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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The was no change in the water level at all.

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

It didn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

Products acquired, I headed back to my mother’s

None of the water had drained at all.

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

Nothing was getting through, though.

Except, now there was water on the floor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

!!!!!!!

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

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

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

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

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

… to the maintenance number I’d called directly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

I never even noticed it was gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes. Everyone. Even you.

How am I taking advantage?

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

…

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

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

Gee. Thanks, Mom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There turned out to be four.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m going to need a lot more material.

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

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

The new solar powered security camera.

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

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

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

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

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

I love my cheap garage sale miter saw!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s going to be hibernation time, soon!

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

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

Then.

Sleep.

I hope.

The Re-Farmer

Getting things done, and which is it?

October 8, 2025 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I’m happy to day I did actually get some progress done outside.

Last night, however, I was up late doing some research on well pumps and pressure tanks.

I’ve been angsting about our well pump since we moved out here. I’ve never been able to ascertain what “normal” sounds like. Thanks go my brother, we do have a new pump ready and waiting to be installed, but no plumber has dared do it. I explain about it in this post from 2020. Basically, there was a possibility the foot valve was leaking, because the pump would start running, even when no one was using water, and they were concerned that if they switched out the pump, the foot valve could break apart. If that happened, we would have no water at all and could potentially need a new well dug.

Eventually, though, we figured out that we have phantom flush. I just happened to be on the toilet in the wee hours of the morning when I heard the water start going in the tank, to refill it. We replaced all the parts in pieces in the tank, but it was still happening. Finally, I just took the refill out of the overflow, so it filled directly into the tank instead, and the phantom flush stopped. Why it worked, I have no idea, but it did.

So with that problem “solved” (we actually want to replace the toilet, for a number of reasons), we figured it should be safe to replace the tank. We just don’t have a budget for it.

Well, in the last while, the pump sounding more and more grindy,. It runs for a normal length of time and the pressure is good. Most likely, it’s the bearings.

Which is bad enough on its own, but lately it’s been going off way too often. Every time the toilet is flushed, even if it’s been on person right after the other, using it. When someone is in the shower or the washing machine is going, it starts running so often, it may as well not have stopped in between (as I hear the pump starting up again, while my daughter is in the shower). We’re also losing pressure faster, which is always most noticeable in the kitchen, which is the farthest sink from the pump and tanks.

After looking things up, it looks like the pressure tank is starting to lose pressure. There can be a number of reasons for this, but the end result is the same. The tank can’t keep up the pressure, so the pump keeps having to turn on to refill it. Depending on the size, a new pressure tank can cost anywhere from about $200 to over $500. For the amount of water we use, we would need a somewhat larger tank (I think this one is a 7 gallon tank), I’d love to get a 20 gallon tank. That way, if we ever get those water fountains by the barn serviced, we could turn the tap on in the basement, and there would be continuous water available for any animals we might get, or even for the renter’s cows. These fountains are insulated and keep the water warm enough to never freeze, too.

But that’s not an option now, and to meet our needs, we’d want at least the same size as what we have no, no smaller.

This morning, I messaged my brother about it. The tanks I looked at all say “compatible with most deep well pumps”, but he’s the one that knows the system better than anyone living.

He doesn’t think it’s the pressure tank.

He thinks it’s the foot valve. He says it was last replaced 20 years ago.

Well, I don’t know how it can get replaced. The bottom of the well access is a concrete floor, with pipes running to the house through the side near the bottom. I don’t know how the well pipe itself can be accessed. The plumber seemed to think that the concrete on the bottom would have to be broken up. Which doesn’t make sense, if the foot valve was replaced 20 years ago. We should be able to pull it up somehow.

I’ll have to consult my brother about that.

Whether it’s the pressure tank or the foot valve that needs replacing, either way it would be a good time to install the new pump!

All these pumps and tanks are the greatest source of stress for me. Water related or septic related!

So that’s something I really would rather not have to worry about. There’s absolutely nothing we can do about it right now, either.

What I did instead was my morning rounds, after feeding the outside cats. While coming back from checking the gate, I realized I was seeing an amazing full moon, and just had to try for some pictures. I even found someplace to steady my phone against, so I could zoom in.

Now that I see the picture on my desktop, it looks so detailed, I’m wondering if the camera automatically “fixed” the photo. That was a bit of a “scandal” some years ago, and that “feature” was supposed to have been dropped.

As I was going through the garden, I checked out the sunflowers. This past frost has killed them off, so any remaining seed heads will never reach maturity. I did, however, find this one…

It is possible that this one has viable seeds in it! I’ve tucked it into the portable greenhouse for now, to dry out some more. It would be nice to try again from our own seeds. Every generation of seeds collected will be better adapted to our local climate.

While the frost killed up most of the things that were exposed (I still haven’t tried peaking under the cover for the winter squash), one thing is doing just fine.

The self seeded peas just keep getting bigger!

Once the morning rounds were done, I waited until things warmed up a bit in the afternoon before continuing with the stuff from the sun room that I had soaking over night. Most of it could be spread out, hung up or set up to dry. Except for the garden mesh. Today turned out to be ridiculously windy, so unraveling those will have to wait. For now, they’re set aside with their bin upside down over them, so they hopefully will not blow away.

That old sheet I found that was repurposed to cover garden beds sure had it’s moments when I tried to hang it on the line. Lots of clothes pins needed! Sure dried fast, though. 😄

I’m so glad I though to put that old roof panel onto the shelf shelter! This little feral kitten could enjoy a warm sun spot while completely protected from the wind.

Eventually, I got things done as much as I could until things dried. After my daughter and I get back from her appointment in the city, I’m hoping to finally put everything in bins with lids, and get them out of the yard again! I need that space to paint the isolation shelter.

The next thing to work on was that garden bed I’d started on a couple days ago.

*sigh*

With all the years of amending the soil, prepping these beds for the winter should only have taken about 15 minutes each. Half an hour, if the rocks and weeds were really bad.

Instead, I’m fighting those !$%&$! tree roots!

Where I’d stopped, last time, had a bit root sticking up and I had to use the loppers to cut that. Then I just kept working my way down that side of the bed. In the first picture, you can see some of the roots I was exposing as I worked my way down. By this point, the soil was so dense with roots, I actually had a hard time pushing the garden fork through it!

The second picture was taken when I finally got that side done. I’d emptied the rocks bucket before I started, so these just rocks I’d picked today. When I stopped last time, I had worked past the half way point, so this was from about a third of one side of the bed. That pile I raked up at the end, near the bucket, is almost all tree roots. Very few normal weeds.

That last photo was taken from the unworked side of the bed. There were a could of bigger roots that I pulled up, but I won’t be able to get the rest out until I’ve worked the other side of the bed.

None of this was there when I planted the peas and carrots in it in the spring. All those roots are just one summer’s growth.

My mother keeps giving me a hard time for being such a bad gardener. Meanwhile, it’s the self seeded trees she deliberately left, after transplanting the raspberries they’d been growing through, that is causing me more problems that all the rocks! The roots are growing into where the soil is easiest to grow in – the soil I’ve been amending to grow vegetables in. So they’re filling the beds and taking up all the water and nutrients, and I’m not even finding it until the end of the season, after the damage is done. This, on top of dealing with drought conditions and smoke this year.

Trees are not always good thing.

One of these days, I’ve got to snag a daughter and our cutting equipment, and take down the entire row of elms and maples. Then we’ll have to find a way to make sure they don’t grow back! Otherwise, even as we build these up into high raised beds, the roots will still find their way up and into the growing zone.

It’s taking a lot longer than it should, but at least I did get some progress in today. Whether I manage to get any done tomorrow, after we get back from the city, will depend on how much daylight we have left.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Well, this heat was good for one thing! Plus, a surprise.

May 4, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

My daughter and I headed outside for what was supposed to be one last check around the yard. That one raised bed cover needed more fussing with to keep the plastic from ballooning.

As we were finishing up, I asked her to go into the basement while I went to the ejector, so we could test it out. The septic pump had gone off not long ago, so I asked her to run the pump manually for just 30 seconds. My brother told me he’d left the cap off, in hopes it would warm up better in today’s heat.

Yes!!!! It’s working!!!

The stand pipe promptly got filled, because there is still ice on the bottom, but the venture pipe is finally clear! Every now and then, the water coming out would go completely black as it cleared settled gunk out.

My brother was so thrilled to hear the news!

Now, we just have to hope the warmer water flowing through will keep it from freezing up again, and actually help melt the ice in the stand pipe and the frozen ground, faster.

After messaging with my brother for a bit, I went to get a screwdriver to put the cap back on, forgetting that the screw on the elbow portion is a different size. So it was back to the house to get a smaller screwdriver and get it all put back together. My daughter, meanwhile, left the valve to the diverter closed. We’ll leave the diverter set up for a bit longer and, once we are sure it’s not going to freeze up again, we’ll store the pipes and hose used to direct the flow away from the house, then put a cap on the end of the pipe from the basement. With the valve installed, the diverter pipes in the basement can stay permanently, so if we ever had another emergency like this, all we would need to do is set things back up outside, then open the valve. Which, hopefully, we will never have to do again, but you never know, with this place!

While going back and forth to the house through the sun room, I made a sudden discovery.

With our water bowl shelter set up, we’d put a blanket in the back for cats to lie on. Then we added a couple of cardboard boxes, over time, just because cats love cardboard boxes. Plus, it would give them a bit more shelter from the elements, particularly in the winter.

This spring, while moving some of the cat beds around, I added one of them into the shelter, turning one of the boxes sideways and shoving half the cat bed into it, to create a sort of private cave. Something a mama might feel safe enough to have babies in, even. Not likely, considering the water bowls are in there, getting refilled a couple of times a day, and plenty of cat traffic, but you never know, right?

This afternoon, while topping up the water bowls, I spotted black fur on the cat bed, with the rest of the cat hidden by the box. My topping up the water bowl didn’t seem to disturb it, though, so I figured it was sleeping.

Well, apparently it wasn’t sleeping.

It was giving birth.

When going by this evening, I startled Poirot, and her new grublings!

It appears she has three. A white and black, a black with some white on the belly, and one that looks almost all white, but possibly with some cream patches, like Ghosty was when she was tiny.

After I was done putting the cap back on the ejector, I saw that Poirot was comfortably nursing, so I got a can of wet cat food for her. She is one of the more feral cats and doesn’t let us go near her, so I put it into a wider container, so I wouldn’t have to get too close for her comfort. She did start to get up, babies suddenly disturbed from nursing, and looked ready to either run away or go on the defense, but that gave me space to put the container into the cat bed with her.

I then stood guard to make sure no other cats went after her food while she was eating.

She must have been very hungry, because she ate the entire can and was licking the bowl clean before I could finally reach in and move it away.

We’re supposed to have some very cold nights coming up, so I’m hoping to perhaps move her and her babies into the cat cage.

While standing guard, I was hearing some maternal noises behind me. It was the white and grey mama.

She was trying to lure Eyelet away. Probably to wherever she has her third kitten hidden. I tried to discourage this and kept putting Eyelet back in the sun room. If she gets them away from the sun room, they won’t be getting their wet cat food anymore, and we won’t be able to socialize them. Well, Eyelet is quite happy with human attention. He brother is not!

Oh! I just thought of a good name for feisty brother!

Grommet!

Anyhow, I definitely would like to get them socialized, so they can be adopted out.

I’ve talked to the Cat Lady. This will be her last summer working with rescue. It has been taking a toll on her health, and she needs to back off. It’s a real struggle for her, as she’s been doing this since her teens, and she feels like she hasn’t made a difference. She says she will get three spays and a neuter for us over the summer, before she stops entirely. She also gave me the name of a no-kill rescue in the city she trusts that might be able to help out. This would get us on a wait list, but if we work on socializing the kittens, they might be able to have room to take them in for adoption by the time they are old enough to wean. So that’s a call I need to make, tomorrow.

Anyhow, finding Poirot just after she gave birth was a surprise. I suspected she was pregnant; the only reason we realized she was female was because I saw one of the other cats having his way with her. She didn’t look pregnant, though! She’s a fluffy cat, but not THAT fluffy, that we couldn’t see. I’ve even been looking at her, any time I’ve spotted her in the last while, trying to see if she was looking rounder or not, and deciding, not. Now she’s got three babies!

Meanwhile, I’ve moved the trap closer to the kibble house. I’ve even seen cats lounging in it – usually Syndol, who is already done! Now that it’s closer, and the overnight temps are warmer, I want to actually set the trap and see who we catch that isn’t already fixed. Tomorrow is Monday, so if we do one, Wednesday is the earliest we could get a cat to the clinic – if they can take us in on such short notice – because my daughter and I have medical appointments on Tuesday.

Here’s hoping!

The Re-Farmer

Well, that didn’t work out the way we expected

April 10, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This afternoon, I headed out to drop our tax stuff off at the preparers, late enough that when I got back, I immediately started feeding the outside cats.

When I feed them in the mornings, I try to see into the cat house, but at that time of day, there is a lot of reflection. Plus, they get pretty dirty on the inside. Yesterday, I could see there was… something… in the cat bed next to the larger window. So while feeding the cats this afternoon, I made a point of trying to see what it was.

It was a dead kitten.

*sigh*

The cat house roof needs two people to open it, so once the cats finished eating the kibble on the roof, my daughter came out to help me open it. The counterweight is supported by two milk crates. The bottom one is embedded in ice, so we couldn’t move it. My daughter, however, was able to hold up the roof for me while I got the kitten out (there was just the one) and wrapped it in paper towel.

As I was going back and forth, however, I noticed Caramel in the larger cat bed on the bottom of the shelf shelter. I don’t usually see her there.

And was that a squeak I heard?

After we finished with the cat house roof and I set the little body in the branch pile for later cremation (the ground it still too frozen to bury anything), I went past the shelf shelter and heard it again.

Sure enough, Caramel had just given birth.

If you click through, you’ll see a brief video.

There was just one kitten, but she was clearly still in labour, so while my daughter went inside, I hung around. I did ask her to bring a cat bed from my room that the cats don’t like to use. I set it up in the cube of the cat cage next to Brussel – with her growling at me the whole time – but I wasn’t sure how that would work out. It is meant to be drawn closed at the top with a rope, but it always collapsed, so we folded the sides down to turn it into a big bowl. We used it with Decimus and her kittens that way, but that was when the cat cage was in my bedroom. In the sun room, it’s a lot more open. Plus, the sides tend to collapse. Still, I thought it was worth a try.

I kept checking on Caramel, and even tried to pet her. Much to my surprise, she not only let me pet her without trying to bite my hand, but when I moved away to switch hands or adjust my position, she actually reached out to grab my hand, trying to pull it back for more pets!

After a while, I figured it might be better to just try and take the entire bed, with mama and baby, into the cat cage. I took the other cat bed out and, with the help of a daughter tried to move the big cat bed with Caramel.

Caramel, of course, got off, but we put it with the baby into the cat cave. It started crying for Mom loudly, and it wasn’t long before Caramel started coming back into the sun room.

Then we heard a cat fight in the outer yard, so I went to check on that, while my daughter monitored things through the old kitchen door.

By the time I came back, Caramel was in the cat cage – and in the cat cave with Brussel! Caramel’s baby, however, was still in the other cube, on the cat bed.

So my daughter moved the baby over, and things became quiet again.

There’s no way this was going to work out, though. I was hoping Caramel would still use the other, larger cat bed. Especially since she was clearly still in labour. There just isn’t enough room in there for them.

Okay, as I was writing this, I had the live stream for the critter cam going and saw a couple of skunks. I went to chase them out, then checked on the mamas. I could only see Brussel and her babies. I could see no sign of Caramel and her baby.

Except…

I have the live stream up right now and Caramel is in the sun room. I see her milling about, eating a bit, milling around some more. Now I’m wondering if maybe her baby is still in there with Brussel, but I just couldn’t see?

Oh, Caramel just left the sun room. You’d think she’d be staying close to her own baby, and with how actively she was still milling around, I don’t think she’s still in labour.

I’m at a loss.

While all this was going on, I updated the Cat Lady. She was very apologetic. She’s been trying to get us in for spays and neuters for weeks. We’re not the only ones she’s helping, though, and donations only go so far. I told her about the dead kitten, too, which I’m pretty sure was a stillbirth. We have no way of knowing which cat that was from.

After much messaging back and forth with the Cat Lady, she now has us booked for next week. We’re shooting to bring in 3 pregnant females. It won’t be easy, but that’s the goal. She wants to get us for 2 more younger females and a male in May. I don’t know how she managed to get us in so quickly for 3 pregnant females!

She and I will also be meeting up tomorrow. She has some donations of canned cat food for us. That will be a big help!

In the middle of all this messaging back and forth, I finally was able to get to that drain pipe in the basement. I ran the big auger bit through and, while I did hit a spot where there was definitely something hard on the inside of the pipe, I was able to get past it easily. I was even able to get through the bend under the bathroom and push through quite a bit further. I did this several times. There wasn’t anywhere near as much gunk stuck to the auger parts as there was before.

I think it might actually be safe to hook up the washing machine drain again!

Once I got someone to run water to test for leaks and everything was cleaned up and put away, the only thing I wanted to do was take a shower!

I most definitely needed to use my husband’s bath chair, though. I even made sure to take pain killers before I started.

We can test the washing machine tomorrow.

I must say, nothing about today has been at all like I expected it to be! 😄

The Re-Farmer

Rough night

April 9, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I tried to go to bed early last night.

The cats had other ideas.

So did my hips.

Ah, well.

This morning, I stayed in my pjs, popped on some rubber boots and did my short rounds. Which is just as well. It was snaining – snow-raining – at the time. You could even hear a continuous almost crackling noise as frozen rain hit. In fact, you can hear it in the video I took this morning.

It was -1C/30F, with a wind chill of -4C/25F at the time. The thermometer in the portable greenhouse was reading 1C/34F. Not a lot of difference.

The holes in the roof probably didn’t help.

Yup, I found a couple of tears in the plastic this morning. Best guess is, a cat tried to jump onto it from the kibble house roof.

Thankfully, there was no other damage. For now, I used clear duct tape to close them up from the inside. Once everything is warm and dry again, I’ll at more to the outside.

I had a lot of hungry cats this morning, including Brussel, but she was nursing her babies and wouldn’t leave the cat cave. She waited for me to deliver her wet cat food breakfast, instead. I’m glad of that, as it is more assurance that she and her kittens won’t simply disappear one morning, to some hidden location.

Last of all, I gave her a squeeze treat. It was harder than usual, as there were other cats around, and they can smell it. They want some, too, but we don’t have enough for all the cats. They’re just for the mama.

Once again, as I moved the tube away so I could squeeze the rest out, she got angry at me. She did wait, though, as I squeezed the last of it onto my finger and put my hand in. There was no hesitation as she licked the last of it off – but when I pulled my hand away, she attacked it, trying to pull it back!

Sorry, Mama. You ate it all up!

Once I was back inside, I headed to bed pretty much right away. This time, the cats let me sleep – as did the pain killers. Somewhat. I got at least a couple of hours of sleep out of it.

Meanwhile, my daughters got the drain from the washing machine set up out the storm door and started laundry day. Later on, I will be opening up the drain pipe in the basement and working to clear it out some more. We’ve done the hot water/detergent flush from the kitchen sink a few times, but I can still hear from the laundry drain, what sounds like water backing up the pipe a bit. Not a problem at all for the kitchen sink, but a potential problem for wash cycle draining, as it drains so much faster than the kitchen sink, and is at least 6 feet closer to that first bottleneck. As good as that drain auger tip is for clearing the pipe, what we really need is a heavy duty bottle brush type pipe cleaner that can really scrape off the inside of the pipe. I’ve been looking and the closest I can find is up to 30 feet long (you can add sections to it) and can be attached to a drill, but it’s designed to clean dryer vents, so the brush is a LOT larger than the inner diameter of the pipe I am trying to clean out. The bristles may be flexible enough to bend and fit, though. I’ve found another version that includes a narrower bottle brush end for the lint trap that looks like it would fit much better, but the rod is only a maximum of 2′ long, and costs almost a much as the 30′ version.

*sigh*

I hate having to shop for this stuff online. I’ve never even seen anything like these at the hardware stores. Perhaps, however, I was just not in the right sections. Something to keep an eye out for.

Meanwhile, we’ll try to clear the pipe out as best we can, with the tools we’ve got.

It’ll be so nice to not have to run a house out the storm door window to do laundry again.

The Re-Farmer

Well, that was really gross…

March 31, 2025 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

… but it had to be done.

Okay, so I FINALLY was able to work on that drain pipe from the kitchen and laundry that keeps clogging. It’s been open enough to do dishes, but from the sounds I keep hearing from the laundry drain, it seemed to be closing up again. I’d already used the snake a couple of times before, and now have the pipe cleaning brush. I just needed a time when no one used, or needed to use, the kitchen sink for a long time.

A really long time, it turned out.

So I got the coupling access the plumber had put in open, and the first thing to do was to use the plumbing snake. Sure enough, about 6 feet in, I hit a bottleneck. I punched through it, and could feel another one a short distance past it, and punched through that. I ran the drain snake through far enough that I could tell I’d gone past the bend under the bathroom and was starting to down the pipe towards the septic tank.

Then I tried the brush.

*sigh*

I got the longest one I could find, which was just barely long enough to poke at the bottleneck. I’d pull it back and could see gunk stuck to the bristles. I’d prepared a bucket of hot soapy water for this, so I’d rinse it off and do it again, but I just couldn’t reach far enough to be effective. The coil would have been too flexible for anything longer, though.

I used the drain snake again and, from the gunk stuck to it when I pulled it out, it was doing something, but it just wasn’t enough. I needed something longer, with some flexibility, but strong enough to punch through that bottleneck.

Which is when I remembered we had a length of Pex pipe left from replacing some of the copper pipes to the tub and shower.

It worked much, much better.

I was getting a lot of this mud-like gunk out with it. That pipe had a thick layer coating the inside of it.

The Pex pipe had a bit of a curve to it and even that helped, as it allowed me to twist it around and scrape the inside of the drain pipe.

There was so much of this gunk coming out.

At about 10 feet, however, the pipe still wasn’t long enough.

Finally, I broke out the commercial drain auger. There was nowhere to plug it in, and this is not something to use an extension cord with, but I figured I could still use it manually. I used the spiral bulb tip that was already mounted on it, which is basically a much larger version of what the small drain snake’s tip is. It also has cutter and spade tips, but those weren’t going to do much, manually.

It worked out surprisingly well.

I reached that bottleneck and had to work at punching the larger bulb tip through. It seems like something hard is coating the inside of the pipe, there. Thinking about where that would be on the other side of the wall, it might be ice. It’s pretty close to where the old basement window is. The second bottleneck is close enough to basically be on the other side of that window, so it might be more ice. Or, should I say, frozen gunk.

We might need to look at getting insulation around the pipe in that area, and see if it makes a difference.

Anyhow.

I ran the auger through until I hit what felt like a wall. After much manipulating, I managed to get past it, and could keep going, but when I pulled it out, cleaned off the mess, and did it again, I hit the same block.

After a couple of times, when I hit the block again, I grabbed the coil right at the pipe, pulled it out completely, then laid it on the floor. I then walked along from where my hand had gripped it, using my feet to measure the distance. It was about 12′ to the end.

I then went into the old basement and, taking into account the length of pipe from the root cellar to the old basement, walked the distance along the wall the pipe runs over.

It turns out I was hitting the bend in the pipe, under the bathtub.

After wiping down the coil and bit (again), then using it in the pipe a couple more times, I finally decided it was enough. By this time, I’d spent about an hour working on it. I could have kept running the auger through and kept dragging out more gunk, but I think I got enough of it out for now.

The pipe ends needed a thorough wipe down before I slide the coupling back over the opening and tighten it down. Then I got someone upstairs to run water in the kitchen sink while I watched to make sure nothing was leaking.

Then it was clean up time.

I so appreciate that old laundry sink the the old basement!

I got the small drain snake cleaned up first, then set the auger’s coil to soak in hot soapy water – about 15 feet of it! – while I did what I could to clean the length of PEX pipe. The end was completely clogged and I couldn’t get it completely clear, but clear enough. That pipe is now stored elsewhere, since we can no longer use it for plumbing. It will be very handy again, I’m sure!

The commercial drain auger’s coil took a lot more effort to get clean, and I know I didn’t get everything off, but it’s no longer completely coated in gunk. I’ve got the coils for both the drain snake and auger coil laid out on the new basement floor to dry now, so they won’t rust when they’re coiled back into their drums.

By the time all that was done, I was feeling thoroughly disgusting. At least I had gloves to protect my hands, but I still got splattered and splashed, no matter how careful I was.

It felt so good to get showered and changed!!

For the next while, we’re going to have to make extra effort to do that maintenance flush the plumber recommended; filling a sink full of hot water, then draining it while squeezing some Dawn dish detergent into the vortex that forms at the drain. We also have some of the enzyme stuff left for weekly treatments, though we might do it twice a week for about a month.

I’ll need to do laundry but, for now, I will still run the drain hose out the front door. I want to make super sure that pipe is open enough for the water to drain through without backing up and flooding the entryway.

Again.

The washing machine simply drained too fast for the water to get through that gunk coated pipe.

When we first moved out here, my brother had moved the washer and drier from the basement to the entry for us, taking advantage of plumbing that was already there (there used to be a sink installed there). When we did laundry, we always used cold water. Partly because of the troubles we had with the hot water tank, but also to save on electricity. Thinking about it now, this probably contributed to the problem. The kitchen sink is the only other thing on this line. Any hot water from there wouldn’t have been enough to make up for all the ice cold water solidifying the gunk lining the inside of the pipe.

That’s my theory, anyhow.

So we’ll be making a point of getting as much hot or boiling water running down that pipe over the next while, with dish detergent as often as possible. If I can still hear water gurgling through and sounding like it’s backing up, I’ll have to open things up and run the auger through again a few times. Only when we’re sure things are flowing well enough will we try a load of laundry.

Starting with the hot water “tub clean” setting, first!

It will be so nice to not have to run a hose through the storm door window anymore. Especially with the inner door no longer closing properly!

Which we’ll be doing as soon as my daughter is done with the dishes.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to give my boots a thorough cleaning…

The Re-Farmer

New tool in, and finally cleaning some smoke damage

March 17, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned before that we are still having to run a hose from our washing machine, out the window of our storm door, to drain into the yard. Even though we had the pipe cleared by a plumber, when we set the washing machine back up to drain into the plumbing, it overflowed and started flooding our entry again.

The plumber had made an easier access to the pipe, so now we can clean it out ourselves. Unfortunately, even though we’ve done it a few times, there seems to be one spot where things build up again very quickly. The kitchen sink still drains fine, but we can hear the water in the drain for the washing machine, and it doesn’t take long before it sounds like water is backing up into that pipe again.

In talking to the plumber, he suggested we might have to cut out and replace a section of that pipe, as we can tell it’s always clogging up in the same spot. The pipe runs under my husband’s bedroom, and he can even hear the difference in the sound of the water flowing through.

Replacing a section of pipe would be far from ideal, as it would be difficult to access.

In the past, we had a similar situation and were able to rig up a toilet brush to part of a chimney sweep to clear out a drain pipe to a septic tank. That worked really well but 1) the pipe was larger than what we’re dealing with here and 2) it was easy to get at.

I figured there had to be something similar out there, so after some searching, I found this. (not an affiliate link). A flexible hose cleaning tool – and it arrived today.

This is what we got.

I got the longest one I could find in the size needed.

When I opened the package, is seems smaller than I expected. It’s the size needed for the pipe, but my brain keeps saying, the larger bristle end is too small. What really got me, though, was how soft the bristles are. I don’t know that it’s stiff enough to scrub the insides of the pipe.

Well, we’ll find out, later today. I don’t want to open up the pipe until we’re done using the kitchen sink for a while, so we don’t get splashed. I’ll use the plumber’s snake again, first, then see what this brush can do to clean the insides of the pipe.

It will be really good to finally be able to use the actual drain for the washing machine, instead of running the house out the window. My daughters had laundry day yesterday, but some things needed extra time in the drier. By the time my younger daughter was able to switch loads, the hose out the door had frozen in a low spot and clogged. My daughter had used hot water to thaw it out, but by 2 in the morning, she finally gave up and went to bed, after setting the hose out on the sidewalk, in hopes it would thaw out in the sun, today.

Which it did. Once I was sure water could flow through the sump pump hose we’re using as a drainage hose, I ran a tub clean cycle, which uses hot water, to get the loose ice out. Once the tub clean cycle was done, I could finally bring the hose in and close the inner door. Thankfully, it wasn’t too bitterly cold out last night, and today is much warmer, though still below freezing.

I was able to finally get something else done that I’ve been meaning to for a while. I was able to clean the smoke damage off the mementos I got for my mother, from our little local church that was torched some time ago. The church was too damaged to repair, so there was a service to officially close the church, and people were welcome to take what mementos they wanted. The rest will be properly burned or buried.

I’m still hoping to be able to get a bench and or a pew home, but we have nowhere to safely store anything that big until we can clean the smoke damage off.

Anyhow.

I had selected a couple of small items for my mother and, today, I finally was able to clean them.

The church had the fourteen Stations of the Cross along both sides, and the Twelfth Station in the photo was taken from the wall near where our family pew used to be. The back of it can be seen in the second photo. It was almost completely black with soot from smoke, but did not have any actual fire damage. I used baking soda and water to clean it, gently scrubbing with a nail brush and an old tooth brush. I will later be using mineral oil on the wood, once I’m sure it’s good and dry. It looks dry in the photo, but there’s a possibility water got under the ceramic part while soot was being scrubbed off the sides.

The votive holder is one of many from a stand where people could light a candle and say a prayer. The ones that weren’t taken as mementos were going to be taken to the still active Catholic church in town, where they have a similar, larger set up. The holder had quite a bit of wax in and on it, though very little soot. I set it on parchment paper in the toaster oven on the warm setting until the wax was fully melted, poured off what pooled on the bottom into the garbage, then used paper towel to wipe up the rest, while it was still hot.

I still have other items that need to be cleaned of smoke damage, but as these are for my mother, they had priority!

I was going to be taking my mother to the city on Thursday (today is Monday) for her appointment at the eye clinic, but she called me today about it. She was really unsure about going, but couldn’t make a decision either way. The appointment is not for treatment, but to monitor her macular degeneration, and we already postponed it once. She says she’s not noticing any change in her vision. I ended up calling the clinic and talking to someone about her situation. The receptionist passed it on to the doctor and his assistant, and the assistant called me back later. After explaining the situation some more, she went ahead and cancelled the appointment, making sure to tell me that, if my mother notices any changes, to make another appointment.

I will still be going to my mother’s on Thursday, though. I will probably do some grocery shopping for her, but she also needs help filling out the paperwork for her Life Line set up. I also have some stuff from my brother to drop off – he’d mistakenly left them with me instead of our mother – so I can bring those along with these mementos.

What I haven’t done today was work on the basement some more. I was hoping to set up a temporary table to hold seed starts, but what I was thinking to use is just too big. I might simply use the work station, instead. I didn’t want to set up on top of the new self healing cutting mat, but I’ll figure something out.

For now, I think I’m going to go treat the wood on that cross with a first coat of mineral oil. I expect to do that a few times before it’s in decent shape again.

I hope my mother will be happy with these!

The Re-Farmer

Oops!

March 16, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

He meant well…

😄

Okay, a bit of a refresher on this one, regarding our septic pump emergency diverter set up, outside.

The end of the diverter pipe sticks through a hole in the wall by about a foot; maybe a bit more. I never really looked closely before it was covered. The hole itself is less than foot above the ground.

My brother found a couple of 10′ lengths of white, 4″ PVC pipe that fit together. This was set over the diverter pipe to direct the flow away from the house. We set a brick under the 4″, to raise it and hold it up against the diverter, with the edge right up against the wall of the house. We used what we could find to put under the 20′ of pipe so that it wouldn’t bow along its length, while maintaining a downward slope. The very end of the pipe was on a brick to keep it off the ground, so there would be no chance of it freezing closed. Later, I wrapped insulating material around the pipe at the house end, and where it had contact with supports, to further protect the pipe and ensure nothing could freeze in there.

This set up had the effluent drain away from the house, but not that far. With the lay of the land, the water would drain over the frozen ground, towards the corner of the old kitchen garden and pool there.

In the fall, my brother had brought a 6″ black flexible pipe that’s about 50′ long. This was to use on the diverter to direct the flow into the trees, while the ejector was being replaced. We ended up never needing to use it, and I eventually took it to the barn for storage, along with the rest of my brother’s stuff.

When the ejector froze and we set up the rigid PVC pipe for the emergency diverter, I brought out the flexible pipe again, just in case. There was too much snow on the ground to do anything with it, yet. Eventually, I dug a trench in the snow, brought a wide board that had been found and was being stored in the garage to use as a supportive ramp, and set the flexible pipe (I supposed I should be calling it a hose, not a pipe, but whatever…) over more than a foot of the rigid pipe’s end. This is what the end result was like.

I pushed the insulating material back quite a bit to fit the hose on. The ramp is on the brick that had been supporting the end of the pipe, so the top of the ramp is just a bit past the end of the rigid pipe. I’d brought another brick along, expecting to need it to keep the board from bowing, but ended up not needing it. Instead, I set it hear the hose/pipe connection, on the side where it looked most likely to be pushed off the ramp by a cat or racoon or something.

In the second picture, you can see the rest of the hose snaking its way down the snow trench. The effluent could now drain well away from the house.

There were a couple of problems with this.

The main one is that, while it slopes away from the house AT the house, the ground is not level.

At all.

What I would regularly do during my morning rounds was check on the pipe, to make sure it was still tight against the house. I would then check along the hose a few feet with my foot until I could feel the weight of water inside. From just above there, I would use my foot and drag it along, under the hose, to slowly work the fluid to the end. I could sometimes hear ice breaking up and moving along inside, too, and much of the ice would come out the end, too. I usually did this at least twice, sometimes three times. Some mornings, however, were too cold. The warmth of water flowing through the hose, as well as the black plastic heating up in the sun, melted the snow in the trench down to the ground. When it got cold enough, the hose would be frozen to the ground. I didn’t want to mess with it and risk cracking the plastic, so on those days, I’d just leave it. With the hose being 6″ in diameter, I really didn’t need to drain it at all, as there was no way the ice could build up enough in there to block it completely.

Using my foot to drain the hose, however, allowed me to identify two lower spots where more water, slush and ice would collect. After hunting around, I ended up bringing over the covers for a couple of crane crates my brother gave me. The crates have been converted to wall shelves in the garage, and I meant to attach the lids with hinges in such a way that they would swing down and could be used as surfaces. Instead, I have put them under the hose over these low spots. They will get too damaged to use as I intended by the time we’re done using this set up, but this is needed more.

The other issue I realized is a combination of two problems.

One, by the end of the hose, the ground starts to slop upwards again. Enough that some of the effluent would actually flow back down the outside of the hose, rather than all of it flowing away.

Two, the very end of the hose has a curl to it, and it was curling upwards. Water could still flow through, but once the pump stopped, the hose could never fully drain, so there was always a layer of water in the bottom of the hose, even on the more level ground.

There were two possible solutions to this. The easiest was to just rotate the entire hose, so that the end would curl downwards instead of upwards. So I tried that.

I call attention back to that second picture. You see how the hose snakes slightly from side to side?

Well, those bends in the hose stay, even after being rotated. So instead of side to side wiggles, there were up and down humps.

I rotated it back and left it. The side to side wiggles are at least flat on the ground!

The other possible solution was to use something to straighten that curled end. The easiest thing would be to put something long inside, heavy enough to hold the curl down. That was not really an option, though, as anything inside the hose would obstruct the flow of effluent and create a surface for it to freeze around, among other things.

The other way to do it would be to weight it down on the outside. Being a round hose, though, it’s not like I could just put something on top of it; it would just fall off. I needed something that was large enough and shaped so it could fit around the hose, heavy enough to hold it in place and stable enough to not be easily knocked over.

I had yet to find anything that fit the bill, but I wasn’t too concerned about it. Water was flowing through well, and there was no change that enough water would be stuck in the pipe as to freeze and block it completely.

What I hadn’t thought to do was tell my brother these details. It seemed inconsequential.

Yesterday, before we tested the new bypass valve, my brother had gone out to make sure the pipe was still tight against the house. When he came back, he told me he added more support to it, so that the diverter pipe was against the bottom of the larger pipe, not the top.

He then mentioned that the end of the hose was curled upwards. I told him, yes, I had noticed it was.

Then he told me he “fixed” it by carefully rotating the entire pipe.

I told him I’d tried that, but it left me with raised sections of hose where it bends. He concurred with that and said that it was warm enough for that not to be a problem.

Which lead me to believe that the “humps” created by the side to side wiggles in the hose had flattened themselves out. I was surprised by this, because it was still pretty chilly out there, but that black plastic does still heat up in the sun quite a bit. Especially when it’s protected from the wind, like the hose is protected by the walls of the snow trench it runs through.

Then I forgot about it, as we got busy testing the new bypass valve.

Until this morning.

I’d heard the septic pump go off during the night, so when I was doing my morning rounds, I knew it would be a while before it went off again. Still, I made sure to check at various key points, and everything seemed fine.

There was a “hump” in the hose near the end, though.

When I went to try and drag my foot under the hose to see if it needed to be drained (with the temperatures last night, I expected anything in there to be frozen), it wouldn’t move…

… and not because it was frozen to the ground.

It was heavy with ice inside.

I checked around and, as far as I could tell, the last time the pump drained the tank, it did flow out the end, like it is supposed to.

Sort of.

Once the pump stopped, any water that couldn’t make it over that hump just pooled in the hose and froze during the night.

The question was, how full was it? Was that hump high enough that the backed up water filled it completely? I honestly couldn’t tell.

I did have to flatten that hump, though.

After doing some digging around, I eventually found something in the side of the garage we store our lawn mowers and snow blowers in. It was a piece of metal that used to be part of a fluorescent light fixture. It was about 3′ long and shaped to fit around fluorescent bulbs, in angles, not a curve.

It was the best I could find.

I took it over to the end of the hose and, after flattening it a bit, could set it over the humped part. I’d brought a brick over to weight it down, and there was another brick my brother had brought over to set under and support the hose, but the two together were not heavy enough to flatten the hump, so I went and got a flattish rock from by the house that we’ve been using to weigh things down, as needed. While I had flattened the metal piece enough to fit over the hose, it still took some doing to get the weights on it and stay there.

I knew the set up would fall off easily, but as long as it held while water was flowing through, that would be fine.

I then had to wait inside until I heard the pump go off again.

When I did hear it go off, I went to my window to check but, while I can see the far end of the hose, I can’t see if anything is coming out of it. So I opened my window to listen.

I heard splashing sounds, near the house.

Dang.

Of course, the pump shut itself off before I could even get my boots on, but I was soon outside to see what I could see.

Thankfully, the splashing was NOT coming from the pipe where it butts up against the house.

It WAS coming from where I thought was most likely. Where the hose goes over the pipe. Effluent had backed up the ramp until it was coming out the space between the 4″ pipe and the inside of the 6″ hose.

I checked the other end, and it was completely dry. Nothing made it out the other end.

The first thing to do was to get as much water out of the hose as I could. For that, I lifted the hose at the end of the ramp and work my way up, so it could flow out where the water had been draining while the pipe was running. I had to do that a few times before I was satisfied I’d got most of it out.

I then had to do the same thing, in the other direction. No dragging my foot under the hose this time, either. I had to physically lift the hose with my hands and slowly work my way to the end.

Of course, the weights on the hump fell off long before I reached it.

On the plus side, water started flowing out the end well before I reached it, too, which means it wasn’t completely frozen closed.

All the way along the hose, I could feel ice and slush moving around. If that hump had been just a touch lower, water would have been able to get through to the end, I’m sure.

Once I got to the end, I made sure to lift it enough to get a good amount of ice out.

Then I went back and did it again.

It could probably have used a third time, but lifting that slush filled hose while bent over and trying to walk was NOT good for my back. I wasn’t going to risk injuring myself, when I could tell that water would flow through.

The first photo above shows where the water was coming out from the top of the black hose, then draining down towards the corner of the old kitchen garden. You can even see that the water is still flowing over the frozen ground.

I did make a slight attempt to rotate the hose back again, but it’s still too full of slush to bother. Instead, I put the metal piece back and weighed it down again. I have up trying to put the bricks right on top, as they just kept falling off again, so I set them on the sides. The rock was staying on top well enough, at least. The main thing is that the hump is flattened.

You can also see the larger ice chunks I got out of the hose.

Now that it’s weighted down, when the pump turns on again, the relatively warm water should actually help melt and clear away some of the slush inside the hose, opening it up more. It should not back up the ramp to the top of the hose again.

It’ll take a few showers, much washing of dishes and flushing of toilets before the pump is triggered again, though!

Meanwhile, the day continues to warm up, which will also help. Right now, we are up to -9C/16F, but the “real feel” is -3C/27F. Our high of the day is supposed to be -6C/21F. The 10 day forecast shows we’ll have a couple more days – not consecutive – with highs below freezing, then we’ll be going above freezing and staying there. Looking at the monthly forecast, we are expecting to get as warm as 8C/46F before the end of the month. There are supposed to be a couple daytime highs just dipping below freezing in the first couple of days of April, and then that’s it. Daytime highs are supposed to remain above freezing from then on. We’re even seeing highs of 17C/63F predicted for the middle of April, but of course, that far ahead, the forecast will change many times.

I’ve updated my brother about the situation with the hose outside, of course. As we were talking, he told me he’d been thinking about that ejector situation. His thought is that, with how saturated the ground became, because of the leaking old ejector, the ground froze far deeper than normal. Which is certainly possible in an area what was freshly excavated. There’s no way to know until it thaws, though. For that to happen, though, our overnight lows need to stay consistently above freezing for quite a while, for it to thaw out that far down. Unless we get an unusually warm spring, we’re looking at the end of May or into June.

Bypass installed!

March 15, 2025 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Have I mentioned, my brother is the best?

Today, he worked on our septic plumbing again. This after already spending a couple of hours outside, doing things among their stored items, and being sick, too!

A few days ago, they’d gone out for dinner and he’d ordered a “Canadian burger”. Yeah, one of those virtue signaling things so many places have been doing, suddenly pretending to be patriotic because our government and media have told us to hate the US right now. Just a few years ago, the same people were calling Canadians who flew the flag and displayed patriotism racists and Nazis and white supremacists, just like Americans – or at least the Americans they tell use to hate. People were arrested for flying Canadian flags, banned from businesses, their property vandalized and even physically assaulted. Now, suddenly “American style patriotism” is no longer bad. Funny how easily people can spin on a dime and not see their own double standards.

Ironically, the restaurant was a US franchise.

Anyhow, the burger made him incredibly ill. He thinks the beef wasn’t fully cooked and he was hit with e. coli. He said he was still operating at only about 80%.

His 80% is more than a lot of people’s 100%, though! The guy is amazing. I don’t know how he does it!

I had other things to get done before I went back to working on the basement, so I didn’t get to help or watch while he figured out how to install the new bypass. I cleared another section in the new basement enough to mop it, then joined him after I set the blower up to dry the concrete floor. By that, he was pretty much done and ready to start testing. He was quite happy that it worked out much easier than he expected.

This is what he installed.

The pipe to the ejector now has the T insert in it. Under normal circumstances, effluent would just go straight through this pipe and to the ejector, out by the barn.

In the next photo, you can see the ball valve in the emergency diverter pipe, in the open position.

I was really curious how he would work with that diverter pipe. It had a very strong curve to it, in the wrong direction! What he ended up doing was first, rotating it so that the curve was in the other direction. Then he used his heat gun on a substantial section of it, until he could straighten it out enough that it could be attached to the T. He had to stand there and hold it straight until the pipe cooled enough to hold its new shape.

Of course, he had to cut sections out of both pipes to install the T and the ball valve.

While this was being worked on, the family was concerned about using the water. The septic pump was turned off while he worked, of course, but it had gone off not very long before he started, so there wouldn’t have been very much water in the greywater side of the tank. Any time I got a message, asking if it was okay to flush or shower or whatever, I encouraged them to use plenty of water, so we could have something to test with!

Before testing it, my brother went outside to check the diverter at the house end to make sure nothing got knocked askew while he was manipulating the pipe around. Once that was done and he was back inside, he turned the pump on manually – an easy thing to do, thanks to the second switch he installed for that! – and checked for leaks. There was a tiny leak at the elbow before it goes out of the house, so he tightened the screw clamp and added a second one, just to be safe. There was no leak when he turned the pump on again.

So we knew that effluent was flowing through the open ball valve in the diverter. We could see in the filter that water was flowing, and we could hear it, too.

We didn’t test for long, though, as we didn’t want to actually empty the tank.

The next test was with the valve closed. We were both watching that filter closely and, while there was movement, it didn’t look like it was flowing. The only way to know for sure, though, was for one of us to go to the ejector, while the other turned the pump back on.

My brother went to the ejector, then video called me on Facebook messenger, so we could see and show each other what was going on. Once he gave the go ahead, I closed the ball valve again and turned the pump on.

Nothing happened.

No flow out the ejector.

We waited a while to be sure, before I shut off the pump, then opened the ball valve again.

Which is just awesome. Without the valve, the only way to test if the ejector is working would require switching pipes – then switching back again when the test failed. Not only is that messy, but every time that is done, there is a risk of breaking something.

What this means is that the emergency diverter is now a permanent set up. Once the ejector is working again, we can close the valve, but can be ready to simply open it again, if we have more problems in the future.

We won’t be able to do anything with the ejector until things warm up a lot more. My brother thinks it’s most likely still frozen at the bottom. I think there’s something blocking the venturi valve. Worst case scenario, the pipe from the house itself is clogged, somewhere. That’s more than 300 feet of pipe, and a clog could be anywhere in there!

Either way, we won’t be able to find out until spring thaw.

Until then, the emergency diverter is our life saver!

Once the bypass valve was installed and tested, my brother headed out for home, with plans to visit our mother along the way – and bring her a hot supper to share. No meals on wheels on the weekend, so I’m sure she would appreciate it. I just hope she treats my brother well this visit. She’s really been on about how he was “keeping secrets” from her because they were so quiet about selling their acreage and moving, even though she knew that was why they brought their equipment here to the farm. I think she even forgot that they’d done that. Ah, well. I’ll find out later tonight!

I am quite pleased with how things have gone today. While I don’t have my seed starting set up in the basement yet – quite a bit more work will need to be done down there, still – I did get good progress down there, and was able to reclaim my work station. My brother got the bypass valve installed and, while we were doing that, my daughter was spring cleaning in the kitchen and dining room. She was able to get all the cat hair off the walls, ceiling, cupboard doors, the ceiling fan, pictures on the walls, curtain rods, etc. That alone was a HUGE job. With so many cats, of course there’s cat fur everywhere, but when it sticks to the walls and anything on them, it doesn’t want to come off! It won’t even vacuum off. She had to get right in there and scrub. She did an amazing job, though by the end of it, she was really needing painkillers!

So was I, by the end of it all. I haven’t gone up and down the stairs so many times in one day since we cleared and cleaned out the basements. Yes, I took my prescription painkillers in the morning, but even those can only deal with so much, and I can’t take more during the day, since I save my second allowable dose before bed. Pain is more of a problem when I’m lying down and trying to sleep than during the day. I can put up with it more when I’m up and about. Once I’m in bed, it keeps me from getting sleep. I did take some acetaminophen, though, to help take the edge off, at least.

I have a few last things to do in the basement before I call it for the day. Tomorrow is Sunday, which I try to keep as a day of rest. This will make sure I don’t over do it and put myself out of commission for days. As long as we get something set up for seed starts within the next week, it should be good. Most, if not all, of the seeds I ordered should be in by then.

From there, it’s the fun part: going through all the seeds and choosing which ones to start and when!

The Re-Farmer

Feeling so good!

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

Yesterday, I found myself falling asleep at my desk by 6pm. Eventually, I succumbed and simply went to bed shortly after 7.

I slept for more than 10 hours!

Okay, not a solid 10 hours. I do tend to toss and turn, there are cat interruptions and bathroom breaks, but overall, I did manage to get a very long, solid night of sleep out of it!

It could very well have been a relief response, now that we’ve got the septic running again and we can use our plumbing again!

When I headed out this morning, to do my morning rounds, it was about 3C/37F, and actually what will be the warmest part of the day. Apparently, we hit 5C/41F at some point of the night! We are now slowly cooling down slightly until tomorrow, when we are supposed to reach a high of 2C/36F.

With temperatures like this, I took the time to soak the kibble and lysine mix for the outside cats with hot water, as a treat. From what I could see when I got out, they have been spending more time outside than in the sun room. Much of the kibble I left in the sun room last night was still there this morning, but kibble trays outside are looking much emptier.

The cats were everywhere, and I even had several while I was doing my rounds.

It felt good to be doing my full rounds, too!

I even had Stinky (top), Syndol (middle) and Magda (bottom) follow me to the sign cam. I had to carry Magda around, as much as she would let me, so I wouldn’t step on her as she ran around my feet.

When I checked the gate cam files later on, there were quite a lot more files than I expected. It turned out, our gate was very busy during the night, with groups of cats going back and forth!

Those reflective collars work very well. Even with the long haired cats, I could see them glowing in the infrared light.

These milder temperatures feel sooooo good after the last couple of polar vortexes! Things are melting all over the place. From the road reports I’ve seen, the highways are wet, but not icy, and we should stay that way for a while. Which is good because, starting tomorrow, we’re going to be doing a LOT of driving!

In other things, I’m happy to say everything is still working at it should, with the septic pump. My daughter had left one of the blower vans running after she washed and disinfected the floor around the pump. It’s all dry now, so I shut that off. We’d changed out the filter basket while working on the pump yesterday and, after giving it a general scrub down, I left it to soak in a bucket with detergent in it overnight. I took the time to finish scrubbing it clean, as well as washing the rag I use to wipe down the hose when I do drain maintenance that was also soaking overnight. All the water I was using was just enough to trigger the septic pump while I was down there, so I got to see how well it was working.

I am so glad for that filter. If we were not able to actually see the water flow, we would have no idea if there was an issue of the water no longer flowing. All we would know is that the pump was running and not stopping, and we’d have to go outside and open up the septic tank to see if the grey water side was drained or not. Or go to the ejector out by the barn to see if anything was flowing there. Can you imagine having to do that over and over, while working on the pump and testing it out? That would be ridiculous in the summer, never mind in the winter! Considering how many problems we’ve had with the septic system since moving here, that one simple thing has been a life saver!

As it is, I could sit there and watch how the water was flowing through the filter, and everything looked just fine. Since it is just pumping out into the yard, via the emergency diverter, and not 300′ feet away towards the barn, it also finished pumping really fast!

We still aren’t running the washing machine drain into the plumbing yet, though. I want to give the pipe a few more cleanouts, until we can no longer hear it backing up when we drain the kitchen sink. With how much warmer it’s going to be today, we’ll run the hose out the front door window again and do a whole lot of laundry!

I never imagined I would be so excited over being able to do laundry. Or flush a toilet. Or wash dishes. And I grew up without running water or an indoor bathroom for part of my childhood!

Ah, the things we learn to appreciate! 😄

The Re-Farmer

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