Our 2025 Garden analysis: direct sowing

December 10, 2025December 9, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Okay, so we’ve gone over the winter sowing, then the very disappointing transplanting. How, we get into the direct sowing.

For direct sowing, we did summer squash, pumpkin, pole beans, bush beans, carrots, peas, corn, sunflowers and, to fill in space after losses, Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard. We also planted potatoes and, for a second try, flowers (which I covered a bit in my last post).

Sunflowers, Pumpkin, Corn, Beans and Chard

The pole beans we planted were the Red Noodle beans, in the same bed as the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers. This bed also had seed onions from last year, plus the oodles of tiny self seeded onions I found and transplanted in between the seed onions while preparing the bed.

The Red Noodle Beans germinated and started growing really quickly. I’d planted them along the trellis side of what will eventually be a trellis tunnel. They came up so fast, I rushed to put trellis netting up, even though the structure had only the vertical supports up.

I could have saved the effort. That initial growth spurt was it. They never got any bigger that what you can see in the above slide show. I had a few spare bean seeds left and ended up planting them in gaps between some sugar snap peas. Those stagnated just as much, in a completely different bed.

*sigh*

The Hopi Black Dye sunflowers, however, were a pleasant surprise. It took a long time, but they did finally germinate. They, too, stagnated and took a long time before they started blooming. Some had a single head, while other developed seed heads at almost every leaf junction.

Much to my surprise, they even survived some frosts and a few heads developed what I hope to be viable seeds, that I have saved.

In the same bed as the Red Noodle Beans and sunflowers, I planted the free pumpkin seeds that are given away at the grocery store in my mother’s town. This year, their packets (they limit one per person) had five seeds in it. Last year, they packets had three seeds.

There was no variety name given, but the town encourages people to grow the seeds and enter their pumpkins in their pumpkin fest, from which they later save seeds to give out for free the next year.

I planted them in protective collars, in between the self seeded onions and tomatoes I found in the bed.

The pumpkins where the last thing I direct sowed this year. All of them germinated, and the plants were all some of the healthiest squash we got. They actually came up faster than the sunflowers. When one of them started to develop a pumpkin, I trained that vine up the trellis netting – by then, it was obvious no beans would be climbing it.

They got some really huge flowers, too.

We only got one pumpkin, though. Other female flowers did start to develop little pumpkins, but they all died off.

These vines were very resilient. Even after they seemed to be completely killed off by frost, but we still had warmer days after, they started to grew new leaves and even started to try and bud!

At least we got one pumpkin out of it, with five plants. Last year, we had three plants, and got five pumpkins.

We left it on the counter for a while, where it continued to ripen, and the pattern left by the hammock supporting its weight disappeared.

For bush beans, I planted Royal Burgundy. The first year we grew these, they were fantastic, and we’ve been trying to grow them again since.

These went in along with the Spoon tomatoes.

We got three. One of them got eaten by a deer. It recovered, though.

Despite this, those three little plants actually did start producing! We got a remarkable amount of beans from then, considering how spindly they were!

That did leave me with a lot of open space, and I was out of bean seeds, so I tried planting Swiss Chard.

All I can say about those is, they germinated. Quite a few of them, actually. None of which grew beyond their seed leaves.

*sigh*

I hadn’t planned on it, but I also planted some yellow Custard beans. These were from old seeds that I had, and they went in between rows of corn and between tomatoes.

The bush beans were included in these beds partly for their nitrogen fixing qualities. Corn is a heavy nitrogen feeder.

I planted Orchard Baby corn, which is a short season variety. I got three rows of corn with two rows of beans in between them. The tomatoes got a few beans planted down the middle of the bed, plus one went into a gap between tomato varieties.

I had extra corn seeds, so those got planted around the Arikara squash, nearby.

The corn took a very long time to germinate. For a while, I thought they were going to make it.

In the main bed with the beans, that is.

Most of the beans didn’t germinate at all. Only two or three made it. I wasn’t surprised by that, as these seeds were a few years old, so I replanted them. Eventually, pretty much all of the beans did germinate, as did the corn in that bed.

The corn with the Arikara squash, however, did much better! They germinated faster, grew faster and produced cobs faster.

Not very big cobs, but there was something!

The main corn bed, however, took even longer for the tassels and cobs to form. Then, when we did…

We got corn smut on several plants!

As for the yellow Custard beans, they did eventually start to bloom and we even had beans to harvest, but the plants never grew even close to their full size or production. The ones planted among the tomatoes had a 100% germination rate, though one got dug up by a cat later on. They, too, struggled to grow, bloom and produce. We did, however, get yellow beans to harvest, later in the season.

Summer Squash and Potatoes

With the winter sown summer squash bed a complete fail, plus the small section of winter sown root vegetable mix by the garlic rolled on by cats, we had some open space to work with.

The winter sown summer squash bed became our potato bed.

While cleaned up the bed and digging a trench for the potatoes, I did find a couple of squash seeds but, overall, they seemed to have completely disappeared.

The potatoes we’d bought earlier and started chitting in the basement all failed. They started to grow shoots while in the basement, but I think it was too cold in there for them to do well. Once inside the portable greenhouse, however, they didn’t go any better – and then they got knocked over when the wind almost blew away the greenhouse, knocked over by cats and basically cooked in the heat of the greenhouse.

I got more seed potatoes. Those were chitted in the greenhouse, and did not get cooked.

With the cats seeing all freshly turned soil as an invitation, we made sure to put netting over the potatoes, right from the start. Over time, they got mulched, then mulched again.

On the one hand, they did seem to do well. They grew and got bushy and…

Then they started to die back.

Without ever blooming.

I don’t think I even found a flower bud on them.

I finally dug a few up to see, and yes, there were potatoes. In fact, we were able to slowly harvest potatoes as needed, for quite some time.

With this bed, it seems that drought, heat and smoke were not the only problems.

The bed was also filled with roots from the nearby elm trees.

My nemesi.

Still, we did end up with a decent number of potatoes to enjoy.

The summer squash – Black Zucchini and White Scallop, went in near the garlic.

They, too, got a protective covering right away.

Summer squash usually don’t take long to germinate, but these took so long, I was actually surprised when some seedlings showed up.

I had planted several seeds in each spot and, when they got bigger, I thinned by transplanting.

The summer squash, however, also stagnated for so very long. They did eventually get bigger and we actually got a few zucchini.

I had to hand pollinate them, as the male and female flowers bloomed out of sink.

Only one white scallop squash survived, and that was set back even more than the zucchini. In the end, we got only one scallop squash to harvest.

It was very disappointing, but at least we got something, before the frosts killed them.

Peas and Carrots

The peas were among the first things we planted, and we had two varieties. Sugar Snap peas and Super Sugar Snap peas. We also had two varieties of carrots. The Uzbek Golden carrots were also in our winter sown mixes, plus we tried Atomic Red carrots this year.

The peas were already germinating when the carrots were planted. I’d already set boards out, which protected the carrots until they germinated, and then were used to keep the soil from eroding while watering, as this bed has no walls.

The peas were probably the best we’ve ever grown, even though they did not reach their full potential with the heat, drought and smoke.

There weren’t a lot of pods to harvest, but I could at least snack on them while doing my morning rounds – until the deer got at them.

*sigh*

The carrots were both successful and not successful. There was good germination, and we eventually did a fair bit of thinning by harvesting. Few got very big, though. At the end of the season, when it was time to harvest everything and prep the bed for next year, there were quite a lot of carrots.

Little carrots.

But will, we had something! In fact, once we concluded that we like the Super Sugar Snap peas more than the Sugar Snap peas, I was able to leave pods on select plants specifically for seed saving.

Flowers

I already covered this quite a bit in my last post, but we did direct sow flowers this year. The winter sown bed got destroyed, so we started over.

In the second photo of the above photo, you can see that cats were not the only problem we had, trying to protect the winter sown flowers. The wind completely destroyed the cover we put over them.

I found more Dwarf Jewel nasturtiums to try again. I also found some mixed Cosmos seeds, and decided to plant the memorial Crego Mixed Colors aster seeds I had.

My mother used to grow Cosmos, so I knew they could grew here. We also have wild asters growing, but not domestic ones, so I wasn’t sure on those. Nasturtiums are completely new.

The bed got protective netting as soon as it was planted.

They took so very long to germinate. The asters, longest of all.

The nasturtiums bloomed and we were able to collect seeds, but they were much smaller than they should have been. The Cosmos eventually got big and bushy, but by the time the started to bloom, it was late in the season and they were killed off by frost long before they could go to seed.

The asters were what I wanted to go to see the most, as they are in memory of an old friend. Thankfully, the Cosmos protected them from frost, and I did manage to collect seed.

Final thoughts.

This was a very rough year in the garden. It made me so very glad we had the winter sown beds! Much of what we planted, however, is stuff we will continue to plant. One really bad year is not going to stop that. Locations and varieties may change, but the staples will always be there.

Beans: as disappointing as this year was, beans are a staple crop and we will be growing them again; both pole and bush beans, to extend the season. By the time bush beans are no longer producing as much, the pole beans are ready for harvesting.

At least, that’s how it normally works.

I really want to grow red noodle beans again. They are supposed to do well in our climate zone. There’s only so much I can blame on the drought and heat, or even the smoke. Maybe not next year, though. I also want to grow beans for drying, but that will depend on space.

Corn: These were also disappointing this year, but I do plan to grow more next year. I’ve got way too many varieties of corn seeds, but I have more Yukon Chief, which is a super short season variety we’ve grown before, that I will be planting next year. I’m also going to be growing a sweet corn that matures later, so they can actually be planted close together and cross pollination should not be an issue. Corn is a heavy feeder and you don’t get a lot for the space they take up, but I just really like corn!

Sunflowers: I’ve got the saved seed from this year, and I’ll be trying those, next year. Each year we do that, the variety will get more acclimated to our area. At some point, we might even have enough to use the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers as a dye! At some point, I want to try the giant varieties again (like the Mongolian Giant we winter sowed, but everything in that bed failed), but probably not next year.

Chard: I’ve already got a new variety of those winter sown with our garlic. I might try others, both old and new varieties, with direct sowing early in the spring, but I’m quite blown away by how the ones I did direct sow never got past the seed leaf stage. Not sure what to make of that.

Pumpkin: we have a new variety of pumpkin seeds to try next year, which I will probably start indoors first. It’s the seeds we get locally that do amazing when direct sown, so I’ll likely get more of those next spring, too.

Summer Squash: Once again, we have new varieties to try. I might start them indoors again, too. Direct sowing just doesn’t seem to work well. I know my mother used to direct sow zucchini when she gardened here, but that was a long time ago, and the soil and growing conditions have changed quite a bit.

Peas: we already have some dwarf peas winter sown in the kitchen garden. I’ve got another new variety waiting to be planted in the spring, plus we have our saved Super Sugar Snap peas to plant next year. I’ve just got to figure out how to protect them from the deer!

Carrots: I’ve already got a rainbow mix of carrots, winter sown. Hopefully, they will do better, size wise, than this year’s did. I still have other varieties of carrot seeds, including saved Uzbek Golden carrot, which we quite like. I’ll probably direct sow some in the spring. It will, once again, depend on space available.

Potatoes: I’m still surprised by the potatoes that never bloomed. Of course, potatoes are a staple crop, so we’ll be planting them again. In digging them up to harvest them, and to clean up the bed in the fall, I found a LOT of tree roots had grown into the bed, which may have contributed to the problem.

We’ve got to do something about those trees!

For now, the amount of potatoes we grow is nowhere near enough to last us through a winter, but we’re still looking to find varieties that both grow well here, and that we like. In the future, as we reclaim lost garden spaces and continue to expand, the goal is to plant many more potatoes to store in the root cellar.

Flowers: Of course, I’ll be planting the saved memorial aster seeds, plus some dropped seed might come up on their own. We have new Cosmos varieties, Bachelor’s button, saved nasturtiums, and other flower seeds to plant. It’s more about deciding where to plant them, as some were specifically chosen so that they can self seed and be treated as perennials. Over time, we plan on having areas filled with wild flowers all over, to both attract pollinators and deter deer.

Well, if you’ve managed to slog your way through all that, congratulations! And thank you for taking the time! If you have any thoughts or feedback, please feel free to leave a comment.

While I tried to include quite a few images with this, since I’m posting images almost exclusively on Instagram (I’ve used up almost all the storage space that comes with my WP plan), it’s a bit messed up. So, if you want to get a better look at things, here are the garden tour videos I did in June and July.

I sounded so hopeful in June.

Not so much by the end of July!

Ah, well. It is what it is!

In my next post, I’ll be analyzing our perennial and food forest stuff, and then one last post in the series with an overall analysis, and what we’re planning on for next year.

We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, that’s for sure!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden analysis: transplants

December 8, 2025December 7, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

In my last post, I talked about the winter sowing we did. A definite head start, with a short growing season like ours. Still, things needed to be started indoors, too.

We “lost” a lot of beds that would have been available for transplanting to winter sowing, which limited how much we could start indoors. We also had some re-arrangements in the house that meant I could no longer use the living room, and the aquarium greenhouses, to start seeds indoors.

I had to use our basement.

Not the old basement, which is actually pretty warm. The “new” basement, which has more space, but is pretty darn chilly!

Here are a series of videos I made of our seed starting sessions, beginning with the things that needed the most time.

For winter squash, we went with four types. Baked Potato, Mashed Potato, Sunshine and Arikara – all new varieties for us. The Arikara squash are a rare variety, so I particularly wanted to grow them for seed.

Next on the list where peppers.

This year, we went with a Sweetie Snack Mix with orange, red and yellow mini bell peppers for my family to snack on. We’re still in the “let’s find a variety we really like” stage, and trying new things.

Pre-germinating seeds has been another game changer for us. We’ve had years were we’ve planted and replanted things several times before getting germination. This way, only seeds that have already germinated get planted, for a much higher success rate.

This year, we also got a portable greenhouse, so we could start taking the transplants outdoors earlier – mostly because of space issues – and to make it easier to harden them off when the time came.

In the following video, it first shows the kitchen garden winter sown bed getting its own little greenhouse cover, and then the assembled portable greenhouse.

By the end of it, you could already see we were having issues, as the cover started to tear, even as we were putting it on!

The next seeds to pre-germinate were tomatoes.

This year, after going over our seeds with my daughters, we went with four varieties. The Black Beauty and Chocolate Cherry, we’ve grown successfully before, and the family enjoys them. New was the Sub Arctic Plenty. These are a super short season variety that we could technically start outdoors, since they are supposed to mature in less than two months, but they got started indoors, too. Last of all were the Spoon tomatoes. Those were mostly for me, as they’re the only tomato I can eat fresh without gagging (I’ve since learned this is a reaction to one of the chemicals in tomatoes, much like with people who find cilantro tastes likes soap). The seeds have gotten very expensive, so I want to grow these specifically for seed saving, too.

Something I somehow did not get pictures of were the melons I started. I started pre-germinating those at the same time I potted up the pre-germinated tomato seeds.

I used up some older seeds and started Kaho and Cream of Saskatchewan melon. I also started older Sarah’s Choice melon and new Green Flesh Honeydew seeds. Last of all, I started some older Zucca melon seeds as well.

The Zucca melon and the Kaho watermelons didn’t make it. None germinated. The others did, though, and I was able to pot them up.

Starting seeds indoors in the cold and dark basement was a real challenge. A challenge made more difficult, as one of my aquarium lights, which are grow lights, since they were for aquarium plants, too, needed replacement bulbs. They need a size that I simply could not find locally, so I had to order them online. I was able to get them from Veseys, which also had them at a very reasonable price.

Still, with heat mats, lights and even a heater, we were able to manage it.

It took a while for some of them, but the pre-germinated winter squash seeds all made it. In fact, most of the seeds did really well. It took quite a long time for the eggplant and peppers to germinate – those were direct sown rather than pre-germinated. The colder temperatures did seem to set them back a fair bit.

I was more than happy to be able to get them out of the basement and into the portable greenhouse as soon as possible!

We were still having cold nights, though. I had a thermometer in there for a while and, in the morning, it was just as cold in the greenhouse as outside. To try and combat this, I dug out an old, black garbage can – one of many we’ve been finding around the property! – and set it up to be a heat sink – covered to make sure no critters fell in! The idea being that water inside the black container would absorb heat during the day, then slowly release it during the night.

I can’t really say it worked that well. Partly because it turned out to have a leak and, after several days, it would need to be refilled.

During the day, it got insanely hot in the greenhouse and, other than tying the door flap open, there’s no way to release the heat.

Yeah, the heat was off the scale on the thermometer in there! It got so hot that, on many days, I had to move the trays and bins of transplants outside and into the shade, so they wouldn’t cook.

Like the chitted potatoes, but that will be covered in another analysis post.

In the picture with the transplants, you can see that I did buy some this year. I decided not to start any herbs indoors – I just didn’t have the space for them, and my results have been hit and miss over the years. In the picture, I got on each of lemon thyme, English thyme, oregano, Greek oregano, lemon balm and basil. Later on, I also picked up two transplants of sage.

Then there was the wind.

Even with the structure being secured at each corner, we had one wind storm that was bad enough to knock it half over!

The old garden hose was draped over the top of the greenhouse to reduce flapping in the wind, which was an issue well before this particular wind storm knocked it over. I later set the bags of manure strategically on shelves to add more weight and keep it from being blown over again.

Thankfully, most of the transplants survived.

Eventually, they were being taken outside of the greenhouse to harden off, not just to keep them from being cooked. They recovered very well.

The one thing that wasn’t doing well was the luffa. Of the four seeds, three pre-germinated but only two survived to be transplanted into pots to live in the greenhouse for the summer.

As you can see in the slide show above, one of those surviving luffa was super tiny.

The stove pellets are something I like to add as a gentle mulch. When wet, the pellets expand into sawdust and are less likely to squish or smother young seedlings. They also hold moisture quite well. I find they’re also good to mulch in hard to reach areas. I can reach under leaves or between plants and drop a handful of pellets where it would be more difficult to use grass clippings, leaves or straw.

In the end, I found myself with what were probably the best transplants yet. It was looking to be a great start for transplants this year! Aside from the sad luffa, they were all strong and healthy plants, by the time they were ready to go into the garden.

Once the ground was warm enough.

Which took a long time, this year.

Winter Squash

This first slideshow is of three types of winter squash that were planted in one bed. I set protective collars around them to help with the still-coldish nights, but also to protect them from rolling cats, slugs and other critters.

I later set up a soaker hose but, in the end, I found it easier to use the protective collars to water them. Protective collars went around all the transplants except the peppers and eggplant.

With the drought conditions we had this year, I found that the collars really helped. I could water into a collar until it was full, then move on to the next one. By the time I finished watering from one end of the bed to the other, the first collars were drained of their water, and I would do it again. Most of the summer, I would water a bed in this way three times, twice a day. By the third pass, the water would finally be draining slightly slower. It was more efficient to water this way, than to water empty, mulch covered soil around the plants.

The Arikara squash had three survivors, and they went into their own little bed in the East yard.

Last year, in this bed, I had finally successfully grown Crespo squash. The vines got so huge, they even spread into the cherry tree suckers nearby and started climbing them! The bed got amended as much as I could, and I had confident expectations that another variety of squash would do well here again.

The three squash were transplanted with a cover of mosquito netting to keep the cats out. The netting was a bit too small, though, and didn’t cover it very well. Still, it was enough to protect the bed until things were big enough. I didn’t want it covered for too long, so the squash could be pollinated by insects. Later on, I would direct sow corn among them.

Melons and Spoon Tomatoes

Last year, we had brought the logs to frame a low raised bed, but didn’t get a chance to finish it. I was able to do that this spring, and that’s the bed that got the melons and Spoon tomatoes.

First, the melons.

I found some metal posts at the dollar store and first used those to create a trellis for the melons. In past years, they turned out to be far to heavy for the plastic netting I’d used, so I figured something stronger was in order!

In planting the Spoon tomatoes, I put a pair of bamboo stakes in each protective collar. Later, I added cross pieces to make a trellis to secure the Spoon tomatoes to, as I knew they could get quite tall and leggy.

I also direct sowed beans beside the tomatoes, and will talk about those in another post.

More Tomatoes

The other three varieties of tomatoes all went into one of the East yard garden beds.

In the first picture, you can see just how much growth there was with the winter sown bed in the background. That greenery is almost all lettuce!

You can also see that the Chinese elm seeds have started to drop.

The attempt at solarizing didn’t work. It did warm up the soil, though, and the weeds were much easier to pull at that size.

In the end, I had 9 Sub Acrtic Plenty, 5 chocolate cherry and 4 Black Beauty tomatoes to transplant.

I added a large, plastic coated metal plant stake into each protective collar, then wove in bamboo stakes to great a strong trellis. I knew the chocolate cherry could get quite tall. When we grew Black Beauty before, they didn’t get as tall, but were so heavy with tomatoes, I had to add more structural support to their trellis, because they were pulling it over! I wanted to make sure these had a good, strong frame to hold their weight.

Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and Turkish Orange eggplant

Next, the peppers and eggplant went into the wattle weave bed in the old kitchen garden.

The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers all fit into the short side of the L shaped bed. The Turkish Orange eggplant were planted around the tiny fruited strawberry plants that were already starting to bloom!

In cleaning one of the beds, I found some sort of flower. I decided to transplant it in this bed, too. Later, I added a second, different, flower of some type I found. Once they bloom, maybe next year, we’ll know what they are!

The peppers and eggplant all got wire tomato cages for support. Those came in handy, later, for other reasons!

The Herb Bed

Finally, there were the herbs.

This tiny bed had been prepped in the fall, but was pretty over grown already. You can see the walking onions outside the bed are doing really well already, too!

The cats also like to sit on top of the mesh, so before anything else, I added supports to it, then added a bamboo stake that was given to us, weaving it through the top. It was meant to keep the top from sagging under the weight of cats, but has turned out to be a fantastic handle.

This little bed is the perfect size for a few herbs. It even had room for a couple more.

Spur of the moment, I got some discounted sage and tucked them in as well.

So, everything went in and was looking good, though things were getting pretty late by the end of it. We had plenty of hot days in May, but the nights were too cold for the transplants, and the soil didn’t get much chance to warm up. I recall we even got a frost well past our old average last frost date. The last of our garden didn’t get in until the end of June.

It did not bode well for how the summer would go.

How things grew

Drought.

Heat waves.

Smoke.

A triple whammy that affected everything. I’m amazed we got anything at all.

Winter Squash

The winter squash was hit particularly hard, and not just by weather and smoke.

Those strong, healthy winter squash in the main garden area started blooming very quickly, even while still small. Just male flowers, but that’s not unusual.

This, however, was a first.

All the winter squash in that bed were hit with these tiny insects. Thrips, I was told they are. They were really bad. In the end, they were dealt with using a spray bottle with dish detergent in it, after washing most of them off with a hose.

None of the winter squash did well. After the first flowers appeared, they just stagnated. It was ages before they started blooming again. Plants that should have gotten big enough to completely fill and cover their beds barely covered their protective collars.

It took even more time before any female flowers showed up, and I made sure to hand pollinate as many as I could find. Usually, I had to open up a spent male flower to be able to do it, though sometimes, not even that was to be had.

By then, it was so late in the season, we started having to worry about cold nights. Not quite frost, yet, but cold enough to set them back. I really wanted to give what few squash had finally started to develop, the best chance they could. Thankfully, we did have a long and mild fall, but not mild enough for the squash.

I found a way to cover the bed.

We added jugs full of water to act as heat since, too.

It seemed to work.

It wasn’t much, but what we had were surviving.

We got times when the days would be cold enough that I didn’t uncover them at all during the day.

After a pretty severe frost, I finally decided to open it up and see what survived.

None of the Sunshine squash made it, but we did have some Baked Potato and Mashed Potato squash to harvest, including one decently large Baked Potato squash. That one was pretty close to the size they are supposed to be. We had something to harvest to try out, at least.

Then there was the Arikara squash.

They, too, stalled and stagnated. The corn that was planted with them, however, did better than the corn in the larger bed, so we could rule out soil issues. The above photo was taken after I’d salvaged the trellis from the melons to make a fence to keep critters from eating the corn before we could.

As with the other winter squash, the Arikara squash seemed to do well, then stalled, then started to grow again, then stalled.

When it got late enough to harvest the corn and pull the stalks, they had started to grow again, so I left the fencing.

In the above picture, you can see frost damage on the leaves – and flowers! There were even female flowers developing!

It was too late by then, but they continued to surprise me by starting to show new leaves and buds even after the entire plants looked like they had been killed off by frost.

Melons and Spoon tomatoes

Then there were the melons and Spoon tomatoes.

I took these pictures of progress on covering the paths with wood chips, but you can see the melon and Spoon tomato bed in both images.

The melons just… didn’t. Some tried to bloom, but the vines seemed to die back a bit, possibly from transplant shock, and then that was it. They never got better, even if a few did try to bloom.

The melons were a total loss.

The Spoon tomatoes, however, were a surprise.

The first surprise is that they stayed short and bushy. Every time I’ve grown them in the past, they got quite tall for such a small plant, and needed support. That’s why I made the bamboo stake trellis for them that I did. The absolutely stagnated, like everything else.

And yet, they were incredibly productive! I couldn’t believe how many tiny tomatoes we got off of these! Granted, they are so small that it takes about 50 or more to equal one small slicer tomato, but it was enough.

Yes, I did collect some just for seeds.

We also lost a lot of tiny tomatoes into the bed while picking them. When the frosts were coming, my daughters pulled them all, then all three of us sat together, picking off only the reddest tomatoes to keep, and the rest went onto the compost heap. Of the next couple of weeks, even with the frosts, I saw all those tiny green tomatoes turning red!

Not only will we probably have self seeded Spoon tomatoes in that bed, but in the compost pile, too!

More tomatoes

Then there were the other tomatoes.

*sigh*

One of the things I had to do was put netting around the bed.

The cats kept going in and trying to use is as a litter box.

I also interplanted them with beans as nitrogen fixers and a living mulch. Plus, some self seeded carrots showed up.

As with so much else in the garden, they did not do well. Everything stagnated, and nothing grew to their full potential.

The Black Beauty tomatoes were already something that takes a long time to ripen, but when we grew them before, they got large and bushy and were loaded with tomatoes. This time, we had hardly any show up.

The Chocolate Cherry did better, but still nothing close to when we grew them before.

The Sub Arctic Plenty barely grew at all. They did produce a few tomatoes, though.

Very few. These are a bush type, but they should have gotten much bigger and bushier, and produce more.

Having said that, we did eventually get Chocolate Cherry and Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes to harvest. Just a bit, here and there.

In the end, we had to harvest the last of everything before a frost hit, bringing them in to ripen indoors.

In the above first picture, there’s the last of the ripe Spoon tomatoes, along with the unripe tomatoes, that we brought in for our last real harvest. This included dry radish seed pods and Super Sugar Snap peas for seed saving.

Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and Turkish Orange eggplant

Then there were the peppers.

The plants actually did pretty well, though they didn’t get as large and bushy as they should have. One thing I did that I believe helped was prune the ornamental crab apple tree of branches overhanging that bed – discovering a whole bunch of hidden dead branches in the process. It took a very long time, but they did start producing, and we even harvested a couple of mostly ripe peppers off the plants.

When the cold nights and frosts threatened, the wire tomato cages allowed us to cover them with old bed sheets we repurposed for the garden.

The pepper plants handled the cold surprisingly well, though. As with the tomatoes, most of these got harvested while still green, and brought in to ripen indoors before the hard frosts hit.

The Turkish Orange eggplant also stagnated and took a long time to start producing fruit, so it was very late in the season before we started seeing orange among the green.

Some did fully ripen on the plants, though!

It was so late in the season, I was collecting carrot seeds, too!

As with the peppers, the last of them were harvested green and brought in to ripen indoors. The plants themselves were not at all cold hardy. Yet, they surprised me. Even after I cut their stems at soil level to more easily harvest the unripe eggplant, I later found that they were sending up new growth!

Over time, as they ripened, we were able to use the peppers and even had enough to dehydrate a small bag’s worth.

As for the eggplant, we tried them out and they were okay tasting. Not particularly tasty, compared to other varieties, but that could have been because of the difficult growing year. One of my daughters, however, found that after eating them, with the skins on, her lips went numb. She’s never had this reaction to eggplant before. There’s something in this variety that she’s allergic to!

The Herbs

This was absolutely a success!

In the first picture, you can see the herb bed in the background, still green and producing, after several frosts, while the other beds are being winter sown. Everything except the basil, which got killed off with the first light frost. It was fantastic being able to pop into the garden and harvest a few herbs, any time we needed.

We were still harvesting as needed until it finally was time to mulch the bed for the winter. Even then, I mulched around the plants first, and we kept using them, before fully mulching them before the snow hit. The thyme, oregano, lemon balm and sage are all herbs that, in milder climates, are perennials. With proper mulching, these might actually survive the winter.

For a time, it did seem that they were stagnating, too, but there was a different solution for that. They weren’t getting enough light. We’d pruned the ornamental crab apple tree at that corner before, but much of it was grown back. After cutting way a major branch, the herbs, and even the winter sown kitchen greens bed, suddenly were getting so much more light!

I’m glad I bought the transplants, though, rather than trying to start them myself indoors. I don’t think I would have had as much success, otherwise.

Now we have one last transplant to talk about.

The luffa.

*sigh*

As with everything else, they stagnated. One grew a fair bit more – enough to actually climb up the greenhouse structure, and even bloom.

The other one also, eventually, started to grow, but these were both failures. They’ve grown better for us, out in the open garden beds, than in the greenhouse!

Final Thoughts

Starting seeds in the basement: we have no choice on this one. In fact, we are currently working on making space and figuring out how to bring the aquarium greenhouses into the basement, so we have have better control over temperature and light. The problem is, the big tank and the shelf it’s on are quite large, and we aren’t sure how we can get it around the bottom of the stairs without breaking anything! Also, one of my heat mats died, so we’ll need to get another.

Pre-germination: no change there. We will continue to pre-germinate as many seeds as possible

The portable greenhouse: I really loved having this, but we have a major issue. By the end of the season, the winds basically tore it apart. Plus, we’ve had a couple of cats jump up onto the roof, adding more holes. The cover is completely toast. The frame it still good, though, so we will probably look into getting better quality greenhouse cover material and basically make a new cover for it. Currently, it’s covered with a large heavy duty tarp and being used as another winter shelter for the cats. With no door flap, because that is gone.

Winter Squash: we will always be growing winter squash of some kind. This year’s failure had to do with things out of our control. I’d like to try this year’s varieties again, but another time. We’ve got other varieties to try in 2026 already. I’m still looking to grow the rare Arikara squash for their seeds, too.

Melons: same as with the squash. Growing conditions just killed them off this year. We have new melon seeds and new varieties, so we will be growing melons again.

Tomatoes: My daughters have suggested not to grow Spoon tomatoes again. Too many tiny tomatoes to pick. 😁 We have new varieties to try, including another tiny variety 😄, so next year we will likely have another three or four varieties again. Just not a lot of each.

Peppers: my daughters suggested that we just grow the Sweet Chocolate peppers we grew a couple of years ago, as they were enjoyed. I did pick up a different variety noted for having thick walls, so we might be doing two varieties of pepper next year.

Eggplant: with a daughter that has a reaction when eating the Turkish Orange eggplant, we won’t be growing those again. I did, however, get a white variety to try next year.

Herbs: total win, here. We plant to have many more herbs in the old kitchen garden, and we do have seeds to start indoors, but buying transplants is always a good option, too. Plus, with this particular little bed, we might even have our first perennial herbs – if the heavy mulch helps them survive the winter!

Luffa: Yes, I will be trying luffa again! I am determined to grow sponges. We’ve come so close in the past!

What we could really use is a polytunnel or a more permanent greenhouse.

All in good time!

As for this year’s transplants, they started out strong once they got out of the basement. It just was such a difficult year. We had modest successes, at least, but nothing that would feed us for any length of time! As my SIL once said, of their own garden: if we relied on our garden to feed us, we’d starve! One of our goals, however, is to grow and store enough produce for 4 adults from harvest to harvest. We can’t afford years like this too many times!

We were not the only ones that has such a bad gardening year, of course. Lots of people on my gardening groups really struggled.

Hopefully, next year will be better.

We will, however, be learning a lot from this year, to help make that happen!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden analysis: winter sown beds

December 7, 2025December 6, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Our 2025 garden started in 2024, and not just by planting garlic in the fall. Inspired by a video from Gardening in Canada, I decided to give winter sowing a try. Now winter sowing in milk jugs, etc, but actually direct sowing into garden beds in the fall.

You can see where I did these in my October 2024 garden tour video.

This was a pretty risky experiment. After going through my seeds, I decided to make mixes of seeds and broadcast them. This gave me a chance to use up old seed, but it also cleaned out all the seeds I had in some categories, both old and new.

The garlic I planted was from saved cloves. Besides that, these are the seed mixes I made and direct sowed before the ground froze.

Seed combo 1 Root vegetables	Seed combo 2 Summer squash	Seed combo 3 Kitchen garden	Seed combo 4 Tall and climbing	Flower combos
Carrots: Uzbek Golden and Napoli Beets: Bresko, Merlin, Cylindra and Albino Turnip: Purple Prince Radishes: French Breakfast, Champion, Cherry Belle and Zlata Onions: saved seed (mix of red and yellow bulb unions) Note: left over seeds from this mix were planted in a final bed with saved Jebousek lettuce seeds added in	Sunburst pattypan White Scallop pattypan Magda Green zucchini: Endeavor Yellow zucchini: Goldy	Swiss Chard: Bright Lights and Fordhook Giant Spinach: Space, Lakeside, Bloomsdale and Hybrid Olympia Kohlrabi: Early White Vienna and Early Purple Vienna Bok Choi: Hedou Tiny (saved seed) Shallots: saved seed Onions: saved seed	Sunflowers: Mongolian Giant and Hopi Black Dye Peas: Dalvay shelling peas (not saved seed) and King Tut purple peas (saved seed) Bush beans: Royal Burgundy Corn: Montana Morado (saved seed) Onions: saved seed	Main garden area: Nasturtium: Dwarf Jewel Mix Butterfly flower: Orange Shades (milkweed) Forget Me Not Maple grove: Western Wildflower Mix

In making these mixes, I had some Uzebek Golden carrot seeds left, 1 out of 2 packs of Hopi Black Dye sunflower, onion and Dalvay pea seeds left. All the rest, I used all the seeds I had. I really cleaned out my inventory in the process!

This is the video I made featuring the winter sown beds this past spring.

Let’s start with the complete failures, first. 😂

Summer Squash mix.

I was really looking forward to these. Unfortunately, not a single one germinated.

No, I can’t blame the old seeds.

I blame the cats. Mostly.

After the mulch was removed, the cats decided that this bed was a great place to roll around in. If anything survived the winter, I never had a chance to see them before they were crushed. In the end, my daughter and I completely redid the bed, digging a trench and planting potatoes. Which did much better, sort of, but I’ll cover those in my direct sowing post.

In the garlic bed, I was left with some space at one end of the bed, so I broadcast a bit of the root vegetable mix there. That, also, got completely rolled on by the cats – and I even saw things starting to sprout there! I did direct sow summer squash in that space later on, which I will also cover in the direct sowing post.

The winter sown summer squash, though, were a complete loss.

Tall and Climbing (mostly) mix

This mix went into a newly redone bed in the south yard, at the chain link fence. The fence would have provided a trellis for some things. The bush beans were there as nitrogen fixers.

I planned ahead on this. Knowing that this bed could be completely suffocated by seeds from the nearby Chinese Elm, I got mesh tunnel kits to protect this bed. These were dollar store purchases, and it took four of them to cover the entire bed from end to end.

As far as protecting from the seeds, they worked great.

They couldn’t handle kittens, though. Kittens that decided the mesh was great to play on, bending the wires under their weight, and to get under. They would use the bed as a litter box, but also just run around back and forth, playing. Or in a panic when they couldn’t find a way out again. The few things that started to germinate were completely crushed. Even the seed onions I found and transplanted along the edges were pretty much destroyed.

It was incredibly frustrating, and the bed was a total loss.

Self seeded lettuce; the only thing that survived in this bed!

The netting survived, but many of the wire supports were so badly bent out of shape, it wasn’t worth trying to straighten them out again.

The Flower combos.

There were two areas I winter sowed flower seeds. One was a purchased mix of wildflowers native to Western Canada. These are the sort of thing I would like to have growing among the trees, so it went into an area on the edge of the maple grove.

Unfortunately, yes, the cats caused damage there, too. The prepared soil was softer there, so they’d use it as a litter. The area was large enough, though, that if anything survived, there was still a chance.

I honestly don’t know if any survived. Nothing came up, but part of the issue in that area was the drought conditions and the fact that I simply didn’t water it regularly in the spring. It’s entirely possible that there are still surviving seeds in there that might germinate later on. I’d sown mixes of seeds in two other areas in the maple grove that also didn’t take, but since then, things have come up that I haven’t seen there before, so it’s entirely possible this will happen again.

For 2025, though, nothing seemed to have come up at all.

The other flower seeds went into a small bed at the end of the high raised bed, where I’d grown pumpkins last year. This one, I was able to water more regularly.

Yup. You guessed it.

Cats destroyed it. By the time I was able to cover it, it was too late. Nothing survived.

Starting over with flowers: much better!

I did replant that bed with more nasturtiums, Cosmos and some memorial asters, keeping them covered until they were too big to fit under the cover, and large enough that I didn’t think the cats would go into them anymore.

The nasturtiums did pretty well, though they were much smaller than they should have been. They bloomed and we were able to collect seeds from them. They did pretty good, but did not thrive to their full potential.

The Cosmos got really tall and looked great, but they were among the things that stagnated. It took so long before they bloomed that, even with a mild fall, they never finished blooming, and there were no seeds to collect.

The memorial asters were also much smaller than they should have been, and took a very long time to bloom. They were, however, also protected by the Cosmos, when the temperatures started to drop and frost hit. The Cosmos protected them enough that they were able to go to seed.

Some of the seed, I allowed to drop to self seed for next year, but I collected others to direct sow in other areas next year.

Now let’s look at what did work – and these really made up for the losses!

Kitchen Garden mix

This mix went into one bed in the old kitchen garden. As things started to warm up, I dragged over a cover to put over it. This allowed me to first cover it with plastic, to create a mini greenhouse, which was later replaced with mosquito netting. This cover is strong enough to withstand the weight of cats!

The first things to show up in this bed was the spinach.

Lots of spinach.

More than we could keep up with, spinach!

Some varieties bolted rather quickly, though.

What got me really excited, though, was the kohlrabi. I’ve been trying to grow it for years and, with the old seeds I had, I honestly wasn’t expecting much. For the first time, we actually had kohlrabi to harvest! That was what really won me over to winter sowing. The only other time I came close to succeeding with kohlrabi, they suddenly got completely destroyed by flea beetles.

Another reason for the mosquito netting!

Different things showed up as the season progressed and space opened up. The kohlrabi did overshadow other things, like the Swiss Chard, though we were still able to harvest some from under the kohlrabi leaves, too.

What I didn’t see until they bolted was the Hedou Tiny bok choi (which I kept misspelling as hinou instead of hedou). They were already from saved seed, and only a couple of plants seemed to survive the shade of the kohlrabi, so I left them to go to seed.

The most resilient in this bed were the chard. We harvested those as cut and come again plants, and they just kept going and going! Even when I finally had to clean the bed up and prepare it for new winter sowing, we still had harvestable leaves.

The “fail” of the bed were the onion seeds. Actually, the bulb onions and shallots seeds, both from our own saved seed, were a fail in all the beds. Those really need to be started indoors in January or February. Heck, I could be starting them now, and it’s still the first week of December as I write this. We just don’t have a long enough season for them to be direct down. I had hoped, however, that they would start to grow enough that we could harvest the greens. The kitchen garden bed was the only one that actually had onions start to grow. In fact, when it was time to redo the bed, I found so many tiny onions and possibly shallots that I kept the larger ones and replanted them with the winter sowing!

I also found a surprise. Two full head of garlic somehow got missed when the bed was being reworked. They were sprouting, so I ended up breaking the cloves apart and transplanting them into the wattle weave bed in the kitchen garden, as part of my winter sowing for next year.

I was really impressed with how this bed did, and the experiment helped me make decisions for next year.

Root Vegetable mix

This mix ended up being spread out over three areas. The high raised bed in the main garden area, and a small space at the end of the garlic bed, got the same mix. When it came time to use the last of the mix, in one of the low raised beds in the west yard, I added Jebousek lettuce seeds I’d saved from last year.

The three areas turned out quite different.

The tiny area with the garlic, as mentioned earlier, was destroyed by cats rolling in the soil.

The high raised bed had mostly beets, radishes and carrots show up, plus some turnip. Including one giant turnip I allowed to go to seed, except a deer ate it. So that got harvested.

I allowed most of the radishes to go to seed as well, as I was growing them mostly for their pods. Eventually, the deer started going for those, too!

They really liked the beet greens.

*sigh*

Still, we were able to harvest beets and carrots – including the orange Napoli carrots from old pelleted seeds! – as needed. What we really got a lot of, though, was radish pods. We tried those out in a quick pickle.

Which we all enjoyed. I don’t like radishes in general, but found myself snacking on fresh pods pretty regularly. It turns out that winter sown radish pods are milder than spring sown ones.

The third bed also did really well.

I did end up putting plastic over this bed as well. Mostly, though, I found I had to try and keep cats from getting under it.

The only “problem” we had with this bed is the Jebousek lettuce. Which we quite enjoy eating. There was just so MUCH of it! I couldn’t believe it! They actually got to be a weed. We simply couldn’t keep up with eating it all and I ended up pulling a lot of it and leaving it as a mulch. Only to discover they would re-root themselves and start growing again!

The radish pods did really well, though. Even after the deer got at them, they recovered and started blooming again.

In the end, the few beets that germinated got choked out. No onions germinated, that I could see. I didn’t think the carrots were showing up, other than the odd one, but when I started cleaning up the bed at the end of the season, I kept finding carrot fronds, so I left them to grow until it was time to clean up and prepare the bed for the next winter sowing.

This is what I ended up finding.

That was way more than I expected!

So that’s how the winter sown seeds went. There’s still one more bed to cover.

Garlic

As always, our garlic was planted in the fall. When I took the mulch off in the spring, they were already up and growing. I was really happy with how they did!

Unfortunately, yard cats were still an issue, and I ended up having to cover the bed (and the potato bed next to it) with netting until the garlic started to get too tall. By then, they were not at risk from the cats anymore.

I’m really happy with how the garlic did – and with being able to harvest scapes again.

We ended up dehydrating some of the scapes, then grinding them to a powder. It turned out to be a fantastic way to be able to include garlic in our cooking, and I definitely want to keep doing that.

This was less garlic than we tend to plant, but we still got a good harvest of what are probably the biggest garlic bulbs we’ve ever grown.

The biggest ones were saved and set aside to be planted this fall.

Conclusion

In the end, winter sowing like this has turned out to be a real game changer for us, and I fully intend to keep doing this from now on.

We did mixes this time, which I will not repeat. Instead, I’ve chosen seeds, from my new inventory, to plant in a more orderly fashion. Which is already done.

So, for next year, along with the garlic and seed onions, I have already planted spinach, chard, kohlrabi, purple savoy cabbage (first time trying to grow cabbage), beets, Hedou tiny bok choi, peas, carrots and dwarf peas. You can see where those went in our October garden tour video.

The other thing we seriously need to address is how to keep things out of the garden beds. Elm seeds, cats, deer, flea beetles, snails (we didn’t have a snail problem this year, thankfully – probably because we had so many frogs this year!!), etc.

With that in mind, I’ll be completely reworking the bed along the chain link fence, making it slightly taller and with supports to hold any sort of cover we want to add. Early on, I’d like to be able to put plastic over it to create a mini greenhouse environment. Later, I want to put netting over it to keep the seeds and cats out. Maybe frost covers later in the season. So the supports need to be something I can easily change things up on, too.

I’m just really excited about how well the winter sowing worked. Obviously, not everything can be winter sown, but as we reclaim more garden space and build more beds, I expect that winter sowing will make up a significant portion of our garden, year after year.

The Re-Farmer

A musical break while planning posts

December 5, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I’ve started on my 2025 garden analysis posts, which means I’ve got way too many tabs open as I review things to plan and organize my analysis.

Which is a good time for some Christmas music as a distraction! I’ve never heard this old cover of Good Kind Wenceslas before.

Bing sure had a smooth and unique voice.

Enjoy!

The Re-Farmer

From a distance

December 5, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, I’m happy to say that the winds died down yesterday, by the time I headed out to do my evening rounds. It felt warm enough that I actually did some shoveling, including paths to the fire pit and wood piles. We haven’t been able to use the fire pit in the summer, due to drought conditions, but I’m hoping we can use it in the winter!

This morning was technically colder, but without that wind, it wasn’t too bad at all. It’s still snowing lightly and is expected to continue, off and on, throughout the day.

When feeding the outside cats and getting to the catio shelter, I spotted a grey tabby inside the self warming cat shelter under one of the floating shelves. I’m so glad it’s being used! Unfortunately, it was one of the more feral cats – Slick, I think – so my approach scared it out. It was starting to panic inside the shelter, so I made sure the door was wide open, with plenty of room for it to run out.

Later on, I saw the feral white cat with grey tabby spots in the catio shelter, and even Sprout.

I had to zoom in from across the yard to take this picture. I didn’t want to scare her away from her warm nest in the straw. I’m happy to say that both of the most feral mamas seem to be hanging out more in the catio shelter. These two have hiding places somewhere in the outer yard – or beyond, for all I can tell – so this greatly improves our changes of socializing them, or at least trapping them for spays.

I counted 35 or 37 cats and kittens this morning. I’m not sure exactly how many kittens were mashed into their favourite cat cave, but I figured at least four. I’m not sure if I double counted any. I spotted the big tom that’s started to visit us as I was going back into the sun room. I may have already counted him as a “grey tabby in the distance”, but I’m not sure.

With today’s slightly improved weather, if there is any errand running to do, I want to get it done today. I think the only trip I need to make is to the post office. There’s a couple of packages ready to pick up now.

While checking the status on the Back to Basics book I’d ordered on Cyber Monday, I saw it hadn’t shipped yet – but I also saw that the kindle edition was on a 1 day sale. $1.99 for the digital version, instead of $24.99. So I got that last night and was able to start going through it. Much of it is exactly like the older edition I have, but there are some obvious differences, too. For example, in the section on how to build various houses, it no longer has a cordwood house, but an adobe house instead. It should be interesting when I get the physical copy (I just checked this morning, and it has finally shipped) to go through both editions at the same time, and see the changes.

I’m expecting today to be another quiet day, mostly indoors. It’s hibernation season. 😄

The Re-Farmer

Books and trees

December 1, 2025 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I took advantage of some Cyber Monday deals on Amazon and ordered a couple of books on my wish list, last night. Just now, I placed an order for some trees that will arrive in the spring. (None of the links below are affiliate links. Links will open in new tabs.)

First up, the books.

One is Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills. Fourth Edition. I actually have a 1981 Reader’s Digest edition, Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Our Traditional Skills. I don’t know that these are connected, as the one I’m ordering has an Abigail Gehring listed as the editor. No Reader’s Digest listed anywhere. Looking at the preview of the one I ordered, it does seem to be an updated version of what I have. Which is an excellent book.

The other is 40 Projects for Building Your Backyard Homestead: A Hands-on, Step-by-Step Sustainable-Living Guide This one has even been shipped already, even though I ordered it just last night.

Both of these are supposed to arrive before Christmas but Canada Post hasn’t exactly been reliable of late. I believe they are technically still on a rolling strike. We shall see. I look forward to going through both of them over the winter!

Next are the trees.

One is a bundle of five Bleu Basket Willow. I’ve been considering for some time, where the best place to plant them would be. Willow propagates easily, so the plan it to expand them. The source, Prairie Hardy Nursery, also has two other varieties of basket willow in different colours that I plan to get, when the budget allows. The plan is to coppice them so that they can be used for things like wattle weave fences and, yes, weaving baskets. Thinking long term, these will be planted beyond the outer yard, and will need to include protection to keep the renter’s cows from crushing them by accident, until they get bigger.

The other is a single bare root seedling, as part of our food forest; a Manchurian Walnut. While we have black walnut planted, they may or may not have a long enough growing season here for fully mature nuts to form. Normally, they wouldn’t, but the ones I got were from a nursery in our province, so they are probably acclimated already. The Manchurian Walnut is hardy to zone 2b. It’ll be 10-12 years before they start producing. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time is now! They are also described as fast growing, so we should be able to enjoy the tree for its beauty before it starts producing. As with the black walnuts, these will be planted in the outer yard. They are self fertile, though it is recommended they be planted in pairs for better production. Which we might do, when the budget allows.

The nursery opened for the sales season in November, and the dormant seedlings will be shipped in the spring. I’ll get an email in April to work out the best shipping date based on our last frost date. If I am able to order more trees between now and then, they actually have a code to include to combine orders, so as not to increase the shipping fees, and everything gets shipped together. The shipping costs are relatively high, but they include insurance. Most places don’t.

It’s slow going, but little by little, we’re getting it things done!

The Re-Farmer

Getting things done!

November 27, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Aside from a morning occupied with wandering around the yard, trying to get a signal on my cell phone, so I could listen to the voicemails from home care, with all the phone calls, emails and messages that get done because of it, it was a decently productive day!

The main goal was accomplished, and that was breaking open that straw bale and covering the septic tank.

I love how round bales just peel away in layers.

The outside was so densely packed, and partially frozen, that it formed a shell. I took advantage of that. After removing the insulated tarp and spreading out loose straw, I’d drop chunks of the outer shell on top, strategically, to keep the straw from blowing away before it could settle in place. There were still some chunks left over when I finished covering the septic tank area, and I put those on top of the bale to form a sort of roof. Once we’re done covering things with straw, I plan to “store” the insulated tarp by setting it over the bale. That way, moisture won’t get into the open end and cause rot.

Once the area was covered, I got the emergency bypass for the septic partially set up. The pipe in the basement needs to be pushed through, and the end can be set into the PVC pipe – after taking the cap off, of course! I’ve got the flexible hose running into the maple grove this time – something we couldn’t do last winter, because of the snow. Once it’s set up properly at the house, we’ll set various supports under everything, to create a gradual decline and try to make up for uneven ground. Last year, there was one time when the flexible hose froze closed because there was a slight dip in the ground.

Hopefully, we will not need to use it at all. However, should the ejector freeze again, all will be ready, and we’ll just need to open the ball valve. The heat tape is still set up around the parts of the ejector that is above ground, but that won’t help anything at the venturi valve on the bottom.

We were planning a dump run today, so I didn’t have time to start covering the winter sown garden beds with straw on top of the leaf mulch, but I did have time to winterize things more for the yard cats.

I especially wanted to the get catio strawed up. I took everything out and put a decent layer on the ground, focusing on filling the gaps under the elevated frame. Then I added some onto the hammocks, just because. I put the pieces of rigid insulation back under the self heating cat shelter again, but the other pieces were no longer needed under the box nests. Since the self heating cat shelter had been collapsed a couple of times, it was a bit floppy in one area, so I trimmed one of the scrap pieces of insulation to fit tightly between the floor and the roof, against the wall next to the entry. Hopefully, it will stay in place, but if it falls in, that’s fine. The cats love that insulation!

As you can see in the picture, the cats are indeed using the new shelter!

The straw will also help insulate the water bowl, at least a bit, so it won’t freeze quite so quickly. I still had to take a hatchet to the ice to be able to drain the water inside, and replace it with hot water. The hot water would melt at some of the remaining ice and soon be cool enough for the cats to drink.

When it was feeding time, I noticed the straw on the hammocks were compacted in circles. Cats are definitely appreciating the straw up there, too!

The catio winterized a bit more, I switched to the isolation shelter – which has seen a whole lot of activity of cats enjoying it being open again!

I removed the litter pans from the bottom level and swept things out as best I could. I’ve got an old telescoping snow brush with a broken scraper that’s perfect for the job. Once that was cleaned up, a fairly thin layer of straw was added – I didn’t want to add to much, since there is a heat bulb and power cords in the upper level – and then the refreshed litter pans were returned.

Which, as you can see in the second picture of the slide show above, Pinky promptly jumped into, before joining the crowd above, which you can see in the last picture of the slide show!

I had a bit of straw left in the wheelbarrow when the catio and isolation shelter we done, so I added it in the covered greenhouse, on the ground under the food tray and water bowl. Even with that, I had a bit I could set on the concrete patio block between the isolation shelter and the steps, just to give another insulated place for the cats to sit on.

While I was doing that, my daughter brought the truck into the yard and loaded up the garbage and recycling. Once the dump was open for the afternoon, we headed out. After unloading at the dump, we continued on to the town north of us – right into blowing snow. Not a significant amount, but definitely the most we’ve seen this year. The system passed our place entirely, but went right over the town to the north of us.

Our destination there wasn’t actually in town, but the feed store. I picked up four 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats while my daughter went shopping in there clothing and boots section. For that many bags, I paid for them, then backed the truck up to their shipping/receiving door to get the kibble, then parked again and rejoined my daughter.

She had been looking for something specific, which she found, but she got distracted by their display of bib overalls. She told me later that she’s been pining for bib overalls since she outgrew some she grew out of when she was 7! She’d looked at them at places like Mark’s Warehouse before, but wasn’t happy with what they had.

This place carried a brand called Tough Duck, which were exactly what she wanted. They had another, more expensive, brand as well, but she didn’t like them as much. She had a budget for only one thing, though, and the overalls won! She got these. (not an affiliate link) Given her rather generous feminine assets, plus these are meant to be worn over clothing, she went with a 3X. She didn’t try them on until we got home and she is very happy with them. These are men’s overalls and ludicrously long on her, but they can be hemmed. The website does have a women’s version but there are no hourglass figured in this household! My daughters and I take after my Eastern European side of the family. If it weren’t for boobs, we’d be straight, rectangular brick houses. 😄 So when it comes to pants, men’s clothing tends to fit better.

When I had a chance later on, I tried them on, too. I might actually want to go a size bigger, only because they tend to pull when I bend over to touch my feet. The fabric has no real stretch to it, though it would soften and loosen up a bit after a few washings. I do a LOT of bending from the waist when I work, since my knees aren’t stable enough to bend at the knees, so it’s something to keep in mind. Not that I’d be getting myself a set anytime soon, but they would be really handy to have come spring time!

After getting the legs hemmed. 😄

Once home and unloaded, the first thing I did was start feeding the outside cats, so my daughter could park the truck, then do my evening rounds. When I was done, I spotted this bit of adorableness.

That would be Sprig, who is only slightly less feral than her mother, Sprout!

I haven’t seen Sprout for a few days. I hope she’s okay.

Sprig has been coming into the sun room more often, and joining the cuddle puddles. So far, I’ve only managed to sneak a touch as she runs past. I’m happy to see her using the new cat cave. I zoomed in to get the picture, as I knew she would run away if I came to close, and I didn’t want to chase her out of a warm spot.

It would be really awesome if we could get her to the vet tomorrow! In a couple of hours, my daughter and I will head out to see who we can set up overnight in the isolation shelter for an overnight fast. Not that they’ll be fed again until after we leave in the morning, so any of the cats could be brought in – if we can get them into carriers. I really want to get Frank. She’s a bundle of nerves, but is still the most approachable of the intact females. Adam and Slick have been coming around, but Slick hasn’t been allowing contact, and Adam only allows it while she’s eating. The white one with grey tabby spots is even more feral. Trapping will likely be the only option. I just don’t see us being able to socialize them over the winter, and I really want to get them spayed before they go into heat in the late winter/spring.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day, that’s for sure. The goal is to be on the road with the 3 cats by 7:30, as the drop off time is 8:50am this time. We’ll be staying in the city until the clinic calls us to pick up the cats – trying to avoid the Black Friday crowds. (Weird that Canada does Black Friday, when our Thanksgiving was last month.) Then, I’ll be doing my mother’s bed time med/personal care assist at around 9pm. If it were summer, I’d be napping in the truck while waiting for a call from the clinic, but it’s getting too cold to do that now.

Ah, well. It is what it is!

Happy Thanksgiving to my US visitors!

The Re-Farmer

Oh, I’m going to have fun over the next few days!

November 26, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Yes!!! It finally arrived!

The family renting most of this property had a straw bale they could spare, but they’ve been really busy. This morning, however, she was able to deliver it this morning.

I never did get a price for it. I told her I had $50 set aside for it, but when I gave it to her, I told her, I knew prices for them have gone up, and that I hoped it was enough. She said it was, but I strongly suspect they sold it to me at a loss! I tried looking up what the going price is right now, but they varied significantly depending on type of straw, quality, etc. I did say I was okay with an older bale, since it was going to be used over the septic tank and in the garden, but I don’t think they had any older bales left.

As we were talking, I asked them if they did beef shares, since the family I’d been buying from before is no longer doing direct sales. She said no, not really. The problem is that they have to go through a provincially approved butcher to process the meat, and that costs so much, they can’t sell at a reasonable price. She said, they’ve had people saying that, with beef prices as high as they are right now, they must be making lots of money, but no. They aren’t. The overhead is so high, the profit margin is extremely slim.

That got us to talking about managing things. They are pretty diversified, with beef cattle and several different types of crops, all of which requires significant equipment. Plus, they are being nickel and dimed to death by government regulations, fees, taxes, etc. She told me how, in several recent years, they’ve managed to cover the costs only because they’ve got trucks and could do some shipping to make ends meet.

It is so very hard to be a family farm these days.

I’m very thankful that they were willing to sell me a bale, and take the time to deliver it!

The next few days are going to be relatively mild, with temperatures just a few degrees below freezing. Tomorrow, I’m going to unwrap the bale and start breaking it apart. It’s closed to the septic tank, which will need the most straw. I’ll be glad to have straw instead of the insulated tarp. The tarp does the job, but it freezes to the ground, making it hard to access the tank if we need to empty it for some reason, in the winter. Plus, if I need to walk around the area, it is shockingly slippery. There’s been more than a few times where I’ve almost fallen, and that’s even without snow to make it ever more slippery!

Since it’s starting to look like we won’t be getting a lot of snow this year, I’ll be adding straw to the leaf mulched, winter sown beds for more insulation. The saffron crocuses will get some, too.

Just as important, I plan to put straw inside the catio. The box nests and self warming shelter in there will do better with a layer of straw under them. It’ll help with the food and water bowl, too. Plus, when things start melting in the spring, any snowmelt that might puddle in the catio will be under the straw, so the cats, bowls and shelters will all stay warm and dry above it. I’m even thinking of redoing the space under the shelf I put in back of the water bowl house and using straw on the floor there, too. There are pieces of rigid insulation on the floor now, which could be set up against the walls, instead.

Oh, I am so looking forward to working on all that!

After the bale was delivered, I went ahead and opened up the isolation shelter. Pinky is doing just fine, with no signs of infection at the surgical site, and has been trying to tear her way out. Which means the bottom of the isolation shelter needs more of a clean up. Even the litter boxes, from bits and chunks of insulation! That will help get things ready for the next isolation cats.

If there are any.

New critter cam is up (a semi product review)

November 25, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today was a pretty quiet day, overall. We did have a surprise at our gate around midnight. I started getting motion detection alerts and discovered a horse.

It was our vandal’s horse. Before my father passed away, our vandal used to bring his horses here at times, so when it got out, it probably remembered the way and being able to go through our driveway. I ended up sending an email to our vandal’s wife to let them know. She didn’t see it until morning, and it turned out the horse was back home, safe and sound, by then. I’m glad to hear it. A dark horse on the road at night is pretty risky!

We had plenty of cuteness this morning, of course.

If you click through the slide show, you’ll see a crowded cat cave – there are at least four kittens jammed into there! My daughter had been able to pet the Colby, the fluffy orange and white kitten, yesterday but no such luck today. The big tom visited us today, and discovered roof top dining on the cat house roof. With the heat lamp inside, it would be slightly warmer overall.

The isolation kitties are doing very well. That insulation is getting torn to shreds. I actually caught Pinky tearing at it as I was doing my evening rounds. She’ll be let out soon enough. Thursday night, I hope we can get a couple of cats in there for fasting and a trip to the vet on Friday. I’m really, hoping to get Frank. She sometimes lets us pet her and purrs when we do, but she is a bundle of nerves and still doesn’t really trust us. It’s going to be hard to get her into a carrier.

I’ve been in contact with the rescue and they asked if I decided who we’d be bringing in. I told them about Frank, but said it’ll be whoever we can catch! I let them know that we’ve had to do this before, where they knew the cats were from a colony. This clinic is good with doing whatever cats we bring in, even if we don’t know in advance which ones they’ll be. Getting strays and colony cats fixed is a big thing for them, so they are willing to accommodate.

With that in mind, when it was relatively warmer in the afternoon, my daughter and I set up the new critter cam. This is what I unboxed, yesterday.

I set it up with the app and got it charging overnight. It was set aside on my desk and, in the morning, I found it had caught one of the cats, being where it wasn’t supposed to be! Impressive, considering the camera was pointing at the ceiling all night!

The first thing to do was decide where the base plate needed to go on the little house I made for the camera, then screw that in place. The camera itself has a latch and can be easily removed, as needed.

Once my daughter and I figured out where we want to attach it to the elm tree in front of the kitchen window, we used the draw knife to shave away at the bark, and even using a chisel in one area, to make it level enough to attack to. We need to get rid of this tree entirely, so we’re not worried about damaging it.

After we got the camera arrangement attached, we had to figure out where to put the solar panel. The cord it came with is nice and long, so it can be placed quite a distance, if necessary. Our main concern was putting it somewhere the critters wouldn’t be getting at it, while still being able to face south, unobstructed. It ended up going under one of the main branch, where my daughter was able to create a flat spot to attach it to – the screws it came with aren’t long enough to go through such thick bark to the wood below. Then, between the two of us, we got the holder on and screwed the solar panel in place, which you can see in the second picture of the above slide show.

In attaching the base plate for the camera to the tree, we started hitting something that was too hard for a couple of the screws to go through. These are 3 inch screws, though, so it’s still very secure – and one of the screws that was sticking out quite a bit came in handy, to hang the excess solar panel wire off of. You can see the final set up in the second last picture of the slide show.

The last picture is of one of the stills it took while being set up. It saves stills into a cloud, but it also takes video, which gets saved to the micro SD card.

By the time we were done, there were at LOT of files to delete!

That done, and while my daughter got the evening cat feeding ready, I grabbed a litter box from the cat cage in the sun room. When there were tiny kittens in there, it was being used, but not that they’re all bigger, they ignore it. I was going to just replace the dirty litter box in the isolation shelter with the clean one. As I took the old litter box out, though, I also grabbed the cat bed that was down there. The cats were no longer using it as a bed.

They were using it as a litter box.

Ew.

I scrapped it off as best I could. Normally, I’d have set it in a bucket with some water and detergent to soak for a while, but it’s too cold for that, and I wasn’t about to bring it inside! What I ended up doing is cleaning out the old litter box, refilling it and setting it back in the isolation shelter, so they now have two litter boxes on the bottom, and no extra cat bed.

I’m glad I designed the bottom with clean up in mind. The mesh will make it a lot easier. It’s a real mess down there! Come spring, we can brush it out as much as possible, then hose it down. For now, the cats will just have to put up with the scattered sawdust mess they made on the floor, but at least they’ll have two litter boxes now.

With the camera in place and the litters done, I moved the doorway box shelter back in front of the isolation shelter, with one side wall against the front panel, to keep critters from trying to claw their way through the vinyl covering the wire mesh. Last year, that happened pretty quickly when we had cats in isolation, and cats outside were wanting in. This year, they don’t seem to have tried, but I still want to keep things as covered as possible.

One of my concerns about having the camera is that I might get too many alerts due to cat activity. I wasn’t sure how busy things would get. I know cats like to jump onto the doorway box shelter, onto the bin on one side, the chair on the other, and onto the roof. Plus, I know raccoons have been all over it, trying to get in – they are the main reason I wanted the camera, really. I have been getting motion detection notifications, but nowhere near as much as I thought I might get. Things are pretty quite in there. The only add thing is checking the notification and finding that the camera’s position has been altered slightly. Which means something moved it, somehow. I’m not sure how that would happen.

What I have discovered is that I can use the camera to check a lot more than just the isolation shelter! I can check the main door, of course, as it’s close by, but I can also check the cat shelters by the sun room, and even the catio and shrine feeding station. In the other direction, I can see quite a bit of the East yard before the tree itself blocks the view.

So far, I’m quite happy with how this camera is doing. I don’t even have the motion sensor sensitivity changed from the default (from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most sensitive, it was on 6), and it’s picking things up fine. The one issue I have with other security cameras is that they don’t pick up vehicles. Just people (or people sized critters). Which is fine if you’re using it in the city or something, but where we are, it’s vehicles that I need to monitor more than anything else. We don’t have pedestrian traffic. With this camera, we have no way to test that right now, since it’s not being used for that, so I can’t say whether it works better or not.

Depending on how things work out, what we might do is make a stand similar to what I have right now for the gate trail cam, which would allow us to set the camera up in locations where we don’t have handy trees to attach it to.

Now I’m thinking ahead to how and where we can set up the big trap and try to get some of the more feral mamas, with the camera to monitor the trap, during the winter. We would want to get the feral ladies done before they go into heat in the last winter. If we have the mild winter it looks like we will be getting, they might go into heat really early, like happened this year with several cats.

We’re supposed to get 2 cats done on Friday and, since Frank got away from us last time, we still have donated funds for one more to do, if the rescue can arrange another date for us. It’s through someone else that is able to get these super low rates for spays, and they have only a certain number of slots available, so we’ll see how that works out. After that, the cost will probably go back up. It’s still a lot cheaper than anywhere else. When I’m there on Friday, I should ask them about the possibility of last minute appointments for trapped spays of more feral cats. We have plenty of friendly males we could bring in for neuters at any time. We just really need to get those ladies done!

Well, we’ll see how it works out as time goes by. Until then, we just do the best we can for the critters.

The Re-Farmer

What a day – but I managed to get some stuff done!

November 24, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Gosh, my mother can make it so hard to help her with things.

I was up way earlier than intended (thanks, cats. *sigh*) but at least it was light out when I headed out to feed the cats and do short rounds.

The isolation cats seem to be enjoying their cozy shelter, though there is evidence that Pinky has been trying to get out. She’s somehow pushing one of the ceiling insulation sheets out one side, as she digs at the other. I know it’s her, because the kittens are too small to reach.

From the muddy hand prints outside the front window, raccoons have been interested in getting in, while Pinky is wanting out! She’s doing so well, we probably could let her out and she’d be fine, though that shaved belly would sure get cold!

Once the morning stuff was done, I had just enough time to grab a breakfast before heading to my mother’s. I got there just after 9am, and her scheduled med/etc. assist is 9:15, so that worked out.

I put together a breakfast while she took her meds and, once she was all settled, I took care of other stuff, like emptying the commode and so on. Once everything was done, I took advantage of her empty sink to try and use the little sink plunger I got for her, to try and fix the slow drain.

I made a mistake with the plunger I chose. It would work with something like a bathroom sink, but not the kitchen sink. The plunger is a sort of accordion style, with a separate seal around the edge. The seal fit around the drain, but the plunger was just small enough that it would go into the drain, flipping the seal and eventually knocking it right off. I kept trying, as all sorts of material was being pulled up into the water.

But the slow drain was now no drain at all. Whatever I moved around down there, it resulted in a total blockage.

Well, my mother had drain cleaner on her list anyhow! So I left it for the moment, hoping the water would slowly drain while I was running her errands.

My first stop was at the pharmacy, and that’s where she wanted me to pick up some Drano. Except they didn’t have any. I eventually found a house brand and got that. Then I did her grocery shopping before heading back.

The was no change in the water level at all.

After everything was put away, I tried adding the drain cleaner. The instructions said to pour down half a bottle. Normally, the heavier gel would sink through the water and into the drain.

It didn’t.

I could actually see, with the debris, as the gel swooped outwards from where I was pouring it directly over the drain.

My mother, meanwhile, was a continuous stream of instructions on what I should be doing, what she would be doing, and I needed to do things the way she would be doing it – even though she couldn’t see what was actually going on. I had mentioned the debris coming up and she starting telling me to use a paper towel to wipe it up, even though I also told her the water as not draining. Not sure what a paper towel was going to do!

I left it for a while. That little plunger wasn’t going to do anything, and I had my doubts about the no-name drain cleaner. I decided I’d leave it to sit and went to the hardware store.

That confused my mother, and she kept asking about being able to use the sink, while I kept telling her, don’t use the sink!

At the hardware store, I found an employee, hoping they would have a better sink plunger. All the had were full sized ones, so I did end up picking a very basic one designed to clear floor drains and tubs. Then I asked about drain cleaner and he took me right to a Drano produce specifically designed for kitchen sinks. It was a granular product, rather than a gel. I’d never actually seen a granular version before. Good to know about.

Products acquired, I headed back to my mother’s

None of the water had drained at all.

So I tried the new plunger, which did actually work better, in that it didn’t fall apart and seem to be pulling more debris out of the drain.

Nothing was getting through, though.

Except, now there was water on the floor.

I checked under the sink, and there was water. I started emptying all the stuff my mother’s been shoving under there so I could clean mop everything up.

My mother had been in the bathroom, and it was about this time that she came out. I told her the clog was far worth than we originally though, and that there was now a leak. I had read the instructions on the new drain cleaner, which included removing any water in the sink. I’d found and filled a couple of small buckets and was trying to get as much out of the drain, explaining to my mother what was going on as I did. Normally, she would settle herself at her table, but I asked her if she could sit in the living room, so I could get through to the bathroom with the buckets.

So began the litany of all the things I should be doing, rather than what I was doing right then, while standing and blocking my way out of the kitchen! Including demanding I call the maintenance number. She did finally move so I could dump out the buckets into the toilet. Then I started taking things out from under her sink, so that I could clean up the water, but no, she wanted me to call the maintenance number right then. I told her I would do it after cleaning up the water, and she finally stopped demanding I drop everything and do what she was ordering me to do.

Once things were cleaned up and as out of the way as possible, I called the maintenance number. My mother has three fridge magnets with the direct number, so at least that was easy to find!

Of course, it went right to hold. I ended up putting it on speaker, so I could monitor it while updating my family and my siblings on my cell phone.

Then Meals on Wheels arrived, so we traded places, and I waited in the living room while she had her lunch. The woman delivering it normally would have stopped to chat a bit, but between my with the hold music going and the open cupboard doors and a bucket under the kitchen sink, she very quickly disappeared! 😄

The hold music would stop every now and then as an automated message gave the “we are experiencing more calls than usual…” spiel. My mother started asking what the lady had said, not realizing it was a recorded message. Then, when it came on again some minutes later, she started making disparaging remarks. When her food arrived, she ordered me to hang up and make myself lunch. I refused. That happened several times over. After a while, it was clear the hold music was somehow bothering her in a way that seemed out of place. I offered to take it off speaker, but I would then have to hold the phone to my ear constantly, and she finally stopped.

When someone picked up the call, I took it off speaker phone and and spent some time explaining the situation. Once he had all the info, he said someone would be sent over to fix it. I asked how long it would be, since my mother could no longer use her kitchen sink.

They would try to get in within three days. If not, it could be a week.

!!!!!!!

That’s when I brought up the product I bought and asked if it was okay to go ahead and try that. I didn’t want to use something stronger like that, without checking first. If nothing else, it would at least let the plumber know it was there and take precautions. I was told they were okay with such self maintenance and to go ahead and use it.

So it was back to going over the instructions again (with plenty of commentary from my mother, who has never used any product like this in her life). I’d had to use a paper towel to sop up as much water out of the drain as possible, since my mother didn’t have any sponges. The instructions were to add 3 tbsp down the drain, being careful not to add more than that, followed immediately with 2 cups of hot, but not boiling, water.

The clog is so bad, those two cups couldn’t go down the drain at all.

The instructions said to wait 15 minutes and, if it was still blocked, to try again. I set a timer and made myself sit down, so I wouldn’t be hovering. My mother, meanwhile, was set up at her dining table again, which meant I had to squeeze between her and the wall behind her, over and over again. She wouldn’t move. Not even to slide her chair forward a couple of inches! When I checked again after 15 minutes, there was no change in the water level. I still did a second treatment, but that just added more water to the bottom of the sink! At least the granules sank through the water and into the drain, though.

My mother, meanwhile, was getting herself quite worked up and kept on with how she would have done things. She would have called the main office number, not the maintenance number – as if that wouldn’t have gone on hold (I’ve called that number a few times. It either goes straight to hold, or to voice mail. A live person almost never answers). They would then transfer her…

… to the maintenance number I’d called directly.

As for being on hold, she would hang up and call back. Or she would start pressing buttons. It took me a moment to realize she meant she would start button mashing on her phone, because she was on hold.

I tried to explain to her that, at the other end, they can’t hear the old music, nor would they hear any button pushing.

She then accused me of “always taking “their” side.”

It turns out that my mother believes that, at the other end, there are people listening to the same hold music and simply not answering because they don’t feel like it. She based this on a story she told me, in a very circular way, of how she actually saw someone doing that at a clinic while she was in the waiting room. Except I thought she was at first describing that a radio was playing, but it was the “same” music as the old music. I tried to tell her, that’s just not possible. When you’re on hold, the people on the other end can’t hear the same things.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized that the person she was describing as ignoring a call on hold may actually have been the one on hold, with the phone on speaker so she could monitor it and keep working at the same time. If that really was hold music my mother was hearing in the first place.

At one point, I’d left with my mother’s Meals on Wheels tray to set it in the common room, and noticed a sign up sheet for a potluck and game night on the table. I assumed it was some sort of sport ball event on TV. I mentioned it when I got back and my mother and she told me it was being organized by someone who fairly recently moved into the building. She’s taken to organizing things and is very bossy…

…

Somehow, this got mixed in with being put on hold for so long.

Then my mother started talking about all these things going missing from the common room – an ancient computer that no one was using, a piano that was donated that is now gone, and there’s another piano there now, and the TV that was mounted to the wall in the common room that no one watched, so of course, this potluck was going to be table games, not a game on TV.

I never even noticed it was gone.

I eventually realized that my mother believed that all these things have been stolen by this one person. She has zero proof of such a thing. That’s just what she believes. I suggested that maintenance probably took them. It’s not like someone can just walk away with a large screen tv that’s mounted to a wall.

The piano, though… she thinks someone stole the piano and replaced it with a different one.

Which is exactly the sort of thing my mother used to accuse my father of doing. I even brought up a few instances, reminding her of how she had me look at a sewing machine my sister had given me, but that I’d left here at the farm when I moved out of province (it’s still here), because she thought it was different. My dad had “traded” it. She’d done the same thing when we got a new TV, and even with a cow. All of these things were the same, but to her, they were different, and it was because my dad was “trading” things. Those were just examples that involved me directly, but she’d done the same with vehicles and entire herds of cows. She even called the RCMP once, claiming my dad and “traded” a bunch of cattle – and managed to do it without leaving any tracks in the snow of any kind.

That just set her off on how – for 50 years! – my dad had been doing all this stuff, and I just didn’t understand…

Then it went back to being on hold for so long, and how I should say it was urgent, and they listen to the tone of the voice to see how serious it is… I guess I was too calm on the phone? and everyone takes advantage of old people.

I told her, yes, it happens, but not everyone does that.

Yes. Everyone. Even you.

How am I taking advantage?

Because of how I talk to her (not agreeing with her wild accusations).

…

Then, as “icing” on the sh** cake, she basically said I was just like our vandal.

You know. The guy that’s been verbally abusing her and sponging money off of her for years. The guy that was stealing stuff from this property to the point that she asked us to move in, partially just to stop him from doing that. The guy that we had to get a restraining order on, and blames us for causing his cancer. The guy that shows up at her place randomly and yells at her. That guy.

Gee. Thanks, Mom.

By this time, I’d been at my mother’s for almost 3 and a half hours, the second treatment of the sink showed no signs of doing anything, and I was well past the time I should have left. My mother, meanwhile, was making herself upset because I bought the different drain cleaner and the plunger, and I should take those home, because she has so much stuff and doesn’t need them. I told her I would do that, but after her sink was fixed. However, from experience, I could see that it was because she didn’t want to pay me back for them, even though I had no intention of asking her to. She just assumes that’s what I expect, because that’s what she would expect if she were in my position. It’s also what our vandal would have done.

She’s much less subtle about it, as she gets older!

I had hoped to get the sink unplugged before I left. There were a lot of things I would have tried, if I were at home, but this is a government owned and run building, so I wasn’t going to do it there. I got the okay to try the specialty drain cleaner, and that was as far as I was going to go on that.

I did tell my mother I would call back later to ask, which I did shortly after her 5pm meal and med assist. No change in the water level in the sink.

After leaving my mother’s, I swung by the home care office. Which turned out to be empty at the reception area, and all the other doors were closed. Thankfully, one of the staff came in while I was reading various signs to figure out what I was supposed to do to get through to someone directly. She asked if I was there for an appointment, and I told her I wanted to pass on information to the home care workers about my mother. She recognized my mother’s name when I gave it, and I explained about the sink. The staff was going to have to use the bathroom sink until the kitchen sink was fixed, and I told her how long that might take. She just rolled her eyes in frustration when she heard how long it might be. This is not a new problem with provincial public housing buildings like my mother’s, apparently!

She assured me she would let the home care workers know, and I was soon on my way again. I needed to run some errands in the town nearer to us first. By the time I finished there and was heading home, it was late enough that the post office would be open again and I could pick up three parcels I was expecting.

There turned out to be four.

I ended up driving up to the house and my daughter helped me unload – and kept cats away from the truck, so I could park!

I had lost so much time that, once everything was taken care of and put away, I quickly changed and headed back outside to get as much done as I could while it was still light out.

One of the first jobs was to finish mulching the herb bed with leaves for the winter. Remarkably, the sage, thyme, oregano and lemon balm all survived that freezing rain we had, and we could probably still harvest from them, if we wanted! Time for them to go to sleep for the winter, though, and hopefully start growing again in the spring.

Another job was to finish trimming the materials I’d harvested for what will become deadwood walls for the chain link fence garden bed. I even remembered to take pictures before it got too dark.

The first picture is the pile of saplings and suckers, so far. The longest ones will be used for the front of the bed. The shorter ones will mostly be fitted between the fence posts, on top of the boards that are already there. With the boards, that side only needs to be a few inches taller. The longest pieces will be reserved to do the front wall, just inside where the bricks are now.

I’m going to need a lot more material.

In the second picture, you can see the log my daughter helped me drag out of the spruce grove. This will be part of a bed that will be two logs tall. It’s pretty small, so it will most likely be a top log. I’ll see what I’m able to harvest out of the spruce grove later, but bigger logs will be used on the bottom of the walls.

After the trimming, I worked on something for one of the parcels I got in the mail today.

The new solar powered security camera.

I was a bit taken aback by the packaging. It just says “battery powered” and nothing on the outside of the box suggests that there is a solar panel. For a moment, I thought maybe it was supposed to be ordered separately, but when I opened it, it was there. The second picture is of the contents.

This camera will be set up to monitor the isolation shelter, which means it will be attached to the big elm tree outside the kitchen window.

The cats love climbing that tree, which means the camera will need protecting.

I also want to be able to easily move the camera to other locations, as needed, such as when we can set up a trap to catch cats for spays.

Inspired by what my brother set up for the gate cam, I went looking through the scrap wood pile and built something to attach the camera to, which is what you can see in the last picture. I started off making the shelter, with a back to attach the camera to, and a roof.

I love my cheap garage sale miter saw!

The roof isn’t so much to keep the elements off the camera; it’s designed to be outdoors and doesn’t need a roof at all. Mostly, it’s to keep the cats off of it!

The camera cover is attached to a slightly longer board, and there are screws already in it, ready to attach it to the tree. I wish I’d found that board earlier, as it would have been much better wood to build the shelter part with!

When it’s time to move the camera, it’s just a matter of unscrewing the back piece from the tree. The solar panel will be attached to the other side of the tree somewhere, facing the sun. That, I am not sure how to set up and protect from the cats (or raccoons!), since it obviously can’t have a roof over it, and still get enough sunlight to power the camera.

After I took the picture, I brought it inside and added wood glue to where the roof comes in contact with other pieces, and the joins of the roof itself.

By the time that was finished, the light was fading fast and getting cold, so I quickly did the evening rounds and cat feeding, and headed in.

I managed to get a decent amount accomplished, given how little daylight I had left when I got home!

Today is most likely that last day of temperatures above freezing for the year, though the long range forecast has several odd days in December that are forecast to be just above freezing. That’s in between temperatures were we are supposed to have highs below -20C/-4C and lows dropping to -35C/-31F, so I really don’t think we’ll get that warm. We’re not even expecting snow until the 7th and 8th of December at this point, and even then it’s only 30% and 60% chance of snow.

Looking at the monthly forecast, apparently, we’ll be getting next to no snow at all this winter! That would actually not be good, as we really need the precipitation. Otherwise, we’re looking at another drought year, next year. Long range forecasts are not particularly reliable, though, so who knows.

For now, though, once the temperatures start dipping below freezing, there really isn’t a lot I’ll be able to keep doing outside.

It’s going to be hibernation time, soon!

Meanwhile, I’ll be going through the manual for the new camera, getting it charged up and hopefully it’ll be set up and working tomorrow.

I’m quite looking forward to testing it out tonight – before it gets attached to the little shelter I made for it!

Then.

Sleep.

I hope.

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

planning ahead

Our 2025 Garden analysis: direct sowing

Our 2025 Garden analysis: transplants

Our 2025 Garden analysis: winter sown beds

A musical break while planning posts

From a distance

Books and trees

Getting things done!

Oh, I’m going to have fun over the next few days!

New critter cam is up (a semi product review)

What a day – but I managed to get some stuff done!

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