postaday

Our 2025 Garden: getting bigger, some firsts in the harvest, and peeking!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, the cuteness. I got this picture last night.

The littles are happily discovering the perks of being close to the house. They’ve been sleeping on various cat beds all over the place, enjoying reliable access to food and water, and the creche mothers are taking good care of them. Some are still super shy, but even they are getting brave enough to go into the sun room.

I was on the late side getting out this morning. I had a rough night. What little lawn mowing a managed with the push more did more than remind me I hadn’t fully recovered from suddenly getting sick.

It reinjured me.

My left arm, that I injured in a fall more than a month ago, had been feeling fine for awhile. Well enough that I wondered just what we’d be talking about when I see my doctor at the end of the month, to go over the X-rays.

Last night, all the joints were hurting enough that I got my older daughter to come over and rub them down with Voltaren. Only after that could I finally get some sleep. By then it was around 3am.

My left hip has also increasingly an issue. Not so much with pain, but stability. The lack of it! It’s gotten so that I have to sit down to put on my pants, because I can’t stand on my left leg. When taking the two steps from the original part of the house to the addition, I can only step up on my right leg. If I try to step up using my left leg, my hip just gives out.

Something else to talk about when I see my doctor!

With that in mind, I got one of my daughters to help me in the garden at the end of my morning rounds.

When I first got into the old kitchen to start preparing the wet and dry cat food mixture I feed them in the mornings, I spotted one of the white and grey littles, right at the window! This window used to be an exterior window, before the sun room was added on, so the sill on the outside is angled down for any moisture to drain away from the window. It makes it a challenge, but the smaller cats and kittens are still able to get onto it and not slide right off. To see the littles up there – I think the one I saw traded off with a second one while I was filling the kibble bowl – is good progress. They have figured out where the food comes from, and are comfortable with that.

Now if only the garage kittens would come out! They are SO hungry by the time I arrive to feed them, because they don’t come to the house where there is more food, after their bowl is empty. I’m seriously considering moving the isolation shelter closer to the garage, and use it to slowly get them closer to the house. The problem with that it, the littles and the outside yard kittens are already using it regularly.

Maybe the catio would work, instead.

After the cats were fed, I continued my rounds and checking on the garden.

I’m quite happy with what’s happening in the trellis bed. The noodle beans are still stunted, but the sunflowers and pumpkins are looking great!

One pumpkin plant – the one with the pumpkin in a sling – is the biggest of the five, and opened up a couple of massive flowers this morning. There’s just male flowers, though. I’ve been seeing tiny female flowers start to form but, so far, they’ve all shriveled up and fallen off, long before they opened up. So it looks like we’ll get a single pumpkin this year.

In the second image of the slideshow above, you can see the tallest of the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers. it has almost reached the height of the top horizontal support for the temporary trellis netting, which is at least 6 1/2 feet from the ground, so about 6 feet from the inside of the bed.

I’m surprised by all those little tomatoes I found when doing a major weeding, some time ago, and transplanted. I’ve since found three more that got missed, but I won’t bother moving those. Some of the transplants are getting surprisingly bed. The largest one is hidden under the leaves of the biggest pumpkin plant! One even has blossoms on it. I suspect that some of them, at least, might be Spoon tomatoes.

Speaking of Spoon tomatoes…

My younger daughter came out to help me pick them. With the instability of my hip, I can only pick from one side, where I can lean against the log wall. My daughter can actually get right into the bed, standing on the mulch in between the melons (which are not really growing, even if some are blooming) and pick the tomatoes on that side of the plants.

This is our morning’s harvest.

Yes, those are grapes! My daughter found the ripest looking clusters. There are lots more, but they are still more on the green side. If my guess is correct, these are Valiant grapes and they should get much bigger, not be the same size as the Spoon tomatoes. Once we figure out a place to transplant them, hopefully they will do better. The vines themselves are doing great where they are, but the fruit is not what it should be.

This is the first time in a couple of years we’ve been able to harvest some grapes before the raccoons ate them all.

Under the colander is a selection of fresh herbs; two types of oregano, two types of thyme, sage, basil, lemon balm and even some dill weed from the self seeded dill that came up among the herbs. I also gathers some walking onion bulbils; we don’t want them to spread beyond where they are now, so the bulbils are for eating, not growing! There’s a small amount of bush beans, some Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes and some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes.

At the bottom are some nasturtium seeds. My daughter was admiring the flower bed (the Cosmos are getting so tall!) and asked about the nasturtiums, which are winding down right now. While checking them out, we noticed some of the seeds had started to dry up and fall off the plants. Rather than leave them there to likely rot, we gathered them up. They are now in the cat free zone (the living room) where we are keeping gathered seeds and seed pods to stay cool and dry before they get stored away.

As for the rest of today, I’m not sure what I’ll manage to get done outside. I’ll give myself a chance to rest, but I most likely will just pain killer up and head out later and do as much as I can. We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

Feeling better and catching up

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Just a quick catch-up for now. I’m hoping to get outside and get some mowing down.

Yesterday turned out to be a good day to be sick. It rained off and on all day. I think it’s finally dry enough to mow. I want to get the area I allowed to get overgrown with alfalfa and whatnot, so the pollinators would have something. I’m not seeing a lot of pollinators of late, though. I think all the smoke has caused problems. The area is done blooming, though, so time to get it under control!

I still don’t know what happened to me, in getting so sick so suddenly. I had a chance to chat with my SIL and mentioned what I was feeling. She told me that she suddenly got sick like that, too, while they were out camping with the grandkids. The dizziness got so bad, she thought she might be having a stroke or something. Then my brother got sick, too. That was a few weeks ago, and neither have fully recovered. Hearing I was sick actually was a bit of a relief for her, as she now things they caught some sort of virus, though she felt back if they passed that on to me.

Somehow, though, I don’t think that’s it. By late afternoon yesterday, I was feeling good enough to go outside, do the evening cat feeding and my evening rounds. By the end of the day, I was feeling normal again and went back outside, just to enjoy the fresh air.

While checking on the garden beds, I found that a few of the Turkish Orange eggplants had damaged leaves. Just on one side of the plants, and among the ones that were more forward in the bed. I suspect it is cold damage when the overnight low dropped to about 6C/43F.

The drooping leaves, however, exposed something else.

There’s a ripening eggplant under there! It’s small, but from the photos of the ripe eggplant, it looks like it’s very close to being fully ripe. I think it’s supposed to get a darker orange, still.

The second photo has my hand in the photo, so you can get a perspective of the size.

This eggplant is so low on the plant, it’s resting on the ground, so after I got the picture, I took one of the dead leaves off the plant and put it under the eggplant in such a way that any water would drain away from the fruit.

We are all very curious as to what this variety will taste like!

The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers around the corner of the wattle weave bed have more fruit on them now, but they are all still very green. They should ripen into red, yellow and orange. At this point, there isn’t even a blush of colour on even the oldest peppers I have been keeping an eye on.

While doing my rounds, I noticed Pinky and her babies on the old tire that’s holding a door on one side of the garage open – I keep that door, plus the back door, open all summer for air circulation. The tire is still on a rim, so it’s heavy enough to keep the wind from blowing the door around. Pinky and her kittens were milling around on the tire, leaning into the rim.

They were thirsty and drinking the accumulated rain water!

There is food and fresh water by the house, but the kittens just won’t come over. I’ve seen the white and grey sneaking over to the shrine food bowls, and I think I’ve even seen him go into the isolation shelter or catio. The smoky kitten, however, will not go more than a few feet away from the garage. I only have a food bowl for them in garage, not a water bowl. I want them to come to the house! Pinky does, but she hates other cats and any kittens not her own. She will attack any that come too close. If they come near the garage, she will drive them away. Even the littles.

The white and grey, however, is starting to get used to me. The smoky kitten ran away, but the white and grey stayed while I pet his mother. After a while, I was not only able to pet him, but I was able to pick him up and snuggle him!

And confirm he is male.

I put him back on the tire and got some pictures while the smoky kitten started to come back. She (I think) does let me pet her while she is eating, sometimes, and I think it starting to learn that the giant, hairless food giver is not something to be scared of. She came closer while was there, but not all the way, so I left so she could finish drinking.

Later on, while walking behind the cat shelters near the sun room, I spotted Adam in the middle of them all, covered in kittens.

At least two ran off when they saw me in the gap between the shelters. She was nursing the whole lot of them. I don’t think any of the kittens in the picture are actually hers.

Of course, when doing the cat feeding this morning, I saw all sorts of kittens, including the “new” ones under the cat house creeping out. Some of them are even brave enough to go into the sun room already! I am 99% sure the kittens from the collapsing log building are Ink’s babies. I’d seen her climbing up into there a few times over the summer.

I don’t think I’ve seen Ink around for several days.

She was always one of the more feral cats and would run off faster, so that’s not too unusual, but after what happened to Poirot, it makes me wonder.

As I was finishing up my rounds, I spotted this baby under the shrine.

I don’t recognize it. It’s hard to know for sure, as the “new” kittens run and hide so quickly, but I think I would have noticed one that had all white around one eye, and black around the other like that.

Today, I had to go into town and my daughter and I headed out in the late morning. She wanted to come along, just in case I wasn’t feeling as well as I thought I was! I went ahead to the truck with the big water jugs that needed to be refilled when I spotted Slick in the grass, under the canopy tent.

She was nursing two babies!

One ran off, and it’s possible that one was the kitten in the photo above, but I didn’t see its face well enough to be sure. The other looked more like Mom. I gave them a lot of distance, so as not to scare it away. My daughter spotted the two of them still there as she came out a few minutes later. She tried for an indirect photo, trying not to startle them, but isn’t sure if it turned out yet.

We left early enough to stop at the post office where a parcel for my husband was waiting. It turned out to have a custom’s duty on it, so I had to pay $30 to pick it up. The postmaster told me she was processing a lot more customs duties of late, and thinks it might have something to do with the new tariff wars. Customs duties are a different category of taxes, though, not tariffs. If it is, that means it’s our own government charging us for stuff they didn’t before. Anything that gets shipped into Canada can potentially be charged duties. Usually, it’s the equivalent of what the sales tax would have been if the product was purchased in Canada. We have very rarely been charged duties on anything we’ve had come in from the US, whether by mail or courier. This was some stuff from a leatherworking supply company he’s purchased from before, without being charged duties.

Now I’m wondering if our government is going to tax me on all those seeds I ordered from MI Gardener that are making their way through the USPS right now. I’ll find out, soon enough, I guess.

Once in town, our first stop was at the pharmacy, where my daughter was able to get her own refills as well. Then we popped across the street to check out the Red Apple; one of the things my husband asked me to pick up is slightly cheaper there. Then it was off to the grocery store to refill the water jugs and get a few little things as well.

Seeing the prices change in just the last few weeks can sometimes be mind blowing. For example, I sometimes like to buy shelled pistachios as a truck snack. There is a brand that has them with various seasonings. About a year ago, they were still under $7. That price has been creeping up until even at Walmart, they went from just under $8 to almost $9 per bag within a couple of months. Locally, they were already just under $9 for some time. That’s what I saw them as, about a week ago.

Today, they were just under $12 a bag. 🤯

Needless to say, I haven’t been buying shelled pistachios.

We didn’t need to pick up much, though, and were soon on my way home. Now I want to get out and mow around the kibble shelters first, before the outside cats get their evening feeding. This is going to spook the heck out of the littles, so I want to get that done as quickly as possible!

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get quite a bit done, but we’ll see. That left hip of mine is causing more problems, so the point that I have to do things like sit down to put my pants on, because it’s too unstable for me to stand on my left leg.

Something to talk to my doctor about when I see her at the end of the month. Looks like I’m due for another round of Xrays!

Ah, well. It is what it is. I’ll deal with it when the time comes!

The Re-Farmer

Sick day

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I have no idea what happened.

I was winding down for bed last night, listening to some videos on my computer before shutting it down, when I was suddenly hit with waves of dizziness. Then nausea. Then the shakes. Not just my limbs shaking, but even the insides of my torso felt shaky. I wasn’t even able to finish getting changed for bed before having to lie down.

I was able to message my daughters, and they helped as best they could. My younger daughter brought over our blood pressure monitor (BP was fine) and even tested my blood sugars (right were expected for how long it was since I ate anything). Of course, that’s when bunch of cats decided they needed attention!

The girls even brought me a bowl to keep nearby, in case I needed to throw up, as there was no way I’d make it to the bathroom in time if I did. When I did need to go, I had to walk super slow and careful and a daughter hovered nearby, in case I fell.

At one point, shortly after 1am, I opened the step counter app on my phone, which has a heart health monitor. You put your finger over the phone’s flash and it gets readings through that. According to the reading, my heart rate was in the “perfect zone”. My stress levels were low. My HRV (heart rate variability) was excellent, and even my energy level was good. In fact, I got one of the best readings since I downloaded the app.

Uh huh.

For a while, I seriously considered getting my daughter to drive me to the ER. In the end, I decided there was no point. Driving all that way to just sit in ER for hours, and probably just get sent home with a “we couldn’t find anything wrong with you” seemed like it would be less conducive to feeling better than simply staying in bed and trying to get some sleep.

I am feeling better now. I’m still feel shaky, though, and I don’t mean my limbs. In fact, my hands are rock steady, which is actually unusual. My hands always shake, normally.

All I can think of as to a cause is that it might be a reaction to medication. I’d taken my anti-inflammatories with my evening supplements, as usual – I only take the anti-inflammatories before bed, even though I can take them up to three times a day, if need be. I had them with a snack, rather than with a meal, since I didn’t want to eat too much right before bed. Could that have been it? Unlikely. I’ve done that before, too. As my left hip has been keeping me awake at night, I took some T3s this time. I’ve never reacted to them before, though, and they are safe to take while also taking the anti-inflammatories.

I don’t get it.

This morning, my daughters took care of all my usual morning routine, so I could stay in bed. They stayed up all night to be available for me, so they are both crashed right now. I felt well enough this morning to make myself some breakfast, but all I could handle was some soup. Eating did make me feel better, though.

I’m going to go back to bed after this. Hopefully, a few more hours of sleep will get me over whatever it was that did me in!

This is what WP’s AI image generator thinks this post describes. Apparently, AI can fine no reference images of a blood pressure cuff.

The Re-Farmer

Short notice shopping, too funny, and kittens, kittens, kittens!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I got a call from my mother last night.

Her fridge was empty.

I asked if she wanted me to come over today (Sunday) and she said, I could come over to go to church.

So we arranged that I could come over earlier than usual so that I could help her walk over to church (across the street), then do her grocery shopping afterwards.

When I got there this morning, though, my mother said she wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t feeling well enough. So we went over her shopping list, instead, and I did that, instead. She was feeling bad enough to take her T3s after I left – something she flat out refused to do, the first time she got them prescribed to her. She was feeling a bit better when I got back. It was a larger than usual shopping trip for her, as she wanted to take advantage of some sales she saw in the flier, too. Extra is always good!

After the shopping was done and everything was put away, I was showing my mother pictures of her great grandsons at the large animal rescue when there was a knock at the door. It was someone from church coming over to give my mother communion, since they saw she wasn’t in church today. My mother was surprised, as she usually calls when she knows she can’t make it. Today was a very last minute change, so she never called. He assured her that if they see she isn’t there, they will make sure he comes over. He mentioned he had two more people to visit after, with one being in the hospital, so she’s not the only person he goes to do communion for. Clearly, he visits her first, since she is so close to the church itself.

I left soon after he did.

This morning, when going my rounds, switching trail cam memory cards and checking on the garden, I picked a small handful of bush beans. Small enough to tuck into my pocket with my memory cards.

When I got to my computer, however, there was only one memory card in my pocket.

Before going to my mother’s, I went out again to pick an ice cream bucket full of crab apples. The big tree with the smaller apples has lots of ripe apples right now. Once I realized the memory card was missing, I back tracked everywhere I went, after I’d switched out the memory card that was now missing. In some areas, like around the crab apple tree, the grass is really tall, but a memory card in its case is light enough and flat enough that I would expect it to just “float” on top of the grass. I even got a daughter to look in the kitchen, in case it fell out of my pocket

Nothing.

After back tracking a couple of times, I left my daughters know it was missing and were it was most likely to be, so they could check while I was gone, then headed out.

Nothing.

After I came back and had a quick lunch, I went to look again.

Nothing.

I was going around the crab apple tree again when I thought of one other possible place it could be.

I had those beans I’d put in my pocket. Could I have accidentally put it in the fridge with the beans? I messaged my daughters to check.

Yup.

I’d accidentally refrigerated the memory card!

Well, at least I was able to pick some crab apples to bring inside. 😄😄

Will all that walking around, I got to see lots of kitties.

First, we have the sun room kittens.

After breakfast, these four in the first picture were soon snuggling together in the bed in the cat cage. The black and white in the second picture seems to prefer under the counter shelf, though I’ve sometimes seen it in the cat cage cuddle puddle, too.

Then there were the garage kittens.

The first picture and the video were taken during the morning feeding. Yes, I was able to pet them all! The only reason the smokey kitten didn’t run off was because it was more hungry than scared.

The last photo was taken just after I got back from my mother’s. As I drove into the garage, the mama jumped down from the riding mower and ran off. I thought I saw some ear tips, though, so after I parked, I went to take a look, and found both kittens sitting on the comfy seat, watching me.

They wouldn’t let me come close, though. I had to take stuff out the passenger side of the truck, which meant going past them, and they both ran off.

Ah, well. At least some progress was made at feeding time!

Then there were the “missing” kittens, which have started to creep out from under the cat house. I don’t know why they won’t go inside the cat house; there are three big comfy beds in there!

A couple of faces were familiar. The tuxedo and the mostly black kitten.

The tuxedo was peaking out at me this morning, and then that tabby in the second photo came out to eat at the tray under the water bowl shelter. I did see other faces peaking out, but not long enough to get photos.

The other pictures were taken after I got back from my mother’s.

That mostly black kitten is pretty much confirmed to be Adam’s baby. But how many does she have? Two? Four?

Six???

There was a mostly white kitten that came out, plus a white and grey, and I knew there was a tabby with white under there somewhere.

Eyelet came over and tried to play with the mostly black kitten. The black kitten did not like that at all!

I also got some short video clips of them, as they got braver and started to come out, even with me standing about 10 feet away.

Once I was at my desktop, I kept looking at that mostly white kitten. I hadn’t seen it by the house before.

Yet, it looked familiar.

So I went looking through my photos from a few days ago. It is confirmed.

That log I put up against the collapsing log building by the fire pit has done its job.

The four kittens that were in there have now moved under the cat house.

From what I can see, it looks like there are six littles under the cat house in total, from two litters. There’s five from two litters in the sun room. That makes eleven littles that have shown up recently.

Then there are the older kittens; the two in the garage, Eyelet, Grommet, Havarti and Sir Robin in the sun room, plus Sprout’s four in the outer yard, making ten older kittens.

The only other litter that I know is still out there is Frank’s babies, born just a few days ago. If they survived. I’m seeing Frank around quite a bit and, so far, I’m not sure if she’s nursing or not. She has been letting me pet her more often lately, but she’s still more semi-feral than socialized. I thought I might have seen some active nips, but she just wouldn’t stay still long enough for me to be sure.

I’m really hoping the large animal rescue can take more kittens, but cats are not their focus. Poirot’s babies are thriving there, but they were already fully socialized, and have no problem with lots of different people, including children, handling them. Feral and semi-feral kittens are not something they are set up for. A horse or a llama or a bunch of beat up chickens, sure, but not unsocialized kittens.

Well, we will do what we can to socialize the newbies, so they at least have a chance to get adopted out. Currently, the most socialized ones are the older sunroom kittens. Sir Robin has his wonky eye and sounds like he has respiratory issues, Eyelet is deaf and Grommet has leaky eyes. Only Havarti has no such issues, and he doesn’t like to be picked up and carried, though he loves pets. Sir Robin would be ideal; he can’t get enough attention from humans! But the chances of a rescue with even minor health problems being adopted are pretty much nil.

It is what it is, and we do the best we can for them. It’s going to be harder once the Cat Lady officially shuts down her rescue.

We’ll figure it out.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: some firsts in the harvest, and weird corn

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Just a quick garden post to start with today.

While doing my rounds and checking in the garden, I found this strange thing in the corn.

I’ve never seen anything like it before. I was looking at it with my daughter later on and we were wondering about those yellow things near the tassels. As I was handling it, that widened yellow section snapped right off. The inside was like a sponge. Very odd!

I wasn’t expecting to harvest anything this morning, but I did end up gathering a few things.

There was one ripe Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, plus I saw some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes through the greenery that I went ahead and grabbed. Turned out only one of them was really ripe, but the others will ripen indoors. I could only find a couple of yellow bush beans to harvest.

I went ahead and harvested the largest of the kohlrabi, which all turned out to be purple Vienna. I was smart this time and used the loppers to cut them free, rather than a knife. One of them looks like a giant pine cone or something! I suspect that one will be more woody in texture.

After harvesting the kohlrabi, I decided to weed out the invading mint by harvesting it, too. I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet. I might just make a big pot of fresh mint tea.

Good for the digestion.

We had another rather cold night last night, with the low dropping below 10C/50F. Today’s high is expected to reach only 18C/64F – which is the perfect temperature, to me! It would be good for the garden, too, if it weren’t for the lows.

Over the next few days, things will get warmer, and possibly even reaching above 30C/86F, with lows above 20C/68F. Which will hopefully give the garden a chance to make up for the occasional cold night.

Looking at the long range forecast into September, the lows in the first couple of weeks look like we might be getting frost around the expected average of September 10. If not frost, then some things will at least need to be covered for the night.

I am beginning to suspect we will not only not have the long, mild fall this year I was hoping for, but possibly an early winter. For the past week or so, I’ve started to see more garter snakes on the roads.

They would normally start returning to their dens in September, not August.

Well, if things done get a chance to fully mature this year, I hope to at least be able to do the planned winter sowing, just before the ground freezes, so we can get a head start on next year. If how things worked out this year is any example, this may be the best way to ensure reliable harvests from year to year. We’ll also need to really focus on the raised bed covers, as they get built, so that we can use them to extend our growing season as much as possible.

It’s definitely been a mixed bag with how things are in the garden this year! I’m rather looking forward to after it’s all done, and I start doing my annual garden analysis posts.

The Re-Farmer

More kitties and, it’s official

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We must, of course, start with the cuteness!

The cat cave I hoped that Frank would use has been discovered by the littles.

Some of them, at least.

I honestly expected to see it being used more but, hey… if it gives the littles a place to chill without scary strange adult cats to bug them, that’s just fine! They seem to be discovering the cat cage is good for that, too.

I didn’t see any in there this morning, but things get pretty chaotic when I come out with the food. More of the littles are actually staying and eating, rather than running and hiding. I really need to watch where I put my feet!

After feeding the cats and doing my rounds, I was about to go back into the house through the sun room, when I heard little squeaky noises and paused.

I’m glad I did.

Lady Hypotenose was being absolutely tackled by her littles. Where she is in the photo is right next to the door to the old kitchen. I stayed out of the sun room and just zoomed in with my phone’s camera to get some photos, then left them be! I could use the other door to go inside!

On a completely different note. While checking my email this morning, I found a notification from Canada Revenue that there was a message awaiting me at the website.

Well, there it was.

I am now officially classified as disabled by the government. Until 2030. I suppose in 2030, I’ll have to reapply? I dunno. I’ll get a letter in the mail about it. The website doesn’t give any other informaiton.

What this means is that, at tax time, I can get the disability tax credit instead of the caregiver tax credit I’ve been getting. As my younger daughter has also applied for disability and most likely has also been accepted, this means my older daughter can apply for the caregiver credit for one of us.

It also means I can apply for various supports available, and get my own disabled parking placard. My husband has one which, in this province, we have to pay a doctor to fill out a form, then send it in with a check for the placard itself, which then gets mailed to us. In the province where we were living when my husband went on short term disability, he got a prescription that we took where we had our van insured, and we were issued one without charge, immediately. It was a red, temporary one. After six months, when he went on long term disability, we did it again and he got the blue, long term one.

Other than that… I don’t know. I’ve been looking at the various supports out there, both provincial and federal, but it seems I don’t qualify for most of them. Most are aimed at people who are in supportive living or long term care, neither of which I need.

So… really, it doesn’t change anything for me other than being something the federal government recognizes at tax time.

I somehow thought there was more to it than that. I’m used to dealing with my husband’s private disability insurance. Not government stuff.

Thank God for private insurance. We’d be so hooped without it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: thinning carrots

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Just a quick little garden post to start with.

We did finally get the predicted rain this morning, which made thinning the row of Atomic Red carrots much easier!

I’d manage to space the seeds out pretty well when I planted them, so most of the “thinning” I’ve done until now has been to pull up weeds and sprouted Chinese elm. Which is why what I pulled today looked like this.

They were all much bigger than I expected them to be! They look really small from the surface.

At that size, they’re useable, but too small to peel or even scrub. I washed them off with a hose before bringing them inside, the rinsed, trimmed, and rinses some more. As I write this, they’re soaking in water to try and loosen any last bits of soil stuck to them, before we use them.

Or just eat them as snacks.

They’re not at their best at this stage, of course; they’ll be much sweeter once fully mature. I did make sure to taste one, though – it’s a new variety for us – and they’re still quite good.

As we expand our garden beds, we’ll be growing a lot more carrots, as they are a good storage crop, and such a staple in the kitchen. We’re still trying new varieties, too. Now that we know how well they can do with winter sowing, we’ll be planting some this fall for next year.

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, afternoon kitties, and not a good day

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I’m having a rather bad day today – and I don’t know why!

But first, the good stuff.

In the first photo above, you can see our growing pumpkin now has a sling to support it on the trellis. Or, more accurately, to take the weight off the plastic trellis netting so it won’t snap. The weight is now being held by the vertical supports for the permanent trellis, plus I wrapped garden twist ties around the strand of the netting holding the most weight, to strengthen it and put some of that weight onto the horizontal support bar above.

The next picture is of the Hedou Tiny Bok Choy seeds I gathered. I keep getting that name wrong, but I looked up the old post from when I got them as free seeds with an order from Baker Creek, back in 2022, for our 2023 garden.

The seeds in the container are actually from today’s pods I gathered, plus some I gathered earlier, as the pods dried out earlier. We will have plenty of seeds to plant this fall, for next year.

The funny thing is, we’ve never actually grown any of this variety of bok choy. The first year I tried them, they were in the bed by the chain link fence, before we know how destructive those Chinese elm seeds were. The entire bed was completely choked out. Yet, a couple of little bok choy survived and promptly bolted. All of two plants. I left them be and collected the seeds. They got planted last fall, in the “greens” mix of seeds planted in the old kitchen garden.

The problem was, the mix was scatter planted and things were pretty crowded out. I never saw the bok choy until the bolted – again, just a couple of plants – sending their flower stalks up through the mass of kohlrabi leaves. They were able to get much bigger, even being crowded out as they were, and I had a lot more pods to collect once they dried up. The pods were so dry, they started snapping open in my fingers as I tried to collect them. Most of the seeds ended up in my hand, but I’m sure a few ended up on the soil. I finally broke off the flower stalk lower down and brought the whole thing inside. For now, the seeds are in the cooler living room, with the container open to make sure they are completely dry.

When I do the winter sowing this fall, it will be a lot more organizes and planned, know that I know how the different things worked out. These tiny bok choi will be planted where they won’t be hidden or crowded out by other plants, and with protection from cats. Hopefully, next year, we’ll actually be able to harvest some and find out what they taste like!

There might still be some stalks of pods hidden under the kohlrabi leaves, but I definitely got most of them. While looking around, I did a bit of weeding and suddenly realized I was looking at a whole lot of new sprouts that were NOT weeds.

We left more spinach to go to seed than we need, and some of them got so leggy and spread out when they bolted, I pulled them like weeds, and just dropped them as mulch. Well, it looks like those seeds continued to develop, even after the plants were pulled!

We’ll be having an unintended fall spinach crop!

I was really struggling this morning, though. I couldn’t sleep for some reason, and after I did finally sleep, I woke up (was awakened) with this simmering undertone of anger, and it just hasn’t gone away. It didn’t get better after I had breakfast, so I tried for a nap.

It didn’t get better after a nap.

So I’ve asked the girls to take over on various things, but the outside jobs I could have done today, aren’t getting done. My head space is so messed up right now, I can’t even think of which project I would be working on. On top of it all, even though I just bought more kibble during the Walmart trip, it was just one 9kg bag for the inside cats, and another for the outside cats, and we’re already running low. I need to go to the feed store and pick up a couple more 40 pound bags, if I want to last until the first stock up trip at the end of August. I’m in no shape to do it today, but I will have to do it tomorrow.

Weather forecast is now saying we’re going to have more rain tomorrow morning. Maybe. The weather app on my phone was saying thunderstorms starting in the wee hours and ending by late morning. Now, it says no rain at all. The app on my desktop says we’ll get a bit of rain in the late morning, then again in the evening. We’re also supposed to get a lot hotter. It’s going to be topsy turvy temperatures for the next while. Last night, the forecasted low was 10C/50F. We ended up dropping to 8C/46F, instead. I actually got cold last night, and when I did my rounds, I wore a sweater for the first time in months. While not cold enough to need to cover things, anything below 10C/50F is not good for our garden, when everything is so far behind.

Anyhow.

I did head out to do the evening cat feeding earlier than usual as I wanted to make sure the littles hiding under the counter shelf could have a chance to eat without the bigger cats pushing them around. I’ve only seen one or two at a time, so I still don’t know how many are under there. For all I know, one of the moms has moved some of them.

After putting the food out, I did a head count of adult cats.

Five.

Yup. Just five! Not twenty five or thirty five. Just five

Of course, there were a lot more in the morning, but I haven’t been able to do a head count. They move around too much.

I did get a couple of pictures this afternoon, though.

Eyelet couldn’t hear the sound of the food being added to the trays and stayed in his comfy bed, making it easy to get his picture. Syndol REALLY wanted me to be paying attention to him instead of Eyelet, though!

As I write this, I have the critter cam live feed up. I can see one little kitten – the one I found in the garage, and later rescued from following other cats around the yard – running around. I saw a skunk earlier and my husband went to try and check it out, but it went under the counter shelf, instead.

Not as fast as usual, though! It would have come face first with however many kittens are under there.

They seem to have made peace, though, as the skunk’s tail is no longer visible, and he’s all the way under.

*sigh*

I’ve accomplished pretty much nothing today, and I feel like I got hit by a truck. Not pain wise. That’s been so much better since I started the anti-inflammatories. Some of it is just a general malaise. My chronic cough hasn’t been very frequent for some time, but today it’s hitting me again. I’m not coughing a lot, but when I do, it’s bad enough that my old daughter was calling down from upstairs, asking if I was okay – and she was wearing headphones while she worked! My cough is like my throat is being torn up. I spent more than 10 years in two provinces going to different specialists to find the cause of my cough, and none was found, and I finally gave up. Nothing drives a doctor more insane than being a short, fat woman that every test shows as being extremely healthy, other than physical damage, like the OA and bone spurs. Aside from not having the laundry list of fat-people ailments they think I should have, they can’t find the cause of my respiratory issues. After test after normal test, they start looking at me sideways, and thinking I’m making it up. With my new doctor, I haven’t even brought it up. She knows it’s an issue, and it’s all in my file, but I see no point in asking for more tests again. I just live with it.

Still, it’s not my cough that’s causing me issues today. I know part of it is the cats and their destructiveness, which is what woke me up this morning. We just have too many cats in the house, and chances of adoption these days has basically dropped from slim to none. I don’t blame the Cat Lady for getting out of rescue, that’s for sure.

I think that might have something to do with that underlying anger I’m feeling today. I think maybe it’s just caught up to me. We do the best we can, but there are limits, and we’ve passed ours, long ago. I can’t even reach out to the stray and feral rescue group I’ve been following; people are very quick to make assumptions and get nasty. You’d think rescues would be a whole lot of people actually interested in rescuing cats and finding homes for them, not virtue signaling, one upping each other or reporting people to the province to “help”.

Oh, I need to stop. That underlying feeling of anger is bubbling up.

I think I’m really starting to burn out.

The Re-Farmer.

Our 2025 Garden: tomato harvest and the status of things

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

After soooo much wonderful rain yesterday, I really wanted to see how things were going in the garden while doing my rounds.

When I got to the bed with the ripening Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes, I decided to go ahead and harvest them. They’re a touch on the green side, but they will continue to ripen inside. I also grabbed the few bush beans that were available to gather.

I rather like the effect of the tomatoes reflected in the stainless steel bowl I put them in!

The next photo is of the one developing pumpkin that I hand pollinated; there’s another on that vine, but its flower has now opened yet. I’ve added support to the vine itself, to take some of the weight off the plastic trellis netting, but the pumpkin has already gotten heavier enough to start pulling down on it again. We will construct a sling for it soon. The vine can handle the weight. The temporary plastic trellis netting cannot.

The Hopi Black Dye sunflowers have had a lovely growth spurt and are getting quite tall. They should have seed heads by now, though, so it’s unlikely we will get anything to harvest. Even the Red Noodle beans have started to show signs of growth. Just barely. I don’t expect them to even start climbing the trellis before the growing season is done.

Of course, I checked on the new food forest transplants. Especially the Opal plum, with its fresh new growth.

And newly missing leaves.

I guess all that rain washed off the anti-deer spray I used on it, and the protective frame.

I went and got the piece of chicken wire I’d used to try and protect the Albion strawberries last year. It turned out to be just long enough to to around the frame. This, at least, the deer will not be able to get through!

The big crab apple tree that has the small but delicious apples is just reaching its peak period. Many of the apples are looking very red right now, though there are still plenty that aren’t ripe yet, among them. We could probably start harvesting some crab apples now, though they’re so small, it’s a lot more work to use them for any cooking. I grab a few on the way by to munch on as I do my morning rounds.

I was debating which project to work on today, but everything it still so wet, I might just stick to indoor projects and start some laundry. No hanging on the line, today, even though we’re not expecting rain. It’s still too humid. We’re also still under an air quality warning for smoke, though we are now on condition yellow instead of condition red.

We have had enough rain that even the grass has come out of dormancy and had started to grow again. We might even have lawn to mow, instead of having just a few patches growing. The overgrown area where the old garden used to be is going to need cleaning up soon. I’d left the alfalfa that was coming up to bloom for any pollinators we might have – there’s a lot less these days, than in the spring, probably because of all the smoke. Their bloom time is ending now, and the burdock is starting to get big, will start flowering soon, so we need to cut all that back before the burrs get too nasty. We might be able to start on that tomorrow. Depending on how things go today, I should be able to go in with the loppers and cut back the poplars saplings that are trying to take over.

I didn’t get a picture but the rain came down so yard yesterday that the almost white lengths of maple used in the wattle weave bed in progress are now grey with splattered soil from inside the bed! Which is saying something, since the soil is all pulled into the middle, to make room to work on the wattle weaving.

According to the forecast, today and tomorrow are going to reach a relatively cool high of 19C/66F, but the day after, we’re expected to scream up to a high of 28C/82F, with a possible small rainfall in the early evening. Then its supposed to drop down to more humane highs, hovering around 20C/68F, for the next while. No more rain, though. The monthly forecasts sees only one more rainfall between tomorrow and the end of the month. It also says we can expect the temperatures to climb up to 31C/88F on the last day of the month, and 33C/91F by Sept. 1st.

We’ll see what actually happens.

If we’re going to get any sort of harvest with the winter squash or pole beans, we need to have all of September to be warm. Especially the overnight temperatures, and that’s where things get dicey.

What this does show me is that, as we build our raised beds, we’ll have to think ahead to including ways we can cover them to protect them during cold nights, or even create mini greenhouses, with frames that can go over relatively tall plants. I couldn’t cover the radish bushes to protect them from the deer, for example, because none of the covers I have had room for them, except the box frame which is currently protecting the corn bed. We are working to keep the same dimensions on all the beds, so the covers can be interchangeable. The beds in the East yard are all 3’x9′, and that’s the size we’re working with. The log beds in the main garden area will all be 4′ wide on the outside which, with the thickness of the logs, means about 3′ of growing space inside. They will all be 18′ long, so two covers will fit on each bed. Once we have chickens, some of those covers will be mobile chicken coops, too, so we can let the chickens clean up and fertilize the beds after they’ve been harvested from.

Every year has been a different gardening year – especially weather wise! – and every year, we learn a bit more of what conditions we can expect, and can plan around in the future.

That is a process I expect will never quite end, and I’m okay with that!

The Re-Farmer

Mid month stock up: this is what $178 looks like, plus a very long day.

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It may not be mid month on the calendar yet, but it is for our stock up shopping schedule.

It’s been a very long day.

First up, the cuteness. A really bad, cropped critter cam image, but still cute!

That is Lady Hypotenose, in the wee hours of the night, tending her now five kittens! I saw them on the camera earlier, swirling around her like a vortex, except the new baby, who was hunting nip. I look a couple of minute later and there she was with three of her babies (the fourth one ran out of frame), and her newly adopted baby, nursing them all in the middle of the sun room.

What a good mama!

When I went to feed them this morning, they were all over the place, but when I came back after finishing my rounds, they were all gone! Every one of them! I couldn’t see them anywhere in the sun room!

I went out to check the cat house and various other spots, but nothing.

Then I came back to the sun room and found a single kitten, going for the food. I had no idea where it came from.

So I went into the old kitchen and watched through the door with the missing screen, and spotted a kitten squeeze its way out from under the counter shelf.

*phew* What a relief! I was afraid Lady Hypotenose changed her mind about keeping her kittens in the sun room!

After that, I had a bit of time before I needed to head out to my mother’s, to take her for her doctor’s appointment. She really struggled to use the stool and get into the truck but, unfortunately, this was not an appointment that could be done over the phone.

We were able to go through a whole bunch of things during the appointment, from going over the results of her various blood tests (all is fine), talking about her leg swelling with a dosage change and confirming that yes, she has toe fungus, and getting a prescription for that. My mother brought up her frequent complaint about dry mouth, that happens only when she’s sleeping. I’ve been telling her, she’s probably sleeping with her mouth open. I get it, too, sometimes. So when the doctor asked some questions and came to the same conclusion, my mother was right ticked off!

I think the doctor was ticked off, too – or at least shocked – but not at my mother. I brought up the referral for another mental health assessment, since it’s been more than a year, and home care needs it for paneling my mother for a nursing home. The doctor looked up the last penal report and was shocked it wasn’t enough. She wrote a referral for the assessment, but also wrote a letter to the home care coordinator (I’m glad I keep her business card in my phone case, because she needed the contact information!). I brought up that my mother really shouldn’t be living alone, and my mother added that she is having more trouble moving around and has to lean on furniture to get around he apartment.

I think the case coordinator is going to get a rather brusk letter about my mother’s conditions, and that she needs to be in care.

There were a few other things, some of which I had to explain to my mother as I brought her home. Normally, we would have stopped for lunch or something after the appointment, since we were on the road at lunch time, but with the changes in her prescription, I needed to get her bubble packs to the pharmacy.

My mother was so tired, she actually started to fall asleep during the drive!

Once I got her home, I went through the lock box and took some bubble packs out, leaving the new one that just got started today. My mom will stick to the same dose until that pack is done.

I also found a message from my daughter. The pharmacy had already called me on the land line, wanting to talk to me about my mother’s prescriptions! When I got there, I joked with the pharmacist that they are FAST! They were calling before I even got my mother home, yet!

They took the bubble packs to adjust them, but the new prescription for my mother’s toes as another issue. I was warned right away that it was expensive, while she looked up if it was covered by our province’s prescription insurance.

It wasn’t.

My mother had given me cash, and asked me to get some more Voltaren as well, since she’s using it on both her knees and her back now. Between that and the new prescription, it wasn’t enough, so I paid the balance.

When I got back to my mom’s and went over everything with her, and told her I’d covered about $50, she was furious. This little bottle was $50? she said, as she threw it across the table. No, it cost over $120. The $50 or so was what I covered.

Cue much ranting and raving about how it’s just toes, she didn’t need it, she didn’t want it.

She had been quite happy to get the prescription when we left the doctor’s, but I guess she expected it to be free, just like she did with the inhaler when I covered that for her, too.

It took a while to calm her down and give her the instructions on how to use it.

I suspect she will refuse to use it.

After all that, I was more than happy to leave. I still had my own errands to run at Walmart, since I was out, anyhow.

It had been raining off and on all day, and I even got warnings from home that it was pouring buckets. It wasn’t that heavy where I was, though, so the drive to the Walmart wasn’t too bad. I’m just happy to have the rain. We need it so badly!

Once I got to the Walmart, I could finally have my own lunch, too!

I didn’t have a large list, but it was enough to make the drive to Walmart worth it. Especially when it came to the cat food.

This is what $178.63 looks like.

Yeah. Not much there at all.

The most expensive items were the two bags of kibble, plus a case of wet cat food. I also got a box of pet stain/odour remover, to cat supplies alone were in the $100 range.

My husband requested water flavours, but they had only one flavour of his preferred type/brand, so he got three different types. I also grabbed more distilled water for his CPAP humidifier. He still has a good supply, but it’s a lot cheaper at Walmart, so I got extra.

There’s some coffee creamer for the girls, some cleaning vinegar and facial tissues, some powdered chicken bouillon, and some rye bread. They had an excellent price on corn on the cob, so I picked up a bunch.

And that’s it. That was almost $200

Ouch.

By the time I was heading home, it was late enough in the day that I asked my daughter to feed the outside cats. She tells me that all the kittens, except the two garage kittens, came to the house to eat, and she even got to pet some of the new littles! I’m glad because, by the time I was bringing in more cat food through the sun room, they were almost all hiding again.

The system that gave us all that wonderful rain today has passed us by and it seems like the main body of it will go right over where the huge fire across the lake is. Even with the rain, the air was still smoky. We might get a bit more rain tonight, but just barely.

I actually don’t have any appointments or planned errands for the next couple of weeks! I’m amazed. It’s been so long. Of course, there will be the usual unplanned stuff – trips to the dump, any new calls to cover my mother’s med assists for home care, stuff like that – but I’m otherwise actually going to be able to stay home for the next while!

What an amazing thing. I might actually get some progress done on various projects that had to be set aside!

I think I’ll celebrate by going to bed early.

The Re-Farmer