The goldfinches are back, taking the opportunity for some easy feeding!
photo of the day
Feeder Discovered
We haven’t seen a lot of bird action at the bird feeder stand we’ve moved outside our living room window. The odd nuthatch would show up on the platform, or a blue jay would land on the hook for the hanging feeder, but that was about it.
Today, some goldfinches discovered it, and my husband was able to get some photos. :-)
Next time we do our big shopping, we’ll pick up a bag of mixed birdseed, and see what else shows up! :-)
The Re-Farmer
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Clean Up: Firepit area gate
After cleaning up in the bushes near the fire pit yesterday, today’s goal was to access the gate by the fire pit, before continuing in that area. We needed someplace to pile the wood we’re cleaning out.
Before I could start on that, though, my younger daughter and I made a trip into town. She had dropped off some resumes a few days ago. The next day, one place called back, but she was with me at the shop with the mower, so they asked her to call back the next day.
That was yesterday. They booked an interview with her for this morning.
And by “interview”, it turned out they meant, “what hours can you work and here are your free t-shirts.”
Starting next week, my daughter begins training as a cashier at the grocery store we usually shop at. :-D
That was a nice way to start the day!
So I didn’t get started on accessing the gate until this afternoon.
Here is what it looked like before.
The far end of the gate is completely hidden by overgrown lilacs, caraganas and a maple tree.
The picket fence thing that was there appeared to be attached to the barb wire gate only by this length of wire, twisted around, and one section of the top barb wire looped around a board. So it wasn’t going to take much to separate them.
But first, I needed to clear the gate post.
Most of what I had to clear away was from a lilac bush, including a lot of dead branches and stems. My mother likely planted it there, so I didn’t want to cut it all away. The maple would have seeded itself, and likely the caragana as well.
I’ve left most of the caragana for now, but when it comes time to take down the two dead spruce trees, we might have to cut those back more. We shall see when the time comes.
That done, I could open the barb wire gate.
The closure of which promptly broke in my hands.
All the wood there is really quite rotten.
Some of the barb wire has come loose from the posts. The fence part also had boards coming loose. It’s all really quite rotten.
Have I mentioned that much of the wood around here is really old and rotten? I think I might have… ;-)
It took some doing to get the fence part loose. Hidden in the tall grass were fallen branches that had to be moved, and the grass itself – including years of thatch – had a good grip on the bottom of it!
I decided to leave the fence part like this for now, so that it’s visible. There are so many nails in that thing, I don’t want to take any chances of someone stepping on it.
Speaking of nails, it turned out that part of the fence was indeed attached, by wire, to the gate post. This length of board, however, was no longer attached to the fence part. Even with all those nails!
I count 20.
While getting all this open, I could see something blue peaking through the grass. Once done, I yanked it out to see what it was.
It seems to be a bell for a child’s bike.
Why was it there, and how many years as has it been there?
That done, I moved the barb wire gate to the outside of the yard, then cleaned up all the cut wood from clearing the gate, plus the pile from yesterday.
Since I had all that handy wood, I fixed the broken closure on the gate.
Here is the after picture.
There’s going to be a lot more to be added to the pile over the next while, so I am leaving the gate open for now.
All of this was about two hours of work. Not too shabby! I’ve stopped for the afternoon, though. I plan to continue where I left off yesterday, but we were getting into the hotted part of the day, so I will wait until the early evening, when it starts to get cooler. Now that this is done, I’ll be able to clean things up right away, too.
I placed the pile far enough away to completely clear the open gate, plus leave room to access the fence, if necessary. Seeing the fence from this side, I was reminded that, at some point, it would be good to re-fence the entire house yard. All of it, including the fence lines that are bordered by roads, if possible. I say “if possible” because they are so full of trees, and my mother’s lilac border along the garden section. It would be good to have something other than barbed wire fencing and gates! I would still want to have a gate here, by the fire pit, and the one by the garden. I’d even like to add another gate to the south fence line, so that we could drive into the yard at one end, then out again at the other.
Hmmm. Thinking of it that way, it might just be easier to build a new fence on the other side of the driveway. And if we do that, may as well extend to the fence that’s keeping the renter’s cows out. Get rid of the current house yard fencing, completely. Wow. That would really extend the size of our yard!
That, however, is likely many years into the future. Still, it’s something we can talk about and plan for.
Later.
I have to keep reminding myself. This year is our “figure it out” year, and the focus for now is on the house and yard.
That is plenty of work all on its own! :-)
The Re-Farmer
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Look what I found
Yesterday, I’d done the south lawns, including along the fence line and behind the “spare” house (more as a space to turn around with the mower, than to cut anything, since there’s barely any grass there).
Today, I set aside hoses, picked up branches, and so on, before I finished mowing the rest of the lawn.
Later, I went back behind the other house to see if I could get down some more of the dead branches. A lot of it involved simply reaching up with the extended pruning saw, which has a hook at the point, grabbing onto an attached dead branch, or dangling broken branch, and yanking until it fell to the ground.
I even remembered to take a picture of how it looks, after my daughters did such a great job raking up under there.
Which is when I found this.
The branch is so big, I actually missed it at first, thinking it was just another part of a tree. Nope. A big ole branch broke, some time after I’d mowed here yesterday, and was hung up in the other trees.
I couldn’t even tell which tree it came from.
In the picture, you can just see the power line that goes from the other house, to the pump shack (which isn’t hooked up now, thank God!). It wasn’t on the power line, but the branch that it was stuck on, is just above the power line.
Once again, I used the extended pruning saw to grab and yank it down, though I did have to cut down a branch from the tree outside the yard that was hanging over the fence, and in the way.
Finding stuff like this is why I’m on such a drive to get the dead and dying branches down, as much as possible. We’ve got entire trees that are ready to come down, almost on their own. One is right in this area, in fact; I cut away some of the lower branches that I kept getting hung up on, and the entire tree was shaking and making cracking noises at the base. I could probably push it right over, if it wouldn’t fall directly on that power line I mentioned earlier.
After this, I did some other clean up in the yard, but I will post about it later. After I shower. I keep finding little bits of dead tree stuck in my hair!
The Re-Farmer
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I’ve Been Rolando Mooned!
We’ve noticed that, when we get the fire pit going, Rolando Moon likes to hang around.
Last night, she decided she really wanted my hot dog.
When she couldn’t get it, she demanded neck skritshes, instead.
It was either that, or she’d fall right off me!
(photos taken by my daughters)
The Re-Farmer
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There be Cows Here!
We had a nice rain today and, when it was down to a drizzle, the girls decided this was a good, safe time to get the fire pit going and burn down the pile of wood we had in it.
Then we had a cook out. Because, why not?
While we were out, I could hear the sounds of cows mooing. Not unusual, except that the sounds were much closer.
Like, really close.
This is taken from the gate beside the fire bit.
My mom rents most of the land out to someone, including the other quarter section. He’s had his cows grazing there for a while, and now they are here.
While we had the fire going, even though it was still kind of raining, I couldn’t help but work on the area near the fire pit, cleaning up the area next to the log cabin that’s got a collapsed roof. There were a lot of dead branches to clean up, plus saplings to trim away, etc. More stuff for the fire pit! :-)
The roof of the cabin is decidedly interesting.
That is a lot of nails.
This would be the remains of one of the trusses.
This board would have had shingles nailed to it. They were all wooden shingles, most of which seem to be gone, now, leaving their nails behind. !!
We also had a squirrel go onto the roof, where it seemed to find something to eat among the pieces of fallen roof!
My head just clears that truss piece, as I walked back and forth under it, making my daughters very nervous! :-D
As I was cleaning up along here, grabbing dead branches and dragging them out, the toe of my shoe caught on something under the decaying leaves along the wall, and I almost tripped. Going back to pick up what I got caught on, I found it was a piece of board.
With nails in it.
Pointing down, thankfully.
I pulled more boards up out of the decayed leaves, also with nails in them, until the girls insisted I stop working in there.
Cleaning up under there is going to have to be a very careful job!
After we had our cook out, I stayed outside to burn more of the wood pile. While there, I started to hear strange metal noises coming from the barn.
I knew exactly what it was.
I got my younger daughter to tend the fire for me, while I went to check on the cows.
Who, for some reason, decided they needed to graze around this collapsed shed, with all the sheets of metal lying about. They were walking over the metal, and that’s the sound I was hearing.
They didn’t like me coming over and were already moving away when I took this picture.
The wire in the foreground is an electrified gate. There are two of them the renter puts up before he brings the cows over, so they don’t go into the house area; this one by the barn, and another closer to where the cows were in top photo.
With the electrified wire there, I went through the barn to get to where the cows where.
I moved things around as best I could but I’d really rather fence this area off until we can get this stuff hauled away and cleaned up. There’s little I can do about it. Some of the metal bits and pieces could not be picked up and moved, so I used sheets of tin to cover them as much as I could, then adding whatever I could on top, to prevent the wind from blowing them away.
On the far side, I stepped on something that felt like a potential problem. It turned out to be part of fence wire that was likely rolled up and left there. Except it was there for so long, it was now covered in ground and I could not pull it up. It was completely hidden in the grass, and a definite risk to hooves! So I covered it with sheets of metal, then dragged a metal headboard out of the pile (I have no clue why anything like that would be there!) and tossed that on top, both to weight it down, and to make it more visible.
I really look forward to when we can start getting rid of piles like this. It might be a few years before we get to the stuff on this side of the fence, though.
The Re-Farmer
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Ready to Go, and a nice surprise
Today, my older daughter and I confirmed that the mower would fit in the back of our van, took out the seats, emptied it of my crates of supplies (we kept the emergency kit and cooler of van water, though), and loaded it up.
I won’t be taking it to the shop until they open on Tuesday. I had thought of dropping it off tomorrow, but my brother tells me they don’t have a secure drop off point.
Which means the mower, with an almost full tank of gas, will be in the van for two nights and a day, in the heat we are having again.
I made sure to open the windows a fair bit. Plus, we still haven’t replaced the handle on the garage door (I finally got some replacement cable for it), so it’s wide open. No chance of accumulated fumes.
Earlier in the day, I went into town with my younger daughter so she could drop off some resumes, and we could pick up a few things at the grocery store. There’s a hardware store next to it, so I popped over for a bit. Turns out they don’t have fan rakes, but they did have metal roasting sticks. So I picked up a few for our next cook out. :-)
My mom called while we were out, so I called her back as soon as we got home. She was wondering how we were doing in this heat (we were hovering around 30C today), and telling us that if we open the basement doors, we would get cool air. I remember doing that, when I was growing up here. It works very well. Unfortunately, we can’t do that until we’ve cleaned up the basements. The old part basement is pretty good, but the new part basement is filled with all sorts of breakable things (years of accumulated jars and booze bottles, spare florescent light tubes, etc.), and way too many hidey holes that the cats would get into.
While we were talking, I told her about the different areas I’ve been working on. I found out that she did, indeed, deliberately plant those little spruce trees at the fence line. Why there, I ask her. Where else? she answers. :-D So I bring up that, when the trees are full grown, they will destroy the fence. Oh, by the time they’re that big, she says, it won’t matter. I think she was implying the fence would be old, or would be replaced before then? I’m not sure. I told her I will be transplanting them, once I find a good place of them. Much to my surprise, she just said not to worry about them for now. Considering that, earlier in the conversation, when I told her I cleaned up around her white lilacs, she thought that meant I had cut them down, this is a good thing. :-D
Then I mentioned wanting to clean up the bushes growing around the other house.
In the past, these false spirea had covered the old stairs on both sides, as the wood rotted away. I remember this because, when we made a road trip to visit family after getting our first van, I had tried to go to the door and a step gave out under me! Now there are nice strong steps, and I want to keep them well maintained.
Which means cutting back the spirea. Plus, I’ll be thinning away the dead branches, etc.
As I tell my mother this, she asks me how her vines are doing.
Vines?
All I could think of were the vines I’ve been finding all over the place, choking out trees and bushes.
No. Vines. She had planted them by the steps. How are they doing?
Well, I did notice what appeared to be dead vines in the spirea, which I thought were the same vines I’ve been getting rid of all over. That was not what she was talking about.
Then she mentioned she’d actually picked from them.
Picked what? Berries? I had no idea what she was talking about. The only vines I’ve seen don’t have berries.
Finally, she remembered the English word for them; grapes.
We have grapes?!?
That’s on my list of food plants, too, but at the bottom of the list, since they need a lot more tending than most plants.
I told her I didn’t remember seeing any, and perhaps the spirea had choked them out? I told her I would check.
Which I did.
Lo and behold, there are, indeed, vines growing that aren’t the ones we’ve been fighting for the past while.
Not only that…
… there are even little baby grapes started!
I will have to ask my mom if she remembers what kind they are, so I can look up how to properly care for them. There are not a lot of varieties of grapes that are hardy enough for our growing zone, so even if she doesn’t, I should be able to figure it out.
I do know that they shouldn’t be the way they are now! If possible, I would want to transplant them to the fence, which can be used as a trellis, and they will have full sun. With judicious care, we should be able to get good harvests of grapes from them.
Oh, I am suddenly quite excited! I had no idea my mother had ever planted grapes! She’d simply never mentioned them before.
I filled in my mother about all sorts of things, from what the electric company told me about clearing the trees, and my wanting to get a quote for the job, so we know what to budget for, to progress on the flower gardens. She had a hard time understanding some of what I was telling her, sometimes. She has what she’s always done so firm in her mind, it’s hard for her to picture something different, just from a description. But it was a good conversation, overall, even if she doesn’t seem quite sure about what I am doing. When it gets to a certain point, though, she starts talking about how this is all men’s work, so she will talk to my older brother about it, so he can take care of it. We got to that point in the conversation, but I didn’t mind too much at all, since she started talking about how good my dad was about taking care of things, and how he understood electricity and plumbing and so on. Then she started talking about how women’s work was housekeeping and so on, and I just kept saying, no. Nope. No. Until she started to say, well, that’s how she and my dad did things, and that worked for them, but others might do it differently.
Yay, Mom! That right there was a HUGE step for her, and I am so proud of her. :-)
It was a good conversation.
Later on, while talking to my older brother, he told me he’d just talked to our mom as well. At one point during their conversation, he told me that my mom expressed her satisfaction with how we are taking care of the place.
She would never tell me that to my face, of course, but I don’t expect her to. For her to say it to my brother, however, is another HUGE step, and I am so proud of her. :-)
I am happy that we are able to take care of this place for her. It takes a big burden off of her shoulders, and it’s been pretty good for us, too (as much as possible, under the circumstances! :-D ). She was having a hard time with letting go, which is understandable. If she is reaching the point where she is able to start trusting that we know what we’re doing, even if it’s different than how she did things, that will also reduce stress for her.
Win, win! :-)
The Re-Farmer
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Little Critter Friends
I thought I got some pictures of how the area near the firepit looks, after my daughters raked, but apparently, I didn’t.
So, instead, I stole a couple of pictures my older daughter took. :-D
While they were raking, they got visited by two wood frogs. This one, and one that jumped right into a downspout. I neglected to steal her pictures of a blurry frog butt in a tunnel. ;-)
She also managed to get a good picture of one of these guys…
They have a distinctively shrimp-like body, and are really big! They are also hard to get pictures of, they move so much. They just LOVE this lilac bush by the house. They are Snowberry Clearwing Moths, also called hummingbird moths. They do sound like hummingbirds, and are almost as big as the one variety of hummingbirds we have in our area.
Meanwhile, I added the bird seed I found to the feeder and stand we’ve put near the living room window. The birds are just starting to discover it, and I hope to get photos, soon. I also saw a deer last night, just quickly passing through our yard. All I managed was one blurry photo before it ran off. Good to know they are still willing to come by, even with all the yard activity these days. :-)
The Re-Farmer
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Lilacs and Lenses
A bit of an experiment for the day.
Most of the photos I take are done with my phone’s camera; for the most part, I leave the DSLR on the tripod at the living room window, with our 70-300mm lens on it, to take pictures of the deer and birds. Things are quiet out there this time of year, so it’s been sitting idle.
This morning, I decided to grab it and get some flower photos. I put on an 18-55mm lens, then took a few more shots with the 70-300mm lens back on.
Much to my surprise, there is quite a noticeable difference in the pictures, with the big lens looking much better. Part of the surprise is that, with the big lens, I had to step quite far back from the subject, just for the camera to be able to focus (another time, I’ll break out the macro lens). My hands tend to shake, which can really affect photos taken with a bigger lens. So I fully expected the photos with the smaller lens to be clearer.
Here is a comparison. Aside from resizing the photos and adding the text and frame, they are untouched. No post processing.
This one was taken with the 18-55mm lens.
It’s certainly a pretty photo (that lilac tree is just a mass of flowers right now!). I would have preferred crisper focus; that softness was not deliberate, but the result of my hand shake. Still, the softness is nice, too.
Here is the one taken with the 70-300mm lens.
The focal points are much sharper. Even though I had to stand further back and zoom in more to get photos, it was unaffected by my hand shake. The 70-300mm is a newer, faster, lens than the 18-55mm that we have.
I’m happy with both, but it was interesting to see the differences.
The Re-Farmer
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Oh, the things we find!
Today ended up being one of those days where nothing really happened as I intended.
First off, I decided we needed to take a day off yard work. As much as I love it, I knew I was pushing myself harder than I should. I need to remind myself that I am still broken, even if I happen to be feeling great on any particular day. If I overdo it, I’ll wipe myself out for days, and I don’t want to do that!
So I was going to finally start packing up the sun room of my parents’ things, starting after I went into town to pick up some prescription refills. My younger daughter came along, to drop off resumes and play Pokemon Go. :-D We were just getting ready to head home when I get a text from my older brother; he was just passing through the town our mom lives in, and on his way to do some work on the barn, in preparation of the electricity to be hooked up again.
He got there before we did. :-D
So I ended up hanging out with him and helping as much as I could. Being the sort he is, once he finished on the barn, he decided to patch the roof of the shed near it. That turned out to be a huge job, and that was just to patch one of the holes. Also near the barn is a collapsed building and sheets of metal roofing material that he had to scavenge to get the job done.
Part way though, I had to leave to do a dump run. The summer hours for Thursdays is now a lot later than it was during the winter. When we’d got back from town, the girls and I loaded the back of the van with our garbage, so it was sitting there in the heat. Definitely a good thing I didn’t decide to wait until Saturday!
After patching the roof, we came in to have the supper my daughters prepared, and then it was back out to fix one more thing before he headed home. He wanted to replace a melted, broken plug in the pump shack, so that we could have power in the storage shed we’re putting all of my parents’ stuff in.
While we were there, I couldn’t help but look around at all the stuff in there, that’s been sitting for years.
Which is when I noticed this bottle, way up near the rafters.
I tried to get a picture of the label, and enhanced it as well as I know how to do.
It’s still hard to read, but I can make out most of it.
I had to laugh when I got to the end. For horses, cattle, hogs and sheep, too! That’s some all purpose stuff, right there! :-D
Oh, and while we were there, I asked about the old wood cook stove that was in the pump shack. It turned out it’s at my brother’s place. It seems someone spilled battery acid on it, so he took it before it got damaged even worse! I was very happy to hear it was with him.
The electric pole did not get delivered today, so we will be expecting it tomorrow. Now that my brother is finished with what he needed to do at the barn, everything is ready.
It will be so good to have that over and done with!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 