outside cats

Snow, snow, go away!

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Things continued to warm up today, so after I finished my morning rounds, I headed to the city for our monthly shop.

Got some major sticker shock, even though I was well aware of prices going up.

I did a quick stop on the way to put a big of gas in the tank. Normally, I would have grabbed some fried chicken and wedges for breakfast, but I was too early, so I just grabbed a snack. My first stop in the city was Canadian Tire. We usually get our wood pellets for the cat litter there, but the pellets last so long, we didn’t need any. What I did find was a new garden fork to replace the one that broke last fall. I hope it is a decent quality one, because the only other fork they had was a pitch fork. Which we do need, but not as much as a garden fork. I also picked up a new cat scratcher. Butterscotch and Nosencrantz still don’t leave my office/bedroom… well… Nosencrantz does explore once in a while, then dashes back again. Which means they don’t go to where the scratching posts for the other cats are. I did get what I thought was a small scratching post last month, only do discover I should have read the label more closely. It was a replacement post, so there was no platform with it. It’s still available, and the other cats sometimes scratch at is, but not Butterscotch and Nosencrantz. Nope. They are going after one of the suitcases stored in my closet, instead! That closet doesn’t have a door, just a curtain, so they have free access to it.

I had also tried picking up one of the cardboard cat scratchers the other cats love so much. They tear them to shreds and made a huge mess of them, but I’ll take that over them going for the couch, any day. Nosencrantz and Butterscotch did use that one – but Nosencrantz was also using it to pee on, instead of in the litter box, so that went away.

This time, I found one that is made out of carpet, and has non-slip bumpers on the ends, so it can be leaned against a wall. It is also infused with cat nip oil.

So far, the other cats have checked it out and knocked it about. We’ll see how Nosencrantz and Butterscotch like it.

One of the things I checked out while at Canadian Tire were their pumps. I was pleased to see that the sump pumps were not very expensive. As soon as we can work it into the budget, I want to get a spare. I also want to get a spare septic pump, too, but I didn’t see any that I could price check. That’s something I’d have to run by my brother first, anyhow. He knows exactly what our system needs.

After Canadian Tire, I went to an international grocery store that is one of our favourites. They also have hot food available, and the seating area has been returned, now that restrictions are lifted, so I got to have breakfast for lunch. :-D There isn’t a lot that we get in this store, but there are a few things that we don’t find in regular grocery stores, plus I like to get fresh produce in non-Costco size packages. :-D

For the amount I got, which was pretty typical, I’d say I spent about 25% more than last month.

Then, it was finally time to go to Costco, where I can shop with a flat cart. :-D

I made sure to fill the tank before I went in; I’d added only $20 of gas at 174.9 cents/L (regular) when I stopped on the way to the city, and I was still under half a tank. Costco’s gas was 164.9 cents/L (regular), but it still cost me just over $80 to fill the tank. I can’t remember the last time it cost me that much to fill that tank, even during the rare times it was below 1/8th of a tank. I already had to increase or grocery budget. Time to see what can be juggled so we can increase the gas budget, too. :-( I think we’ll mostly just drive even less than we already are.

Once in the store, I did get a chance to ask about getting an eye test this time. Despite all restrictions being lifted, the eye clinic still requires masks. No medical exemptions.

So no eye exam for me. :-(

There were no such restrictions for the rest of my shopping, and I was happy to see smiling faces on a lot of the staff.

I did have a couple of splurges today. Because they were still in stock and so inexpensive, I got another of the shop lights that I picked up last time to use with the mini-greenhouse. This one will be for the sun room, so the seedlings will get light from two directions, when we transfer them over, and the trays won’t need to be turned as much.

I also unexpectedly picked up a new spade. We do have one good spade. We had two other, much older ones, that we found. One broke on a root when I was digging a hole to transplant a haskap bush. The other can still be used, but the handle is broken off at the end (it was like that when we found it), so it has a jagged edge. It’s a wooden handle, so we could cut the damaged part off, but then the handle would be too short for use without wrecking our backs, so we make sure to wear gloves to use it.

Well, now we have another good spade. This one comes to a sharper point than the one we already have – which is funny, because it’s called a “round point shovel”. It’s designed more for uprooting, and where we are going to be planting the buffalo berry and sea buckthorn, there are a lot of roots, so I hope this works out. We will have a LOT of holes to dig!

As for the rest of the shopping, even taking the extras into account, I still ended up spending more while buying less. Not everything was more expensive, but most things did go up at least a little. The Kirkland brand of kibble, which the cats quite like, was limited to one bag per cardholder. Another brand didn’t have an limits, plus are slightly larger bags. Both have gone up in price, as has the canned cat food. Paper products all went up quite a bit, though nothing compared to the increase in fresh meat and fish prices! It didn’t even matter what kind or cut. They’ve all gone up. Some fresh produce, like potatoes, didn’t seem to be any different, but the dairy and eggs all had increases. Still cheaper than non-Costco, though, so it did make the trip worthwhile, still.

Most things were in stock, though some items were missing specific types or brands.

Most of what we get there are not things we can grow or make ourselves, which is why we buy them in the first place, so there isn’t a lot we can do to avoid the increasing prices. At least, at some point, we’ll be able to start raising animals for eggs and meat, and possibly milk (I don’t think we’ll be up to getting a cow, but we might be able to get milk goats at some point), but not for a while, yet. Right now, we’re focussed more on the gardening, and building what we need to be able to raise animals, starting with chickens. That is doable in the shorter term.

But I digress.

By the time I was done at Costco, I was completely knackered, and more than happy to be heading home.

Though overcast and warm all day, once on the highway, the visibility soon started to drop. At first, there seemed to be rain, but almost immediately, it turned to snow. By the time I reached home, visibility was maybe 100 yards (which is a little over 90 meters). I’d been seeing Canada Geese all over on the way in, along with a few grouse, along the roads. On the way out, it was deer. They were grazing by fence lines, though, thankfully, not running across! One herd I saw was at least a dozen deer, probably more.

For all the visibility was down, there wasn’t actually a lot of snow accumulated, when I got home.

The kibble trays were completely empty, so after the van was unloaded, and I parked it while the girls put everything away, I refilled the trays. That’s when I realized I’d forgotten the container I usually use to scoop the kibble and the deer feed, outside. I leave the container at the feeding station as I go to switch out the sign cam’s memory card, and forgot to grab it on the way back.

Which made for convenient visualization of how much snow had accumulated.

It’s not a lot, but everyone is just so tired of snow right now. Yes, we do need more snow for the moisture, so help recover the water table, but at this point, I’d rather have rain instead of snow! :-D

As I write this, I can see snow is still falling. We are at 0C/32F right now, so the snow is quite sticky. After today, it’s supposed to keep warming up, reaching 5C/41F within the week. In the 14 day forecast, we’re supposed to get as high as 8C/46F, but overall, it should remain pretty level. No extremes. Which is exactly what we need for the ground to thaw out and be able to absorb all that precious moisture. Both rain and snow are predicted, but not much of either, so that shouldn’t mess things up too much.

As much as I know it’s good to have the snow melt away slowly, I am still going to be very happy when it’s finally all gone!

The Re-Farmer

Catching up

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With things going a bit crazy for the past few days, then being able to spend the day with a friend, I’ve been a bit behind on my usual computer stuff.

The kitties were very happy to see me this morning. I spotted a dozen of them this morning. Their trays in the kibble house had been knocked about; my husband tells me that, from the sound and smell at about 4 am (he had a sleepless night, unfortunately), there was a run-in with a skunk. Even the sun room had been ransacked a bit, again. It will be good when we can close those doors up again, which we should be able to start doing soon, now that it’s supposed to get warmer.

Going through over 300 files from just the one trail cam, then making a video using all those deer images, took a lot longer than it should have. Partly because I don’t have very good video editing software. The “easy” software that came with my computer suddenly needs a driver update and wouldn’t let me export all the work I did. I didn’t have the time nor inclination to search out and download the driver, so I used some old movie making software I have. It allows me to do a lot more, but the “new” version of the software I got was so much less intuitive, and useful than the first version I bought, not to mention a massive resource hog, I never updated it again and hardly ever use it. I’m told there are others that are better, but I just haven’t been up to searching for something that meets my needs.

Still, it was enough to get the video made. Setting it to export into an uploadable file gave me enough time to make supper. :-/

This evening, I finally sat down to go through the email notifications for the blogs I follow, and even find a few direct emails and notifications, including donation notifications to the fundraiser for the Cat Lady (thank you!).

It took several hours to catch up. Granted, I did leave the computer a few times to do other things, but I did finally get it done. I even managed to get it done before 11pm! ;-)

As I write this, it’s now just past 11pm, and we have continued to warm up to -2C/28F. Considerably warmer than this morning! Or even this afternoon.

We’re supposed to drop down a degree overnight, but tomorrow we’re supposed to reach a high of 1C/34F We’re also supposed to get a bit of snow, but that forecast changed from an expected 5-10cm/2-4 inches, to 1-3cm/<1/2 – 1 inch, in total, through tonight and into tomorrow.

If all goes well, we should be able to make our big, monthly shopping trip to the city tomorrow, and stock up again.

Thankfully, my brother made the 1 1/2 hour trip on Sunday to visit our mother, early enough to go to church with her. He was able to help her do her grocery shopping and other errands. Normally, I would have, but with the septic issues we were having, I lost complete track of how long it had been since I last helped her with her groceries. Usually, I would have phoned to ask when she needed me to come over, but that was when we found the mess in the basement and started having to get the snow cleared and the septic guy in. I called her today and mentioned it, as why I hadn’t called about her shopping earlier. She told me she had thought we would do the errands on the day I took her to visit her sister in the nursing home, now that they are allowing visits without appointments again.

Which was a bit of a surprise to me, since when we last talked about it, she had said it could wait until the weather improved again, and we would talk about it later. There was no other timeline discussed.

She was also remarkably incurious about the septic issues we had. Also a bit odd, since such conversations usually involve her going over everything I did wrong and telling me how I should have done it, or telling me I should have gotten my brother to take care of it, and how sad it is that I “don’t have a man in the house” to take care of such things for me. I guess my husband being disabled means he stopped being a man. :-/ So I suppose it was a good thing that she didn’t care that we had to deal with septic backing into our basement for the third time in four years! Still, it was very unusual for her.

She did, however, find the time to chastise me for growing potatoes in bags last year, because that was something to maybe do in the city, but it was just stupid to do that out on the farm.

I don’t think she knows that I know about the very, very stupid thing we found out she did that hurt my brother so badly. But then, she still doesn’t realize that what she did was in any way wrong. My poor brother is still trying to fix the damage. It keeps him up at night from the stress. He’s told her that, and she’s completely oblivious.

My brother is such a saint.

I know I’ve said it before, but I am so incredibly glad he owns the property now. I’m also glad that our living here does relieve him of some of the stress and worry about keeping the place from from falling apart – and our vandal from stripping it bare even more that he already had. It’s very much a “win-win” arrangement we have with him, and he is a much better “landlord” than my mother was!

We have much to be thankful for, when it comes to living out here. Even if we do have to deal with unfortunate things coming up the drain in the basement, every now and then!

The Re-Farmer

What a wonderful day!

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Today has been such a great day!

And not just because we can use our plumbing again. :-D

When I checked the basement this morning, everything had dried up so much, I could unplug the blower fan. The house gets so dry in the winter, it doesn’t take long, even without the fan.

The highlight of my day, however, was being able to get together with a friend from out of province, who happened to be in town for a few days. We were set to meet for a late breakfast, and ended up spending many hours together. It was so fantastic.

This is also the first time I’ve eaten in a sit-down restaurant in more than 2 years. This wasn’t something we did often, to begin with, so when the restrictions started, many places refusing to recognise medical mask exemptions, and then organic humans getting segregated, it just wasn’t worth trying. We just did take out with the placed we new were on the green list, and will continue to stay away from the places that got on the black list.

It’s also been ages since I’ve had the chance to go to the lake, and where we were meeting was right near it.

The ice fishing huts are gone, but it looks like the ice driving track is still in use. Or perhaps those are the lanes to get to and from the huts. Normally, once the ice is thick enough to support the weight, this area has what looks like an entire village of fishing huts.

After my friend and I had a lovely breakfast, we checked out some of the shops that were open; there are a lot of “new” ones, and shops I remember are long gone. One of the “new” shops turned out to have been open for 3 years!

As you can tell, I don’t shop much.

We ended up spending quite a long time in one particular store and got to chatting with the owner, and I discovered we are “neighbours”. She has an amazing store but, unfortunately, it’s been very hard for them. It’s very much a tourist town so, like many shops, they pretty much close for the winter. They have a lot of really amazing clothing, including some in my size, so I will definitely need to come back when I have a clothing budget. Normally, I just by work clothes for myself, but it’s nice to have something not designed to survive heavy manual labour for a change. ;-)

We hung out together long enough that we ended up going for a late lunch together, too. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get together again before she has to leave.

Chadiccus was happy to see me when I got home!

I noticed their water bowls were frozen, and the heated bowl in the sun room was almost empty again. This morning, I looked out the bathroom window and saw one of the ‘iccuses curled up in the empty water bowl, sleeping! I’m glad they can use it to keep warm, but with the outside heated water bowl not working right now, and everything freezing again, I don’t want them to run out of water.

We’ll have to pop open the roof of the cat’s house again and check the cord. It looks plugged in at the outlet inside the cat’s house, when I look through the opening, but it may have been knocked loose by wrestling cats or something. The bowl itself appears completely undamaged.

While I was out galivanting with my friend, my daughters were hard at work at home, catching up on all the dishes we couldn’t get done until the septic and drain was dealt with. It was a huge job. It’s amazing to see how many dishes, pots and pans get used in just a couple of days, when you suddenly can’t wash them!

On top of all that, we are finally feeling warmer again, mostly because the winds have started to die down again. Starting tomorrow, we’re supposed to warm up to just around the freezing mark again for a few days, then it’s supposed to go above freezing and stay there.

In preparation for that, the municipalities have finished cutting a channel in the snow in one of the ditches that stretches from the highway near our place, all the way to the lake, to prevent flooding. Driving in town today, I noticed a lot of the paved roads are already torn apart by the freeze/thaw cycle. Driving on the gravel roads is already a combination game of “dodge the pothole” and “dodge the big rocks heaved out by frost”. It’s going to get muddy.

It’s going to be great. Everyone is SO done with winter right now!

The Re-Farmer

Who is this?

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I glanced out the bathroom window to see what cats were in the sun room, and …

…

Who is this??

The photo does not do justice to this massive brick of a cat.

I didn’t recognize him, but when the girls came down to see, they did. Apparently, he used to show up around the time Nicky the Nose used to, and would sometimes appear at their window. They remembered him partly because of he’s got the saddest expression ever.

I think we may be looking at Tissue’s daddy. :-D

Rolando Moon was in her spot in the window, while Potato Beetle was at the food bowls, and they were all quite chill with each other.

Huh.

I wonder if he will stick around?

The Re-Farmer

Winter’s last gasp?

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Counting today, we’re expected to have three cold days before the spring-like temperatures return.

Not that it’s particularly cold – until you step out into the wind!

The outside cats barely made an appearance this morning. They were far more interested in staying out of that wind!

The wind was mostly coming from the north, which meant stepping around the house to put seed out, was like walking into a wall.

A cold wall.

The path to the sign cam was pretty much blown in.

I paused this morning to check out the deer damage to the Chokecherry and Saskatoon bushes we uncovered while clearing out the invasive spirea at the edge of the spruce grove. Cleaning things up meant they got more sunlight and actually produced fruit during their first uncrowded summer, but now the deer can get at them. All the lower twigs are nibbled away, and there are many broken branches. And by “lower twigs”, I mean basically anything under about 7 feet. The deer can reach pretty high when they stand on their hind legs!

I wonder if these deer were among those causing damage?

I didn’t see any deer when I came out this morning. They’d already left. :-D

The winds are still high and it’s quite unpleasant out there.

Rolando Moon the Wise has staked out her spot in the sun room, where it’s much warmer and cozier! Not to mention, she has her own private food and water bowls. :-D

As for today, we’ve got a big project to work on. While doing the laundry last night, I came to the entry and found water all over the floor.

It wasn’t from the washing machine. At least not directly. It’s from the drain. I’ve long had concerns about it. When the water starts to drain, you can hear it flowing, but the tone changes until the sound stops. Basically, the water is draining out of the washing machine faster than the water is flowing through the pipes, and what I’ve been hearing is the water backing up until it reaches the end of the drain hose from the washing machine, and then you can no longer heard the water flowing. I’ve been keeping an eye on it, to see if it’s at risk of overflowing, but until now it’s been fine.

I did a larger “heavy duty” load last night, and it may have been just too much water this time.

So what I want to do is see if we can clear the drain a bit. Which means we have to move the washing machine.

The washer and dryer just fit between the built-in closet and the wall the taps are in. There are two steps from the entryway into the dining room, and the bottom step is several inches in front of the washing machine. Which is handy for short little me to stand on and reach the bottom of the washing machine, but it also means we can’t simply pull the washing machine straight out. In order to move the washing machine, we have to move out the dryer.

Since we have to move the machines out, anyhow, we’re going to clean up the mess we know is back there. The cats have been knocking things down off the shelves and, from the smell of it, they’ve been peeing back there, too. It’s just so difficult to get back there, we haven’t done it, yet. I would love to find some way to keep the cats from going back there, but no practical solution has come up yet.

I am not looking forward to this particular job. I’d almost rather be working outside, in the wind!

The Re-Farmer

Let’s play “count the kitties!”

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How many can you see in this photo?

(I’ll show where they all are, below.)

Once again, the kibble was all gone from the food trays, and I don’t think we can blame that piebald deer this time.

We did get some rain and a light snow last night, so we could see tracks all over the place.

These are kitty paw prints.

With their pretty little toe beans, well defined in the snow.

These are NOT kitty paw prints.

Check out those claws!!! Aside from the claws the paw prints are about the same size as most of the kitty prints.

These are from a skunk, and I found some tracks around the kibble house, too. I know for sure it was a skunk, because I saw it running around our driveway last night, on the garage cam’s live feed.

Skunks don’t go into total hibernation. It’s more of a “lethargic sleep” than full hibernation, and they do come out now and again, throughout the winter. February and March are their mating season, so not only would they be out in full, we’d have pregnant females by now, looking for food.

Speaking of food…

Did you find all twelve hungry kitties in the kibble house?

Tuxedo Mask is almost completely hidden by Creamsicle Jr, in the far right corner of the kibble house. I love that you can juuuust see the tips of his ears above Creamsicle’s back.

Then there’s one of the ‘iccuses peaking from behind the kibble house, at the tray on the ground.

Along with these twelve, there were three more in the sun room. Not quite all of the yard cats, but close!

The Re-Farmer

Strange bird!

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I spotted a strange bird in the trees, yesterday…

It seems to be a weird species of owl. :-D

Things continue to remain mild; I think last night was the first time we didn’t go below freezing, overnight.

This morning, there was no kibble at all left outside, and even the sun room bowls were empty, and the room was slightly ransacked. The outside heated water bowl was overturned, the there was still liquid water in the other bowls – and the hole in the ice left by the heated water bowl is full of water! That cats even seem to prefer drinking out of the ice bowl instead of the actual bowls. :-D

As expected, when I did my rounds, I found the new path dug to the fire pit had lots of new hoof and paw prints going back and forth. :-D

No digging today, though. Too wet. Supposedly, we’ve had rain today, though it seems to be one of those things that showed up on the weather radar, but not outside our window.

So today, I got some work done on an indoor project, which I will post about next. :-)

The Re-Farmer

We have a fire pit again!

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Today is turning out a bit cooler than yesterday.

The outside cats don’t mind at all, and have been widening their horizons. This morning, I only saw 10 of them, even though there was no kibble left in the kibble house at all. The warmer temperatures has them needing fewer calories to keep themselves going.

When I put seed out for the birds and deer, our three usual visitors took off. They seem to have formed an actual little herd together. The piebald has always been a loner until now, but the mother and her yearling seem to have accepted her as part of their group.

Even if they do still bicker over the seeds.

Since digging the path to the sign cam, I now head over to switch the memory card right after putting the seed down. The deer usually come back to the feeding station right away, so my going in that direction seemed to confuse them! They went onto the road, milled around the intersection, then ran off down a different road.

While I was switching out the memory card, I heard noises.

They were running back again! Then they stopped and watched me while I finished with the trail cam. As I walked back to the house, they came running along the road again. There’s one spot along the north fence they have been able to use to use to get into our yard, and that’s what they were heading for.

They’ve been in front of our living room window, on and off, ever since.

While things were still below freezing, I decided to keep working on the path to the fire pit.

This is as far as I got, yesterday. You can see the shape of the BBQ under the remains of the tent – and the piece of tree that fell on it!

The tent, not the BBQ. The tent protected both the picnic table and the BBQ from damage.

To the right, there’s a bar with a handle on it sticking out of the snow. That’s where the fire pit is. That handle is for the cooking grill.

This is why I didn’t want to wait until it was warmer. I’m standing on the cat path to the storage house to take this photo. There’s a low spot that fills with water, and it’s still too chilly for my rubber boots. ;-)

Here, I’m standing where the path curves, so the rest of it can be seen. I’d dug out most of the fire pit by this point. Yesterday, I had dug to just past the big maple tree.

We have a fire pit again! Yay!

Now that it’s uncovered, the sun should melt away the remaining snow in it rather quickly. There are two concrete blocks on the sides, and a the support for the cooking grill is in a half-block. Those will warm up quite a bit, once the sun hits them.

I don’t know where my parents got those glazed bricks around the fire pit. They are everywhere, and I don’t remember a time when we didn’t have them. I like them but, my goodness, they are dangerous! So incredibly slippery! I accidentally stepped on them more than a few times while shovelling, and almost lost my footing, every time.

The space around the fire pit still needs to be widened, so there’s room to set up chairs or even just stand around a fire and not be too close to it. From here, I’ll dig to the collapsed tent to access the BBQ and finally put the new over on it. The snow on the fire pit side of the tent isn’t as deep as around the other side.

There are a couple of large, hollowed out spaces under a nearby spruce tree. I think they are where deer had lain down in the snow.

Then a path needs to be dug to the wood pile.

Critters have already made their own path to the pile!

There’s a cover over most of the wood, so if we did want to do a cookout, we have dry wood available.

Here is the entire path, looking back towards the house.

There is something absolutely delightful about walking down these paths, through hip and waist deep snow. They’re like some sort of secret passageway!

I fully expect to see hoof and paw prints down here, soon. :-D

Now we just need an excuse to have a cook out! For the past few years, we’ve hardly been able to use the fire pit at all, due to dry conditions. Winter has been the only safe time to light a fire.

Hhhmmm… Now I’m thinking of what we’ve got that would do well, cooked over a fire… LOL

The Re-Farmer

Another beautiful day!

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Today was originally forecast to be only 0C/32F. Then the predictions were for us to be “5 degrees colder than yesterday’s high” – apparently we reached 8C/46F at some point!

Even as I was reading that on my app, we’d already surpassed that adjusted forecast, and as I write this, we have continued to warm up and are now at 6C/42F.

It’s awesome out there!

The outside cats are loving it.

I think the heated water bowl is working again. The metal bowls had iced over, though they weren’t frozen solid. The hole formed around the heated water bowl, however, was a pool was water. I’d chipped the ice and snow away from part of the cord so I could see if there was any damage (I couldn’t see any), so I had enough slack to move the bowl to a new location, out of the water. It had no ice in it at all.

We’ve been clearing snow off the winter sowing experiment as best we could. They all have holes in the tops for air circulation, but I did put snow inside them every now and then. That has completely melted away.

In comparing the 4 different types of containers, so far I like the milk just style (it’s actually a water jug) the least. The plastic is a lot softer, so if feels less stable, and the packing tape I used to hold the top and bottom halves no longer sticks to it. Other than that, they all seem to be responding to the light and temperatures the same, as far as I can tell. We’ll have a better idea of which type of container works best once the seeds start to germinate.

If the seeds start to germinate, I suppose!

Today is Saturday, which means the dump is open longer hours. Between the weather and vehicle troubles, we were way overdue for a dump run, and finally got it done today. The van was backed up closer to the people gate in the chain link fence for loading, but the packed snow of the driveway had softened so much, we almost got stuck trying to leave!

The part of the drive that bothered me the most, however, as the lane to the dump itself. I’m particularly paranoid when it times to tires. Between the vans we’ve had and my mother’s car, we’ve dealt with quite a few tire problems. I’ve had tires blow out on me on the highway. I’ve had to drive on a rim for blocks before finding a safe place to pull over. I’ve had tires suddenly and unexpectedly go flat on me (only one of which I could reasonably say was not vandalism). I’m far too familiar with how it feels to drive on a flat.

Driving down that lane was so rough, it felt like driving on 4 flat tires.

I was never so relieved to get back onto a muddy, pothole ridden gravel road than after we were done at the dump! :-D

Once at home, my daughter was sweet enough to take the time to clean the windows and lights on the van. They needed it!

I took advantage of the warmth and started digging out another new path. This time, towards the fire pit. In past winters, we were able to maintain paths around the entire house, a path to the fire pit, the area around the fire pit itself, and of course, a path to the wood pile.

This winter, even if we’d managed to start some of those paths, we couldn’t have maintained them. Maybe if the big snow blower was working, it would have been possible, but certainly not with little Spewie. There was just too much snow for that little electric machine.

One of the main reasons I want to clear a path to the fire pit is because the BBQ my brother gave us is there. We had a gazebo tent over it, but then a storm broke a tree branch on top of it, and the whole thing collapsed. It was still covering the BBQ and the picnic table, so we left it for the winter. My brother, however, bought us a new cover for it that is the right size; the one that was on it when they brought it over was for a smaller BBQ, and while we could get it to cover the important parts, the wind ended up tearing it to shreds, which is why I had it under the tent. So along with clearing the fire pit out, I want to be able to put the new cover on the BBQ, too.

This is going to be a multi-day job, though. For now, I just got a path about 2/3rds of the way to the fire pit. The warm weather is supposed to continue through into April, with the exception of 1 day that’s supposed to dip below freezing, so we’ll have plenty of good days to work on it.

The sun room, meanwhile, has been reaching almost 20C/68F during the day! The overnight temperatures are still a bit too chilly, but it’s going to be time to stop letting the outside cats have access to the room, now that their water outside is no longer freezing, and start prepping space for the seedling trays, and work out how to set up the new shop light.

I am so looking forward to being able to get more seeds started!

The Re-Farmer

A good day!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We are having another lovely, warm day today. Not as warm as yesterday ended up being, but still enough that things are melting.

Things are starting to look really messy and gross as the snow melts away to expose layers of dirt, but it’s so uplifting to finally feel “spring” happening, no one cares. Least of all the cats!

I checked the tracking on our Purolator package last night, and was happy to see that the replacement bands for our vacuum cleaner finally came in. I headed into town this afternoon to pick them up, which is when I saw the one unfortunate thing of the day. The first sign of trouble was when I saw two sets of headlights, side by side, coming towards me on the road – with a third vehicle on the side of the road in between. I started slowing down, of course, but so did the truck that was passing a car – which also pulled over to the side of the road!

When I saw the driver of the first vehicle on the side of the road get out and start walking around her car, I considered stopping to see if she was okay, but the truck stopped beside her to talk to her, so I kept going. Then I saw someone get out of the other vehicle that had just pulled over, which is when I spotted something on the road, across the lane.

It turned out to be a deer. The woman in the first car must have just hit it. The woman in the second car pulled it off the road.

This time of the year, we always see a LOT of deer crossing the roads. It makes driving unexpectedly dangerous.

Since I was in town to pick up our package anyhow, I made a quick stop at the grocery store. Bizarrely, the staff are still all wearing masks, as where most of the customers. Even outside, walking around by themselves. The psychological addiction can be very strong.

I was very happy to see one familiar face, though. A friend of mine that I used to work with, the last time we lived in this area, many years ago. She was just as pleased to see a face as I was. We chatted a bit about it, as well as the vaccine mandates that have also been lifted. Like us, she and her husband would be far more at risk from the vaccine than getting Covid, so the whole thing was very frustrating for them.

They have a farm to the north of us, so of course we started talking weather! Such a relief to see things melting. The amount of snow we got this year is not enough to make up for the last couple of years. Much will depend on spring. When she hears people complaining about how much snow we got this winter, her thought has been like mine: this is what our normal winter’s snow is! We needed more, to make up for last summer’s drought, and the conditions of year before. The response she usually gets to that has been comments on spring rains taking care of that, but she says we haven’t and spring rains around here for 7 years. Yes, we did get some last spring, before the heat waves hit, but nothing close to the average amounts. So these drought or near drought conditions have been around for quite a while now.

Of course, they garden as well, plus they have an assortment of animals. The cost of feed has been going up, and seed is running out. They’ve noticed lots of people diving into gardening as well, contributing to the supply shortages and increased prices (at least until the seed companies can catch up). As we were chatting, her husband joined us and commented on the cost of oats for human consumption. Seed oats cost over $17 a bushel right now. It used to cost about $3 a bushel!

Time to stock up on oatmeal while it’s still affordable!

Before I left the store, I picked up a lotto ticket. I figure if they can win the jackpot, so can I! :-D

Once at home, I opened up the vacuum cleaner and changed out the broken belt, and immediately started to vacuum my disgusting, disgusting floor. The carpet in my office/bedroom is a strange, felted sort of surface, and it probably 50 years old. It used to be in our living room, but when we got the current shag carpet put in, this one got slapped down on the floor of what used to be my parents’ bedroom, like a rug, with molding along the bottoms of the walls holding it in place. It’s severely stretched and lumpy-bumpy in places, and attracts dust, dirt and cat hair like nothing else I’ve ever seen! I was so thrilled to finally…

… break the new band on the vacuum cleaner.

It turned out I hadn’t quite lined the cover up right over the beater bar when I put it back.

I’m glad I got extra bands! If I break it again, there’s still a couple more.

It feels so good to finally have a red carpet again, instead of grey with cat hair. :-D

You know you’re getting old, when being able to vacuum a carpet is exciting.

Unfortunately, with the noise of the vacuum, all the cats ran off, including Butterscotch and Nosencrantz. Nosencrantz has started to explore the house more on her own, and has even visited the girls upstairs, but Butterscotch still hadn’t even shown an interest. Nosencrantz has made her way back and is settled down on my bed with several other cats, but not Butterscotch. Right now, I have no idea where she is!

Well, I guess that’s one way to get her to check out the rest of the house! :-D

The Re-Farmer