Power Mapping

August 7, 2018August 10, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today, I spent some quality time with our breaker panel.

If all goes well, our electrician friend will stop by on his way home from his job in the city to look at our dead bathroom fan, and the one my husband bought to replace it.

Electricity Clipart 011511» Vector Clip Art - Free Clip ...

I am not sure we’ll be able to use it, because it is supposed to have heater lamps in it (the bulbs need to be purchased separately) and there might not be enough power load for that. Plus, we would likely want to have a third switch installed so the fan can be operated without the heater lamps. If it’s not appropriate for use, we’ll get another and save this one for when we get a second bathroom installed.

Now, the electricity in this place is quite inadequate to modern needs. Not enough outlets, and it doesn’t take much to trip a breaker. For example, we can’t have the coffee pot or tea kettle and the toaster going at the same time.

The breaker panel had not been labelled, so my older brother figured out which were which, as best he could, and printed out a list. Some were pretty obvious. When he had the new electric furnace installed, it got its own breaker. Same with the drier when the entry was made into a laundry room. Beyond that, he just turned things on and off and figured it out the best he could, printed out the list and put it up on the panel. He even put it in a plastic sleeve, rather than affixing it directly to the panel, so we could add to it as we needed, since he wasn’t able to find everything.

Since we’re looking at getting electrical work done in the bathroom, I figured it would be good to know which breaker the light and fan switch plate is hooked up to. I turned on the bathroom light, which I can see from the breaker panel, and checked the list.

Nothing was labelled for bathroom.

There’s one labelled “unknown”, so I tried that first.

It’s still unknown.

I then tried the one labelled Old Kitchen.

I then got an alarmed question from upstairs, asking why we lost power.

There is a breaker labelled “Upstairs”, but it turns out that’s just for the two newer outlets, which the girls’ computers are plugged into. The old outlets, which their fan is plugged into, is on the same breaker as the Old Kitchen light. Which means that, while my daughter was working on her computer, the fan turned off, and she thought we’d lost power until she realized her computer wasn’t affected. *phew*

Okay.

I then tried the one labelled Old Kitchen Plug. That turned out to be the one our freezer is now plugged into.

Nope. Not the bathroom.

Then I hear my printer restarting itself and my daughter is asking, why did we lose the internet?

Okay. So the breaker labelled Old Kitchen Plug is also for my office.

We then shut down our computers (thankfully, my power bar protected my computer from being affected by the breaker being switched off).

I then started working my way through the other labels, trying to figure out which one would be the bathroom, testing different ones that seemed they might include the bathroom. That included one labelled NW Freezer, which is the outlet in the old kitchen that our freezer used to be plugged into. (At the time it was labelled, there were two freezers in there.)

Nothing.

Finally, I started trying the less logical ones, like one labelled for the basement, or the fridge, etc. I even tried the one labelled Septic Pump.

Nothing.

Going through the list again, I found one I hadn’t tried yet.

Living Room TV.

The bathroom light turned off.

My daughter and I were just shaking our heads. These rooms are about as opposite in the house as you can get.

In the process, I realized we don’t know which breaker the master bedroom is part of. My husband was asleep, so we couldn’t check at the same time.

Also, while we do know about one outlet and light switch in the old part basement, we don’t know about any of the other switches and outlets in the rest of that basement, or the new part basement. Plus, since we’ve got extension cords coming up from holes to the basement, there would be breakers hooked up to places in the basement that would affect power cords on the ground floor.

It is so strange.

The Old Kitchen has a light and two outlets, each on different breakers. I now know one of those outlets is also on the same breaker as the office. Or at least the two outlets. The light wasn’t on at the time, so that might be on a different breaker. Also, it’s one of the rooms with an extension cord coming up the floor, along with a TV cable (this became my dad’s bedroom as his mobility decreased, and a TV was set up for him to be able to watch from bed), which is likely on another breaker. What is sharing the breakers the other old kitchen outlet and the light are on? I didn’t have the light on in the sun room to be able to tell which one it’s on, either.

We’re going to have to do more mapping in the future.

The old part of the house may not have had running water when I was a kid, but it did have electricity. When the new part was added on, aside from the stove being on its own breaker, everything else would have just been extended from existing lines.

I would so love to get this place rewired, top to bottom, with each room on its own breaker.

But if we were going to start tearing out walls to do that, we’d be renovating the house from top to bottom at the same time.

It certainly needs it, but we’d have to win the lottery or something, first!

Until then, we’ll just have to keep trying to map things out and add to the list as we discover them!

The Re-Farmer

Building the new back gate

August 1, 2018April 11, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Today we picked up some fence wire to make a new gate for our second driveway.

The wire we got was 1 inch mesh, in a roll of 36″ x 25′ I was pleased to see the hardware store had 1 inch mesh in stock. When I price checked it a while back, the largest they had was 3/4 inch mesh. I would have preferred something like a 2 inch mesh, but this will do just fine.

My younger daughter and I then went out to the back gate to replace the old barbed wire gate.

When we moved out here, the gate was open and we had no idea that it was in such bad condition. When the girls went over to close the gate, they had to replace the post at the end (the lock and chain around it is the only thing keeping it closed) and salvage the wire as much as they could with what was there.

We salvaged the posts for the new gate, cutting down the round one at the end so that it was the same length as the middle ones.

In the process of working on it, I made sure to gather up and set aside the old barbed wire from the gate.

It’s amazing how much rusty barbed wire just disappears in the grass. There were a couple of times when, even though I knew the wire was there, I still managed to catch it with a shoe, or almost step on it.

Keep that particular detail in mind for later…

On to the new gate!

The first thing we did was lay out the wire and position the posts more or less where they needed to be, while using other posts I’d brought, just in case we couldn’t salvage the old ones, as weights to keep the wire from rolling itself back up again. :-D

For the end post, we first affixed the end of the mesh to the post with U nails, then wrapped the wire around the post and affixed it again, opposite the first U nails. Since this post will see the most movement, the wire needs to be secured the strongest here.

Once the first post was secured, we slid the next two posts under the wire, making sure their bottoms lined up with the bottom of the first post. Then, after making sure the wire mesh was pulled taut again, the wire was affixed with more U nails.

Next, the gate was put in position and the mesh affixed to the gate post.

The main gate post on the right has a barbed wire loop at the bottom that the first post tucks into. A second barbed wire loop at the top was then tucked over the top of the post to hold it in place. You can’t see it, but the chain is hanging down from that wire loop, as it had been threaded through one of the links when the chain was added.

You can see my daughter at the other end, securing the wire mesh to the opposite gate post with more U nails. The posts in the gate itself each has 3 U nails securing them, but at the end, the mesh is secured with 5 U nails.

The space between gate posts is about 22 feet. Once the mesh was secured, wire cutters were used to remove the last 3 feet or so of mesh.

The chain fits through the mesh, which worked out perfectly.

The barbed wire loop at the top was replaced with the wire that was wrapped around the mesh roll, to keep it from unraveling. It is the same type of wire the mesh itself is made of, but was long enough that we could fold it in half, twist it around itself, fold it in half again, then twist it around itself again (something I do with string or yarn to make cord when crafting). The loop itself is secured to the gate post with a U nail as well.

Yay! The gate is finished, and it looks SO much better than barbed wire!

That done, my daughter headed back to the house to put away the tools and supplies, except for the hand saw and anvil shears I’d brought to clean up some of the self sown saplings that were starting to encroach.

Remember what I said about barbed wire, disappearing in the grass?

Well, this was next to the gate.

The old gate had been on top of this pile of posts and barbed wire (and an ant hill). My daughters referred to this as the barbed wire trap! We’ve already had the renter’s cows end up on this side of the fence once (and as bad as the old gate was, it was enough to keep them from ending up on the road, so it still did the job. :-) ), and it’s always possible it will happen again. I don’t want any cows getting hurt in barbed wired, so I figured I’d take some of the loose wire and pull it out to add to the pile of junk we plan to get hauled away later in the year.

I grabbed some of the wire and pulled…

… and pulled…

Before I knew it, I was pulling up the wire from an old fence line, long since collapsed. Since I had already started pulling the wire up, I couldn’t even stop, since lifting it made it that much more of a hazard.

Every now and then, I’d reach a fence post and try to lift it up, only to have the wood disintegrate in my hands. On some of them, the bared wire was attached to the post with nothing but bail twine. ???

Now, the thing about barbed wire fences is, they never have just one line. There’s usually three. Which meant there were at least two more barbed wire lines, hidden in the grass.

About half way down the row of trees, I found myself pulling up two wires at once, because they were stuck to each other in places. Then one of them ended abruptly, while the first one continued…

… and continued.

When I finally reached the end of the row of trees, at a large willow, I saw the remains of what turned out to be the last post of the fence line (I hope!). I pulled it up, but the wires attached to were basically all broken off a couple of feet away. I tucked the post itself against the willow. I did find some ends and started pulling them up. Once they were clear of the tall grass and old thatch (that area needs a controlled burn, big time!), I started working my way back, rolling up the wire as I went along, eventually adding in the second line as I found it again.

When I got back to the area of posts in the picture above, it was all pretty tangled together, so I tried lifting the post that looked like it was the furthest out in the line and began pulling on it.

As near as I can make out, the pile of posts were the remains of another barbed wire gate. But why would there be two of them? I’m thinking maybe an old gate was replaced with a newer gate, and rather than getting rid of the old one, it was just tossed aside at the fence line. Then when the fence line collapsed, the old gate came down with it.

But that’s just a guess on my part.

I did, however, find the third wire of the fence!

So back I went down the row of trees, pulling up the third wire until it ended. Which was about 2/3rds of the way down the row of trees. Which means there’s probably more of it under the grass somewhere along the way.

Once I found the end, I worked my way back to the gate again, rolling it up as I went along.

This is where the fence line was.

The tip of the arrow at the back is pointing to the willow the fence line stopped at.

My guess is that, when the row of trees was planted along the fence that’s still there, this fence line was added to protect the plantings from cattle. Since then, the current fence line was kept up, since the land is being rented out for grazing on the other side, but the inner fence was allowed to just rot away and collapse. [Update: I have since learned that I got this backwards. It turns out that the collapsed fence is the original one, and it has been there for an estimated 40 years!]

Leaving barbed wire hidden in the grass for anyone, or any cow or deer, to step on, trip over or otherwise hurt themselves on.

Which just blows me away.

In the end, I couldn’t even get rid of the wire, because it’s all still attached to the main fence line. I just didn’t have the tools for it. So I moved the posts and the wire I rolled up into one, more obvious pile that I think even a cow will not bother getting into.

I hope!

After this, I cut away the spreading saplings on both sides of the area I’ve been mowing to the gate we just replaced, including clearing them away from the gate into the garden.

Notice that this gate has 5 lengths of barbed wire on it.

In the future, as I work my way around, clearing the yard’s fence line, I will eventually cut back that lilac to uncover the gate post it’s growing over. I checked the area over as I cut away the saplings and it’s clear, so the next time I mow down this way, I will probably mow a path to this gate, too. (I haven’t done that to the gate by the fire pit yet, as it seems to need some clearing, first; I’m not entirely sure what’s buried under the thatch and tall grass, but it’s very uneven.)

This is the corner created by the garden/yard fence line leading to the roadside fence line. Though I will be clearing the fence lines themselves, I have not yet decided if I will also clear away these self-sown saplings. It might be nice to just leave them be. They’re not blocking anything. I’ll leave them for now and decide what to do with them later, when we get to the point of working in the outer yard area.

It wasn’t until I was at the computer, uploading these photos, that I noticed this…

I honestly don’t know what that happened! I’ve got so many scratches from doing yard work, I don’t even notice them anymore. :-D

The back gate is finally done. One more thing to check off the list! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clearing the apple trees

July 26, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This afternoon, I got out the weed trimmer and started going around the edges of the yard, in preparation for mowing. I wanted to trim all the way to the end of the row of crab apple trees by the main garden, so I grabbed an extra extension cord. This made for a total of 250 feet of cord, and it was enough to do almost the entire yard, without having to move from the outlet outside the kitchen to the one in the sun room.

20180726,apple.trees.trimmed

I also tried to go further into the overgrown main garden a bit. The plow line is there, and my goodness, it’s rough. What a mess. Still, I was able to go into the overgrown area a bit to trim out some burdock, before it got too bid, as well as some thistles.

Mostly, though, I’m glad to get the area around the apple trees finally done all the way to the end.

20180726,apple.tree,dying

This is the very last tree in the row, and as you can see, the main trunk is mostly dead. It’s just got a few little branches with a handful of leaves on them.

I am planning to take the main trunk down completely. What greenery is there is mostly from the saplings at its base. I will select the one that looks the strongest and healthiest, then cut away the rest.

It you look in the background of the photo, you can see the north edge of the spruce grove, though a fair number of poplars have seeded themselves further in. That north side is a straight line of spruces which, I learned only recently, was planted by my oldest brother. I’m not sure if I was even born when those were planted!

When I am done in the maple grove, I plan to start working on the spruce grove from here. I want to clear away the majority of the self-sown trees, but mostly, I want to clean out the bottom branches of the spruces. They are all dead, though hidden by the living branches higher up.

I think, for the spruce grove, instead of working from one end to the other, as I have been with the maple grove, I will start with clearing the circumference. Especially the fence lines. They are getting away too overgrown, and I want to reduce the damage being done to the fence as long as I can (though when we moved here, there was already one tree that had fallen right on the fence). Hopefully, I’ll at least be able to get that done this year. The bulk of the clean up in the spruce grove will be done next year. This is going to eventually involve clearing out many downed trees, and cutting down lots of dead ones, too.

It’s going to be a huge job!

The Re-Farmer

Apples to apples

July 24, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

While checking on the apple trees along the garden, I couldn’t help but notice just how different they are.

They are all crab apples, but I know nothing about the varieties. I don’t know where my parents got them from.

This first batch of pictures are from different trees, with my hand there to give perspective. (click on them to see bigger images)

At least one tree was pruned back so severely, it is not producing any apples at all. I am not sure if it will survive to next year.

There is another at the far then that has two large trunks that are mostly dead, surrounded by suckers have have been allowed to get quite large. I am debating what to do with it. I am thinking to just take out the dying trunks completely, while choosing one, maybe two, of the strongest suckers to leave behind, and cutting away the rest.

As for the pruning done last year, I believe what was cut away are dead and dying parts, because most of them still need to have their branches thinned out. I will also look at thinning the apples on some of them, so the remaining ones will have more room to grow, and to take some weight off of the branches.

This next photo is from one of the ornamental apples by the old kitchen flower garden.

From what my mother told me, these apples remain quite small and are not edible.

The next photo is from a very old crab apple tree, near the ornamental apples.

This is the one that, as I was mowing the lawn as a teen, I would go under the branches, grab about 5 or 6 apples, and eat them while I continued mowing. By the time I worked my way back to the tree, I was finished eating one batch and ready to grab some more! They were to very tart, and I loved that. The apples in the photo are about the size they were when I did that. So not ripe at all! :-D

The next photos are from another tree near the ornamental apples.

It has two main trunks that are looking very dead. One has a lone branch reaching to one side, with a few leaves at the end, and a single apple.

It’s probably the largest apple of all the ones I looked at today!

From what I can see, there are no other apples from this trunk.

This next photo is from the other side of the tree.

I would say that these are two, completely different trees!

And yet, they are together…

This is the base of that apple tree. I wonder if it was grafted at some point? I can’t really tell.

I think the larger trunk on the right in the photo is actually completely dead. The branches are so entwined, it’s hard to say for sure.

What I will likely do, probably in the fall, is simply cut out the two big trunks completely, and leave behind the strongest looking of the young growth.

One of the things my mother had but never used is a juicer. I can see us making good use of that when it’s time to harvest the apples!

The Re-Farmer

Bloom time

July 20, 2018July 20, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

When we moved out here to take care of the farm for my mother, one of the things we knew is that this first year would be a year of discovery. With the yard in particular, I wanted to get an idea of what was growing where. Sure, my mother could fill in a few details, but she hasn’t lived here in a few years, and isn’t going to remember everything.

As summer progresses, and things come to bloom in their seasons, I am making more and more of these discoveries.

This is at the base of one of the dead spruce trees I’d pulled a whole triffid of vines out of, not long ago. When I was going around here with the weed trimmer, I avoided this area, partly because I could tell it wasn’t just a whole lot of overgrown crab grass and weeds, partly because I wasn’t sure what was hidden in it. I’m glad I left it. :-)

The main garden area is completely overgrown right now, much to my mother’s dismay, but I did try to explain to her that I wanted to see what was there.

In the middle of some tall grass and burdock that I’d pulled, there is this splash of colour. There is another next to it that’s more white than pink. Just the two of them, in a sea of grass!

I will see about transplanting these somewhere, to salvage them, later on.

There were a couple of areas with a lot of thistles that I pulled when they were larger (easier to pull), but I didn’t get all of them. There is another type of thistle, with fewer but larger leaves and spines, that grows much larger flower heads.

The bees and butterflies love them.

There’s only a couple of these big thistles. I will leave them for the insects and pull them out just before they go to seed.

There were many more random flowers and raspberries (I picked almost 2 cups of raspberries while taking these photos – far more than I expected to get out of them!) growing in between the trees in the maple grove, including in areas where I’d already used the weed trimmer.

The girls and I have been talking about what we’d like to do, and it turned out we’re all on the same page. When things are cleaned and cleared out, we want to plant, in some areas, a variety of wildflowers and bulbs that will naturally spread. The rows of trees are not the same distance apart, so I’m thinking of keeping the widest area clear, and planting between the rows that are closer together. If we’re careful about what we select, we can encourage them in these areas to not only make it look pretty, but to reduce maintenance. No grass to mow or weeds to trim. We’ll just have to make sure there is plenty of grassy areas, too (or maybe moss) to walk in. Plus, I’d like my husband to be able to enjoy the space, too, and not have to worry about getting stung, since he’s allergic to stings.

Finding that balance, and thinking years into the future, will be the key in deciding what we do. We don’t want to be in the same situation, years down the road, that we are in now with the spirea and the vines!

Until then, we’ll just enjoy the blooms as we find them!

The Re-Farmer

I think I’m done?

June 22, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

With today’s heat (we hit 32C today, and it stayed there for hours), I wasn’t able to get any work done in the trees and bushes until past 8pm! Even then, it was about 28C when I first started. As I write this, we’ve dropped to 25C, so it’s still quite warm.

I continued to work in the row of old lilacs I had been working on last, and I think I’m pretty much done now. By the time I stopped, it was too dark to take pictures. There is still clean up to do; the piles of what I cut and pulled away need to be cleared out of the yard, and the ground needs to be raked up of the many, many twigs and who knows what is in among the dead leaves. I wasn’t too surprised to find the odd piece of garbage at the based of trees. Things blow in from all over, and once caught, no one would have seen them to clear them out. The oddest thing I found, though, was the tray from a Hungry Man dinner. My dad loved his Hungry Man dinners! But how did a tray end up buried in leaves in the bushes? It’s not the first one I’ve found, either. I found one buried in the tall grass when I was mowing along the driveway. I can’t even suggest they came from the pile outside the yard that was being used as a garbage dump, because of how far it is, and the face that there are rows of trees and fences in between.

After this section, I will start working my way through the maple grove again. I’ll be getting into clearing some big stuff in there!

But not tomorrow.

Tomorrow, the girls and I are planning on a day trip to the city to see some movies, to celebrate my younger daughter’s birthday – and to be in air conditioning! Unfortunately, it’s going to be too long of a day for my husband to join us. :-( We considered using the time for him to visit his dad, but that would just make a long day for both of them!

When we lived in the area back in 2004, we didn’t think twice about hopping in the car and driving to the city just to see a movie. My husband used to commute to the city every weekday. Now, just getting outside is an accomplishment for him. I had hoped that living out here would help him with getting outside more, but the pain just isn’t in control enough for him to manage.

Which really sucks.

The Re-Farmer

Looking around, planning ahead

June 18, 2018June 18, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

The heat is on for the next few days, with some thunderstorms predicted by the end of the week. This will limit what we can do in the yard, and when, for a while.

After dropping my younger daughter off for her first shift at her new job, I decided to finish up the sun room. I’ve emptied it out completely, and mopped the concrete floor. I’d originally intended to take a hose to it, but there is nowhere for the water to drain.

I mopped that floor three times, with many changes of water. I swept it as much as I could, but there was just so much dust left behind!!

It is now drying, so I figured this was a good time to make a post. :-)

Yesterday was our day of rest, and I took advantage of it to just walk around, checking things out now that it’s all as green as it’s going to get, and thinking ahead.

After I finish with the area I’ve been working on for the past while, I intend to slowly work my way through the maple grove to the garden area.

There was a time when this space was a path to the garden. I think that stick next to the dead spruce tree is marking one side of where it used to be.

As you can see by the dead branches in the foreground, there’s more than dead spruces blocking the old path. There is where there are a bunch of maples that had been cut down, cut into pieces, then left there. I don’t know who started the work and then stopped part way through; for all I know, it was my late brother, which might also explain why it was left unfinished.

Before we can even start on taking down the small dead trees (the big ones will wait until we have a chain saw), I will have to clean up all the deadwood on the ground.

We’re going to have several years worth of fire wood for cookouts, by the time it’s done!

I squeezed my way through to check out the West end of the garden space. There, I discovered a huge mass of horseradish! My mother had told me she’d transplanted some there, but that the younger of my brothers had plowed too close to the pole and dug it up, so she transplanted it again, under a spruce three nearer the house. Clearly, she missed some, and it is thriving!

When I was younger, this area was pretty much all open. Now, there is a dense, virtually impenetrable wall of trees where I remember we once had a cabbage patch. From what I could see, along with the usual maple, elm and black spruce, I believe there is also some Colorado blue spruce and birch.

Unfortunately, the trees near the pole are tall enough that they are reaching the power lines! I think they are still clear enough, though, that we can safely cut them down without hitting the the lines. At the very least, we will need to thin the area down. It is so dense, everything is fighting for survival. I can tell quite a bit of it is deliberately planted, such as the Colorado blue spruce (not a native species) and the row of birches, plus the rows of black spruce, but I’m pretty sure there is quite a bit that is self sown. Some of the black spruces, perhaps, and most likely the maples and elms. I am hoping to save as much as I can; the birches look pretty good, but I will likely be removing 2 out of every 3 trees in the rows of spruces. Though just removing the dead ones might achieve the same goal. I would really like to save the Colorado blues.

A number of years ago, the Canadian government was encouraging people living on farms to plant more trees and shelter belts. They had a program where people could sign up and order all kinds of trees, shipped to them for free. I have no idea if this program is still available, but I know lots of people took advantage of it. I am thinking that this is how my parents ended up planting so many of the trees I’m finding, including the shelter belt outside of the yard, along where the cow fence is now.

After checking this area out, I took a look at the North fence line. At this end, there are a number of trees that look like they were deliberately planted, along with some obvious self-sown ones. There is a gap between the big trees and the fence line, which is good. I’d like to clear that gap, so that the fence is accessible. Once the lilac hedge starts, though, I couldn’t see the the fence line at all, and couldn’t tell if there was a space between the bushes and the fence. While walking along the lilacs to try and see, I did find a couple of chokecherry trees.

There are quite a few berries forming, though a lot of them seem to have insect damage to them. We shall see how they do throughout the season.

Eventually, I found a gap in the lilacs and went to see how close to the fence line they are and found…

… some mystery wire.

I have no idea what kind of wire this is, other than it is NOT fence wire. I can’t even see anything nearby that it might be from, or that might explain why it is here.

Something else I’m going to have to clear out and add to the haul-away pile.

The lilacs, meanwhile, are well into the fence line. Not going to be able to clear a path out. Ah, well.

As I was finishing up, I went past a bush my mother planted by the clothes line platform. I had ruthlessly pruned it down, because it was in the way of trying to hang things on the line.

It seems to have like the pruning, because it is now completely dense with foliage, and covered with flower buds, including one early bloomer!

Based on how many buds I’m seeing, by the time this bush is in full bloom, we’ll hardly be able to see any leaves at all; it’ll be a mass of white!

I’m rather looking forward to seeing that.

Well, I think the sun room floor has had enough time to dry. Now I have to decide what to put back, and what will have to go into storage!

By the end of the day, we should finally have a usable sun room. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: before

June 13, 2018June 13, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I plan to work my way down the front of the row of trees and bushes in the West yard, from the fire pit area towards the flower garden. I’ve started at the linden tree at one end. Here are the areas I will work on next.

Like the maple and spruce groves, when I was a kid, I used to be able to mow in between the trees and bushes here.

20180613.bushes.cleanup.before1

Nearest the linden and plum trees I’ve already cleared is this tree. I don’t know what it is, but a lot of the leaves are turning yellow with black spots on them. I’ve done a quick search, and it might be a fungal disease. If so, I might have to do some serious work on it – but first I have to get to it through the undergrowth!

20180613.bushes.cleanup.before2

I’m going to have to somehow get to that dead tree in the middle of some false spirea and… some other bush. I think the dead tree used to be another plum.

I like the false spirea. Really, I do! But my goodness, they are invasive!

20180613.bushes.cleanup.before3

This crab apple tree seems to be doing okay. It’s got lots of bitty apples starting, no bigger than rose hips right now. It is still going to be needing some pruning…

20180613.bushes.cleanup.before4

More self-sown false spirea at the end if this row, and you can see some of the deadwood on the crab apple tree.

Also, I think you can see some surviving lilacs.

You can’t see them in any of the other pictures, but there used to be two rows of lilacs behind all these trees and bushes. I remember how, at the end where the linden tree is now, the two rows of lilacs formed a natural tunnel that I used to be able to crawl into.

Now, I’m not sure how many of them have survived, blocked as they are from the sun by the overgrowth.

I hope to start cleaning up these areas over the next few days, weather willing.

The Re-Farmer

Ready to Go, and a nice surprise

June 10, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Today, my older daughter and I confirmed that the mower would fit in the back of our van, took out the seats, emptied it of my crates of supplies (we kept the emergency kit and cooler of van water, though), and loaded it up.

I won’t be taking it to the shop until they open on Tuesday. I had thought of dropping it off tomorrow, but my brother tells me they don’t have a secure drop off point.

Which means the mower, with an almost full tank of gas, will be in the van for two nights and a day, in the heat we are having again.

I made sure to open the windows a fair bit. Plus, we still haven’t replaced the handle on the garage door (I finally got some replacement cable for it), so it’s wide open. No chance of accumulated fumes.

Earlier in the day, I went into town with my younger daughter so she could drop off some resumes, and we could pick up a few things at the grocery store. There’s a hardware store next to it, so I popped over for a bit. Turns out they don’t have fan rakes, but they did have metal roasting sticks. So I picked up a few for our next cook out. :-)

My mom called while we were out, so I called her back as soon as we got home. She was wondering how we were doing in this heat (we were hovering around 30C today), and telling us that if we open the basement doors, we would get cool air. I remember doing that, when I was growing up here. It works very well. Unfortunately, we can’t do that until we’ve cleaned up the basements. The old part basement is pretty good, but the new part basement is filled with all sorts of breakable things (years of accumulated jars and booze bottles, spare florescent light tubes, etc.), and way too many hidey holes that the cats would get into.

While we were talking, I told her about the different areas I’ve been working on. I found out that she did, indeed, deliberately plant those little spruce trees at the fence line. Why there, I ask her. Where else? she answers. :-D So I bring up that, when the trees are full grown, they will destroy the fence. Oh, by the time they’re that big, she says, it won’t matter. I think she was implying the fence would be old, or would be replaced before then? I’m not sure. I told her I will be transplanting them, once I find a good place of them. Much to my surprise, she just said not to worry about them for now. Considering that, earlier in the conversation, when I told her I cleaned up around her white lilacs, she thought that meant I had cut them down, this is a good thing. :-D

Then I mentioned wanting to clean up the bushes growing around the other house.

In the past, these false spirea had covered the old stairs on both sides, as the wood rotted away. I remember this because, when we made a road trip to visit family after getting our first van, I had tried to go to the door and a step gave out under me! Now there are nice strong steps, and I want to keep them well maintained.

Which means cutting back the spirea. Plus, I’ll be thinning away the dead branches, etc.

As I tell my mother this, she asks me how her vines are doing.

Vines?

All I could think of were the vines I’ve been finding all over the place, choking out trees and bushes.

No. Vines. She had planted them by the steps. How are they doing?

Well, I did notice what appeared to be dead vines in the spirea, which I thought were the same vines I’ve been getting rid of all over. That was not what she was talking about.

Then she mentioned she’d actually picked from them.

Picked what? Berries? I had no idea what she was talking about. The only vines I’ve seen don’t have berries.

Finally, she remembered the English word for them; grapes.

We have grapes?!?

That’s on my list of food plants, too, but at the bottom of the list, since they need a lot more tending than most plants.

I told her I didn’t remember seeing any, and perhaps the spirea had choked them out? I told her I would check.

Which I did.

Lo and behold, there are, indeed, vines growing that aren’t the ones we’ve been fighting for the past while.

Not only that…

… there are even little baby grapes started!

I will have to ask my mom if she remembers what kind they are, so I can look up how to properly care for them. There are not a lot of varieties of grapes that are hardy enough for our growing zone, so even if she doesn’t, I should be able to figure it out.

I do know that they shouldn’t be the way they are now! If possible, I would want to transplant them to the fence, which can be used as a trellis, and they will have full sun. With judicious care, we should be able to get good harvests of grapes from them.

Oh, I am suddenly quite excited! I had no idea my mother had ever planted grapes! She’d simply never mentioned them before.

I filled in my mother about all sorts of things, from what the electric company told me about clearing the trees, and my wanting to get a quote for the job, so we know what to budget for, to progress on the flower gardens. She had a hard time understanding some of what I was telling her, sometimes. She has what she’s always done so firm in her mind, it’s hard for her to picture something different, just from a description. But it was a good conversation, overall, even if she doesn’t seem quite sure about what I am doing. When it gets to a certain point, though, she starts talking about how this is all men’s work, so she will talk to my older brother about it, so he can take care of it. We got to that point in the conversation, but I didn’t mind too much at all, since she started talking about how good my dad was about taking care of things, and how he understood electricity and plumbing and so on. Then she started talking about how women’s work was housekeeping and so on, and I just kept saying, no. Nope. No. Until she started to say, well, that’s how she and my dad did things, and that worked for them, but others might do it differently.

Yay, Mom! That right there was a HUGE step for her, and I am so proud of her. :-)

It was a good conversation.

Later on, while talking to my older brother, he told me he’d just talked to our mom as well. At one point during their conversation, he told me that my mom expressed her satisfaction with how we are taking care of the place.

She would never tell me that to my face, of course, but I don’t expect her to. For her to say it to my brother, however, is another HUGE step, and I am so proud of her. :-)

I am happy that we are able to take care of this place for her. It takes a big burden off of her shoulders, and it’s been pretty good for us, too (as much as possible, under the circumstances! :-D ). She was having a hard time with letting go, which is understandable. If she is reaching the point where she is able to start trusting that we know what we’re doing, even if it’s different than how she did things, that will also reduce stress for her.

Win, win! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning Cats, and shopping day

May 30, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

I want to start by sharing some photos of the cats this morning. Because it’s a great way to start the day!

Like waking up to this…

Actually, I woke up to see her sitting there, staring at me. :-D The cats really appreciate the extra thickness of the window sill, thanks to the log walls in the original part of the house. They’d love to get up onto the other window, too, which is much, much bigger, but it’s the one that didn’t get replaced. Which means it still has sheets of plexiglass covering them on the inside, so there’s nowhere they can sit at. Which drives them bonkers, when the outside cats are in the trees outside the window, looking in. :-D

Speaking of outside cats…

With all the rain we’ve been having, I moved the food bowls under the little roof over the basement window. They actually seem to prefer when the kibble gets a bit wet; likely softer on their teeth. “A bit wet” is not what’s been happening, lately. Which is a good thing!

When I came out this morning, Squishum (not in the picture) was all talkative, squeaking away as if wanting attention, but still won’t let me come near. Nasty Crime Boy, Beep Beep and Butterscotch were content to ignore me to come to the food.

The Hand, on the other hand…

…would not go to the food while I was around! I took this through the screen door of the sun room, after bringing back the container I use to take food to the bowls. She would only peak her head around the corner of the shelf outside, watching to see what I would do. I was able to move my phone enough to get more than just her head, but she was not comfortable with me being there and slunk away to the clothes line platform to wait for me to leave.

I don’t want to prevent her from eating, so I left.

I so want to touch that cat! :-D

Instead, I got to touch the Butterscotch!

I even got a decent picture of her! She makes it very difficult. :-D

I wandered around the East side of the house and did a bit of weeding to free up some irises that are coming up. Looking into the spruce grove, I just had to get another picture.

Remember this?

That photo was taken on May 15. The leaves are barely coming out at this point.

This is what it looks like, today.

That broken piece of tree in the first picture is still there, in the left side of the photo. Completely hidden from where I was standing, and barely visible even at other angles.

That horseradish is coming up nicely, too.

In time, that underbrush will be cleared mostly away, and the dead tree will be cut down. Likely not this year, though. I think we will focus on cleaning up the maple grove, first. At least as much as we can, until we have a working chain saw.

My goal is to have both the maple and spruce groves open under the trees, park-like and mow-able. I would like us to, at the very least, be able to walk through the trees without having to skirt dead branches, dead trees and other detritus. Including my husband, with his walker. Maybe set up a picnic table or something in the shade, so we can enjoy the spaces more.

Little by little, we will get there.

Late this morning, my older daughter and I made the trip into the city for our monthly bulk shopping trip. Our usual routine is to stop at the town we drive though on the way, to fill the tank. The gas station we stop at is a co-op we have a membership with, which will translate into a check at the end of the year, so we make it a habit. When we got there, however, I got the nasty surprise of seeing the gas prices had gone up 10¢ per liter. !!! Our tank was lower than I normally let it go (we drove over 1800km since I filled it and reset the trip counter at the end of last month), so I kind of had to put something in. I ended up putting in $30, which didn’t even bring it to half a tank. While paying for it, I asked when the big jump happened. Turned out to be a mere 2 hours before we got there!

When we finished our Costco shopping, I filled the tank there. The price was 14¢ per litre less! Plus, since it’s Costco, that will also be included in the check we’ll get at the end of the year. Even at the lower price, and having already put in $30 of gas and bringing it to just below the half way mark, it still cost over $60 to fill the tank. That’s almost half our gas budget for the month, right there. Thankfully, our van does have good mileage.

The increases in gas prices are really going to be a problem. The politicians can talk about how we should be using alternative transportation all they want. Even in the city, that’s not always feasible. For anyone living in the country, what choice do we have? It’s not like there’s a bus we can hop on, and we certainly can’t bike to the city to do our monthly grocery shopping. Or even to the next town. Plus, most people have multiple vehicles, because they are work tools, not just transportation. Heaven help those who make the commute to the city! When we last lived out here, my husband had a 70 minute commute, one way. That’s highway driving, for the most part, so it wasn’t affected by traffic until the last 10 minutes or so. I know others who have longer commutes. Back then, it was a big deal when gas prices went higher than 60¢ a litre. Now we’re looking at $1.309 (there are about 4L in a gallon, for those of you in the US. That works out to about $5.24 per gallon), and other areas are even higher.

That’s going to make life more difficult for a lot of people. :-(

We got the monthly shopping done, at least. $600 later. :-/ My splurge of the month was new wiper blades for the van, to replace the ones being held together with electric tape. :-D Tomorrow, we go to the regular grocery store to get the things we don’t need to buy in bulk.

It feels good to have well stocked cupboards, fridge and freezer again!

The Re-Farmer

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: