, there’s nothing we can do but monitor from a distance. At least he’s still coming around for food. My guess is, the damage was done by Sad Face (AKA; Shop Towel). Sad Face has been quite aggressive towards TDG and some other cats, and he’s got the size and bulk to be the winner pretty much every time. I still see Sad Face around, but he runs off pretty quickly.

About the only positive thing I could make out is that TDG wasn’t actively limping as he walked around. He’s is such rough shape, though. He was a lot more social when he first showed up at our place, which is why we think he was dumped, but with Shop Towel beating on him, and likely getting chased away from other farms around us, he is a lot more feral now. I’ve only been able to get close to him when he’s been too hungry to be willing to leave the kibble.

He is not the only critter I saw today. When I first went outside to bring burnables out, I spotted a groundhog running away, first to the raised beds near the spruce grove, then skirting along the edge of the spruce grove towards the garage, then around the other side of the garage. Where he went after that, I couldn’t see. From the looks of the hole in the ground we found by the house when the snow first melted away, it’s possible it’s being actively used, and if it is, this might be the grog that’s using it.

I was really hoping to not have to deal with grogs in the garden this year.

Ah, well. It is what it is.

I’m more concerned about TDG.

As for the burn, it’s all set up, but we’ve got too many wind gusts to do a burn today, so it’ll have to wait. The burn ring is getting so full of ashes, we won’t be able to cover and let it smolder this time, but need to burn it down as much as possible, then clean out the ashes. Since we are slowly burning away the rotten pallets cleared out of where the wood pile used to be, before an electric furnace was installed, there’s a lot of nails in there, so we’ll be using the soil sifter over the wheel barrow to catch things like nails, as well as larger pieces of unburned wood. Since this is all from litter pellet sawdust and garbage, we can’t use the ashes in the garden, but we can dump it in some of the low spots in the outer yard.

This post has been oddly difficult to type. For some reason, Fenrir has decided she really, really wants to sniff and lick my keyboard, directly under my left hand. Earlier, she was trying to do the same thing with my mouse and mouse hand, and when I tried to stop her, she actually got angry enough to attack my hand and try to bight me! I can’t imagine what she could possibly be smelling on there all of a sudden.

But I digress.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a calmer day and we’ll be able to get that burn done. If possible, I’d like to do a controlled burn of the outer yard around there, but for that, I’d want to make sure to have enough hoses joined together to reach, and the water tap’s shut off valve in the basement turned on. It’s still freezing overnight, so we’d have to make sure to turn the valve off again.

It may be dipping below freezing during the night, but not by much, so I unplugged the extension cord to the cats’ house and put that away, then unplugged the outside heated water bowl. I haven’t bothered to unplug the heated water bowl in the sun room, yet, simply because I like for that cats to have access to at least some warm water during the night.

Okay, this is weird. Fenrir is back. It’s not my keyboard she’s trying to get at. It’s my left hand. I don’t know what I touched that she might be smelling, and I did wash my hands when I came back inside, so I have no idea what’s going on! Time to give up trying to type, though. Every time I remove her, she comes right back and tried to eat my hand!

What a strange girl.

The Re-Farmer

Another sleepless night

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First, some morning kitties!

I counted 23 or 24 this morning.

Last night, I glanced through the bathroom window into the dark sun room, and could see a larger… shadow… moving around. Too big to be a cat and the wrong shape for a skunk.

So I headed out to take a look and, sure enough, it was a big racoon, searching for kibble.

I chased it out, then left the light on in the sun room so we could check it throughout the night.

I don’t know about the rest of the family, but several times, I headed back out to chase out skunks and another – or the same – racoon. That second racoon sighting was funny, as I glanced out the bathroom window, and this racoon head popped up over the seat of my husband’s walker to look back at me!

We’ve getting a couple of very small skunks and one big one going into the sun room. The little ones don’t like to leave, and will sit on the threshold, between the inner and outer doors, rather than go outside. I end up having to push the inner door and kick at it to make noise and chase it out. Chances are, there are cats or other critters just outside the door that are keeping it from going right out, too.

I was trying to get one of the skunks out that way, when it was still light out, when movement out the windows facing the old kitchen garden caught my eye. I had just scared our piebald deer away from the kibble house, too!

So we’ve got the deer, skunks and racoons, along with the blue jays and chickadees, stealing the cats’ food.

No wonder it’s disappearing so fast. Poor babies.

I did manage to sneak a pet on the back of the little black and white cat that looks so much like Pointy Baby. It was all lumps from matted fur. We so need to socialize this cat, so we can take care of that!!

Between the outside critters and the antics of the inside cats, I got very little sleep last night.

Meanwhile…

It’s still really windy out there.

Once again, I found the gate cam fallen over. This time, the solar panel got knocked right off. Thankfully, the connectors were all completely dry – the only parts that aren’t water proof – and I was able to reattach it right away.

I also dragged over a heavy piece of metal I found in the shed with the collapsed roof.

Hopefully, the weight of it will be enough to keep the stand from falling over, until we can find something better.

It was funny checking the files just a little while ago. After it got knocked down, it seems a cat clambered over it and used the wooden stand to keep its feet out of the water. From the fur colours and the matts I could see, it was the little black and white one.

The winds are supposed to keep up all day, but I’m hoping it will calm down at least a little bit, later today. I’m going to need to make a trip into town. I could probably wait until tomorrow, but thinks have a habit of coming up unexpectedly, so I’d rather get it over with today. I’ve heard the highways are clear and dry, so at least I won’t have to worry about icy roads as well as high winds.

Right now, though, I’m so tired, I’m not safe to drive. My daughter isn’t feeling very well, either, so she can’t drive for me. So I think I’ll try for a nap and hopefully head into town later.

And hopefully, we won’t have too many critters out in this wind, stealing the outside cats’ food!

The Re-Farmer

Round kitties, stinky kitties!

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Among last year’s kittens, we didn’t get as many grey tabbies as the year before. So far, all but one of them seem to be male.

This one isn’t.

And she is most definitely starting to look round.

*sigh*

There is another that is more of a muted calico that looks so much like a baby Beep Beep that I call her… well… Baby Beep Beep. She has started to sometimes let me pet her while she is eating and, yes, I can call her a “she”. So far, though, she is not looking to be in the motherly way. The tortie has been hanging out in the sun room a lot, and so far she doesn’t look pregnant, either. With the long haired calico, Brussel, her fur is so long, we wouldn’t be able to tell one way or the other. I don’t usually see Sprout or Phantom very often (I sometimes wonder if they’re the same cat, to be honest), but the last time I did, she was looking pretty svelte so far, too.

Rozencrantz and not-Junk Pile have definitely had their kittens. Somewhere. Whether they have survived or not, or where they might be, is anyone’s guess right now.

Meanwhile, when I went to to feed the outside cats just a little while ago, I found these stinky kitties!

At first, it was just one, rooting around near the bottom of the shelf by the window. Then the second one squeezed its way through the doors. It took me making a lot more noise than usual while tossing the kibble with lysine powder in the old kitchen to persuade them to leave! I have no idea what effect lysine will have on skunks, but I would guess it’s just as beneficial for them as for the cats.

I look forward to when we can start keeping the sun room doors closed again, cleaning up the messes that cats made and being able to move our seedlings in!

The Re-Farmer

Snow or no snow?

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My daughters were sweethearts and took care of the outside cats for me again this morning. Which was nice, because I was trapped in my bed by about half a dozen of them at the time!

When I headed out to switch the trail cam memory cards, only Rolando Moon was willing to follow me around!

She would not let me remove the burr she has stuck in her tail, though.

The driveway cam really takes a beating in this location! I need to find something to weigh down the base of the stand.

The camera was fine. Only the solar panel was touching the water. It and the camera are waterproof.

We had some heavy snowfall at times, but we’re also staying mostly above freezing temperatures. Even overnight, we’re just a degree or two below freezing. We’re getting snowfall warnings of up to 20cm/8in by the end of tomorrow, but from the looks of the weather radar, our strange little climate bubble is very much there. The snow is moving through our region but, directly above our area, the clouds part and go around! The southern part of our province is getting hit harder, and a neighbouring province has gotten 30cm/12 in places already. We’re doing just fine where we are. With how warm it is, the paved roads are staying clear. Not that I have any desire to go anywhere! 😄

We have about 3 or 4 more days of temperatures hovering above freezing, and then we start warming up again. About a week from now, the overnight temperatures are supposed to stay consistently above freezing, too. We’ll see how it actually works out!

Meanwhile, I’ve got some herbs to get started in the Jiffy pellets I started hydrating yesterday. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Feels wasted

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Today is Sunday and I normally try to keep it as my day of rest, but today just feels… wasted.

I woke up to a bad pain day. Enough that I asked my daughters to take care of feeding the outside cats, then went back to sleep for a couple more hours. It’s not even the worst pain I’ve been in, but it’s like all my joints just don’t want to work properly.

(As I type, retype and retype again, these few sentences repeatedly, because my fingers don’t want to work right!)

Still, I wanted to make sure I got outside for a while, do the rest of my morning rounds and get some fresh air and sunshine. It’s a really gorgeous day out there, and I didn’t want to miss too much of it!

Judgement is judging the state of my boots. 😄

Judgement and Gooby both followed me around all over. With more snow melting away, and plenty of wind, I found and picked up a lot more of those plastic strips from the new shingles being blown around.

One of the areas I can now get into is parts of the spruce grove. Usually it’s either too wet from the snow melt, or too overgrown, to get into. The snowmelt is being absorbed by the ground this spring and nothing is growing yet, so I was able to get through most of the area. There are so many dead trees in there. Some on the ground and rotting, some stuck on other trees and may actually be useable, and others that will need to be cut down. I was also spotting the poplars I want to thin out to use for the trellis tunnels we will be building. Poplar has been taking over the spruce grove. We will be keeping them to a certain extent, as they have been a very useful material, but as we cut down and clean out the dead trees, I want to plant more spruces in the spruce grove!

Feeling the way I do today, though, looking at all the work that needs to be done had me feeling my aching bones even more.

I was also scoping out locations. If things work out to plan, we’re going to have a shed delivered to us at some point, and we need to decide where to put it. It will likely be used as a chicken coop, once it gets the repairs it needs, until we can build the mobile chicken coop I have in mind. We will need some sort of base to support it, so it’s not directly on the ground. Yesterday, I was able to get into the barn and see the state of things. In the lean to side, there are a whole lot of old tires (why are there so many old tires all over the place???), some with rims, some without. It occurred to me that we can use the tires with rims to support the shed. Or just the rims. We don’t have as many rims without tires around, but we can take the tires off.

I had considered putting the shed near the barn, where we would have access to electricity if we wanted, but we have other plans for the outer yard, including permanent raised garden beds and the outdoor kitchen, so I’m thinking it might get to be too much. My daughter is also looking to build a shelter for a forge in the outer yard, though in a different area. The space is going to be filled up quite a bit, and we still need to make sure that there are lanes to drive through with large vehicles. There are also pipes from the well and septic tank running through towards the barn, with the septic pipe running off to the outflow pipe and water pipes running to an old cattle fountain and the barn. The area over them needs to be kept clear, in case they ever need to be excavated. Some day, I would like to be able to turn that water on again, but not until we’ve been able to replace our well pump and upgrade to a larger pressure tank. The shut off valve for fountains and barn is in our basement. There are two cattle fountains are designed to refill automatically, and they keep the water from freezing in the winter. One fountain, we can see from the house. The other is behind the barn, set up to be accessible both inside and outside of a pen. I’d like to have both of them checked out and repaired as necessary. We’re not planning to have cattle, but if we end up having goats or something, or even have it available for the deer or the renter’s cows, that would be good. That is years in the future, though. As for the tap in the barn, it’s been bashed into at some point and needs repair, too.

In the end, I decided the best place to set up the shed would be near the garage. There’s an open space there that no longer has a branch pile in it. We would have to line it up with the front of the garage, which should keep it from shading out the asparagus and sunchoke beds along the chain link fence. With the chain link fence and the garage, we would have to fence off only two sides to create a run for any chickens. It would be a small run for just a few chickens, but enough to start with. The shed would need to be far enough from the garage to access the wall and roof. Now that the branch pile is gone, we can finally clean out the eaves on that side of the garage!

That branch pile was never meant to be there for several years!!

Having it by the garage gives easy access to electricity, plus better storage for feed and bedding, and still be fairly close to the house, where we’d be getting water from.

To prepare for the shed here, the ground will need a small amount of leveling, and the tires/rims can be brought over. I don’t know the dimensions of the shed yet, so I’d just want to have them nearby until I know where to put them. We even have a chain link gate in the storage house, sitting on the remaining section of stairs to the basement, that could be used to access the chicken run after we fence it off. The shed itself needs its floor replaced. It has a flat roof that leaks, which is why the floor got damaged, so I want to put an angle roof over the existing one, with an overhang on all sides.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The next area I wanted to scope out was the maple grove behind the house. The two branch piles there are now gone, so it’s nice and open again. The old garden shed is slowly rotting away. My late brother got it second hand from who knows where, and it was basically shoved in between some trees, on top of rocks. I don’t know if any attempt had been made to level it when it was first brought in, but it’s certainly not level now. The trees are holding it up, though!

Since the outdoor bathroom we were planning to build as a cordwood practise building will have to wait until we’ve cut down and removed about a dozen dead spruce trees, I want to make a garden shed as a cordwood practise building. My original thought was to place it next to where there is a path through the maple grove to the main garden area, with the door facing the path.

The bare ground the branch piles had been on will be planted with a lawn replacement mix of seeds, but as I walked around, I considered using one of those patches as a better location for the shed I have in mind. It’s not going to be very big; the interior is planned to be 6’x8′, plus the width of the cordwood walls, so we have some options. One thing to keep in mind, though, is the water. There is a tap near the old garden area. It used to be right at the path along one side of the garden, but the garden grew smaller over the years, as my parents planted more trees closer to the house, instead of along the north fence line. There are now trees on the other side of the old path, where garden used to be. A lot of trees have been cut down since it was installed, and there’s even a stump right at the tap that still keeps sending out shoots. Other trees have gotten much bigger since it was installed, too. The water source is a tap at the back of the house, and there is a hose buried in the ground. I’ve tried hooking up the hose end, only to have water spraying up from the ground, at the edge of one of the branch piles that was there. One of the goals of this year is to dig up the old hose and replace it. My thought is to get some heavy duty hose and run it through a PVC pipe from tap to tap. That way, if we ever need to replace it again, it would be relatively easy to pull it out and put a new one in, without having to dig a new trench.

Digging that old hose out is not going to be easy. There are going to be a lot of roots in the way!

The main goal being to have that tap at the main garden area working again. It would be a better place to hook up a hose for watering the garden, and I want to make a vegetable washing station. Having the new garden shed near the tap would also be convenient.

The more I walked around the area, the more I realized the best place to build the garden shed would actually be on the other side of where the hose is buried, closer to where the current shed is, and closer to the tap. There are fewer tree stumps to work around, among other things! There would also be more open space in what would be the front of the shed.

In planning the cordwood walls for this, we intend to place longer logs in parts of the wall to support a bench on the outside at one end, which would be closer to the tap. We could even include some longer logs higher up to support a small table or shelf, too. The other end will be facing south, and we plan to have a window and bottle bricks on that side for natural light. With the new location I’m considering, there won’t be as much light, since there are more large maples there. At least one of them is dead and needs to be cut down and untangled from the live tree that’s holding it up. Others are leaning so far over, I plan to cut them to where the trunks are still straight, which will encourage new growth at a lower height. That will be better for the trees, but will eventually block out more light from the planned shed. I don’t mind that too much, though. As long as we have a good, strong garden shed!

So…

Lots of plans. Lots of work to do this summer.

I guess today wasn’t that much of a wasted day, after all.

The Re-Farmer

The status of things

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Today may be cooler, but we’re still staying above freezing, and the kitties are just loving it!

I only counted about 16, this morning. As things melt clear and my morning rounds are extending further out, I’m seeing the cats all over the place. The long haired tuxedo followed me all over the place, much like Pointy Baby did – just without actively trying to get me to pick him up and carry him!

I miss Pointy Baby.

The berry bushes we planted last year are almost completely uncovered. That old saw horse with the sticks is over the highbush cranberry the deer kept eating. I checked the other one and can almost, sorta, see leaf buds starting to form!

The main garden area is still mostly covered with snow. If all goes to plan, the area in front of where I’m standing will have at least a couple of trellis tunnels built.

The garlic bed isn’t quite clear, yet!

The standing water has receded more, so I was able to get to the storage warehouse (which I would really love to reclaim as a work shop again!!) and look around. With not being able to get to the dump as often in the winter, we’ve been storing our garbage bags in the old kitchen, where it could freeze. It’s getting too warm for that, now. We need to build a garbage bin outside that is cat and racoon proof to store the bags until we can make our dump runs. There are pieces of plywood and other random boards in the warehouse. With all my parents’ stuff jammed into there, none of it is accessible. Some of the stacks of boxes need to be moved around, anyhow, as they are starting to collapse and tip. That’s as good an excuse as any to move things around. Some of the plywood sheets, however, are behind a couch, and there are all sorts of boxes and bins that predate us on and in front of it. No matter. We’ll figure out how to get to them. I’d love to get rid of all the bags of clothes in there. They’re not even suitable for donating after all this time, but my mother still insists we don’t throw anything out! *sigh* She’s still all worried that someone might come in and steal her old underwear or something. 🤨

While in the shed, I noticed an old broiler pan that will work as a kibble tray. I don’t know why we’ve been finding broiler pans all over the place – no one ever used them for what they were made for – but they make great kibble trays, so I grabbed it. With a bit of readjusting of things, I was able to reclaim two of the baking sheets I got for carrying transplants around that were being used as kibble trays over the winter. There is still one more, just inside the cat house entry, but I will leave that for now. With the two trays I reclaimed, I’ll be able to pot up the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes now.

After I was done my rounds, I made a quick trip to the post office to see if a parcel had arrived. With so much snow gone, once I was back, I actually went to close the gate! I’m seeing our vandal walking by with his dog on the trail cam more often, so I wanted to have it at least closed. This makes it the first time that gate has been closed since the snow got too deep to keep clear, several months ago.

Well, now.

When my brother and I put the repaired gate back up, the two sides were even. That sliding bar holds the two sides closed, and I could put a pin through the pair of holes at the corner, which made sure the wind or whatever didn’t vibrate the bar off the end of the gate. Before winter, it was noticeably shifted, but we could still lift one side of the gate while pushing down on the bar and get the pin through. Now, it’s just too far off! We’ll have to come out with a level and see which gate post has shifted the most. I was thinking the north post was tipping away, but my daughters think the south post is tipping inwards. It could well be both. The gate posts were installed in such a way that they can be adjusted by adding washers to the bolts at the base. My brother had done that when he installed the new hinges that replaced the ones our vandal broke. I’d hoped it would be a few years longer before it had to be done again. It’s been about 3 1/2 years since these were repaired and replaced, so I guess that’s not too bad.

The main thing is, the gate is now closed! Without being able to put the pin in the sliding bar, the chain is extra necessary to make sure they don’t swing open on their own. We’ll also have to touch up the paint a bit. I think I still have a spray can of it around. I’ll have to think about what I can put around where the chain and bar is damaging the paint so quickly.

Things are going to stay colder over the next 10 days or so, with daytime highs just above freezing and overnight lows dipping several degrees below freezing. We’re also getting smatterings of rain. I’d say it’s a good thing we didn’t plant those carrots, even if we did have the plastic to cover them until they germinated. I don’t mind, though. It means things will continue to melt and be absorbed by the ground slowly. I rather like not having to wade through giant muddy puddles to get to the garage. It will give us time to work on other preparations.

I’m just thrilled to be able to get outside and get working again, even if it’s just a tiny bit at a time!

The Re-Farmer