planning ahead

Bye Goat!

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

When I was doing my rounds last night, including the outer yard, I got some company.

Though we made a point of closing the gates in the chain link fence, the truth is, the goat could have gotten out at any time, if she wanted. And this time, she wanted to follow a cat!

As I did my founds this morning, she followed me for the entire circuit!

We were having no luck closing her up in the pen we threw together, but maybe… just maybe…

Would she follow me if I walked over to her owner’s place?

I figured it was worth a shot. After having breakfast (and taking some pain killers!), a grabbed a bit of feed in a bucket and started walking.

She enjoyed a bit of feed while I locked the gate behind me. :-)

For the first while, we were being followed by Creamsicle and Butterscotch. The goat was happy to come along with all of us.

Also, I spotted these ahead on the road. I zoomed in, and it’s hard to see, but…

… can you see those shapes on the road?

There was about 4 or 5 of them, all in a row, when I first spotted them.

They’re cranes!

I often hear their calls from that direction, and had a good idea of where they were, and this has been confirmed.

This is where the cranes were. When I was a kid, we used to all this area the Three Ponds. In reality, it was more like one pond and a couple of marshy bits, but we didn’t care!

I spent many happy hours slogging around in the water, spotting mysterious creatures among the underwater plants and observing them.

This area is so full of water right now! The last couple of years, even the deepest part here was almost completely dry.

For a while, I thought leading the goat wouldn’t work. I almost reached about a third of a mile when the goat started going back the other way. She was following the cats. Butterscotch and Creamsicle were following, but they reached about the quarter mile mark and didn’t want to go any further. I ended up back tracking quite a bit, before the goat was willing to turn back to me. What I ended up finding was that if I walked my normal pace (which is a brisk walk), she would actually run to catch up with me, and follow along more diligently, rather than wandering off to the ditches as she did when I walked slowly. Especially after we had to pause to let a truck drive by. I think it spooked her a bit, and she kept up with me a lot more after that.

I’d posted earlier about the flowing stream I’d found that was a surprise to me. This is where that water reaches the road.

We are past the farm’s property line at this point. The photo on the left belongs to the guy who owns the goat, I think. That quarter section has been split up since we last lived in the area, and I don’t know where the new lines have been drawn, so I can’t be sure.

This is part of the municipal drainage system, and one which takes advantage of a low area that was already there, naturally. In one of the photos, you can see some piles of dirt from when it sometimes gets dredged. This is more what I was expecting, at our place. Basically, a big ditch of slowly draining water. Not a fast flowing stream.

It’s hard to see in the photo, but the markers are warnings for the dip that runs across the road. When I was a kid, this section of road would get washed out, every spring. Sometimes, so much would wash away, the school bus couldn’t get through. The driver would have to reverse the bus for about 2/3 of a mile, before he could use our driveway to turn around in. Eventually, the municipality cut down all the trees that were growing along the ditches on either side. After that, the road no longer washed away. It wasn’t until after I moved off the farm that the drainage ditch was dredged out, and a culvert placed under the road. It’s at this culvert that the road is sinking!

We turned at the 1 mile intersection, then it was another 1/4 mile or so to the driveway of the owner. It was at this point that I think the goat started to really recognize things. She perked right up and started going ahead of me, instead of following behind.

When I started going down the driveway, which is closely bordered by trees, it took a bit to get the goat to go down the driveway, too – but soon we were walking past a goat pen, and she went right over!

Just look at the size of those bucks!

The other milk goat is in there with them.

As I continued down the driveway, I was greeted by three BIG Great Pyrenees dogs, wagging their tails, furiously. I didn’t know he had dogs! I’d seem them before, but in other people’s fields, and had no idea who they belonged to. Such gorgeous animals!

As I went around, I saw the other goat pen way beyond the house. The owner, however, was not home.

I didn’t expect that. With the lock down, pretty much everyone is home. I didn’t even think that he might not be.

So I sent him a text right away, letting him know the goat had followed me over, and was at the pen near the rams (he called them rams, but male goats are called bucks).

The response was not what I expected.

I thought, at the very least, he would be happy for relieved the goat was home again.

Instead, he was all stressed out that she was there and not in a pen.

Long story short, he told me he was going to get a buddy to go over and put her down.

I tried to reassure him, saying the goat would stay near the other goats and be fine, but nope.

At that point, I was most of the way home again and just stopped responding. She’s his goat, and he can do what he wants with her, but what the heck? Why such an extreme response?

I find myself wondering. He could have been having a lot more problems with the goats than he’d hinted at before, and maybe he had been counting on us taking the two milk goats off of his hands. He had still wanted her back to breed with the bucks, though, and would have kept her until we had a pen ready. Maybe he thought that if he said this, he expected me to turn around and take her back? I don’t know. I’m only guessing.

Whatever his reasons and motives, I can’t help but feel ticked off that he was so eager to just shoot her. I didn’t want or even expect any sort of thanks for bringing the goat back, but I did expect him to at least be happy to have her again. Not immediately have her put down.

Whether or not he’ll follow through with this, I don’t know. I don’t know what circumstances he’s going through with his goats, it’s not up to us, and we are not in a position to take the goats ourselves right now. There is just no way we can set up the fencing needed right now. A few months from now, maybe, but not right now.

In hindsight, I probably should have contacted him before I headed over, but I hadn’t planned on doing it, and didn’t even know it would work. Now, I kinda wish I hadn’t.

It has, however, been a learning experience for us.

I still think we will be getting milk goats, but will go back to our original timeline. We’ll take a couple of years to get ready for them, while continuing to clean up around the property. Then, when we do get them, we will buy them from someone I know, who raises goats and works very closely with them; these will not be untamed goats!

Meanwhile, we can dismantle the pen we threw together, then put together the stuff that is his, like the chicken wire and food containers. I might end up using the wood to build squash trellises, instead. I should probably be outside already, working on that, but…

I’m just feeling quite ticked off right now.

Bye, Goat.

The Re-Farmer

Recommended: What the Fungus

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

Welcome to my “Recommended” series of posts. These will be weekly – for now – posts about resources and sites I have found over the past while that I found so excellent, I want to share them with you, my dear readers. 🙂 Whether or not I continue to post these, and how often they are posted, will depend on feedback. Please feel free to comment below, and if you have a favorite resource of your own, do share, and I will review them for possible future posts.

I hope you find these recommendations as useful and enjoyable as I have!

When I was a kid, I refused to eat mushrooms.

Especially morel mushrooms, which we found in various places here on the farm. I thought they looked like brains.

My parents, being Polish, loved mushrooms, but couldn’t make me eat them.

To this day, I have yet to taste a morel mushroom.

I have, however, developed a taste for other mushrooms, and even an interest in the idea of growing them at home. I had discovered a website that sold different types of mushroom spores, which I didn’t even know was a thing until then. We were still living in the city, however, so the closest we ever got to growing mushrooms was to buy an oyster mushroom kit we saw at a grocery store. Once.

It didn’t grow very well, but we did get a couple of mushrooms out of it.

Since moving back to the farm, we have talked about buying spores and inoculating areas around the farm. I have been interested in trying morel mushrooms, but have only ever seen very expensive dried ones in stores. Since I already know they can grow here in the wild, it seemed logical to inoculate an area somewhere closer to the house.

Unfortunately, the website I’d found years ago has disappeared. I found a few other sites, but they were all US based.

Then I saw a video on a YouTube channel I’ve recommended previously, The Urban Farmer talking about a company called What the Fungus.

Oh, have I been smitten!

For starters, they are Canadian. They might be in BC, but it still makes being able to find varieties that will grow here in our province much greater.

What is awesome is that this company doesn’t just grow and sell fresh mushrooms, mushroom spores and the things you need to grow them. They provide a lot of information and support to teach people how to start a viable mushroom growing business for themselves.

With the current Wuhan virus shut downs, they are now producing videos that focus on how to continue to run a business and make an income when almost all avenues for sales are no longer available.

While most of their growing videos involve greenhouses or indoor mushroom farms, they also have videos on growing mushrooms on logs, outdoors. Which is more in line with what we were originally thinking of doing here at the farm.

Their video channel is a wealth of information, from how to grow different types of mushrooms, to equipment used, to financial concerns.

On their website, you can buy mushroom kits and supplies and, if you are in their area of BC, order fresh mushrooms. They even have a mentorship program for those interested in commercial mushroom growing.

Now, we’re just interested in growing mushrooms for our own use. We have lots of mushrooms growing wild here at the farm, but I have no idea which ones are safe to eat (except morels, which I have yet to look for since we’ve moved here, because where I remember finding them is actually on the other quarter section that’s rented out), so this would be a way to have mushrooms we can be sure are edible. We would also be able to grow varieties that are either not available locally in stores, or are way out of our budget.

After discovering What the Fungus, however, I am starting to feel that growing commercially is something we could do at some point. Right now, this farm makes no money. We don’t own it, so we’re not the ones paying the taxes or the property insurance (and the income from the renter barely covers the taxes, if I remember correctly), but the maintenance of this place is almost all out of our own rather limited pockets. As it stands now, at some point, when my husband and I are no longer able, it’s already planned for the girls to take over as caretakers, and it would be good to have things set up so they can run a profitable farm, even on just the few acres that aren’t rented out. So this is one of the avenues we can consider in the longer term.

With the wealth of information and resources available in the videos and on the website, this actually seems quite feasible!

New garden plot, ready! (video)

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This morning, I was able to finish prepping the new garden plot!

Woo hoo! It’s done!

Well… okay. Maybe not. But it’s almost there.

At this point, there are two things that need to be done to the area. One is a thorough watering before planting. The other is to adjust the acidity. Hopefully. According to the meter, the soil has a pH of 7.5. This plot will have beets and carrots in it, and the packages say they should be in soil with a pH of 6.5

From what I’ve been reading, I could increase the acidity several ways. One it to add compost or wood chip mulch. Which is interesting, because the whole reason the soil here is so soft is because it basically is compost. This area had firewood on wooden pallets, with whatever organic material (leaves, needles and grass, I would figure) was under the pallets. Which means it should be more acidic than alkaline.

Another thing that can be done is to add sphagnum peat moss. We would have to buy that, because there isn’t much left of the bale we got last year.

Other suggestions are for additives we would have to hunt down and buy, and that’s just not going to happen right now.

There was even a suggestion to water the area with highly diluted vinegar, but that tends to be a short term solution.

I might just have to go with what we’ve got.

The seeds we have that are supposed to be planted as soon as the ground can be worked are parsley and carrots. They should already be in the ground right now. :-( The parsley was to be planted in a different area. As for the carrots and beets, I have 3 varieties of each, and I’ve plotted out 6 rows. They are cross marked, making a grid of 6 x 5 squares, as I was thinking of working in square foot (ish) plots rather than single rows. For the carrots, and any other really small seeds, I plan to use this method of planting.

Then I have to find a way to cover them, to protect them until they sprout. I could lay a board over them, but if I can find some, I think I would prefer to cover them with semi-transparent plastic row covers.

We shall see when the times comes.

For now, I think it’s time to go soak some carrot seeds!

The Re-Farmer

Morning critters

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Hello, kitties!

The kittens seem to be away more often, and squirming around their nest a bit more. When I first came down to tend to their mother, the tuxedo was well away from the others, and close to the outside end of the box. My being there seemed to disturb him, because he quickly squirmed his way back to the fur pile. :-D

My morning escort! :-D

Of course, I tried to spend time with the goat. When I got some feed in the container I use as a scoop, she was willing to stick her head right in to eat, and let me pet her.

As an aside, the Costco popcorn containers are really useful. I’ve got several that I used to scoop up feed or cat kibble. These ones have the bottoms cut off and the lids left on. I use others, without any parts cut off, for water in the winter, instead of the pitcher we used before. The heavy duty plastic of the containers make them better for scooping the feed out, and the size lets me keep a rough consistency in portions.

As for the goat, she was really interested in the feed while I carried it, but once I added it to the feed container in the pen, she still wanted to check me out for feed and followed me around. She let me pet her again, but only while she had her face in the feed. :-D She did go into the pen a couple of times, and at one of them, I swung the “gate” closed a little more. I probably should not have done it while she was in there, as it spooked her out, but I didn’t think of it until it was too late. If we can keep closing the “gate” end, little by little, so she gets used to it, is should make it easier to close her in .

Theoretically. She might simply refuse to go in at all, if it’s too closed up.

As I walked around the yard, she didn’t quite follow me, but she did move further away from the doors. She has been going into the old kitchen garden and finding things to eat in there, which is good – for now. There are plants coming through the layers of mulch we put down to build up the soil that we are trying to kill off. This includes some spreading roses. I had hoped to not have to dig them out by the roots, but it seems I will have to, to get rid of them. There are a couple of rose bushes that will stay. It’s the spreading ones that are going to make using this area more difficult. I was happy to see that she will eat the stems that have come up. The thorns don’t seem to phase her at all.

Of course, she also tried to come closer to the cats.

She followed Pumpshack cat up onto the clothes line platform, but when the cat went around the bin, and she could no longer see him, she decided to give Mary a kiss on the head! :-D

She is also very curious about the sun room! She knows this is where the feed bag is – or at least that food comes out through this door! It’s too bad we can’t use this room to contain her, since she seems much more willing to go into here than the garage. If we did close her in and she tried to escape, though, I could see her knocking my seedlings all over, or even breaking her way through the glass.

I’ve been researching about goats, of course, and one of the things I’ve read is that they don’t like to eat feed or hay off the ground, and if they’ve pooped or peed near food that’s on the ground, they won’t eat it. So I took a container we found while cleaning out the basement – a rectangular bin of thick, hard plastic, with a nice, flat bottom – and put it upside down in the pen, then put the feed container on top of the bin. She seemed pretty good with that set up.

So my plan will be to spend much of the day outside, working on the new garden plot, to keep an eye on her.

The down side with all this is, we haven’t had a chance to work on the replacement door. All it needs at this point is to have the recesses for the hinges chiselled out, touch up the paint in the recesses. Once the paint is cured, we just need to attach the hinges and install it.

Hopefully, that is something we can make progress on, today.

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Some fluffy little worms to brighten your day!

One of the orange babies still has its eyes closed. The other had one eye open, one eye… almost open. :-D

They have also reached that stage where they do the little hissing and trying to spit thing. :-) Beep Beep, however, was more than comfortable with my handling them.

As I head into the basement, there is typically a whole bunch of cats coming over, very curious to see what’s down there. Today, I let Two Face down. Since we will eventually be moving the litter boxes and food and water bowls to the basement, I figured it would be good to start introducing them. Two Face is the most recent yard cat to come into the house, so I figured she would be the one Beep Beep is the most likely to remember. Plus, Beep Beep is her mom.

They did snuffle each other a bit, but mostly, Two Face just wandered around, sniffing at things. She completely ignored the babies, even though she snuffled around their little cave under the chair, and gave Beep Beep an astonished stare down when she discovered her under there. :-D

I brought Two Face back up with me when I was done, and I think she was happy with that. It’s still too new and strange down there! Next time, I think I’ll bring Susan down. She is another one of Beep Beep’s babies, and likely still familiar.

It would be good if we can leave this basement door open in the summer. Last year, we were able to use grid wall to block off the old basement door and leave it open, to help cool the house down. It works better to have both basement doors open and, this year, we can do that. We’ll still need to block off the entry to the old basement from cats, but I think this time, we’ll be able to make another mesh “door” to fit, rather than rigging up the grid wall again.

It’ll be a couple of months before we need to do that, though, so plenty of time to build something to fit.

The Re-Farmer

Nooooot quite!

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

My daughter and I went into the shed to get the door I was thinking of using to replace the broken door on the sun room.

The replacement door is in pretty good shape, and even has complete hinges attached, so we took the old door off, hinges and all.

We did not, however, replace it quite yet.

The replacement door is about 2 inches wider.

It is, however, a wooden door, and we do have a circular saw. It was given to us last year, and we’ve yet to use it. Once the weather is calmer, I want to get the old saw horses out of the garage that are matching heights, and we’ll cut the hinge side of the replacement door to the correct width. It’s a temporary measure. Cutting the door will mean that side will be weaker, but we’re not in a position to buy a replacement door. The inside door will do to keep the weather out, for the most part, but it doesn’t close well, either.

Speaking of weather, it’s gotten wild and windy out there since this morning! My daughter and I walked around the yard (I found new deer damage, this time to one of the tamaracks. The bark was torn away all around the trunk, so it’s dead), and I noticed a fair few things blown around since I went through the same areas this morning. We noticed one of the spruce trees is starting to come up at the roots, making it another to keep an eye on. We also looked at where we were thinking to build the cordwood outdoor bathroom we are planning on. The ground is uneven there, but we’ll be removing the sod and leveling it with gravel, sand and some sort of base (possibly paving stones or concrete) before we build. There are a number of old tree stumps around the area, so we might be clearing out dead roots in the process.

We also talked about when we can get the tree guys back to take down three dead spruce trees that are of most concern; two nearer the house, and one near the garage. We were quoted at $750 to get all three done. Depending on what other expenses come up in the next while, we might be able to do that by the end of May. It’d be nice if we could get the wood piles chipped, too, but that was another $650. The live tree in front of the kitchen window that keeps overgrowing the roof and dropping branches was also quoted at $650, all on its own. That tree can probably wait a few years, but the dead tree removal and the chipping is something we really should do sooner rather than later.

Which gets me to thinking about our need to replace the roof. With all these things that need to be done, that’s money that isn’t getting set aside to replace the roof.

So many things, pulling at the budget, and so many of them are urgent or essential.

Hhhmmm… Thinking of removing trees to protect buildings, I sit here watching the wind blowing the branches of one of the maples outside my window. Among my goals, as we are able, is to take down some of the lower, heavy branches. The main trunk of this maple leans heavily, and I’m hoping that by removing the weight, it will prevent the tree from breaking in these winds and extend its life. Maples like a good pruning!

So much to do, and I’m really looking forward to the work! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Spring clean up started

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

I finally got to get outside and start doing some dedicated clean up around the house.

But first, I must share this adorableness.

Two Face is getting all of the love from her siblings as she recovers from her visit to the vet.

Speaking of visits to the vet, we discovered our inside mama cat has been throwing up, so we are stopping the pain killers the vet gave us to try with her.

Dang.

My goal for outside had originally been to go around with a wheelbarrow and pick up all the little branches scattered all over the yard over the winter. Once out there, however, I changed tack completely. Instead, I removed all of the rigid insulation we put around the bottom of the house for the winter, removed the straw from over the septic tank area, and cleaned things up around the house.

When our septic failed earlier in the year, and we had to get the tank emptied, I had moved the straw covering the lid over to the side, on top of snow and other straw. As I cleaned away the straw, I uncovered a snow drift! :-D

That’s okay. The straw got moved over to the old kitchen garden, and the straw that was stuck in clumps of snow and ice will just add moisture to the garden. Plus, some of it was already starting to decompose quite nicely. Bonus! :-)

This is all just the straw that was covering the septic tank area. Later, I plan to cover the rest of this little garden with more straw from the bale we still have in the old big garden area.

The sheets of insulation around this side of the house were held in place with whatever was handy. Bricks, chimney inserts that will never be used (now that is an electric furnace) and little benches we found while cleaning up in the maple grove. They all fit quite nicely together to make a little seating area. :-)

In the future, we plan to make a path along the house, and a small garden of shade tolerant plants in this area.

On the topic of planting things, I was able to cover a future planting area with black tarp this morning.

The ground here is soft enough that I could actually use tent pegs to secure the corners. Unlike pretty much everywhere else, which is still frozen hard.

One of the things I want to do in this area as soon as the ground is thawed enough, is dig through it a bit more to make sure I’ve cleared out as many roots as I can. There were so many cherry roots running through there, it’s very likely we’ll end up with some trying to grow through our plantings, if I’ve missed any! Of course, we’ll have to be on the look out for any rusted nails and whatever else may have been missed when we cleaned this area out.

Also, the Potato Beetle decided to be part of my “found object” display. :-D

Him and his filthy, filthy nose! :-D

My other goal of the day was to start some seeds, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. It’s time for me to pain killer up again and take it easy, so that I’m not too wiped out to continue tomorrow.

Ah, the things you need to think about when you’re broken. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Recommended: The Curd Nerd, Gavin Webber

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Welcome to my “Recommended” series of posts. These will be weekly – for now – posts about resources I have found over the past while that I found so excellent, I want to share them with you, my dear readers. 🙂 Whether or not I continue to post these, and how often they are posted, will depend on feedback. Please feel free to comment below, and if you have a favorite resource of your own, do share, and I will review them for possible future posts.

I hope you find these recommendations as useful and enjoyable as I have!

When I was a kid, I was pretty indifferent to cheese. For commercial cheese, we got your basic cheddar, processed cheese slices, and I even remember the odd block of Velveeta (yeah, I know…). I honestly don’t think there was much else available. Some Mozzarella, cream cheese, marble cheese and grated Parmesan in a shaker. The odd triangle of expensive blue cheese. Our choices were limited.

Even as an adult, there really wasn’t a lot of variety available. I liked cheese, certainly, but it wasn’t really a thing for me. The one major discovery for me was commercial cottage cheese. My mother made cottage cheese, and I really didn’t like it. I recently asked her how she made it, since I only remembered bits and pieces, and it was far more convoluted than I expected. It took two days, and included the addition of baking soda, but no cream.

The end product was very, very dry.

It was, of course, used as a filling in pierogi. I loved my mother’s potato pierogi, but never liked the ones with cottage cheese or sauerkraut stuffings. So very un-Polish of me. :-D

Then one day, I tried commercial cottage cheese and realized that yeah, that stuff is actually good!

Over the years, I regularly bought cheddar, but every now and then I’d get adventurous and try some Havarty or Montery Jack. Discovering Brie was an eye opening experience for me. I’d never had anything like it before, and it’s still one of my favourite cheeses.

Then, a few years back, one of our local grocery stores added a new cheese section.

You know you’re getting old when something like that is exciting. :-D

Suddenly, there was the wild and crazy selection of cheeses available, at pretty much every major grocery store. Then we found a local chain that specialized in European imports, baked their own bread in wood fired ovens, and had a deli consistently rated as the best in the city, year after year. It was thanks to this store that I discovered charcuterie platters, which became a much enjoyed treat, any time we could. We began to try new cheeses every time we could squeeze it into the budget.

I’ve long been interested in making as many things myself as I could, including making yogurt and yogurt cheese.

I definitely was interested in making other cheeses, and never really thought I could do more than make something like mozzarella or ricotta – cheeses that don’t require any aging. Then we moved provinces, and I discovered that apparently, cheeses just aren’t as popular out here. The specialty cheese sections in grocery stores don’t have anywhere near the variety, even in the city, that we’d become used to. But, what are we to do? It’s not like we could make any of these, ourselves, right? I mean, it’s not like we had access to raw milk in the first place, never mind the equipment, space, access to cultures and so on. I knew people who did make cheeses like Gouda at home, but they were farmers with cows or goats they were milking.

Then I stumbled upon The Curd Nerd, Gavin Webber, and his YouTube channel.

Talk about inspiring!!

Gavin Webber is an Australian who has been doing cheese making tutorials and “Ask the Cheesemaker” live streams and podcasts since late 2009. You’ll find videos on the making of MANY different types of cheese, followed up later with taste tests. He talks about what equipment is needed (much less than I expected), how to sanitize them, how to age cheese in a fridge, how to wax cheeses, and more. All done in his own home.

He even talks about the failures.

There are even videos on how to clean your cheese cloth, and other topics, like making mead, and the construction of his cob oven.

It was these next two videos – especially the taste testing one – that won me over.

We need to start making our own cheese.

I just love how enthusiastic and excited he gets about cheese!!! Oh, how I want to be tasting those cheeses with him!

Inspiring indeed!

I now feel we actually can start making a wide variety of cheeses at home. We are looking to convert the old root cellar into a cheese cave, but even if it turns out to not have the conditions needed, I now know we can work around that and still be able to make our own ages cheeses – in varieties that are not available locally, or well beyond our budget to indulge in.

After finding this channel, I’m downright excited about the possibilities.

Who knows. I might even become a Curd Nerd myself!

The Re-Farmer

So many cats… and a bit of a hang up

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

I was talking to my daughter a little while ago when she happened to mention the current indoor cat count we have right now.

Eighteen.

I … really hadn’t thought about that. We’ve now got 8 cats upstairs, plus the 2 mamas and their 8 babies in the basement.

That is insane.

Two Face has changed noticeably after her surgery. She is so much more cuddly now. Lately, this is what I’ve been waking up to.

She now likes to lean hard against me while I’m sleep. Cheddar also likes to do that, so I woke up book ended in cats.

Then there are the boys outside. I think they’re lonely! All the ladies, except Rosencrantz (who didn’t make an appearance this morning) are now indoors.

Potato Beetle was funny this morning.

He wanted SO much attention!

One of the things I started to do this morning is dismantle the shelter we made with the old dog houses, so I can use the black tarp to help warm up the soil in one of the areas we want to plant.

There was a bit of a hang up.

The snow had accumulated in one area, enough for the cloth to touch the ground. Of course, that created a puddle when the snow melted.

Freezing the tarp to the ground.

I used a metal bar that was one of the weights keeping the tarp from blowing away to bash apart the ice, then left it to weigh down the tarp. The ice should melt away faster now.

But not today.

We’re barely above freezing temperatures today. Starting tomorrow, and for the next 14 days, according to the long range forecasts, we will finally hit double digit temperatures.

The dog houses were well used over the winter, I was happy to see.

I could see tamped down paths in the straw around them, the insides were flattened, and there was a hole leading under one of them. I even found a flattened spot on top of one of the dog house roofs, where something had curled up and made a nest in the straw, directly under the tarp.

The straw will be left here for now, though wind might be a problem.

In some places, it already is.

It’s been quite windy for the past couple of days. This tarp is being torn to shreds!

I would love to have someplace I could properly store this old post pounder, but the one shed that I could pull it into has a roof full of holes and is starting to fall apart. Like way too many other things around here! :-( If I could clear enough space in a section of the barn, we might be able to store it in there, though at this point, I don’t even know how we would pull it. The hitch damaged, and both tires are flat.

We’ll figure something out.

I am really looking forward to the warmer temperatures. I’m just itching to get to work around the yard! Tomorrow, though, I have the rest of the seeds I have waiting to get started indoors.

Then I have to start scavenging around the various sheds and the barn, to see what’s available to build trellises out of.

I’m looking forward to the work! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, cold damage and more thinking ahead

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Let’s play “can you spot all the kittens?”

I had to dig one of them out from behind Beep Beep’s head. :-D

Butterscotch’s kittens are much harder to get pictures of.

I finally just stuck my phone in and used voice activation to take some photos, hoping it was angled right.

I got one shot that managed to include all the babies. :-D

We want to move the kittens and mamas out of their nests so we can put down fresh, clean cat beds, but don’t want to disturb them so soon after birth.

In other areas…

I took a closer look at one of our surviving blue spruces, of a group of three that had been planted way two close together, some years ago.

Most of the remaining branches have cold damage like this at the tips. It should be okay, but might take a while to recover from having its newest growth killed off.

Yesterday, I posted a photo of one area we will need to address, when the time comes for us to plant the fruit and nut trees we are planning to do in the future. Here is another area we’ll have to figure out.

Among the trees I hope we will be able to plant are Korean pine. This is a tree that needs to have a “shade shelter” for the first couple of years, and this location naturally provides that for most of the day. However, as you can see, this is also where water pools in the spring. That shade also means the snow takes a lot longer to melt away, and the ground stays frozen longer.

What we eventually want to do is get this package of hardy nut trees. It will be some time before we can afford that. In the shorter term, I hope to slowly acquire a good variety of fruit trees and bushes from this site, that can survive in our growing zone. They even have a variety of apricot that can grow in a zone 3!

This is one of the reasons I want to expand the inner yard to include the outer yard. I see no point in replacing the old and broken fences around the inner yard. If we just get rid of those (the chain link fence is still sturdy, and can at least be used as a trellis), we’ll have easier access to areas we can plant food trees and bushes.

We just have to make sure the fence around the outer yard doesn’t have any gaps or weak spots the renter’s cows can break through, if his electric fence gives out again. :-)

We still need to finish clearing and cleaning the inner yard, but if all goes well, I hope to get started on the outer yard this summer, too. Especially if we want to start salvaging some things we’re finding to use for gardening and so one. I can foresee a time when we’ll even have greenhouses in the outer yard area. But first, we need to do a lot of clean up out there – including cleaning up a collapsing log building, and figuring out how to salvage the log building that we used to use as a chicken coop, when I was a kid. That one still looks solid.

Little by little, we’re making progress! :-)

The Re-Farmer