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
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
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
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
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
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
With all the yard work we’ve been doing over the past while, I’ve been really appreciating all the blooms.
The ornamental apple trees and plums are long since finished blooming, but now we have all sorts of flowers, scenting the air!
Right by the sun room door is this white rose. There are others in the flower garden, but they are not as prolific as this one is!
After clearing away the vines that had climbed up the lilacs by the people gate, I could finally see that they were blooming! I’m sure my mother told me, at some point, that these were white lilacs. Not that I can remember one way or the other! So it was a nice surprise. :-)
This is the huge lilac bush with teeny, tiny leaves and flowers, that I’d cleared a maple tree out of, earlier. I’ll need to go back to this garden and finish cleaning and clearing it. It, too, is inundated with vines! There are regular lilac bushes at the other end of this flower garden.
This is also technically the “front yard”, and the door in the middle of this side of the house is the front door. Which isn’t used. In fact, I still haven’t been able to open the screen door; it’s still stuck at the base, and I don’t want to force it and break something.
If all goes as planned, though, that is the door the ramp we hope to have added will be installed at. Depending on the dimensions, it may be necessary to remove this garden.
The post in the foreground had a bird feeder on it. I took it off after I turned away from pruning a branch and smacked right into it with my glasses, knocking them askew.
Thankfully, the base was designed to lift right off. It needs to be cleaned up and repaired, anyhow. :-)
In the big flower garden, off the old kitchen, is this honeysuckle bush, in full bloom! When talking to my mother about clearing this garden, one of the things she requested as to save this bush. It was being choked out by the invasive undergrowth!
I can see why she wants to keep it! :-)
The Re-Farmer
I roasted potatoes in yesterday’s cookout, and I thought I’d share. :-D
To make these, you will need;
Start by thoroughly scrubbing the unpeeled potatoes, then stabbing them all over with a fork.
For the butter and seasoning, you can use plain butter, then add coarse salt (how we usually do it), or you can make a flavored butter using whatever 
seasonings you like. This time, I added paprika, fresh ground pink Himalayan salt and fresh ground pepper, dill and garlic powder.
Generously cover the potatoes with the butter and seasonings. Tightly wrap each potato in a double thickness of heavy duty aluminum foil.
Don’t skimp on the foil. ;-)
Time to go outside!
Prep a small fire and let it burn down. When you have a layer of coals, place the foil wrapped potatoes directly on top of the hot coals.
Build the fire up again on top of the potatoes.
Enjoy your fire for about an hour, letting it burn down to coals. Gently move the foil wrapped potatoes out of the coals and remove to a container that can handle high temperatures.
The time is completely a judgement call. A lot depends on the size of the potatoes and how hot the fire gets. You might want to try for 45 minutes the first time you do it, and adjust for the next cookout.
Because there will be another cookout! :-D
Carefully unwrap the foil (I used two forks) and cut a potato in half.
As you can see, this potato was VERY well done! Which I’m okay with, as the skin serves as a bowl.
While the potato is cooling, roast some wieners over the fire.
Add flavorings to taste. I had some of the flavored butter used on the outside of the potatoes left, so I put some of that on one half, and sour cream on the other. Then I used a fork to mix in the flavorings, in the skin “bowl”.
I think, the next time we do this, I’ll roast 2 potatoes per person instead of one! It was SO good!
These can also be left to cool and eaten later. Just unwrap and reheat in the microwave, or chop into cubes to use to make hash browns, or to make a potato salad.
Enjoy! And please remember to exercise fire safety precautions, at all times.
The Re-Farmer
Today was very much an outdoors day!
Thanks to the AWESOME riding mower my brother and his wife gave us, I was able to finish mowing the yard yesterday. Which means that one of the goals of the day was to get out the weed trimmer to clear areas the mower can’t get close to.
A loud and messy job, so I waited until after our afternoon appointment with someone from the home care department. This was a follow up on the last visit, with a different person. So while we waited for her to arrive, I started working on cleaning up the flower bed on the west side of the house.
At one end of the flower bed, there is an unusual variety of lilac; it’s bushier, has tiny leaves, and masses of sprays with tiny flower buds right now; it’s blooming period seems quite a bit later than the other lilacs, which are near the end of their blooming period.
One of the problems with it is that there is a maple tree growing out the middle of it.
Plus, lots of dead branches.
So I started cleaning away dead branches and cutting away the many suckers at the base, just to get at the maple. Where I found this.
This is the trunk of the maple tree (which would have been self-sown), bent around a lilac stem.
I had to cut away more of the lilac before I could take out the maple, which had to be done in sections, due to the size.
It was very awkward work. The lilac stems are surprisingly long and bendy, and many were wrapped around each other. So much so, I found myself wondering if someone hadn’t done it deliberately at some point; perhaps they were overhanging the space between the house and the flower bed or something.
Once the maple was out, I could see the damage it did to the lilac.
I’d already had to cut away a branch of that stem, and I’m not sure if I’ll have to cut the rest of it away. Without being regularly pruned, the stems are so long that, without the dead and dying branches (and the maple tree) holding them up, they’re just sort of… flopping.
It was while I was working on this, that the woman from home care arrived.
While she was here, she went over her form questions, double checking my husband’s mobility needs and what we’ve got around the house. She even took a look at our bathroom (higher toilet, bath chair, lots of arm bars in the tub/shower, and we made sure to bring the special hand held shower with us when we moved; you can shut the water off at the handle, rather than at the wall, and it has an extra long hose). She asked about how he finds raising his legs over the side of the tub, and brought up that, if he ever needs it, there is a transfer chair available. Which we already have, as my father needed one, and it’s still quite new.
She checked out the hospital bed as well, confirming that my husband is now able to get in and out of bed without losing his balance. He’s really enjoying that thing, and finding it very comfortable to sleep on, too.
She also went through her list, asking about cooking, shopping, laundry, etc. If the girls and I were not around to take care of this stuff, he would be able to get home care to come in to help. As things stand now, it isn’t needed.
Which brought us to the only thing that we are hoping to be able to get; a ramp, to make it easier for my husband to get in and out of the house with his wheeled walker. One of the things we learned is that, if we were to qualify for a ramp, we would need to get a contractor to give us a quote to pass on to them. Qualifying for funding is another issue. I had found out about the program online and read that there is an income cut off that can change, so they said to contact to find out what it is. I’d sent an email and finally got a response.
Based on that, my husband’s disability payments put him at too high of an income to qualify. :-/
She’s still going to see if there are other programs available, but if we can just get someone to assess the location for us, and give us the information we need, then we will have something to go on to get it done ourselves, at some point.
So that meeting went well.
After she left, I headed back out to work on the yard. I just cleaned up the trimmings I’d cut down earlier, then got out the weed trimmer – and the two 100 ft extension cords we’d been using to get power to the garage. With those, I can reach pretty much anywhere in the yard.
While I worked on that, the girls cleared out the large pile of branches I’d cleared away from the maple grove. The dead stuff went to the piles by the fire pit, but most of it was green. The green wood pile by the fire pit is already getting big, so they decided to add to the pile I’d started outside the yard, when I cleared the back of the garage.
I didn’t think to take photos before I started with the weed trimmer in some areas. After going around the house, I went around the east yard, including clearing a path to the Saskatoon bushes. When I started working on the south west yard, I was finally able to go around parts of the “spare” house in the yard (I have no idea what my mother has in mind for that building; I did ask her, but the only answer I got was that it’s for storage. !! It was originally intended to be moved to one of the other quarter sections, for one of my brothers to use as a home), and the south fence line. There had been a single mowed pathway leading to around the back of the other house. There are several curved rows of spindly trees, planted close together. I’d asked my mom about them, and she told me she planted them to be a “living fence.”
Personally, I’d like to get rid of them, as it’s really not a good place for trees. I don’t think she really thought about what they will be like, at full size.
And that doesn’t even include the two rows of fully grown trees immediately behind the other house.
Very little of the area is mowable, and no one has tried to clear in between the trees, at all. So I started clearing parts of it with the weed trimmer. There isn’t much I can do behind the other house, until we clear away the junk and fallen branches, and random cinder blocks. :-/ It’s a big job, and I wasn’t able to finish it today. Weather willing, I’ll continue tomorrow.
Once done the yard work for the day, I decided we needed to have another cookout. This time, though, I did baked potatoes.
I will post about those, separately. :-D
My husband was even able to come out and join us for a little while. Not long enough for the potatoes of finish, unfortunately, but even a little bit is good. :-)
After the fire was no longer needed to cook food, my younger daughter and I took advantage of it and started adding more from the clean up pile. Unfortunately, we seem to be adding to it much faster than we’ll be able to use it for fire pit fuel! :-D
Since we were tending the fire, anyway, we also took turns cutting down some of the logs to fire pit size lengths.
We’re going to be set for wood for a good, long time!
We’ll just have to find lots of reasons to get the fire pit going, I guess. :-D
The Re-Farmer
Last night, we decided to take advantage of the lovely evening, and have our first wiener 
roast of the year! :-D
When I was a kid, we used to have these quite often. I would go into the bush with a machete-type knife (we even found it while packing away my parents’ stuff!) and cut dogwood branches for roasting sticks. They were perfect for it, naturally growing long, straight and supple. Sometimes, I could get ones with a perfect Y shape. The bark came off easily, and I would strip off the top several inches, then sharpen them to points.
At the end of the day, we’d get a fire going, roast wieners and stuff our faces with hot dogs, then finish off with marshmallows. When we were done eating, it would be quite dark, and we would start burning our roasting sticks until the tips were glowing, then wave them around in the dark, using the red tips to create shapes of light in the air.
Sometimes, my parents hosted parties, and their friends from the city would come out with their kids, and there would be dozens of people all over. Most of the time, though, it was just us kids. We had a blast!
Thanks to the burning my daughter and I did earlier, when I cleared the yard to mow the lawn, I had a nice pile of sticks ready to set up for a fire. We brought the hose (of course) and chairs. We were thinking of moving the picnic table over, but it’s in serious need of cleaning, so the girls brought out one of our small folding tables, instead.
We’re going to have to invest in metal roasting forks soon. I picked up a package of wooden roasting sticks along with the S’mores kit, and they are a bit too flammable and bouncy! :-D
I had hoped my husband could join us, even if just to sit on his walker while we roasted wieners for him, but he had to lie down for the night, before we even started. :-(
It got to watch a beautiful sunset while we set up and got the fire going.
I’m going to have to get out there with the weed trimmer. *L*
The outside cats were all over the place, checking out what we were doing! Rolando Moon staked out a spot on the log pile to watch us. The hose sprays water at where two hoses join, and at the nozzle, and the cats played with the spray!
At one point, while I was sitting and eating, Rolando Moon actually jumped up onto my knee! That’s a first. Even the friendliest ones are still quite stand offish, so this is a big step in at least Rolando Moon’s comfort levels with us.
Ah… perfect for toasting those wieners!
We made some S’mores – that’s something we never did when I was a kid. I didn’t even hear of them until after I had my own kids.
I find I really enjoy toasting marshmallows, and getting that perfect state of golden brown on the outside, and all melty on the inside.
Problem with that is, I don’t actually enjoy eating them. Too sweet!
None of us are all that big on sweets, so while the hot dogs disappeared quickly, there’s still lots of S’more making supplies! :-D
Best part was, the entire night, we only saw one mosquito!
There is at least that one benefit to the dry spring we had!
After a while, we just hung out to watch the fire die down.
I hope we will be able to do this often. Even if we don’t have wiener roasts, to at least get a fire going and enjoy the evening. We have a lot of wood we need to use up, and will be adding more as the clean up continues, so why not? :-D
It was a fantastic evening!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 