planning ahead

We… don’t have rain. :-(

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So much for weather forecasts.

For all the lower temperatures and overcast skies, and forecasts of 80% chance for rain, there has been none today.  Going into town with another errand, my daughter and I played a bit of Pokemon Go.  In the game, which is linked to local weather in some way, showed pouring rain on our maps.  In the real world, there wasn’t a drop.

Once home again, I did a quick check around the yard and garden area.  After talking to my mother yesterday, I learned that the trees in the flower garden are not cherry trees, after all, but ornamental apple trees.  The cherry trees, she tells me, are in the spruce grove, behind where the wood pile used to be.  No sign of blossoms there, yet.  I am not sure why edible cherries would be planted among spruce trees, while ornamental (I assume that means they don’t produce anything edible) apples are planted next to the house.

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The apple trees in the flower garden are leafing and budding up nicely, too.  The row of apples (all varieties of crab apples, as I recall) are barely in leaf.

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Planted on the north side of the spruce grove, they wouldn’t have anywhere near as much sun as the ones in the flower garden, which is the most likely reason why they are so much slower to revive for the season.

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On the far side of the garden, along the fence line, the lilac border is showing flower buds already on some bushes.  I was looking for a sign of the chokecherry tree that used to be there.  The lilac border runs the entire length of the fence line now, but when I was a child, it was only about half the distance, and the chokecherry tree was at the end of the row, about the middle of the length of the garden at the time.  I may have found it, but can’t be sure, as it’s behind lilac bushes.  The tree I saw that might be it also seems to be dead; likely the chokecherry tree was choked out by the lilacs. :-(  I will see if I can confirm that with my mother one of these days.

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This is part of a row of what appears to be raspberry canes, though it’s hard to identify them among the scrub and without any leaf buds to be seen.  On one side, it’s almost right up against a row of spruces.  On the other, I can see that it was plowed within inches of the stems.  They would be getting light only in the early hours of the morning, now that the sun is rising so much farther to the north than it did in the winter.  By about 9 or 10 am, they would be in shade until sunrise.  We’ll see what raspberries we get this year, if any.  Most varieties of raspberries have canes that produce in the second year, before dying back.  At that point, the spent canes should be cut away, but that is something my parents never did, as far as I can recall; they just let them be until it was decided to transplant them.  I remember when they were planted on the far side of the garden, beyond where a row of trees is now planted.  At the height of raspberry season, we could pick several ice cream pails’ worth of berries in the morning, then come back by evening and have more ripened berries to pick.  On our list of things we eventually want to plant are three different varieties of raspberries, each with a different harvesting period, so we could have raspberries from July through September.

Whenever that happens, we will be sure to plant them somewhere that actually gets full sun.

The Re-Farmer

I’m Sensing Something – or not!

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While cleaning up around the yard, one of the girls reached the far post of the clothes line and called me over to look at something.

Hmm…

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So… we have a National Geographic remote sensor, attached to the clothes line post, with electric tape.  (The rope is there because the post as started to lean over.)

There isn’t really anything to say what it’s there to sense.  A search has turned up nothing; this thing is so old, nothing even close to it is showing up.  Most of what does show up is weather related, but they look so completely different, I can’t even guess that this is also some sort of weather sensor.

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The wire from the sensor is also attached to the pole with electric tape.

This has been there long enough for that bit of lichen above it to actually overlap it!

I’m guessing it was sending a signal to a receiver inside the house at some point, though I can’t recall finding anything that could be a receiver while we were packing up my parents’ stuff.

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Though this device isn’t going to be sending signals anywhere, anymore!

I’m going to have to ask a sibling about it and find out what the story is!

In other areas…

Along with the clean up, we’re gathering a fair bit of stuff that normally would go into the burn barrel.  We haven’t done a burn in ages, with good reason.  There is a total burn ban in the area, and while approved fire pits and BBQs are still allowed, we aren’t going to take any chances.  Sure, we could hook up a hose, now that the outside taps have been turned on again, and spray the area around the burn barrel, but why take chances?  This stuff is just going to have to go to the dump.

I also did the meter reading today and sent that in.  I then went back over the last 5 readings and worked out the differences from month to month on our power usage.  This gives me some idea of what we can expect on our next electric bill.  It was quite interesting.  Our highest bill was just under $600, then the next one was about $550 or so.  Those two months can predictably be our highest consumption periods, though this also included the weeks we spent heating water every day, until we could get the new hot water tank.  The next month saw a consumption drop of about 1/3, and the month after that showed another slight drop.  That’s when we saw bills of just over and just under the $400.  This month?  The consumption dropped by almost half – more than 2/3s less than our highest month of consumption.  So our next bill, I am thinking we will see just a bit more than $200.  It should be interesting to see how much it’ll drop when we are at our lowest consumption period over the summer.

Interestingly, I found that we have been living here long enough to qualify for the electric company’s “equal payment” plan – with monthly payments of only $44.  !!  Based on the last 6 months of meter readings, including the one I sent in today, I just don’t see how they came to that number.  Unless I’m just not understanding something about the plan.  I think we’ll give it a few more months and see if that changes, before we apply for it.

Our electric bill is much, much higher than it was when we were living in the city, which we expected.  I’m just glad we’re not living in Ontario.  I know someone there who got an electric bill of over $2000 – about double what they paid in the same month the previous year, with less consumption!  So I’m definitely not complaining about our power bills, that’s for sure!  Still, we will be examining our options to see what we can do to bring the bills down.  Especially for the winter months.  Options that do NOT include heating with wood, since that will increase the insurance costs.  Add in the cost of buying wood, and there would be no savings at all.  Theoretically, we could cut our own wood, but even if we were all able bodied enough to do the work ourselves, it’s not worth it.  There are too many other things that our time, efforts and energy need to go to.  Like so many other things, it’s a balance of priorities, not just about dollars and cents.

Which is how we will be looking at all sorts of things as we clean the place up and learn what work it needs.  There is going to be quite a few things where we are simply going to hire people to come in and do it, rather than try and do it ourselves.  Sometimes, it’s just more efficient that way, even if it costs money.  I think some of the biggest problems we are finding now come down to the fact that no one wanted to spend the money to hire people to do it, but didn’t necessarily have the time, knowledge, resources, or skills to do it themselves.  Sometimes, the best way to save money in the long run, is to spend money in the short run.

Of course, that requires having the money to spend in the short run, which is always its own problem, too!

To complicate things further, we have my mother, who owns the place, and siblings, telling us about things that will need to be taken care of, like covering holes in shed roofs.  Which we do appreciate, since we haven’t spent a lot of time looking at the outbuildings, with our focus being the house and yard.  Then we go to look at what they are talking about, and all I can think is, this shed is not worth patching.  It’s not worth fixing.  It should be torn down and gotten rid of.  The stuff inside that’s worth keeping needs to be moved elsewhere, to protect it, and the rest needs to be turfed. Heck, some of the sheds I’ve gone into, I’m reluctant to even walk across the floors.  I’m no light weight, and there’s a good chance the rotting wood won’t hold my weight!  Meanwhile, things that could have been salvaged, like the log cabin out by the fire pit, has a roof that was allowed to cave into all the stuff that had been store inside it.

Ah, well.  Little by little, we’re figuring it out.

The Re-Farmer

How Does the Garden Grow?

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As we clean up around the house and yard, we are starting to discover where things are growing, and even what some things are.

These pictures are of the biggest of my mother’s flower gardens, at the old kitchen.  It actually has a fence around it and everything.

Here is what I am seeing in it, now that growth is starting to happen.

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I am enjoying the sight of leaves and flower buds on this cherry tree.  It looks like we have a second, smaller one.  I look forward to seeing them in full bloom!

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Under the bigger cherry tree, outside the garden fencing, chives are coming up.  Plus what looks like an onion, over on the right.

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There is also some rhubarb growing just inside the garden, near the base of the tree.  I am happy to see it.  I love rhubarb!

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Near this rhubarb, there appears to be a whole lot of onions coming up.  It should be interesting to see what all we find once we get to raking in here.  Though my mom has always called this a flower garden, she’s had onions planted in here for as long as I can remember, though there may have been some years without them.  I remember tomatoes planted in here, too.

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The middle of the garden is completely overrun with these plants.  My mom told me the name of them, but I don’t remember what it is.  She had planted them, only to discover they are quite invasive, and has told me that she would like me to get rid of it.

That is not going to be easy.

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Along the outside edge of the garden, I can see some wild columbine starting to come up.  Next to what looks like a wild rose?  I like wild columbine.  So do hummingbirds. :-)

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Around the corner, on the opposite side of the garden, there is a whole bunch more rhubarb.  Hmmm!

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This tangled mass of last year’s growth is asparagus fern.  We have had it for as long as I can remember; as a child, I used to love looking at the fine sprays of greenery.  What I don’t remember is us ever eating asparagus!  I think it may have just been too much of a hassle, so my mom left it to itself.  I’m hoping to get it cleaned up soon, and see if there is new asparagus growing.

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Then there is this mass of greenery, near the house, under a rose bush.  I have no idea what it is, or even if it was intentionally planted.

The soil is rock hard and bone dry.  It’s going to take a lot of work to get this garden going again!

I think it will be easier if we start by removing the fencing, which is falling down.  Even the fence posts are starting to fall over.

I do hope we get some rain soon.  There hasn’t been anything more than a few sprinkles all spring.

The Re-Farmer

Walkabout – the East yard

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I had done a walkabout yesterday, through our East yard, some of the areas just outside the fenced yard, and explored around the old gravel pit and pond.  I had my phone with me and took plenty of pictures, but then had technical difficulties uploading them to my desktop.  My husband was able to see them fine on his laptop via the USB cable, so the problem had to be with my desktop.  This morning, I tried one thing.  Usually, I have my USB cable attached to one of the front ports of the tower, but my husband had moved it to one of the back ports, so he could access the front ones for something he was doing.  Could that have made the difference?

Turns out, yeah.  That seems to have been the problem.  I was able to upload the pictures without getting the weird error messages I was getting before.

Unfortunately, in my attempts to access and transfer the photos yesterday, some were lost, while others were corrupted or damaged.

So today, I did the walkabout again, this time using the DSLR (Nikon D80) and an 18-55mm lens.

I ended up taking 308 pictures! :-D  And I didn’t even go into the other house in the yard, this time!

Basically, I am documenting the way things are right now, that we will have to deal with as time goes by.  Anything outside the house and immediate yard are lower on the priority list, but they will still need to be dealt with, eventually, so I want to maintain a photographic record of it all.

For now, I will just talk about the East side of our yard – and not even all of that.

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When I first came out, Nasty Crime Boy was there to greet me, but he did NOT like the noise the DSLR made when I took pictures! :-D

The first area I went to was around the other house in the yard.  This house used to be a church rectory, and my dad bought it and moved it when they wanted to build a new one.  It was put into our yard temporarily.  The plan was that it would be moved to one of the other quarter sections of the farm and be a home for whichever of the boys inherited it that section.

That never happened.

I’ll post about the house itself, another time.

This is next to it.

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When my parents’ freezer died, they gave one of my siblings the money to buy a new one, which we are currently using.  The old one, for some reason, got dumped in the yard.  They took the door off, so nothing could get trapped in it, but that’s it.

I hadn’t realized that even the baskets were in there until I came over to take pictures.

I could do posts of nothing but large household appliances, abandoned in strange places, and have no shortage of material.  Especially washers and driers.  It’s amazing.

Then I went around the back of the building.

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That largish black pipe you see?  It’s placed through a hole in a partially boarded up window.  That means it was deliberately placed there.  I find myself wondering if there is something under the house that is being propped up.

This house had had a full basement in it.  Now, the areas with the bricks are what used to be the top of the basement walls, and there is basically a crawl space underneath.

Then there’s this.

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A toilet.  Just sitting there.

Another rain barrel.  I don’t know what the 6 sided plastic thing is.  A wire shelf.

Just.  There.

Why?

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This is some sort of mini garden, near the fire pit.  I can see no rhyme or reason to it being there, and can’t figure out what’s in it – that will have to wait until things start to grow.  It needs to go.  Seeing what’s there will help me decide whether it’ll just be torn up, or if there’s anything in it worth transplanting.

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The above picture is of what is directly North of the mystery planting.  There used to be a playhouse here, built by my oldest brother.  It was basically a shell of a building, with a door and windows in the front.  I was too young to remember it being built, but as a child, I helped my late brother, who was just a few years older than me, frame out bunk beds inside it, and we used old couch cushions as the mattresses.  In the summer, I would sometimes sleep in there, with a tiny kerosene lamp for light.  It was glorious.

I don’t know what happened to the playhouse.  For a while, one of my brothers had some bee hives here.  Now, there’s nothing.  I am thinking this is where we will start a wood pile from what we’re clearing out of the garden now, and what we’ll be clearing out of the trees around the yard.  I am looking forward to when we can have the fire pit going in the summer, and have some wiener roasts!

This is the fire pit that’s there now.

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Yeah.

Believe it or not, there is a metal ring in there.

It’s not where the fire pit was originally.  That was about where I was standing to take the picture.  It was made of loosely stacked bricks, on top of an old tree stump that had been cut to ground level.  I only discovered the tree stump when I took it upon myself to “rebuild” the fire pit, because the walls were being knocked out of place.

One thing I noticed that you can see in some of the photos, is that this area now seems to be mostly moss!  As I was the one who took on the chore of lawn mowing, I know there was no moss at all in there when I was living here.  I don’t know when the moss started taking over, but this is not a sign of a healthy lawn!

I am thinking we should move the fire pit back to where it was, and farther away from those trees in the background.

We will first have to trim away the a dead branch overhanging it, from one of the maples in the area.  There are a lot of dead branches that will need to be dealt with.

Eventually, I want to build a cinder block cooking pit in the area, but that’s a few years into the future.

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This old log cabin is near the fire pit area.  (note the amount moss in the foreground!  That used to be all grass) From what I’ve been told, the family that owned this area before my family bought it – the ones who built the original log portion of the house we’re living in now – had built this and lived in it.

I am hoping we can salvage it.  The one side wall has logs that are sagging in the middle, which may be a problem, but the rest of the walls seem sound.  The roof is almost completely collapsed, and it’s filled with junk – including large household appliances, of course.  At some point, I want to hire someone to empty it, including the remains of the roof, and haul it all away.  Then we can see what can be done with the remains.

There is one thing about it that has me wondering.

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See that tree at the corner?

When I was growing up here, there was a gooseberry bush growing there.  I used to love picking and eating the berries right off the bush.  I don’t know that anything else was ever done with the berries.  Which might have something to do with why, years after I moved away, I came back to discover it was gone. In its place were a couple of spruce trees.

Now, the spruces are gone, and there is this tree.

I don’t know if it was planted, or if it seeded itself, but it’s going to have to go, along with the other trees that are growing too close to the building.

I am seeing this all over the place; trees were allowed to grow right next to buildings.  No one bothered to cut them away.  Did no one consider how much damage they can do to buildings?  Did they not think of it?  Or did they just not care?

So much of what I’m finding around here smacks of “no one cared.”  I’m not talking about things that were left as they were, as my parents aged and weren’t able to take care of things themselves, either.  It’s really quite disheartening.

Well, that’s part of our East yard.  I’m expecting that, this year, we’ll be able to do some clean up and improvements in this area.  At least the smaller stuff.  The big stuff will have to wait, as they will require hiring people, and fixing up the main house is the financial priority.  Still, we should be able to get the East yard to the point that we can use it and enjoy evenings around the fire.

Well.  Maybe.  That will depend on how bad the mosquitoes are this year!

The Re-Farmer

Hoop Jumping, discoveries and tech upgrades

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Since moving out here, there have been quite a few things that we’ve tried to do that needed unusual hoop jumping.  The most severe being our issues with transferring our identification, but another has been getting an internet connection.  Since we couldn’t afford to have a minimum 60ft tower installed, we had to go with satellite internet, and then ended up needing to get two accounts, because it was cheaper than going over our data limit.  Satellite internet has more speed limitations, too.  Our internet provider, however, recently gained access to another satellite and could offer higher upload and download speeds, with less interruptions, so we signed up for it.  Someone was scheduled to come in this afternoon to switch it for us.

Before that happened, we got to work on our daughters’ taxes.  In Canada, we have until April 30 to file.  Normally, we just do the TurboTax thing, but it had issues with my husband’s disability information.  So he and I have taken our tax information to the tax preparer in the next town.  This guy (it’s a family business) has done the taxes for my parents for as long as I can remember, and still does them for my mother.  Probably my brother who lives out here, too.  We’d gone to him when we lived out here years ago, so it was a bit funny to be going back to him again, after all these years.

Our daughters, however, should have been able to just do theirs as usual, right?

Wrong.

Turns out that they can’t file their taxes online, because of the new address.

They can’t log onto the Government of Canada website to change their address, because they’ve never needed to start accounts on the site before, and to start one, they needed information from last year’s taxes.  Which was lost when we lost my husband’s desktop computer after the move.

The alternative is to phone Canada Revenue.  The website says to change the address online, or call a 1-800#, providing a list of the information that would be needed.  One of my daughters called the number, got the automated system, went through the whole thing, only to have a recording tell her to go do it online.

Of course, the reason for phoning was because doing in online wasn’t an option.

Which meant they couldn’t file their taxes.

In the end, we gathered their tax stuff, drove into town and dropped it off with the same guy that’s doing mine and my husband’s.

The tax preparer’s wife took their stuff and got their information onto envelopes.  As we were chatting, she made an observation on how much my younger daughter resembles her grandfather (my husband’s dad).  Until then, I had forgotten that he’d done my in-laws’ taxes, too!

That done, we didn’t stay in town long.  Sadly, it seems one of my daughters has caught my cold.  I’m still sick as well, though I am getting better – the coughing fits are still a problem – so being out and about was pushing things.

Speaking of pushing things, before we headed out, I started to gather up some of the branches and twigs in the yard, now that the snow is gone.  There is a LOT of them.  In the process, I made a discovery.

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These little spruce trees were deliberately planted, right by the fence.

I don’t get it.

First off, why are two spruce trees planted in the middle of the fence line like that in the first place.  There are already quite a number of mature maples there, including a couple that will need to be pruned away from the power line to the house, as well as trimmed so that, once the leaves come in, they won’t be blocking our satellite signal.  You can see part of the row of maples on the other side of the fence.  The fence line used to be on the other side of those trees with a gate to the pump shack – the red building in the background.

Second, why so close together?  Spruces get quite large.  They should be planted anywhere from 8 – 15 feet apart.  We’re looking at less than 4 feet apart here.

And finally, why are they planted right at the fence?  As they get bigger, they will grow into and destroy the fence.

Yet there they are, with little support poles and tiny picket fences to protect them.  Initially, I’d thought maybe they seeded themselves, but the fact that they are protected like this shows that they were deliberately planted.

Why would someone deliberately plant trees in such a way that they will destroy the fence as they get bigger?

I don’t get it.

Meanwhile…

When we got back home, the internet guy was here and busily installing two new satellite dishes.

On the sunroom roof.

Oh, dear.  My old brother specifically said he didn’t want them installed on the roof.  Turns out, there was no choice.

Because of the trees.

It was the only place he could get a signal.

The old dishes were already down, and he took extra care to ensure there would be no leaking caused by the satellites.  It took him a couple of hours to finish up.  When he was done, he tested the speed at about 35mbps.  When I had the chance, I tested the wifi signal on my phone.  I got 40mbps for download speed, and 1.89mbps for upload speed.  The first is quite a lot faster than before – I think we were getting between 10-14mbps consistently.  The upload speed is almost doubled.

That should make live easier!

We also got cool looking new modems, with the black boxes replaced with white triangles. :-D

This is what we had before.

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That’s our original dish.  When we got the second account, the other dish was installed above it.

This is what we have now.

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They are aimed in a very different direction.  No wonder he couldn’t get a signal through the trees!  The other satellites were aimed through a gap between threes.  In the same location, these would have been aimed right into the trees.  From here, they are now aimed through the gap over the big gate into the yard; the one that can be driven through.  Mind you, there are still trees on either side that will need to be pruned, because they are overhanging the gate.  Plus one that’s shorter, but close enough that its branches get in the way when I have to make a wide turn into the yard.  Pruning is still in order.

I like trees.  A lot.  They are wonderful things to have, and can be very protective.  We intend to eventually plant more trees in the future.  Preferably food trees.

But they are also potential problems.  Many of the trees that have been planted in the yard seem to have been done without much thought given to what would happen, once they reached maturity.  From the Chinese Elm in front of the kitchen window, planted too close to the house with branches damaging the roof, to the pair of Chinese Elm on either side of the small gate, whose roots are now making the sidewalk blocks uneven.  Even the original maples on the north side of the house have been allowed to reach too close to the house itself; they should have been cut back many years ago, when they were smaller and it was safer to do so.

It’s going to be interesting, during our first summer living here, to get a good understanding of what all is planted around the yard, what we can keep, what needs to be gotten rid of, and possibly, what can be moved.  Those little spruce trees, at least, as small enough that they can be easily transplanted.

There is much to do here, that’s for sure!

The Re-Farmer

 

 

 

Looking around – and critters!

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Today was another day where I didn’t get a lot of deer photos, but I did get a few good ones.  Hungry Girl was obliging in letting me get my favourite kind – silly ones!

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I have noticed that when Hungry Girl and Barbecue come over, I get very few good pictures of Barbecue, but I always seem to get lots of good ones of Hungry Girl! :-)

Here’s another…

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*childish giggle*

With things warming up today, I decided to take the camera and go for a walk after supper.  There’s still too much snow around the yard, so I went on the road.

On my way out, I discovered that the cats just LOVE those tire marks in the driveway, left behind by the movers.  Rolando Moon was enjoying one of them as I came out.

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She was rolling around in there in absolute ecstasy!  My daughters did a burn while I was walking and told me that they saw other cats rolling around in them, and rubbing their faces in the little wall of ground between the divots.  Too funny!

One of the areas I passed on the road brought many happy memories.

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It certainly doesn’t look like much now.  It’s just three sections of the ditch that are somewhat wider and deeper, so we called it the Three Ponds.  I spent so many happy hours of my childhood, slogging around barefoot in the water, often accompanied by our dog.  He fetched rocks, not sticks, and if you threw a rock into the water, he would actually dive in and get it.

We had to be careful doing that, when he’d go after rocks even in the deep water that weren’t intended for him to fetch!

He also would fetch logs.  Which is a story for another time!

In the Three Ponds, I remember looking out for frogs’ eggs, and when they finally showed up, it felt like I’d found an absolute treasure.  I would go back day after day to look at them, watching for the tadpoles to hatch.  And then I would watch the tadpoles.  I remember seeing all kinds of interesting things in the water, including bright red mites that looked like the tiniest of spiders, and walking bits of plants that I later learned were caddisfly larva.  I’d pull up bullrushes (aka cattails) and pretend I knew how to weave baskets out of the leaves (I never figured it out!), and in the fall, when their seeds were starting to come loose, I’d make big piles of the fluff on the road and wait for a car to come by and puff right through it.

It was such fun!  I look forward to seeing how pond-ish the area still is, once all the snow is gone.

Farther down the road is a sort of driveway into our field.  I don’t know that there’s a gate there or not, but there is a gap in the fence.  This is part of the farm my parents rented out when they retired from farming.

This falls into the “why this here?” category.

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Just a big ol’ tractor tire, leaning on a tree, with what looks like an inner tube draped over it.  My guess is the guy renting it had to change the tire on his tractor in the field, leaned it there and never came back for it.

I wonder how long it’s been there?

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I just thought this picture was pretty and wanted to share it with you. :-)

Walking past the wooded section of the farm, I’m seeing a lot of dead trees fallen down.  The old cattle shelter has long since collapsed, and looks like it’s been partly cleared away.  There are also a lot of parked vehicles in what used to be the hay yard.

Once the snow clears, I’m going to have to take a good look at what all is there. It would be nice if all this stuff could be cleared away, including what’s stored in the barn, so that we could maybe have animals in there again.

But that is years down the road.

The Re-Farmer

Doesn’t quite match

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Here’s a good illustration of how different micro-climates can be!

This is a picture of the thermometer outside my office window.

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That reads a VERY balmy 13C.

This is the actual temperature, in a screen shot from my phone, which is getting readings from a weather station maybe 5 miles from us.

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These were taken moments apart, shortly before 12:30.  It is now about 1:45, and the thermometer outside is reading 21C, while the weather station is reading -9C.

These little pockets of warmer temperatures are why my mother had been able to grow things that were rated for zone 5, when we live in a zone 3.  Or zone 2B, if I were to go by my Veseys catalog, which conveniently includes our hardiness zone right next to my name and address.

Granted, my mother also had two green thumbs.  Even when she was downright brutal with her plants, when it came to transplanting, tending, or even just weeding, they absolutely thrived.

These are the sorts of things we need to keep in mind when we get around to planting around our yard.  What can grow on the East side of the house (more shade, wind tunnel) is going to be very different from the West side (more sheltered, mix of sun and shade).  The main garden, to the more exposed North, is going to be very different from anything we try to plant in the more sheltered South yard.

I’ve started up a list of things we might consider planting.  I want to focus on things that produce trees, but I also want to encourage pollinators.  I’ve made up a list of flowering plants that both attract pollinators and deter deer.  I may love having the deer come and visit our living room window, but I don’t want them eating our garden!  I am thinking a border of pollinator friendly, deer deterring plants, around any areas of food plants we end up including.  My daughters and I will be making another list of vegetables.

Not for this year, I don’t think, but very likely next year, at least to start.

Any gardeners out there that have had to deal with things like this?  What sort of solutions have you come up with?

What sorts of things would you be considering, in a situation like ours?  Big yard, huge main garden area, many small garden areas, wildlife, and lots to clean up before we can start!

The Re-Farmer

A Good Day to Stay Inside!

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It was just a bit nippy out there! :-D

I posted a video, taken from the cat food area, on my Instagram showing some of the branches blown into our yard, though a few of them were there from a previous blustery day.  I took another video from the deer feeding area that I posted previously.

That was the only time any of us stepped outside today!

The wind actually managed to knock over some of the insulating foam we’ve got around the base of our house.

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I can see the one bin being blown over, as it was empty, but the other had stuff in it to weigh it down.  Plus, there were bricks holding up the foam.

It was the only area I had to fix, though.

I was holding the containers of deer feed when I took this photo.  You see those seeds on the bin and the step below it?  That was blown out from them, in just the few seconds it took me to get out my phone and take the photo!

I ended up not having to refill the cats’ food at all; I just got some of the snow out of what was already there, then refilled their water.  Only Rolando Moon braved the winds to say hello, and take a few bites…

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… and give my finger a gentle chomp, immediately after this shot was taken! :-D

The deer feeding area had only quick visits with deer, including one I didn’t recognize that came by, but didn’t go near the feed.  The area is just too exposed to the wind, I think, and they were very skittish.

I first saw what I thought was Barbecue, running away from the feed, across the garden area.  I’m pretty sure I saw Hungry Girl already ahead of him.

It turned out they were chased off, by two more deer I’ve never seen before!

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This one dared come to the feed for only a few quick mouthfuls.  I noticed the mark on its neck and, once the photos were uploaded, confirmed that it was indeed a scar.

It looks like there are antler buds on this one, too.

The other deer didn’t even get that close…

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This second one started towards the house, but only a bit.  Then they both ran off.

It wasn’t until I uploaded the photo that I saw the red mark on its inner leg.  It looks like a fairly fresh wound.

This one also seems to have antler buds starting to show.

Happily, Hungry Girl and Barbecue did come back later, but only for quick visits.  The area, however, was just full of redpolls, today, in spite of the winds!  Those little guys sure do move quick!

We humans, on the other hand, stayed warm inside.  Normally, we would have gone to church for Palm Sunday, but if it’s this windy by our house, the roads would be far worse.  Instead, my daughters baked some more bread, since we were going through the last batch so quickly.  I started a list of what we’ll need for our Easter baskets and prepared some recipes.  The girls requested I bake a special bread I used to do regularly, when opportunity allowed.  It’s very similar to challah, and I enjoy making pretty shapes with it for our basket.

Our Easter basket is based on the traditional Polish Easter baskets of my family’s tradition, which means it will be full of symbolic foods, plus a few token chocolates, if we happen to pick them up.  The bread is the centerpiece, and of course, there are lots of eggs.  We make sure to have both peeled and unpeeled eggs (no unnecessary work is to be done on Easter Sunday, including peeling eggs, if it can be avoided).  One very non-traditional way of doing eggs we’ve decided to do again is pink pickled eggs.  Those require 2-3 days to pickle in, among other things, beet juice. Sometimes we like to do herb and olive oil marinated goat cheese, but those need about a week to marinade, so it’s too late to do that this year.  The basket will also include ham, kielbasa, butter, cheese, salt, horseradish (we’ll be buying that in a jar, this year) and a few other things.

I had asked my mother again about the horseradish growing here, and this time she told me where she’d last transplanted them.

Under the spruce tree, next to the house.

I tried to get her to be more precise as to which spruce tree she meant, since there are quite a few by the house, but I never did get a clear answer.  She seemed to assume I would know exactly which tree she meant! :-D

Ah, well.  We’ll see where it comes up and will know for next year!

We make sure to have the basket ready by the end of Good Friday, so it can be assembled and taken for blessing on Saturday.  The contents are then used for our Easter brunch.  It’s one of our favorite traditions, and I’m really looking forward to it.

This tradition is huge in Polish culture (shared in Ukrainian culture, too).  I recall when our Polish priest had to finally retire for health reasons, and we got a new and younger priest that was…  I don’t know, actually.  Just “not Polish.”  :-D  When Easter came around, he announced that there would be no blessing of the baskets.  I don’t remember the exact explanation, but basically, it wasn’t “Catholic”, so it wasn’t going to be done.

Boy, did he have a revolt on his hands!

By the time the uproar was done, he was doing the basket blessings.

That priest didn’t last long.  He was a very bitter man.  I don’t know how he was ever ordained in the first place.

As far as I know, no priest assigned to this parish has ever tried to end the tradition of blessing of the baskets!

The Re-Farmer

Quiet – and critters

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Oh, how I’ve learned to appreciate quiet, boring days.

Not that today turned out to be either quiet, or boring – but it was close enough!

The temperatures dipped a bit today, but the windchill made it feel so much colder.  I was glad not to be going out, that’s for sure!  It was still pretty mild in our area.  In other areas South-West of us, I heard they were closing down the highways in some areas.

Though I was looking forward to sleeping in today – and even stayed up much later last night as well – it seems my brain had other ideas.  I ended up waking up at about the same time as I have been for the past week!  Ah, well.  It could be worse; my husband is up even earlier, every day, because it’s just too painful to be lying down.  That’s the crazy thing about back injuries.  There is no position you can stay in for any length of time before the pain forces you to shift.  So there’s that cycle of getting up, sitting down, getting up, lying down, over and over again.

My older brother was going to drive my mother to the hospital today, had she needed to go.  Since she didn’t, he just had a visit with her, instead.  It’s quite a drive for him to come out here, so that was really nice of him.  He even texted me a photo of her eye, though it didn’t come in for almost 3 hours!  Ah, the joy of cell phone dead zones.

My mother’s eye is noticeably better today; amazing how quickly it’s recovering now that she’s off that one medication.  The new medication is considered a blood thinner, too, but it doesn’t lead to bleeding the way the other one did.  She even let my brother put the brace on her leg, too!  That is such a wonderful step for her.  Now I just hope she’ll be able to get home care to help her get it on.  Theoretically, she can do it herself, but it would be very difficult to get all those straps tightened on her own without the brace shifting out of position, and it’s really important to have that knob properly aligned.

After seeing my mother, my brother came over to our place and we had a nice visit.  Plus, we checked out the door on my van.  The door that he worked so hard to replace has started to drop again when I open it.  *sigh*  It isn’t much, but after what happened previously, I’m a little paranoid about it.  We tightened the hinges again and it’s better, but it looks like it’ll be something that will need to be continually monitored.

One of the things he and I have been talking about was setting up security cameras.  I had been thinking around the house (more to capture the visiting wildlife… :-D ), but he was looking to put one above the garage door, too.  It’s the perfect spot to cover anyone coming in and out of our driveway.  So while we were still in the garage, he closed the door from the inside to look at where the cables would be coming in from a camera mounted outside.  Over there, he points out to me.  You see where that wasps’ nest is?

!!!!!

Turns out we have a fairly large wasp nest inside the peak of the roof, against the garage wall, plus there’s a row of 3 more new nests, just a couple of inches long, and what looks like the remains of other beginning nests.  It was fairly dark (since we don’t have the electricity to turn on the lights, thanks to our movers), so I couldn’t quite make out all of them.

We’d never seen them before because any time we go in the garage, it’s through the main door, which hides them when it’s open.

My husband is allergic to stings.

Those are going to have to disappear.  Preferably before it warms up enough for them to come out of hibernation.

So I’m doubly glad my brother came over!

He didn’t stay too much longer, though, as he was concerned about road conditions, but he still took the time to check out the barn, which also needs to have power restored to it again.  When we get our power pole by the garage replaced and electricity restored there, he’s arranging for the barn to get hooked up again, too.  At some point, we’ll look at restoring the water, too.  When we got running water in the house, with a new well dug in the yard, a trench had been dug towards the barn.  The pipes for the septic field, as well as for water to the barn, were installed all at the same time.  Along with a water pump in the barn, two heated water fountains had been installed for the cows, so they would always have water, even in the coldest of weather.  When, how or where all this got shut down, we don’t know, so there’s going to be some sleuthing to do before any of that is restored.

Add that to the list of things that needs to be worked on, now that we’re living here.

It’s a long list.

In the afternoon, my lovely daughters did some more bread baking, giving me a chance to catch up on my crochet.  With the blustery weather, we weren’t seeing a lot of activity at the feeding station, and what activity we did get was very quick!  I managed to get a cute bluejay photo…

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I love how they tilt their heads like that.

Hungry Girl and Barbecue came over as well.  They dashed in quickly, and seemed very antsy – probably eager to eat and then find some shelter from the wind! – so I didn’t try to take very many photos.  Seeing me in the window seemed to make them more nervous, and I didn’t want to startle them away from the food.

I did manage to get a very pretty profile picture of Hungry Girl.

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In going through my folders of photos, I’ve got quite a lot of photos like this; the deer frequently look behind the house while feeding, so many images are of them in this pose.  I never tire of seeing, them, though.  They’re so lovely!

Ah, but of course, I got some fun pictures, too!  This time, it was Barbecue to was sticking his tongue out (though from the lack of antler buds starting to show, I’m thinking he might actually be a she!).

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This one had me laughing out loud, but I think the next one is some kind of record…

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I think that’s the most tongue ever, in any of the shots I’ve managed to get over these months! :-D

They didn’t stay for much longer after this.

Tomorrow we’re technically supposed to warm up a bit, but the wind is supposed to increase, with more snow.  How much of that will reach us, we shall see, but it’s still going to be another chilly one.

Oh, how I’ve already been spoiled by the calm, warm days we’ve had for the past week.

I think I’ll go through those seed catalogs I got in the mail and dream of warmth and green, growing things.

The Re-Farmer

The deer showed up, too!

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One last post for today!

This morning, I was quite surprised to see Hungry Girl show up on her own.  This was early enough that the feed wasn’t quite covered by the snow, yet.

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She was very skittish coming in.  I wouldn’t be surprised that all that snow would have made everything sound very different to a deer.

Gosh, she still looks pretty rough, doesn’t she?

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Though the feed was still visible, she nuzzled pretty deep into the snow as she was feeding.

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I just couldn’t resist posting this goofy photo of her!

Later on, well after the snow had covered the feed, Barbecue came by, too.

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He had to dig his nose down pretty far to get at the feed by then, but he had no problem finding exactly where the food was!

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He gets a more dignified profile picture. :-D

I saw Hungry Girl come along shortly after, but they were both very nervous and ran off before she got to the food again.  They did come back, but not for long.

They at least got some food, though.  I’m hoping that Mama and the twins come by at some point, too, for a bit of a snack.

The snow has stopped falling now.  My brother who lives nearby was kind enough to come and clear our driveway out.  He’d fired up the tractor to do his own driveway and just popped over to do ours as well.  I’d seen the snow plows going by the main road earlier, so I’m hoping they’d already gone through the road past our place before he came over.  The last time the snowplows went by, they left a windrow across our driveway.  Not enough of one to be more than a bump, but having another one on top of that now would be much more than just a bump!

After doing the driveway, he came in for a bit of a chat.  During the conversation, he mentioned last winter being one of the coldest in many decades!  He feeds deer with hay at his place, and he said he was feeding 39 of them!  I just can’t imagine that many deer crowded around by his place.  He trained his dog to leave them alone.  He said that they were pretty mean to each other, too, attacking each other with their hooves.  One young orphan deer was small enough to jump up into the round hay bale and get some food while avoiding attacks from the other deer.  After a while, he broke up the bale to spread it out, so they could feed farther apart and not be attacking each other so much.  Sadly, one night, a pack of coyotes killed a young deer, right there next to his house!  They had heard their dog barking like crazy, but by the time they saw why, it was too late.

Coyotes can be a real problem.  Especially when the population is high enough for them to start forming packs.  That’s one of the reasons I want us to get our firearms acquisition certificate as quickly as we can, and get at least a .22 rifle.  Being on the farm without a gun feels very wrong.  It’s a vital tool.  Especially if we do start getting farm animals over the next few years.

This has been a pretty mild winter, though, so there is less chance of a hungry coyote showing up and attacking anything in our yard.

It’s supposed to be just below freezing over the next few days, then creep above freezing again.

Time to keep a close eye out on the roof, and for any more leaks that might show up!  Hopefully, once the roof is shoveled off, that won’t be an issue.  We shall see.

The Re-Farmer