After how bloody and swollen he was after his spay yesterday, then disappearing when the cleaned out isolation shelter was dry and ready to hold him for the night, I honestly would not have been surprised if he didn’t make it. Instead, when I came out to do the feeding this morning, there he was, mostly cleaned up, among the cats swirling under my feed, very eager for food!
I just came back from the evening feeding. He is doing very well – but it’s so hot out there, most of the food I set out this morning was still uneaten! No appetites in this heat, that’s for sure. They have plenty of water available, and plenty of shade, and we have cat puddles all over the place.
One of the things I did today was pick up the trees at the post office.
I haven’t bothered to open the box, yet. It’s in the living room, where the air conditioner is, and no cats to try to tear into it.
The house is cooler – we’ve got the AC, my husband and I have box fans in our rooms, and the girls have their AC in their upstairs apartment. They also managed to get the old basement door to open (the knob needs replacing) and the wire mesh door we made for it is set up, allowing air circulation from the cooler basement.
The old basement is damp enough that I got two blowers and an oscillating fan going. The new basement has weeping tile but, after a rain barrel was allowed to overflow the summer before we moved here, the corner where that barrel was still gets damp, so I’ve got an oscillating fan on that corner, too. I still need to set up the summer window in the old basement, which is a combination of wire mesh and window screen, so no critters can get through. The extra air circulation will help with the dampness in that basement, too.
With the sump pump going off fairly regularly, and the hose set up to drain under a bed in the old kitchen garden, it means our tiny bok choy, beets and parsnips will get watered from below, too.
The heat was still getting to me and I ended up going down for a nap in the living room, with the AC running, for an hour and a half – I set a timer this time – shortly after lunch.
Then I went into the new basement. With all the transplants now outside, I cleared the set up that was on my work table, putting the full spectrum lights away (now I suddenly can’t remember if I shut off the shop light…). This gave me room to re-organize my seed packets and think about what I can direct sow, now that the soil temperatures are more than warm enough. Normally, I wouldn’t sow these things for another week, but the soil thermometer I picked up tells me the soil is ready, and the long range forecast shows no sign of frost. With all the protective netting I’ve been setting up, though, if there was a possibility of frost, I would be able to cover the beds that need it with cloth.
After going through my seeds, I set aside a number of packets into a separate bin, as thinks I can potentially direct sow in the next few days.
No, I won’t be sowing everything in that bin! The second picture shows part of why. Granted, that’s in the sun room, but still…
Most of what’s going into the garden beds will be transplants. I don’t actually have a lot to direct sow.
In the high raised bed, I will be planting bush beans, interplanted with onion transplants. I will be planting pole beans in the middle of the bed that has the daikon radish and white turnips winter sown into it.
The flower bed at the end of the high raised bed will have cosmos and nasturtiums transplanted into it. I have marigolds to transplant among the vegetable beds, but I also plan to direct sow more. I have bachelor’s button and other flowers I’d like to direct sow, but I’m not sure where, yet.
There is a space in the trellis bed that should have room to transplant cucumbers into it – if we have any to transplant. I do have the bi-colour pear gourds, though. I might transplant those, instead. There is also enough space between where the carrots are planted (I still can’t tell if we have any, after the second sowing) to direct sow something that isn’t too large and bushy.
One of the empty beds in the main garden area is meant to have some tomatoes, plus the celery and peppers transplanted into it. Onions will be interplanted among them. There aren’t a lot of surviving peppers, though. The spacing I have will determine what I will direct sow there. These are long beds and I might have extra space for the celery. They are a short season variety I could potentially direct sow more of.
Another bed, where the garlic was planted last year, is meant for squash or melons, but after the tray of winter squash, melons and cucumbers got decimated by something in the basement, it will be a while before the new seeds even germinate, never mind be ready for transplant.
I have two varieties short season corn to direct sow, but the area they are going in still needs to be uncovered and prepared. If we have any that survived, I hope to interplant winter squash transplants, or direct sow pole beans among them.
The bed along the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden will be direct sown with summer squash. I have 5 varieties to plant, possibly 6, if I have the space. That bed still needs to have hoops to hold protective netting set up over it, though.
In the newly finished bed I have at the chain link fence, I am looking to transplant winter squash and melons – if the new seeds replacing the eaten ones germinate and survive! I might end up buying transplants at some point, but I don’t know if it’s necessary, yet.
Among the other seeds I will sow as I find space are things like fern leaf dill, which I plan to treat as a perennial, and other varieties of peas and beans, including garbanzo beans, though those might wait until next year. The Caspar eggplant transplants don’t look very robust, but they are a short season variety, so I might direct sow more along with the transplants, just so see how that will work out.
With the heat holding on for so long in the day, I expect to only get the evening watering done tonight. I will try to get up earlier tomorrow and see what I can get done before it gets too hot out there. The highs are supposed to very slowly get “cooler”; starting tomorrow, we’re expected to be below 30C/86F for the next while. One of my apps says to expect rain starting Tuesday night (today is Friday), thunderstorms on Wednesday, and rain continuing through Thursday morning.
Right now, at almost 7:30pm, we’ve finally dropped to 28C/82F, though the “real feel” is still 29C/84F.
Time to find the bug spray and do the evening watering!
I started things off a bit early, and it was still lovely and cool. My priority, after I did my morning rounds, was to water the garden beds before the heat hit.
I’m happy to say that I am seeing new sprouts in the rows of spinach, chard, turnips and radish in the main garden area. I checked under the boards in the trellis bed and saw what might be carrot sprouts, so I removed the boards. It’s hard to say for sure, as a lot of weeds were trying to come up under there, too.
I’m pretty sure I saw new sprouts in the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, too. I’m pretty sure I’m seeing tiny bok choy and beet seedlings through the mosquito netting, thought it’s hard to be sure. I didn’t see any this morning, but this evening, I’m sure I could see the first dwarf pea sprouts!
After I finished outside, I came in and had breakfast, then tried to go down for a nap before I planned to visit my mother, then pick up anything we needed before doing our first stock up shop, tomorrow.
It was a failure.
For some reason, both Butterscotch and Cheddar have decided that, when I lie down, they absolutely MUST cuddle my head. Aggressively. Then curling up right at my head to nap themselves.
That doesn’t count the other cats that like to settle on my hip, against my back or on either side of my legs.
*sigh*
Next time, I’ll try napping on the couch. The living room is a cat free zone.
I eventually gave up and got ready to head into town. Before I did, I noted activity notification on my bank app and checked.
My husband’s tax return, which is supposed to include my first Disability Tax Credit, came in.
It was short by about $2500.
Unfortunately, my husband still can’t log into his CRA account to see why. I’m going to have to wait until our tax prepared is back from holidays at the end of the month and phone her, because she can log in and see his account – and maybe find out why he can’t log in, himself. anymore!
My younger daughter never got her disability tax credit, either. She did her taxes herself.
Frustrating.
Anyhow.
I headed into town and realized my mother would be just starting her lunch, so I decided to go to the grocery store, first. I actually picked up some ground beef that was on sale. I haven’t seen ground beef for under $6 a pound for a long time, even with sales.
My visit with my mother was pretty good. As I was headed to her room, I spotted her in the dining room and popped in. We then went to her room for the visit.
She is so enjoying having a room – and a bathroom – to herself! She says being in the nursing home, compared to the TCU, is like night and day.
Of course, she still had things to complain about. With her medications, as usual. Apparently someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time? Then the count for her morning meds was off. She said she asked who was in charge of the medications and was told it was the pharmacy in town. I suspect the person didn’t understand what my mother was asking, but she now believes the pharmacy decides what medications she gets, at their whim. She then started going on about how the staff all think she is stupid, and everyone living there is stupid, and that’s why they are deliberately messing with their medications.
*sigh*
She had asked my brother for a radio and he’d given me one to pass on to her. I plugged it in and tried to find the station she told me the number of. There was nothing on either AM or FM (she didn’t know which is was; she doesn’t understand anything about AM or FM). Since I couldn’t pick up her station (though I could pick up others), she decided it was a bad radio and started asking me if an old radio that belonged to my husband when we were in high school – a ghetto blaster, which tells you just how old it is! – was still around. It is, but I told her, it still won’t pick up that station. I tried to explain again about things interfering with frequencies, but she decided it meant that the radio stations were the problem, for having “weak” signals.
Then I tried to show her the sliding switch that goes from off to FM then AM. She demanded “just show me what button to push”. I told her, it’s not a button. It’s a switch that slides, and showed her again; Off – FM – AM.
She got angry that my brother would give her a high tech radio that she can’t understand.
*sigh*
It was a shorter visit, since there really wasn’t much we had to talk about. Now that she is in town, I can visit her more often, anyhow. Before I left, I spent some time at the nursing station. I explained what my mother told me about the medications, and that someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time. She was startled to hear that and said she would look into it. She got out the medication binder and looked up my mother’s file, going over everything, which is basically the same that it was while she was at the TCU. She said they tried looking at my mother’s list to compare (the hand written one she makes after she counts her pills, with little diagrams), but it was in Polish, so they were trying to translate it. My mother had been promised a list of her medications and they were going to try to get it translated into Polish for her, too. I told her, my mother knows pre-WWII Polish; she would not be familiar with modern medical terms in today’s Polish!
As we were chatting, the nurse told me how so many of the staff were startled when my mother was transferred over. Many of them had cared for Baba – “grandmother” – which is what they called my aunt. My mother looks SO much like her sister did. My aunt passed away a few years ago, so for the staff to suddenly start seeing their Baba again was a bit of a shock until they found out they were sisters.
This nurse had just started working there when my father came to live there. I’ve had it confirmed that he was there for only 5 months before he passed away; I thought it was 6 months. She remembered my father, and I told her about how, when I phoned him every Sunday, he would go on and on about how great they were treating him, how well taken care of he was, and how much he liked the staff. She was so touched to hear that!
So far, my mother has been very nice to them. I hope that lasts! She has been saving the nasty comments about the staff for when we are there. 😕
It was a good chat with the nurse, and I expect we will have many more opportunities to talk now that my mother is there!
That done, I headed home, then stayed indoors to stay out of the heat. Unfortunately, it just kept getting hotter. I finally headed out at around 6:30, which is about when we hit 27C/81F.
The predicted high was 25C/77F.
We’re supposed to keep getting hotter, with the hottest day in the forecast being Friday, which they are now saying is supposed to hit 34C/93F.
The yard cats are laying in puddles all over the yard, in whatever shade they can find.
Bobert was looking adorable in the cat bed I tucked under the isolation shelter’s door box, to keep the weather out in the winter.
With the heat, I made sure to do the watering again. This time, I did watering in the food forest area.
I’m happy to say that it looks like the apple tree survived, in spite of the damage to the stem. A single branch with new leaf buds has shown up. The plum tree also has leaf buds showing up finally, but only in branches coming up just above the graft at the base. None of last year’s growth is showing buds. Neither are the mulberry trees. They survived their first winter, but it looks like they didn’t survive their second. The poor little highbush cranberry have free leaves showing, but they are still remarkably tiny, including the one that the deer did NOT nibble one. The silver buffalo berry bushes, which I don’t bother watering because there are too many, had been covered with what I thought were leave buds. It turns out they were not leaf buds, but flower buds! The leaf buds are showing up now. The sea buckthorn also have leaf buds unfurling.
After the watering was done, I started working on the larger of the two East yard beds that had not been prepped in the fall.
I first removed the two lengths of twine that went around the sides. Those were there to keep anything wrapped around the box frame from flapping in the wind too much, but they were in the way for working in the bed. I considered taking the box frame off entirely, but decided it wasn’t necessary and worked around it.
In the second picture, you can see the cleaned up bed. Unfortunately, while I was leveling the cleared soil with the hoe, I caught the line running across that helped keep the sides from bowing outwards at the joins. The wood is rotting and the screw eye got pulled right out!
Honestly, I’m surprised these beds have lasted as long as they have. I used lumber I found in the barn that had been sitting there for probably at least a decade before I found them. They were not in particularly good shape, but they were the best I could find for the job. I expected them to last about 3 years, maybe, and they’ve lasted twice that by now.
Weeding the bed didn’t really take that much, except that I found a remarkable amount of tree roots! Given where this bed is located, they would not be from the elm tree, but from the nearby cherry bushes.
I look forward to when we can make these into high raised beds. These beds are about a foot high, but it was still really painful to be bending to work in it.
Once the bed was clear, I took some plastic that was rolled up and set aside from previous uses in these beds and covered the soil to protect it from cats, until we can plant in it. I’m looking to transplant tomatoes into this bed. We have four varieties to transplant, and couple probably fit three varieties in this bed. We don’t have a lot of each variety.
The pieces of wood frame on the left of the first photo are on the 4′ square bed that also needs to be done. By the time I finished the longer bed, I was too hot and in too much pain to do that one. Aside from weeding it – and that one has been infected by creeping Charlie – I will be adding the additional wood frame pieces to make it a bit higher, and can then add more soil into it. I’m planning to put the eggplant in here. It’s a small enough bed that I can add plastic walls around it, to protect them from high winds and create a semi-greenhouse around them.
I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get done over the next few days. I’ll be doing our city stock up trips and a vet trip in between. Shopping always drains me, so it will depend on how much energy I have left – and what my pain levels are at. At the very least, I plan to water everything in the morning, and again in the evening, because of the heat.
Once the city trips are done, I expect to be able to start the direct sowing, and then hopefully start transplanting soon after. Somewhere in there, I’ll be uncovering and reclaiming the area to plant our corn in.
Getting that raised bed at the chain link fence done has taken way too long!
I’ll get to that in a moment.
My brother and SIL have been out working on their caravan, and whatever else my brother was able to do outside as the weather allowed, this weekend and had invited me to join them for breakfast this morning. I wasn’t able to join them last time, but was happy to do be able to join them today. They took me to the single restaurant in our little hamlet. The last time I was there was two owners ago!
Before that, I was outside doing my usual morning rounds.
There are so many tulip flower buds, with one early tulip just starting to open up.
When it came close to the time we were going to meet up, I headed out to open the gate, then took advantage of the time waiting to check the fence line and see what else needs doing. I’m going to have to head through the area with loppers again, and trim away all the poplar that’s trying to grow back, among other things. Not a priority right now, though.
When I got back to the gate I saw they had parked in front of the house and were waiting for me there! 😄
I closed the gate behind their car after they drove through which, with all the rain we’ve had recently, was rather muddy. Which got us to talking about how badly that driveway needs gravel! My brother has his front end loader here, but it still won’t run, and he hasn’t figured out why, yet. Not that he’s had much opportunity to troubleshoot the beast.
We talked about the two trees threatening the house that will be coming down – when the arborists arrive will depend on the weather. It will be a while longer before the saturated ground is dry enough to hold the weight of their equipment.
It was great to catch up with them, and compare notes on things like Mom and our vandal, while enjoying a lovely breakfast. I really like what the new owners have done with the place. It’ s longer a bar with a small restaurant on one side, but a pub and family restaurant. Which is what the last owners had converted it to, but I never saw what changes they did. We did order take out from them a couple of times, but could pick our orders up without ever going all the way into the restaurant, so I never saw what they’d done with it.
After breakfast, they dropped me off at the gate, then headed out again to a hardware store. They were back before I was ready to head outside. I needed to get that raised bed at the chain link fence finished.
The walls are done, but it needed some preparation before the soil could be returned.
In the first image above, I’ve taken straw and stuffed it into all the gaps I could find in the front wall, as well as tucking some against the end walls, to prevent soil from falling in or through the walls.
In the second image, I’ve covered the bottom and sides with two layers of carboard. Then, using the fence to steady myself, I walked across the length of it, tromping the cardboard down as much as I could.
In the last image, I had started to saturate the cardboard. I went it down, tromped on it again, then repeated the process several more times while working on the next stage.
I started by using a hoe to spread the pile out – and remove as many cat turds as I could find. The pile of soil was absolutely saturated and sticky like glue! I got it spread out though, and then scattered Sulphur granules over it. I then mixed it in with a hoe, and then by lifting the tarp to turn the soil over itself, from all sides.
Did I mention it was saturated?
Not only did that make it sticky, but heavy. Shockingly heavy!
Once mixed, I shoveled the soil into the wheelbarrow and started adding it into the raised bed. The soil was so sticky, I actually had to stop and scrape it off the blade of the shovel, because it was so coated, it was hard to push it into the pile of soil, and there wasn’t much room for it to pick up more soil, either!
The first thing I did was spread out a couple of wheelbarrow loads on the carboard, pushing it up against the sides so that the soil would hold the cardboard against the walls, and no soil would fall between the cardboard and the straw filled walls. It wasn’t as much of a concern on the back wall, since that was in protected by a layer of vinyl. You can see that in the first image.
Then, FINALLY, I could dump in the rest of the soil and spread it out as evenly as I could. Which you can see in the second image.
At this point, I couldn’t really stop for a break or anything like that. Even as I was refilling the bed, I was chasing cats out that were determined to use it as a litter box. After I leveled the last of the soil, I turned to get something, turned back, and there was another cat, starting to dig in the soil!!! It was Flopsy, so not a feral. He just started at me while I tried to shoo him away and didn’t run off until I was practically on top of him!
The bed needed to be protected right away.
For this year, the supports will be temporary, and I debated whether to use robs from the hoop kits, or some of the Pex pipe hoops I have. In the end, I decided on a hoop kit, because I wanted to use the clips, and on the new one because it had more rods left.
My original plan had been to use the pairs of taller vertical supports to secure the hoops to. Which I could have done, though this bed is so much narrower, I wouldn’t have wanted to bend the rods quite that much. However, it occurred to me that, for this bed, I don’t actually want hoops. Once those elm seed start dropping, they would gather at the back of the raised bed, along the chain link fence, and would get under that way. Also, the cats will climb on top and lie on it, and I would prefer to avoid that completely.
So I only attached the rods – connecting three rods together for each length – to the front supports, using little zip ties to hold them securely. The top of the rods were curved into the chain link fence, near the top.
You can see the rods in position in the first image above.
In the past, we tried protecting this bed with mosquito netting, and I still have the netting that was used, rolled up and waiting. The mosquito netting ended up acting like a sail in the high winds, with the edge pinned to the ground blowing loose constantly, and the whole thing flapping. So I decided to use the black netting we still have on the roll. I unrolled it on the other side of the chain link fence, which you can see in the next photo, so get the length I needed before cutting it.
Then came the hard part. This netting is folded into thirds on the roll. I needed it folded in half. After cutting the length I needed, I dragged it over to an open part in the yard and spread it out flat, with rocks to hold it in place at the corners, because it was fairly windy.
Which is about when my brother and SIL drove by on their way home, so we chatted for a bit before they headed out.
Then I messaged my daughters for help, and my older daughter !!!!! came out. A testament to how much better she is feeling!
Between the two of us, we got the net folded in half length wise, then straightened it out as best we could in the wind. Then we very carefully moved it into position, with the salvage ends set to go over the chain link fence, and the folded edge to the ground. This netting catches on EVERYTHING, so it took some doing to get it in position and straightened out as smooth and tight as we could. then I draped the salvage ends over the chain link fence at my end – at this point, the “catches on everything” was a help – and slowly made my way down the fence, pulling the netting over until I got to my daughter’s end.
At that point, I could finish off the rest myself.
The first thing to do was use ground staples to secure the folded edge to the ground at the base of each longer vertical supports the hoop rods were attached to. I started from the middle and working to the ends, pulling the netting tight between each support along the way. Once the bottom was secured, I went outside the chain link fence, lifting and pulling the netting to get it as snug as I could. I wanted as little slack as possible in between the hoop rods.
Then I went back and got the clips. Once again, starting from the middle and working my way out, I pulled the netting up and snug before clipping it to the middle rods, just above the connector. Then I went on the other side of the fence to lift and tighten the netting over the fence again. I repeated the clipping process again, this time adding clips to the next higher rod, above the connector.
Once the netting was secured to the rods, I grabbed some more ground staples and went back to the outside of the fence. I lifted and tightened the netting over the fence one more time, this time using the ground staples, woven around the chain link, to secure the salvage edges in place.
Last of all, I worked on the ends, rolling and tucking the netting until it was closed off, using ground staples to secure the bottoms to the ground, and the garden wire to secure the rest to the chain link fence.
You can see the finished product in the last photo. It’s very hard to see the clips.
No cats are getting in there. No wind is going to blow it loose. With the netting folded in half, no elm seeds should get through. Plus, with the netting set up the way it is, it can stay there for most, if not all, of the growing season, depending on what gets planted there. To access the garden bed, I can lift the ground staples and, if necessary, remove the lower clips to raise the netting as high as I need.
It’s done.
It’s finally done!
Our temperatures are expected to go from one extreme to the other. The colder nights in the long range forecast into June are no longer expected to get as cold.
Which means I can start getting my transplants out.
I’m not hardening off this time. I just don’t have the cat free space to do it, without the portable greenhouse. I will be using the water bottle collars as protection for some things. For other, larger, transplants, I’ll figure something else out. The onions are the one thing that won’t need any of that, and they need to be transplanted so badly! The snail roll thing has been working a bit too well, in that respect. 😄
I need to get as much as possible done over the next two days, because after that I just won’t be home much. Wednesday is our first stop up shopping day. Thursday, I’ll be taking cats to the vet again, which means staying in the smaller city until it’s time to go home, unless I’m picking up chicks that day. I still haven’t gotten a call about those, so I’m guessing not. Then Friday is our second stock up shop. I will finally be home long enough to work in the garden more by the weekend, though somewhere in there I need to get a visit in with my mother. My brother left me with a couple of things for her that she wanted that I want to drop off, too.
Oh, and I still need to put together my May garden tour video. I took the video clips but just haven’t had a chance to sit down and put them together and edit them. I hoped to do it tonight, but it’s already coming up on 9am, and I am tired enough to go to bed pretty much as soon as I’m done writing this!
It feels so good to finally get this done!!!
It feels so good to finally have the weather we need to get outside stuff done again.
I had to make a run into town late this morning, so we didn’t even start on finishing the chicken coop assembly until much later in the afternoon. Which was fine, because it turned out to be an absolutely lovely day today.
The first thing I worked on was reinforcing the interior roost, then securing them in place.
Each corner got one of these flat braces. My original intention had been to have the horizontal roost resting on top of the vertical support, but it was difficult to get proper measurements through the tiny opening I had to work in. The roosts ended up too short by enough that I instead trimmed them about a quarter inch shorter so that they would fit in between the vertical supports, instead of on top. While the corner braces would hold them in place, these were cheap dollar store braces and I was concerned they wouldn’t hold the weight of chickens without bending or breaking. These flat braces are higher quality and will hold. The wood itself will break before those give out.
To secure the roosts, I had to use a little kitchen step ladder to be able to reach from above at the front, to set the roosts in place and line them up, while making sure they were flush against the front and back walls. There is just a bit of a height difference because of the white edging I had to account for. Both roosts had a vertical that sort of bent away from the wall, so I used one of the pieces for later in the build, jammed at an angle to brace the wonky side in place. Once they were solidly flush against the walled, I screwed them in place from the outside. Each end got three screws. Later on, I’ll use some sort of sealant on the screws to protect the wood from moisture.
The coop now has a roost on each side, on the inside.
The next stage of the build was to add the roosts that came with the kit, which were to be mounted underneath, on either side of where the ramp would be. For that, I needed an extra pair of hands and asked my daughter to come help. After I went inside and looking up online, just how they were supposed to be attached. The pictographs were really useless for that and even an image I’d shared with my daughter, showing how high off the ground they were supposed to be secured, looked like there was something else entirely going on.
She ended up basically taking over the build, and I was her assistant. Mostly because she can actually get down on the ground, and I can’t.
This time, though, we set a sheet of plastic on the ground as a drop sheet. Last time, my daughter was crawling around on the ground, she later discovered she managed to get cat poop on her pants. Ick.
Getting the exterior roosts in place was definitely a two person job. Especially for the front. With the area for the door empty, the sides sides were slightly spread out, and I had to push the entire side in and hold it in place while my daughter screwed the roosts in place.
After that, the floor between the two sides had to be installed, then the hinged ramp attached to the floor. That was all my daughter, as there was no room for me to do anything other than hand her screws.
That done, we had to attached the door to the frame by the hinges. There were a couple of plates that I’ve been using as spacers every time we had to attach a hinged door. After the door was hung, those plates were added across the insides of the frame’s corners at the opposite side, to stop the door from going past the frame when closed. Then the latch was added to the top, and the door and frame could be attached to the coop.
With the ramp on hinges, that could be lifted up and out of the way, so my daughter could go inside and screw the door frame to the coop. The ground isn’t level, so my job was to line up edges and corners and hold them in place – which required actually lifting the coop itself slightly, on one side – until my daughter got enough screws in to hold it in place, and she could do the rest without me holding things.
Once the door and frame were in place, there were a pair of cross pieces to attach between the top of the door frame and the back mesh wall of the coop. These were part of the roof supports.
The roof was the next thing to do, and it took a lot of figuring out what the pictographs were showing. We noticed some pre-drilled holes in some pieces and had to look at instructions a couple of pages later to see what they would be used for, and we could tell which direction they were supposed to face.
The roof supports were assembled in two parts before they could be set on top and secured to the coop. Then we could finally put on the plastic roof panels.
Which was more of a pain than it should have been.
First, was figuring out which side was up, as both sides were identical. They had pre-drilled holes in them that needed to line up with the supports they would be screwed into. Then there were the overlaps. After much shifting and flipping and trying again, it was the pre-drilled holes that determined which panel edge went on top of the other. It was not the way I would have expected it to, when it comes to drainage, but it was the only way one screw could secure both edges at the same time.
Once we got that figured out, and the panels were centered and lined up, we could finally start screwing them into place. For this, my daughter was using the little step ladder a lot, and we found a different problem. The ground was too soft and the legs of the ladder started to sink! I had a small piece of plywood nearby that I could put on the ground under one set of legs, which worked out very well. When it was time for my daughter to move the ladder to reach another section, I just kept moving the board.
We found other problems, though.
The screws for this part of the build are quite short. Too short for where the panels overlapped. After some digging around in the garage, I found a few that could replace some of the screws along the seams, but then we had a whole different problem along the front. For all the care we took to line up the pre-drilled holes with the supports below, the entire row of pre-drilled hold along the front were just a touch too far. The boards in that part of the roof were slightly warped. Probably from sitting in the box in the garage for over a month in the winter. There were extra longer screws in the kit and my daughter ended up using those, and not using the pre-drilled holes, to secure the roof panels. Some of the screws went in crooked and the tips got exposed, but not anywhere I chicken could hurt itself, so we weren’t too worried about it. We’ll have to go over the roof with sealant in places, anyhow.
Once the roof panels were on, the only thing left was to attach the hooks and eyes that would be used to hold open the two front doors for air circulation. For that, the hooks were first attached under the roof, and then we could use those to decide where to attach the screw eyes at the height we wanted the doors to be held open at. In spite of using a measuring tape and marking out where to attach them, we ended up doing one door at a different height than the other. The white edging in one of them had marks already on them that I mistook for the marks I’d made below! Which is fine. As long as they can be held open.
That done, the coop was officially assembled. We just had to move it.
Slight problem. The hinged ramp. With the roof in place, it couldn’t be lift up like when my daughter worked under it before. What we ended up doing was lifting is as high as we could through the open door, then quickly shutting the door before it could drop. We still had to push the ramp up through the wire mesh so the door could be closed but, once it was, the door itself held the ramp up and out of the way.
It wasn’t easy to move the hole thing. We were able to get grips on each end, because the wire mesh is on the inside of the coop, so there was enough of a lip on the frames that we could get our fingertips under there. The main problem was me and my janky elbows. I could hold the weight for only short distances before I could feel them giving out.
Still, we managed it, and set it up in front of the retaining wall, where the ground seemed to be the flattest.
It’s still not level, but at least the whole thing isn’t being twisted out of shape by uneven ground.
Where is how the finished coop looks, with all the doors closed, plus the back, which has no doors of any kind.
You can really tell in the side views, how the ground is sloping! In the front and back views, you can see the screws holding the inside roots in place.
The coop was designed with the roosts below as a way of not having to deal with lots of chicken poop inside. With the added roosts sheltered inside, we’ll be adding bedding. The nesting boxes will probably get straw, but I plan to get pine shavings for under the roosts inside.
With the coop right up against the retaining wall, we can potentially secure it to the blocks so it won’t get blown over in high winds.
We will probably not be able to keep it there, though. It is facing west and the sun can shine right through the wire mesh, the sides might create too much shadow for the garden bed behind it.
One of the things I want to do if find a way to add wheels to it, so it will be easier to move around as needed. It might be easier to just make a pair of wheeled platforms that can be tucked under the ends, then removed once the coop has been moved.
This coop will work out fine for when we get our first chickens, and for the summers. It is not the strongest of structures and definitely not suitable for a Canadian winter, but the plan is to build a polytunnel in the garden this year, so that we can move the chicken coop into it for the winter. It will do until we can build a proper, sturdier, chicken coop. We’re just getting a few chickens to start; enough to supply us with eggs. Over time I want to get more, including meat hens, so we will need to expand things quite a bit. It will take time and materials we don’t really have, but at least now we can get started.
Meanwhile, we can get ready for the chicks to arrive at the end of May. We’ll need feeders and waterers (the ones my parents used are still in the old chicken coop, but I don’t know that any of them are useable, after so many decades since my parents had chickens), both for while we have the chicks in a brooding pen indoors, and for when they get moved outside.
Something else that will be coming at the end of May is our order of basket willow. I got an email from the nursery with several shipping dates available, and I requested the latest one. That will give us time to prepare where we will be planting them, beyond the outer yard, and working out how to protect them from the renter’s cows.
On a completely different note…
It is confirmed that Slick lost her litter. While working outside, I heard a commotion and it was Slick. She’s gone into heat again, and had a whole crowd of dudes wanting their turn with her. She was not happy about it, either. I sent a quick message to the rescue and they want me to trap her as soon as possible. I don’t think we’d be able to trap her specifically, though. However, she has been super friendly when we do the morning cat feeding, and we might be able to get her into the big carrier. Tomorrow morning, my daughter is going to come out with me to try and get her. If we can manage it, she’ll go to the rescue for however long it takes for them to get her spayed, then she will come back here.
What a lovely day today had turned out to be! At one point, checking one of my weather apps, it told me it was still -2C/28F out there, but the “real feel” was 6C/43F!
The outside cats were quite enjoying the sunshine.
One of the things I’d done, once the snow cleared away enough, was move the broken office chairs to the junk pile instead of several feet away, setting them upright again. As expected, the cats are taking advantage of them!
I had to zoom in quite a bit to get these pictures.
The cat in the first picture is one of the more feral ones. It comes to the house regularly, but we cannot approach it. The second picture shows Stinky keeping (her? him?) company on the other chair.
In the afternoon, I headed out with a project in mind, then got these pictures.
The first picture is Sprig. She’s mostly feral, but I was able to stand just a few feet away from her to take the picture. She’s got burrs stuck in her tail, but as soon as I stepped towards her, she ran off. No chance of getting them off for her.
In the second picture, you can see Bug and Fluffy enjoying the exposed straw mulch in the old kitchen garden! That bed is the one sown with beets and tiny bok choi, with transplanted onions that I found while cleaning it out in the fall. You can just see a stick behind Fluffy’s head. That marks the end of a row of beets, so she’s right on top of where they are planted.
I’m going to have to work on keeping that cats off that bed! I’ll be removing the mulch, hopefully tomorrow, and then setting up the vinyl cover sized for this specific raised bed cover. That will keep the cats off for the most part. Once the “greenhouse” is no longer needed, I’ll have to replace the vinyl with netting. I’ll have to find a way to protect the part of the L shaped wattle weave bed that is winter sown, once that mulch is removed, too.
As for my project…
We haven’t seen Slick much at all, and I just can’t figure out how we can possibly trap just her, given how skittish she has become. So I have made an offering to her, in the catio.
I cleared everything out and added fresh straw to the bottom of the catio, as well as some on the remaining hammock. Then I put the big donated cat carrier, with a cat bed in it that I was able to get out of the cat house without lifting the roof, set inside. The carrier is so big, I had to turn it sideways to get it through the door! Then I put the self warming shelter back, on top of some scrap pieces of rigid insulation, along with the food and water bowls. I took the two box nests out completely, along with the blanket that had been in one of them. The blanket went back inside, while the boxes went onto the feeding station under the shrine nearby. Now that enough snow has melted away, we can start leaving food there again, and I put the two bowls inside the boxes for now.
Once the inside was set up again, I used clear repair tape to fix some tears in the vinyl around the catio, caused by the wind. I couldn’t get all of them on the north side, as the bench there is still frozen to the ground and blocking access, but I got the ones on the south side thoroughly covered and reinforced. The tears I couldn’t reach shouldn’t be much of a problem, as they are “sheltered” by the pile of snow at the bench, so there would be very little wind or weather getting through those.
My hope was that Slick would either have her kittens in this shelter within a shelter I have made for her – or bring them there, if she had already had them! I just came back from doing the second feeding of the day and she did show up – still looking pregnant – but wouldn’t even go up onto the cat house roof to eat while I was around. I wish I knew what happened to make her suddenly so nervous.
The catio is one of the places she regularly goes into for food and water, and just hanging out. I’ve seen her using the self warming shelter as well, but the cats jump on top of it, crushing it flat, so she’s not going to have her babies in there. Now that the cat carrier is there, with a soft bed inside, on top of fresh straw, I really hope she will accept it as a safe place to for her babies. That will hopefully give us a better chance of catching her for the rescue, or at least socializing her babies. The only problem I foresee is that, any time she’s been in there and I’ve started to come over with food, she immediately runs away.
I was thinking about how, if she did have her babies in there, we could potentially close the door on the carrier while she’s in it, and then get her to the rescue. Since the carrier could only fit through the door by being turned sideways, we wouldn’t be able to move it if she and her kittens are inside. What we can do, however, is simply pick up the catio and move that, instead, but only if enough snow around it melts away that we have the space to access it and set it down nearby.
As I was still working on taping up the tears on the catio, I saw several cats go in to investigate the new set up. In the second picture of the slideshow above, I was able to get a picture of a cat enjoying the fresh straw on the hammock. I thought it was Pinky at first but, looking at the photo more closely, it might be the cat my daughters have named Bobert.
Staring tomorrow, we’re supposed to alternate in highs of 14C/57F and 12C/54F for the next four days. Thursday, we’re supposed to get rain as the temperature drop, leading to snow on Friday and Saturday, and the highs are supposed to hover at or just above freezing for the rest of April. Even in the first full week of May, we’re supposed to get several days rain during the day, with highs above 10C/50F, and snow overnight! After that, we’re supposed to start getting consistent highs above 20C/68F, and overnight lows staying above freezing.
Winter just does not want to let go, this year!
Well, we’ll see what actually happens when the time comes.
I have been seriously procrastinating with the seedlings in our basement set up. Today, however, my daughter was available to assist, and we got it done!
My daughter took on the job of sifting the rest of the bag of potting soil. She had to start a second bucket for all the sticks she sifted out, as the one I’d been using before was already 3/4 full. While she did that, I worked on making a whole bunch of strips for snail rolls, with a few extra strips, just in case.
Once the soil was sifted, my daughter thoroughly moistened the potting soil with hot water while I cleared all the trays of seedlings, the heat mats and the full spectrum lights. Everything was going to go on the shelf under the shop light. A shelf that sags in the middle. I did try to elevate the trays in the middle, but when I watered the bottoms, it would still all pool towards the middle, so anything on the outsides of the trays would end up with less water available. After some poking around in the old basement, I found a board to set across the top. It’s too short to be able to use heat mats under it, but I decided not to set those up again. Hopefully, they will be okay without them in our basement, where the ambient temperature is at least 5C colder than it should be for seedlings.
Once everything was cleared out and set up, the first things I wanted to “pot up” were the peppers and eggplant. They have been really struggling. Some new seedlings from a second sowing did start to germinate, but even some of those have already withered away.
I bottom watered the tray and had vermiculate on top, but there still ended up some algae growing on the surface. That’s not harmful to the plants, but it does suggest a moisture imbalance.
When it came time to transfer them, my daughter used a large spoon to scoop the seedlings out of the cells while I set them onto one of the strips, flattening out the seed starting mix they were in, then adding the moistened, warm potting soil to fill in gaps.
I had already transferred all the tomatoes, fennel and flower rolls into one metal tray – 8 snail rolls – and had room for two more rolls on there. In the end, there were only 5 surviving Caspar eggplant, and only three Sweet Chocolate peppers. I did have a full row of California Wonder bell peppers, though, and one of the cells had a two seedlings, so that gave us a very large and full snail roll to put into the second metal tray set up under the shop light.
One thing about these thicker snail rolls is that it’s a lot harder to keep the soil in them, while they are being rolled up.
Next was the Golden Boy celery, which has already been “potted up” once. They now needed to be split up into two rolls. We were really surprised by how dry their soil was! For all the regular bottom watering I did, they were large enough that they’d needed more.
The leaves were all tangled up, so it was very careful work to unroll the celery. The soil was very full of roots. Between use, we carefully broke out half the celery and spread them out on a new strip before adding the moistened potting soil to fill the strip. It took both of us to very carefully roll them up without losing too much soil from the bottom. Once that was done, we had the space to finish unrolling the original roll, space out the seedlings and add more soil.
So we now have two snail rolls of celery, to go with four types of tomato, three types of flowers and the Florence fennel.
I considered putting the sad little herbs into a snail roll, too, but decided against it. As for the last surviving luffa, I’m not sure it’s surviving any more! It got pretty buried under the celery leaves. Well, we did get seeds for a different variety with a much, much shorter growing season – short enough we could potentially direct sow them – so if this last one doesn’t make it, we can try the new variety, instead.
Once everything was set up under the shop light, I supported the light while my daughter shortened the chain it’s hanging from, so it wouldn’t be too close to the plants. Especially the celery. The chain on that side was hung even shorter, to give them the space they need.
Which means we now no longer have anything under the grow lights. With the snail rolls, everything fit in the two trays. They got a thorough bottom watering, then a second one when we saw how quickly the water was absorbed. With how dry the celery was, I’ll probably give that tray another watering, later today.
The next batch of seeds are the 4-6 weeks before last frost ones. I don’t have a lot of those, comparatively speaking. There are a LOT that can be started in the 2-4 weeks before last frost category, but a lot of those can actually be direct sown, so I plan to be more selective about it.
Looking at the forecast, we’ve got some more weather whiplash expected. Winter still does not want to let go! Today, we are now expected to reach a high of 15C/59F (it’s 8C/46F as I write this), shortly before noon), but the overnight low is supposed to drop to -7C/19F. At midnight, we’re supposed to start getting snow. Tomorrow we’re supposed to get a mix of snow and rain all day, through to the next morning.
The weather system that’s hitting us is mostly going to pass to the north. They are looking at potentially several inches of new snow. This is actually really good. Everything is still so dry u[ there. Every bit of moisture is needed, so this year’s fire season isn’t as bad as last year. There will be fires. There always are. Between any moisture we get, and the fact that last year’s insane number of fires probably cleared out a lot of deadwood, hopeful this means very fewer fires, and only little ones, this year.
The highs for the next two days are supposed to be -3C/27F. After that, we’re supposed to get back above freezing, and soon reach double digit Celsius highs. Before the end of April, we’re even expecting to reach 20C/68F, and once we’re into May, the long range forecast has us getting as high as 24C/75F It’s the overnight lows that are the thing, though. Last year, May had all sorts of hot days, but the nights remained cold, so the soil never got warm enough for transplants until the middle of June. Even then, it might still have been too cold. Our transplants really struggled last year.
Hopefully, our winter sown beds will do well. After the next couple of days of cold, and any snow we get on the beds melts away, I should be able to remove the mulches on at least some of the beds, so the soil can thaw out faster. I can set the vinyl over the cover in the old kitchen garden to create a little greenhouse. That bed has the beets and tiny bok choy in it, along with the little onions I’d found while preparing the bed for sowing. I have more vinyl I can potentially use on one of the other covers on a 9’x3′ raised bed to create another little greenhouse. Plus, once I can access the main garden area, I have the hoops and 6mm poly I’d ordered and can use to set over one of the other pre-sown beds to speed things up a bit. Or just to warm up one of the other, empty beds, faster. We shall see how things look, once the snow has melted enough to get to them.
For 8 years, I’ve been hearing that old pump going off, never knowing what “normal” sounded like. Just that this one was sounding worse and worse as time went on. Now that it has finally been replaced, it actually feels weird to just barely hear it when it goes off.
The other thing I’m appreciating, in a still stressful way, though, is not having to worry about the truck’s oil pressure sensor triggering alarms. The alternative, until the OEM sensor comes in, is no sensor at all, but I’ve had to drive it with the gauge at 0 before. The check engine light is on now, of course. I’ve driven with that on for quite a while this past winter, until it warmed up enough and it shut off on its own. That was the O2 sensor and likely caused by the polar vortexes that his us freezing something in it.
Still, I’m going to be nervous driving the truck no matter what. We’ve had so many crazy things break down, that’s really to be expected.
Today, however, the dump is open from 9am to1pm, and we were seriously overdue for a dump run. The last time I managed a dump, I ended up needing a tow.
My younger daughter, sweetheart that she is, offered to come with me to keep me company. 😄
We loaded the back of the truck after the morning cat feeding was done. We had so many garbage bags, including from the sun room and the garage, to load, there was room for only one bag of recycling. The recycling can wait. The temperatures are warming up, and the garbage bags no longer freeze in the old kitchen, so they needed to be gone!
When we got to the dump and started making our way to the pit, my daughter got out to walk ahead, looking for anything that might puncture a tire. There was a pick up truck parked on the side, and we hadn’t realized someone was in it! It was one of the staff having his lunch, I think. He could tell what she was doing and I could see he was assuring her it wasn’t necessary. We got a chuckle out of that after she guided me in backing up to the pit and she told me what he’d been saying. He had even asked if we needed a hand unloading!
After we were done and driving out, I stopped at the truck to thank him. I mentioned to him about being paranoid, having gotten a flat after doing a dump run once. He told me that he’s been hearing stories like that from many, many people, so he has been making sure to keep an eye out and to clear in front of the pit if he sees anything that could cause damage. I made sure to tell him how great of a job they’re doing; the place hasn’t looked this good for a long time! I wanted him to know how much it is appreciated.
From there, it was a quick stop at the recycling bins, then then we made our way to the town north of us. I’d brought our files to drop off at the tax preparer. Our taxes are about as simple as can be; the only change this year is that I no longer am going to get the Caregiver Tax Credit, but now qualify for the Disability Tax Credit. We gave up trying to do taxes ourselves; the last time I picked up the software, it had changed so much, I could barely navigate it. I even got another company’s software, and it turned out to be just as useless. My husband has T4A slips – the slips for persons on long term disability. One brandy’s software didn’t even recognize the A, nor could I find where we could claim the Disability Tax Credit and the Caregiver Tax Credits. When it came to claiming my husband’s medical expenses – just his prescriptions, usually – it became impossible. There simply wasn’t any way to input his data accurately. I gave up, took it to a pro, and we’ve been doing that ever since.
After dropping the files off, I asked my daughter if we needed to get anything while in town, and she informed me we were out of milk, so we went to the grocery store.
Good grief.
I got a 4L of 3% milk instead of our usual 2L. A 4L of 3% is usually just over $5. In this town, one brand was over $8, and one was just under. That happened to be the brand we usually get, so we got it again.
We went through the store to see if there was anything else we needed. Most of the prices were just insane. The exception was beef prices. I saw a couple of big beef tenderlions that were just over and just under the $100 range. Those same beef tenderlions cost almost $300 at Costco! Still, it wasn’t something we were ready to get today, and ended up just getting snacks for the ride home. My daughter picked up a package of donuts to share with her sister. I don’t like cake type donuts much, but she said she’s been craving a good donut.
Then she grabbed everything and snuck ahead to pay for it for me! 😄
Later on, she came to me, very disappointed. The donuts turned out to be terrible. The same thing happened the last time we picked up some mini donuts about a month ago. They looked so good, but tasted horrible!
After we got home, I remembered to phone my mother. I usually remember too late in the day to actually make the call.
*sigh*
I asked how she was doing, and she started to complain about being in pain, but when I asked what kind of pain, she just started going on about how she’s been there for three months, and the doctor has never seen her. She told me that when she tells the staff that she wants to see the doctor, they just tell her “he’ll be here tomorrow” or “he’s on holidays”. She’s conflating responses. He was on holidays over Easter, but he’s been back for awhile now. She still claims they’re saying he’s on holidays. I tried to explain again that yes, he has (briefly, to be sure) seen her, but that he’s only there 1 day a week, and it’s to go over the staff reports, not necessarily to see individual people. She cut me off and told me she didn’t care
She did ask me if I’d heard from my sister and my brother. I told her, it’s been a few days since I’ve heard from my sister and got a lecture about how we need to stay in communication. I told her, if we have nothing to say, there’s nothing to say! Then I told her I’d heard from my brother yesterday, and how they’re now in Spain, after walking 190km, with another 90km to go. She told me, she didn’t care about kilometers, and how all she knows is that my brother has basically run away from his responsibilities and is hiding overseas. I told her, they are on a pilgrimage. Following the paths of saints. She brushed that off.
She’s asked what was new with us, so I told her about the well pump. I knew she wouldn’t care, but I figured it would stave off any lectures on why I hadn’t visited her. I told her the pump had stopped working on Sunday, so we had no water, which seemed to confuse her. Then I said we called plumbers, and she started demanding I call a guy she remembers my father hiring in the past that lives not far from us. I said no. I’m going to call a real plumber! Plus, he’s tight with our vandal. The guy actually is a plumber by training, but hasn’t worked as a plumber in years. He’s been on disability for years. I had to cut my mother off from demanding I call him to say, it’s already fixed. We got a plumber in and, thanks to my brother, we already had a pump, so it’s done. We have water again.
Oh, that’s your problem.
…
At that point I told her, don’t ask me what’s new with us, if you don’t care to hear about what’s new. I had to repeat it a few times before she got what I was saying, then tried to blame it on how bad she’s feeling.
She never did tell me exactly how she’s feeling bad, other than generic stuff. She started off talking about pain, but finished by saying she thinks it’s her digestion that’s causing problems.
The real problem is, my mother is someone that is 94 years old, has lived a life of great physical hardship, including surviving starvation and a war, but somehow thinks she would be feeling perfectly healthy – and any doctor that can’t just fix her (without pills, though, because she’s already taking so many and she’s still in pain…) is not a good doctor. I have tried to get her to explain her expectations to me, and she never quite answers.
It was a frustrating call.
She had been about to go for a nap, though, so I didn’t keep her on the phone for too long.
Meanwhile…
It’s been a lovely day, but one where I’ve been fighting sleep all day. I’m just drained. Still, I made sure to do the evening cat feeding, just to get outside and enjoy the sunshine and warmth. We hit 10C/50F today, and it’s been so lovely!
This morning, my daughter had helped me return all the carriers for storage in the sun room, with the doors open so cats can go in and out. After doing the feeding, I got some puppy pads to set inside the carriers in such a way that they would also keep the doors from closing all the way.
That’s little Flopsy on the left. The one on the right is an unsocialized cat we haven’t named. Can’t get close to it, but it is quite content to go into a carrier and use it as a nest!
It was so nice out, I took the time to grab the snow shovel and do some clearing. I shoveled in front of the old kitchen garden retaining wall, clearing more than enough space for the assembled chicken coop. Now that there’s no longer over a foot of snow on the area, the layer of ice left on the grass can melt away and the area will have a chance to dry out faster. We won’t get chicks until the end of May, and they won’t be big enough to go into a coop for weeks later, but the earlier we set up the coop, the better. It will give us time to determine if that area will actually work, or if we need to try somewhere else. We don’t have a lot of level areas, anywhere.
I’m really, really enjoying the warmer weather! At this rate, it won’t be long before I can remove the mulch on the sown garden beds, so the soil can thaw out faster. Not in the main garden area, yet. That’s still completely covered in snow and will take longer, but the slightly higher raised beds in the old kitchen garden and in the east yard are already mostly free of snow.
Looking ahead, we are going to have a few days where the highs will dip below freezing again, but after that we’re supposed to start getting highs above 10C/50F, and overnight lows staying above freezing, regularly.
I can hardly believe April is almost half gone already.
As I was getting my coat to go feed the outside cats, I spotted movement in the distance. I had to zoom in quite a bit to get these shots, so they’re not the best.
Two white tail deer, beyond the outer yard, at the far side of the barn. Soon after, I saw one of them making its way through the outer yard to the driveway, heading for the gate. The deer are very, very active this time of year, and the population looks to be quite high this spring! I haven’t seen so many since we stopped feeding them outside the living room window.
After I did the outside cats’ food and water, I tried for a head count. I think I counted 24 in total. Possibly 25?
Adam was on the cat house roof, where she prefers to eat, and she enthusiastically allowed me to pet her. I was able to feel around her belly. She does not feel pregnant, and I don’t feel any active nips. Given how early I saw she’d gone into heat and the boys going after her, it’s entirely possible she’s had a litter and lost it. I am seeing the other feral females – Slick, Sprout and the white and grey we haven’t named – show up just long enough to eat, and then they disappear.
I managed to get a picture of this beauty, though.
I’m glad we were able to catch her and get her spayed, because she very rarely allows me to touch her. Once I do, she stops and enjoys the pets, but otherwise, she just runs away.
Once the outside stuff was done, I headed out. My first stop was to the post office, then I planned to go to the feed store in my mother’s town, then visit her.
I had asked the owner of the general store if their feed supplier also carried cat food. She looked up their list and they did. That was a while ago, so when I came in to get the mail, I looked through their feed section and saw they had three 18kg (39.68lbs) bags of cat kibble! They were only $45, too. With the other brands we’ve been getting, they are in the $50-$55 range.
We’ve never had this brand before, so I got only one, to try it out. If the cats like it, it would make things much easier to pick them up in our own little hamlet than having to drive to the towns with feed stores. The only thing is that I would have to change how I budget it. Right now, I put the budgeted amount onto a credit card, so that when I buy them I get my cashback or Canadian Tire dollars. The general store doesn’t take credit cards, though. Just cash and debit. So if I’m going to be buying the big bags there more often, I have to make sure NOT to transfer the funds to a credit card.
So after I picked up our mail, I got the one bag of kibble – then picked up a couple of sausages for the Easter baskets. Something else that was on my list for the shopping I planned to do after visiting my mother.
Since I got the test bag of kibble, I skipped the feed store and went straight to my mother’s.
She was in her favourite armchair in the common room when I got there. She was pleasantly surprised to see me, which was nice for a change.
It was a pretty quiet visit. There wasn’t a lot new going on. My mother immediately started complaining, of course, but not as … energetically, shall we say, as usual. Her health isn’t good. She needs sleep. She needs a private room. (I don’t disagree!) Her room mate is terrible. (I’m sure her room mate thinks the same of my mother!) The regular doctor never comes to see her. The other doctors are from the city come in just for a day. I reminded her that she would need to make an appointment for the doctor to actually see her as a patient; otherwise, he’s just doing his rounds before going to his regular patient appointments at the clinic. To which she complained that it’s just about moneymoneymoney. Apparently, doctors shouldn’t get paid? I’m not quite sure what she’s getting at when she says that, but she says it quite often.
Hopefully, she won’t be here for very long, but there’s just no way to know when a bed will open up at the nursing home she wants to be in.
I remembered to ask if our vandal had shown up again, after his big act with his wife pushing him in with a borrowed wheelchair, then storming out when she refused to pay for his funeral. She said no, he hasn’t. I was not surprised. I told her, I knew there was a reason he was visiting so often. He wanted something from her. Now we know what it was. She started going on about how he’s wealthy, he has his farm. I told her, that’s not cash in the bank. He would have to sell it. Her response was, what else is he going to do with it? His wife isn’t going to farm it, and they have no kids. I told her, he doesn’t have to. He’s got so many vehicles and equipment scattered all over his property. Stuff he can’t use anymore. He could sell just a couple of things and more than cover the cost of his own funeral. That reminded her of the thousands of dollars she’d given him for the huge garage he had built to store his equipment in. All I know is, his vehicles and equipment are still all scattered all over his yard, fully visible from the road as I drive by, except for the Bobcat he stole from my mother, so who knows what all he’s got stored in there. My mother got the point, though; there is no reason for him to be going to her for money to pay for his own funeral. Which could be years from now, for all I know, based on how he appears the few times I’ve seen him since his diagnosis.
Overall, it was a good and relaxed visit. I stayed until her lunch tray was brought over – a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup and crackers, a pickled blend of legumes I recognize from Costco that is quite good, and canned fruit for desert. Her insulated tea cup was just hot water – at her request – to mix in with the glass of milk. One of her favourite things to drink. I stayed long enough to help her get set up and everything was in reach before saying my goodbyes.
From there, it was off to our regular local grocery store – and extra drive, but the difference in prices between that town and my mother’s made it worth it.
Once there, I got the last few things for the Easter baskets, including an extra flat of eggs. I’d asked my daughters to hard boil some eggs for me to start pickling after I got home. They ended up doing a flat and a half – roughly 45 eggs. The extras and the uglies would be used for egg salad. I got a paska for my mother, though it’s huge for a one person basket. Since she no longer has her own kitchen or utensils, my plan is to have everything for her basket all cut up and ready to eat without needing anything else. Plus, she could share the contents, if she finds it too much. We aren’t fans of paska ourselves, so I got a lovely fresh flax seed loaf for our own basket.
The shopping done, my only planned outing over the next while is to visit my mother and bring her the basket on either Saturday or Sunday.
I’m thinking Saturday.
There’s a reason for that.
The truck.
The truck has been running well. The stock up shopping trips have been fine. I have, of course, still been constantly checking the gauges. With the troubles we’ve been having for the past couple of years, I just can’t help myself.
Which is why I noticed something had changed.
The oil pressure gauge.
When we had the leaking seal replaced again, on warranty, and the oil sensor replaced, I got an oil change done at the same time. According to the mileage, we have a couple thousand kilometers before it needs to be changed again – which is about a month’s worth of driving, in the summer. Two months, in the winter.
After all that, the pressure gauge was right back where it was supposed to be and staying within a typical range.
As we were coming home from the Costco trip, though, it started to read on the low side of normal. Technically still okay, but at one point, it was pretty much on the line for low pressure.
It was reading normal again when I started out today, but when I got to the grocery store from my mother’s, the gauge had dropped down to the line again.
While I was on my way home, I kept checking it, and sure enough, it kept slowly dropping. As I was pulling into our driveway, it was touching the line again.
*sigh*
One thing I can say, though; the warranty differential is working fine. The 2 wheel and 4 wheel drive setting has been on auto, and it has had no problem kicking into 4 wheel drive as needed. Today got so warm, the hard packed snow under the tire tracks in our driveway started to soften and the truck starting to sink as I was driving, but I was able to get through with no problem! No getting stuck in our own driveway again!
We’ve been parking the truck in the yard for the past while, since my brother’s truck was half in our garage (as far as it could go without hitting the top of the door frame). My brother had phoned this morning and he suggested I just back it up into the lane towards the barn and leave it there, so we could park our own truck in the garage. So after the shopping was unloaded and I did an early feeding of the outside cats (they like the new kibble!), I moved his truck out.
His truck was having issues with sinking through the formerly hard packed snow, but it got through fine as well.
Driving our own truck into the garage, the oil gauge didn’t have a chance to drop like it did while driving, but it also never got to where it normally is.
The boxes for our chicken coop are still stored at the far end of the garage, so we can’t pull all the way in. Not a problem, since it means I had space to get out the step stool and check the oil levels.
It was low.
I had one last bottle of oil left, 3/4 full, and used that. The level seemed okay after that, but I’m never confident in what I’m seeing on the dip stick. The colour of the oil and the colour of the dip stick is pretty much the same, and the metal is always shiny, even after wiping it clean.
*sigh*
I made a point of checking, and there is no sign of an oil leak, but then I’ve never seen evidence of an oil leak even when it turned out to be leaking really badly, because of where the leak was. The only times I thought I did, it turned out to be from the differential, not engine oil.
Once I was settled inside, I called the garage. The owner answered. I made sure to first let him know that the warranty differential replacement has been doing fine, then explained about the oil pressure and being low on oil again. I mentioned, I’ve got a lot of driving to do in the next while!
He asked me if I could come in on Tuesday afternoon, so they can check it out. They are closed tomorrow and on Easter Monday, of course, so I was very happy that he could book me in so quickly.
For now, it should be fine for me to drive to my mother’s. I’ll do it on Saturday, when things are open, so I can pick up some extra oil to keep in the truck, now that I’ve just used the last of my stash.
This is getting so insane. I’ve either got another leak somewhere, or the truck is simply burning a lot of oil. Which I would expect to see evidence of in my exhaust, and I haven’t.
I just don’t get it.
I am so tired of vehicle troubles!
I can’t even say it’s been this particular truck, since the last two vehicles we’ve owned have also had weird problems. As my daughter told me during our Costco shop, and I was commenting about my own paranoia about the truck; with all the stuff that’s been going on, I have reason to be!!
Hopefully, it’s something minor that they can find and fix easily and quickly.
Hopefully.
On a completely different note, once I had my appointment made, I got to check out what I got in the mail.
The padded envelope had been opened, and the box it was in was crushed. That would have been customs. At least the thermometer itself was not damaged!
Once things thaw out, I want to use it in various beds to see how different the soil temperature is in, say, the high raised bed compared to the low raised beds. It might help explain why I had issues with my beans, melons, tomatoes and squash last summer.
That all settled, the last goal of the day was to make three different types of brine to pickle eggs in, and start peeling the eggs that were hard boiled last night. I made beet, soy and turmeric brines, using the simplest recipes I could find online, so I had three little pots going at once. Then my younger daughter and I started peeling eggs.
It was a disaster.
The shells just did not want to separate from the eggs!
Now, it we were just making egg salad, I wouldn’t have cared, but I was after the most perfect eggs to brine and use in our Easter baskets, and we just weren’t getting any at all. After about a dozen eggs, I called a stop to trying.
Thankfully, I got a extra flat of eggs at the grocery store today.
The ugly eggs didn’t go to waste, though; they got eaten pretty much immediately. 😄
Meanwhile, I started on another batch to hard boil, using tips I’ve tried in the past, all combined.
It worked.
First, fill the pot with water and generous amount of baking soda, then bring it to a boil. The eggs were brought out of the fridge to warm up. Room temperature would have been ideal, but I at least didn’t want to have cold shells cracking on contact with boiling water.
Once the water was boiling, I used a wire basket type scoop – I don’t know the name of it – to lower the eggs into the boiling water in batched. I got 24 eggs into the pot. One did crack, but nothing leaked out of it.
I set the timer for 10 minutes, but it took a while for the water to go from a simmer to a full boil again, so it was really more like 7 minutes at a boil. When the time went off, I shut off the heat, but didn’t take them out right away, just in case. Then I transferred them to a bowl of cold water and left them there for another 10 minutes.
Every single egg peeled perfectly.
All 24 eggs.
Perfect. Including the one that cracked!
I was hoping to just have 6 eggs per jar or brine, but I was able to do 8 in each!
Gotta make sure to pass on the method to the girls. My younger daughter was pretty upset that the first batch wouldn’t peel and felt she had done something wrong. It’s not a problem, though. We’ll just have lots of eggs ready for snacking!
Tomorrow, we need to dig out a couple of baskets from storage, and I need to figure out how to do my mother’s basket, if I’m going to have everything pre-cut up for her. Normally, the baskets would get blessed on Saturday, then enjoyed on Easter morning, but I have not been able to find any times for basket blessing. I know it’s being done; just not which church or what time. For quite a few years now, we’ve just blessed them ourselves. I’ll take the chance to visit my mother on Saturday with her basket and get a bit of a visit in.
Then not go anywhere again until it’s time to take the truck in to the garage to get checked!
I ended up outside for about four hours, digging paths in the snow – and I’m not done!
The priority was to get the fire pit area cleared. That has been drifted over for at least a couple of months now. I got the easy paths done first, though, like the path to the litter compost area. On that side, there was one path that got drifted over that I hadn’t gotten to previously, and I needed to use the ice scraper tool to break up the packed snow to get it clear. The rest of the most used paths only needed minor clearing.
The first section of the path to the fire pit area was brutal. I didn’t even try to re-dig the original path from before. That’s where, in the video, you can see a dark trail from dirty little cat feet. Normally, I’d clear the cat path to where they get under the storage house, with a branch off towards the fire pit. That cat path was too hard packed, so I cleared a new path next to it, until I reached where the old path branched off.
Even working off to one side, the snow was so hard packed, even the blade from the ice scraper had difficulty cutting through. I probably spent as much time on that one short section as I did the rest of the path to the fire pit area. If I had tried to use little Spewie to try and clear it, it would have broken. I’m pretty sure even my brother’s gas powered snow blower would have broken, trying to get through there!
Speaking of which, my brother came out today. Along with stuff he needed to do in their storage, he got his own truck set up. He used the snow blower in the outer yard and driveway as well, and moved his truck to our garage, where it can partially fit through the door. The cap on the box of his truck is too high to drive all the way in. He made sure it was all prepared so we can use it, if we have to.
He is convinced something is going to happen to prevent our truck from being ready in a few days, or it’s going to break down again, and we’re going to need to use his truck.
I really don’t want to use his truck! I appreciate the offer, for sure, but it’s a bigger truck, a rear wheel drive and basically a one wheel drive. It’s done very well for them, and I am incredibly grateful the option is there, but I really, really would rather not have to use it!
While I was digging one of the last sections of path, my brother came over to get me and show me the truck. He had it part way in the garage, and had set up a large board across the floor, in front of the tires, to make sure it didn’t go past that point. Otherwise, the top of the box cap would hit the top of the garage door frame! He had me start it and back it out, and walked me through various things on it. This truck as two gas tanks; something we’ve never had. As old as it is, it has lower mileage than our truck! He had some things he wanted to take out of the back, so after going over it with me, he took care of that, then drove it back in position party way into the garage while I went back to shoveling.
I was near finished shoveling when he came over again. He wanted to take pictures of section of the drain pipe from the kitchen, across to the bathroom. Under the bathroom, with the maze of pipe joins, the main drain changes size twice before the final length of 3″ pipe that runs to the septic tank. He is thinking of replacing the pipe from under the kitchen to under the bathtub with 3″ pipe, so that it can handle the volume of water from when the washing machine drains. The washing machine’s pump drains it faster than the water can go through the 1 1/4″ pipe. The problem is, there not a lot of room to put a 3″ pipe through!
I told him about how I’d run the drain auger through three times, after the plumber last got it unblocked for us. Not even the commercial drain auger can get the inside of the pipes completely clear from decades of grease and grime from the kitchen sink, and the sink that used to be set up where the washing machine is now.
I’ve picked up a brush set that’s designed to clean pellet stove pipes or dryer vents. It has two brush sizes, one of which will fit inside this pipe, and it can reach up to 30 feet. It’s about 20 feet to the corner under the bathroom. I think that if I can scrub out the inside of the pipe, that would solve the problem, and we can have the washing machine drain to the septic tank instead of out the window in the main door! I haven’t done it yet because it would be a very messy job that I would need to prepare for. Just running the auger through was messy and disgusting enough! Until it’s done, though, we don’t even dare try testing it again. The last time we did, even after the blockage was cleared by the plumber, we ended up flooding the entryway again. The water just couldn’t drain through the pipe fast enough.
That done, it was back outside. My brother had a few last things to do before leaving, and I did a bit more clean up around the paths before starting to put things away. I dug out fire wood that had been partially buried in snow, and left it out in the sun to melt a bit before having a cookout tomorrow. March is a birthday month and we always celebrate on a weekend near the birth date, usually with a special take out meal (going to a restaurant is no longer an option). Obviously, we can’t do that this month, but I still want to do something special, so we’ll be having a cookout, instead!
Before putting everything away, I finally took the snow off the cat shelter roofs. I’d been leaving the snow as an extra layer of insulation, but we don’t really need that anymore. Now, I want the sun to actually warm up the shingles and metal roof panels and melt away any remaining build up of ice and snow.
By the time I got in, I was pretty wasted. My daughters have basically taken over the other jobs I normally would have done, and made sure I got fed! 😄
Tonight, I’m thinking to prep some things in advance for the cookout before heading to bed. I’m still deciding on what that might be.
Meanwhile, I still need to dig out one more path. With the cookout planned for tomorrow, I might leave that for Monday. We’ll see. I definitely want to get it done before the first day of spring, though, as I plan to do my first “garden tour” video of the year. 😄 It won’t be the first time I did one with everything covered in snow!
For the gardeners out there – especially those who are still buried in snow, like I am – Gardening in Canada just came out with a new video on winter sowing.
The temperature fluctuations are so very typical for our region – and she’s farther north than we are!
We tried the winter sowing in jugs a few years ago, and it was a complete failure. This video covers a few of the reasons why. In our case, that year, they basically just froze, thanks to those fluctuations. That is why I tried the in ground winter sowing – sowing in the fall, before the ground froze, and mulching heavily. As an experiment, it worked quite well last year (not counting the beds destroyed by cats). These beds are now covered in deep snow, so they are well insulated from any temperature fluctuations. In the spring, once things warm up enough, I’ll remove the mulch so the ground can thaw out faster. Mulch will be returned once any seedlings are large enough.
Would I try this type of winter sowing again? Possibly, but unlikely. Perhaps a few years from now, we might have a better set up, and catch the right conditions. Hopefully, our direct sown beds will do well this year, too, because doing it that way is a real game changer.
Currently, I haven’t even tried to get at any of the garden beds, as that would require a fair bit of digging. The rectangular bed in the old kitchen garden has our cover with the strongest wire on it. I have a vinyl cover that fits over it. I used it last year to great greenhouse conditions, and I plan to do that again, once we can get access into that garden again.
Such are my thoughts this morning, as we have gone from 3 or 4C/37-39F yesterday, so a current temperature of -15C/5F, with a wind chill of -24C/-11F as I write this. Our high of the day is supposed to be -11C/12F. We’ll be warming up again over the next few days, then back down again. We’re not expected to see highs about freezing until 10 days from now, but of course, those longer range forecasts are constantly changing. Still, by the second half of March, we should start to more consistently see highs above freezing.
Today, I think I will putter around in the basement with our seedling set up. I need to “pot up” the snail rolls of onions, and make space for my next round of seed starts. I think I might end up doing more snail rolls. I didn’t plan to, but I think those might be easier to protect from the mice or whatever that’s been eating my pepper seedlings. I’ve resown new seeds in the now empty cells. Hopefully, they’ll take but, if not, I still have enough seeds left and they have a short enough growing season that I can try direct sowing in the spring. Hopefully, it won’t come to that. Meanwhile, the next seeds to be started indoors can wait a bit longer, though I can do some, like flowers, earlier if I want. I hope to interplant with more flowers this year, including the memorial aster seeds I collected in the fall.
With so much snow on the ground, yet spring just around the corner (we’re almost half way through March already!!!), a bit of garden therapy will be good for the soul.
The Re-Farmer 